In Search Of A Better Tomorrow

Daily Devotion: The Fullness of God’s Love

Ephesians 3:14-19

New International Version (NIV)

A Prayer for the Ephesians

Read: Ephesians 3:14-19

14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family[a] in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Consider: How can you know something that can’t be known? It sounds impossible, but that is what Paul prayed for the Ephesian believers (and for us). He prayed that we would “know this love that surpasses knowledge” (3:19).
Well, the only way we can make sense of that is to try to understand what Paul means by knowledge. And it’s obvious that Paul is speaking about two different kinds of knowledge. There are some things we can grasp with our minds. We can know the story of Jesus’ birth, life and death. But the love of Christ surpasses that capability. I can’t contain his love in my thinking and reasoning.

While that may be obvious, Paul needed to remind us. It is easy for us to try to “know” Christ in the wrong way. It is our nature to approach all of life from a rational point of view. We try to figure things out. We make reasoned decisions. And if, at some point we fail to live life in that manner, we chide ourselves for being “irrational.”

Well, to know the love of Christ is not rational and it’s not irrational. It is what one author likes to call “trans-rational”—it transcends our knowledge or, as Paul says it, it “surpasses knowledge.”

That means that you and I need a different capacity—a spiritual capacity—to know that love. Paul said that capacity is given to us from “the fullness of God” and he prayed that we would be “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (3:19).

Pray: “Lord, I open myself to you and ask your Spirit to fill me this day. By your presence in me, I ask that today you would help me ‘to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.’ I know this can’t happen in my mind alone, so help me to see you today with new eyes, in new ways.”

Phil Stout, Lead Pastor, Jackson First Church Nazarene