(Ephesians) the Love of God

Let's turn tonight to Ephesians chapter 3. As we pick up here in verse 14, Paul says, for this reason, perhaps you remember in our last study, we talked about how Paul in beginning the third chapter was on his way into the prayer that we're going to be looking at this evening, but then he was sort of sidetracked a little bit. He actually began to pray, but then other things came up. And so he went off on a little detour briefly to talk about his apostleship and to talk about some of the significant things pertaining to his ministry among the Gentiles.

But he had just been telling the Ephesians that they were no longer strangers or foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. And it was for that reason that he wanted to pray for them, that they would be able to really grasp everything that God had done for them. So he picks up now after having gone off on just a brief detour, he picks up now with the prayer that he actually intended to pray before he was sidetracked.

And so he says, for this reason, I bow my knees to the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is interesting that we find Paul making reference to bowing the knee. And of course, we don't think there's anything peculiar about that because that's a posture that we take in prayer.

And we do find examples of people bowing their knee in prayer in the scripture. But that really wasn't the ordinary posture for a Jew in prayer. Ordinarily, a Jewish man would stand and pray.

And whenever you find one bowing their knee, what you find really is something extraordinary. And there were those occasions. They're rare in the scripture, but there were those occasions where because of an extraordinary event or unusual passion, you do find a few places where people were bowing their knee in prayer.

We think back to the time of the dedication of the temple and we read that Solomon knelt down and he prayed and what a an extraordinary event that was really the dedication of the house of God. We find Daniel kneeling down and praying when he was forbidden to pray by the government. It says that he went to his room and as his custom was, he knelt down and he prayed.

We find that Jesus knelt down and prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. You see extraordinary circumstances, deep passion. Of course, when Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, we know that he was so passionate in his prayer that his sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood.

And then we find that Stephen, when he was being martyred, was kneeling down and praying. We find that Peter, when he was petitioning the Lord over Tabitha, the young girl that had died, he knelt down and he prayed and then he called out to her to awaken. And so those are a few of the examples we find in scripture of kneeling in prayer.

And then, of course, Paul makes reference to the fact that he did it. And when he was leaving his ministry with the Ephesians, he gathered the elders of Ephesus together in Miletus. And it tells us there in Acts chapter 20 that they all knelt down and prayed together.

And so kneeling in prayer. Really does indicate unusual passion. I think it would be good for us to kneel more.

Kneeling, of course, it also indicates utter humility before God. Remember, Psalm 95 said, Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker.

And so as we're kneeling in prayer, we're sort of expressing with our bodies our utter nothingness before God. We're really exalting the Lord as we kneel in prayer. And, you know, I appreciate the fact that we have this kind of a relationship with God where we've got a lot of freedom and we can be, you know, to some degree casual about our approach to him.

But sometimes I wonder if maybe we haven't taken it a little bit too far. You know, maybe we're just a little bit too casual. And not only in scripture, but oftentimes when you're reading the account of the life of some great saint, you know, you're finding references to kneeling in prayer.

And I've read several testimonies, you know, where someone might have been leading someone else to Christ and they grabbed him and said, let's kneel together right here in prayer. As a matter of fact, I was reading something a few weeks ago, and I shared with you the biography that I was reading about the Rhodesian man. And it just came to mind that there was one particular time when he was preaching on the streets and a number of people responded to the message.

And they said, well, what should we do? And he said, well, let's kneel down right now and pray and ask Christ to come in our hearts. And the people responded and said, you mean kneel down right here? They're standing on it. We're on a street corner.

And he said, yes, let's kneel down right here. And a dozen or so knelt down and prayed and received the Lord right there. But it's an indication of humility before God.

And so, Paul, this great man of faith, this great, powerful apostle. Following the example of others before him and particularly our Lord Jesus Christ, he said, I bow my knees to the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory. So we come now to the second prayer that's recorded for us in Ephesians back in chapter one.

You remember the great prayer there that's recorded from us. And I might have said this before, but I just I love the prayers that are recorded in the Bible because they were not only. The heart of the men that recorded them, but they were the hearts of the men that recorded them under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

And so every time I read these prayers, I just think, wow, this is exactly what God wants to do in my life. This is what the Lord is desiring to accomplish. And so he inspired his servants to pray these things and then to write them down.

