PAUL'S PRAYER FOR THE EPHESIANS - PART 2
TUESDAY 24 JANUARY 2023
Today's focus is on the power to understand the immensity of the love of Christ. This understanding ultimately controls the entire view of our salvation and newness of life.
Reference: Ephesians 3:18-19 New Living Translation (NLT) "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."
We need power to understand how wide, long, high and deep the love of God is. Simply put, this love is guided by the power of God such that it can never lose its potency. It starts with allowing the profound sense of Christ's example and teachings to establish its influence in our hearts and minds. And this power is the enabling power of the Holy Spirit. Remember that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of understanding, according to Isaiah 11:2. Therefore He is the one that makes it happen.
Since we need the very understanding, the power of the Holy Spirit gives, to explore this love, it simply implies that we already have the power within us for adequate spiritual understanding. Notably, we can never grasp this love by leaning on our mere physical strength or human understanding. It is the Holy Spirit that powerfully directs our minds and hearts to dig into it, encounter and function in it. To begin with, this love is shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us (Romans 5:5 WEB). For this reason, we must be filled with His power to be able to understand every aspect of Christ's love.
For instance, it is the power of the Holy Spirit that prompts us in the moment where we need to overcome evil with good, which demonstrates Christ's love. So it means that Scriptures such as Romans 12:21 (NIV): Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good, needs the influential power of the Holy Spirit to be fulfilled, which is why it is often challenging to be actualised by human ability.
John 16:13 reads, "But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth..." (NIV). Since the love of Christ is an overwhelming truth that has dimensional characters such as width, length, height, and depth, it is the Holy Spirit who can guide us into all of its dimensions. This power of the Spirit is a vital part of our exposure to divine love. It must be activated and expressed through you and me, in order to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, long, high, and deep Christ's love is. Shalom!
Scripture Reading - John 14:26; 1 Corinthians 2:4; Romans 15:13; 1 Thessalonians 1:5.
Guided Prayer: Dear Father in heaven, I thank you for strengthening me with might in the inner man, by your Spirit, so as to relate with your love, which is shed abroad in my heart. Therefore this assurance gives me the advantage to understand divine love, and to function in it through the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you for the dimensions of your love which are continually before me, thereby guiding me aright always, in Jesus' Name, Amen!
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