“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. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.” Ephesians 3:18-19
Remember when your children were younger?
Remember when you walked into the house after work or picked them up from school, or even just saw them first thing in the morning? I may be remembering through rose-colored glasses, but in my memory, there were hugs. Lots of them. Sometimes too many of them. But they were always there – the physical sign of affection from your children. Those days, your kids would throw themselves into your arms with reckless abandon, holding nothing back.
But kids get older, and I’ve noticed that as mine have aged, there is a diminishing amount of these displays of affection. Getting a hug from a pre-teen or teenager can seem like a chore; there’s a certain awkwardness about it. I suppose that’s the way of things. You start to grow up a little bit and find that you’re a bit too old, too mature, and too cool for these displays of love and affection.
On my best days, I know this is indeed just the natural progression of parenting. On my worst days, though, it feels like my kids are growing out of their love for me and of my love for them.
It does make me wonder, though, if we do similar things spiritually – that we tend to grow up out of the love of God. Sure, there were days when we first heard the gospel and were first floored by the realization of the extravagant nature of God’s love for us, but then we started to grow. We started to learn. We involved ourselves in the “deeper” things of theology, relegating the love of God to the days of Vacation Bible School and macaroni art from Sunday school.
But we don’t grow out of God’s love.
In fact, as we grow and mature as Christians, we ought to grow more deeply into it. This is what Paul prayed for the church at Ephesus (Ephesians 3:18-19).
We are indeed rooted and firmly established in the love of God, for God has not left His love in doubt. No matter what might happen to us or around us circumstantially, God has demonstrated His love for us in that Christ died. Case closed.
But the love of God is not only the foundation upon which we built the Christian life; it is the continual experience of the Christian life. Having been rooted and established in the firm love of God, we are meant to continue to grow in our knowledge of this love.
This is an amazing thing – so amazing that Paul actually prayed that we would be able to comprehend the length, width, height, and depth of God’s love. But that’s the thing about the love of God – just when you think you’ve got a handle on it, you are overwhelmed again and again. As Paul did, you might say that this love is not the stuff of intellectual pursuit but instead of experience. This is knowing God’s love that surpasses knowledge.
I wonder today if I have begun to grow out of this. Have I begun to think of myself as too mature, too educated, too “spiritual” to once again experience this unbridled sense of the love of God? I hope not, for you and for me.
Let us be careful as we move further into the faith that we don’t grow out of that which we are meant to push further into…and that is God’s love for us and our love for Him.
Written by Michael Kelley, Guest Contributor
To read more of Michael’s writing, check out his daily blog, “Forward Progress.” http://michaelkelley.co/
WANNA LEARN MORE?
Check out “What does it mean to comprehend the ‘breadth and length and height and depth‘” in Ephesians 3:18?