And as we look at these things, we have really, you know, just a beautiful layout of the things that God wants to see accomplished in our lives. And so here he is with this second prayer that he's coming into. But notice he says that he would grant you according to the riches of his grace.

And I want you to notice that it's according to the riches rather than from the riches of his grace. And it's a small point, but it's an important point. You know, think of a of a wealthy, wealthy person.

Now, a wealthy person can do two things, say they're going to express some sort of generosity by giving. They can give from their riches or they can give according to their riches. Now, if they give from their riches, it doesn't necessarily reflect how rich they really are.

You know, they can give, but be kind of tight. Sometimes people with the most are the stingiest. I guess that's how they got to be the people with the most by not sharing it with others.

But when Paul talks about. God granting according to the riches. The idea is that what God would grant us would reflect his wealth.

So what God is going to grant us is to some extent going to correspond. With his greatness and with his glory, so you can bet that when God gives according to his riches, whatever it is that he's going to give, that it's going to be an overflow. It's going to be an abundance because it's a reflection of what God has.

It's not just a little piece of it, but it's a reflection of the totality of it. And so the implication behind God giving according to whatever it is, is that there's going to be an overflow. There's going to be an abundance of it because that is who the Lord is and that is what he has.

And so that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory. And here he begins with a petition to be strengthened with might through his spirit, to be strengthened with might. Oh, how we need to be strengthened, don't we? We need strength.

We face difficult circumstances at times, and we need that infusion of strength. We need that divine energy. Injected into us so we can bear up under the burdens that we sometimes face.

Life is full of trouble and difficulty, so we need strength to endure. We need strength to persevere. We need strength to make it through the troubles.

We need strength against our adversary, the devil. We need strength against the temptation. That often comes our way.

The enemy is going about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, and he's throwing out the temptation all the time. And we need the strength of God. We need supernatural power to resist the temptation as it comes our way.

We need strength to be witnesses for the Lord, don't we? I need God's strength. You know, sometimes I get in a situation where it looks like there might be a witnessing opportunity and I feel so powerless. I feel so weak.

I feel so much like. I can't do this. I don't know where to begin.

I don't know what to say. My thinking process gets muddled and, you know, I suddenly forget everything I know. And and there I am and oh, how I need strength to be a witness.

And so Paul is praying for us that we might be strengthened through his spirit. But he prays specifically that we might be strengthened through his spirit in the inner man. We need more concentration on the inner man in these days that we're living in.

We are bombarded. With the temptation, I guess, to concentrate on the outward man, everything around us is geared toward catering to the outward man in some way or another. And even as Christians, sometimes we get caught up.

Giving more attention to the outward man than we do to the inward man. But remember what the apostle told us in another place, he said the outward man is perishing. But the inward man is being renewed day by day.

The outward man is perishing, the inward man is being renewed, the outward man is mortal. Oh, and the outward man is one day going to perish completely, but it's the inward person, the spiritual person that is going to go on forever. And so.

It doesn't take a whole lot to realize that if we're emphasizing the outward man, we're putting the emphasis on the wrong thing. Because the whole outward situation is a temporal situation for that which is seen is temporary. Paul said, but that which is not seen is eternal, and so we need to concentrate more on the inner man.

Remember what the scripture says about bodily exercise. There's a lot of concentration on that today, and especially in this little neck of the woods that we live in, you know, the place where you've got to be fit, you've got to be in perfect shape. And if you can't get at the gym, come on down to the doctor's office and we'll sort you out with a little bit of cosmetic surgery.

And there's a big emphasis on this big emphasis on the body, bodily exercise does profit, but Paul said it profits a little. So it's not the thing that we're to be majoring in. It's good to take care of ourselves, it's good to keep ourselves fit for service to the Lord, but that's what we ought to have in mind.

We ought to have in mind that we're going to keep our bodies fit for the service of the Lord, but we don't want to go overboard with it. I think of what was stated in the thirty first proverb. It says beauty is vain, fleeting or passing.

But a woman who fears the Lord shall be praised. So, ladies, don't worry so much about that stuff because the outward woman is perishing, just like the outward man is perishing. Paul is praying that we would be strengthened in the inner man, that the spiritual person would be growing and getting stronger and stronger all the time.

That our. Spirit man. I hate to use that term, it sounds like Kenneth Copeland, though, is talking about the spirit man.

