Growing In Love

Growing in Love

Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Ephesians 3:17-19

One of the great messages of the Bible is that love is of supreme importance to God. He wants us to grow in love toward him and others. Without love, Scripture tells us, we are bankrupt, and all our good works are worth nothing (see 1 Corinthians 13:3). But how can we love unless we’ve deeply experienced the love of Christ? This prayer from Ephesians 3 is not asking that we will simply have more head knowledge about God’s love but that we would understand and comprehend it—that how very much he loves us would really sink in and go from head knowledge to heart knowledge. And most of all, that we would experience the love of Christ for ourselves and be rooted in it. Knowledge isn’t enough. Great speeches or sermons won’t suffice, nor will hearing what the Lord did in someone else’s life. It takes God’s power imparted to each of us through his Spirit to fathom the depth and length and width, the incomparable nature, of God’s amazing love for us in Christ Jesus.

Just as Paul prayed earnestly for the Ephesian Christians, we need to ask that our roots would go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love. And as we continually pray this life-transforming prayer, we will drink deeply of love. When we receive and experience the love of Christ in our own hearts, his love will grow and will flow through us to others. —CHERI

Lord Jesus, I want to understand and experience your love in a deeper way than I ever have before. May your love be my anchor as your Spirit causes my roots to sink deeper in you. And may your love flow through me like a river to those around me.

We must daily come and drink at the fountain of divine love. Herein lies the purpose of all prayer. —MARGARET THERKELSEN, AUTHOR AND SPEAKER