So disregard that last. But we're talking about the spiritual person, the who we are apart from the body. And of course, Paul did tell us when he said bodily exercise profits a little, he said, but godliness is profitable.

And then he said to Timothy, exercise yourself to godliness. And so we're asking the Lord to strengthen us with might. Through his spirit in the inner man.

And. And I think we can help that. By exercising ourselves to godliness.

Now, if we just sit around on the couch all day and never exercise ourselves spiritually and just, you know, occasionally throw up a prayer, OK, Lord, strengthen me with your spirit in my inner man. Well, it's a cooperative thing. And God will strengthen us with his spirit in the inner man, but he's given us certain things through which he does strengthen us.

He strengthens us through. His word. He strengthens us through prayer and praise as we spend time with him, as we worship him, he strengthens us through one another.

As we come together, fellowshipping, he strengthens us when we step out in faith to serve him and we sense his power working and flowing in our lives. And so what a beautiful request, strengthen with might through his spirit in the inner man. And then he said that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

Now, if you know your Bible a little bit and you know. Something about what it is to be a Christian, this verse might be a little bit confusing to you, because Paul is asking that Christ may dwell in our hearts. But we know that if Christ isn't dwelling in our hearts, then we're not truly believers, or in other words, everyone who is genuinely a believer already has Christ dwelling in their heart.

So what is Paul actually asking for? Well, the word that he uses here for dwell is the key. The word here, it means to occupy completely. That's what he's praying that Christ may dwell thoroughly in your heart, that Christ may fill up your heart.

In other words, that he would be Lord over every facet of your life. That's what Paul's really praying here. He's praying for complete and total lordship of Jesus Christ over our lives.

Our lives are sort of like a house. And as we receive Christ, he moves in, he takes up residence within us. Jesus said, my father and I will come and we will make our abode with you, our dwelling place.

You'll become our house is another is really what he's saying. But you know that a house. Has many aspects to it, a house has many rooms, and it's possible, evidently, from what Paul is requesting here.

That Christ can move in. But not have complete occupancy of the premises, it's possible that Christ has come into your life by faith, but you haven't really allowed him to take complete control over the whole house. And that's what Paul is praying that Christ may dwell.

In your hearts, by faith, that he might occupy completely your life, and you know, that is when life gets exciting. That's when things really begin to happen. That's when the Christian life really begins to unfold as the most glorious life conceivable.

And people who are Christians and yet who are bored or disappointed or sort of just, you know, in the doldrums because, well, this Christian life, you know, it's it's not what I thought it was going to be. You know what the problem is? You don't have all of it. You haven't let Christ occupy you completely, and that's why you have that sense that, you know, this isn't all that they said it was going to be.

You don't have all of it yet. But as you open up and you just say, Lord, take control completely, take over every area of my life as you basically just say, Lord, I surrender my entire being to you to do with as you will, that's. Where it's at, that's where it begins to happen, that's where it gets exciting, that's where it gets so thrilling.

You can hardly stand it. The Lord's in control and he's guiding and he's directing and it becomes an adventure, and that's what Paul knew from his own experience, and that's what he's praying for his friends in Ephesus, all that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. Notice that through faith, not through works.

It's not by, OK, well, I'll do more things for God and then I'll get that abundant life. But no, by faith, it's just believing and receiving and opening up and letting the Lord just take over. Just by faith that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith and that you being rooted and grounded.

In love, rooted and grounded, Paul uses. Here, two. Different metaphors.

Some people criticize Paul for mixing his metaphors. You know, when you speak metaphorically, it's proper not to mix your metaphors. I read I read about one guy who said it had to do with a business deal or something.

He said. He said, I smell a rat, I can feel him in the air and I'm going to nip him in the bud. Now, that's a that's a mixture of metaphors right there, and that is in.

Correct, improper English right there. And some people have looked at this and said, oh, Paul, you know, the poor guy, you know, he might have been an apostle, but he was really a bad grammarian. He didn't understand language.

He was mixing up his metaphors. It's amazing what the critics can come up with. But you know what? They're wrong.

Paul is not confused here with his metaphors. He's using two different things to talk about the same thing. Rooted and grounded.

Yes, he's speaking on the one hand from an agricultural or botanical metaphor, and he's speaking, on the other hand, from more of a building or construction sort of a metaphor. But he's expressing through each one the same thing. He's talking about a tree that's rooted or a pillar that is grounded, and what he's wanting to communicate is that we would be permanently fixed just as a tree that's roots have gone down deep is permanently fixed.

It's immovable. It's not going to. Be brought down by the storm and just like a pillar that's been sunk deep down.

Beneath the surface. Just like that pillar is going to be stable and it's going to help support the structure, he's talking about, again, being permanently fixed. That you may be rooted and grounded in love.

Rooted and grounded in love, if love is the foundation upon which our lives are built, we are going to be blessed and we're going to be a blessing to others around us. And that's what God is wanting to see is established in in his love. Rooted and grounded, permanently fixed in the love of God and love for God, in love of each other, love covers a multitude of sins, love does no wrong to its neighbor.

Love is the fulfillment of the law. Boy, if we just were truly rooted and grounded in love in a practical sense, that would be the end, that would be it. And that's the apostles prayer that we would be rooted and grounded in love and that you may be able to comprehend with all the saints.

The love of Christ. Able to comprehend. With all the saints, notice that with all the saints now, there's two possibilities of what Paul means by that, and.

It could go either way, it could be both. He could be saying he's writing, of course, to a particular group of people, he could be saying to them, I want you to be able to comprehend the love of Christ with all the saints, the other saints from the other fellowships that have had this experience. Or, you know, again, along the same lines, but just in a collective sense that that you and all the saints, all of us together.

Experiencing. The love of Christ, and of course, that no doubt was. As.

Part of what Paul had in mind, but some see it as. A statement. To the effect that.

We can't really comprehend the love of Christ. Apart from the rest of the saints. In other words, in order to comprehend the love of Christ.

We must comprehend it collectively. Within the body of Christ, I cannot isolate myself as a Christian from other Christians and think that I am going to comprehend the love of Christ, and I think that that could be what Paul had in mind as well. Because if you think about it practically.

We experience the love of Christ through. One another many times now, it's not that we couldn't experience the love of Christ apart from one another, there are on occasion people who are isolated, not by choice from fellow Christians. And they certainly have had experiences of comprehending the love of Christ.

Napoleon's soldiers. After they had. Advanced into Spain, they apprehended a fortress.

Where there was a dungeon and they went into a dungeon that had been used by the inquisitors in the Spanish Inquisition. And there they found the skeleton of a man. And the man had been imprisoned for his faith.

He was in solitary confinement, he was the only prisoner there and he had died, obviously, a long, long time ago because his body was completely decomposed, but the shackles were still there on his legs and scrawled on the wall was a cross. And. The terms that Paul uses here were placed there around the cross, the width, the length, the depth and the height.

And. The man was expressing that even in. His isolated state, even in his lonely, lonely condition that he comprehended the love of Christ.

And another prison cell. They once found. These words penned that expressed something about the greatness of the love of God.

If we with ink, the ocean fill and where the skies of parchment made where every blade of grass, a quill and every man ascribed by trade to write the love of God above would drain the oceans dry. Nor could the scroll contain the whole those stretch from sky to sky. So if a person is isolated because of persecution or something beyond their control, then, of course, Christ is able to meet them and lavish his love upon them.

And we've all had the experience, I think ourselves, of having those times of closeness with the Lord, those intimate moments where there we are. We're all by ourselves. Maybe we're, you know.

Off somewhere and seeking the Lord, maybe we're in deep prayer, maybe we're sitting in church together, you know, but it's not a time where we're interacting necessarily. But suddenly you just feel overwhelmed with the love of God. We've all had those experiences, but.

There is a dimension of God's love that's experienced through the body of Christ. As we minister to one another, as sometimes we reach out and we become the the Lord's hands in helping another person, we become the Lord's feet in maybe lifting up and carrying another person along in their difficulty. We become the mouthpiece of the Lord as we speak a word to another person and we bring them strength and comfort, peace.

We become the ears of the Lord sometimes as we just sit and. Tentatively listen to someone who needs to be heard. And in those kinds of situations, what is happening is a person is comprehending a little more the love of Christ.

And so I think Paul perhaps had that in mind as well, that we cannot separate ourselves from the family of God and expect to comprehend the love of God in that fullest sense. Oh, how important it is to be in fellowship. It's important to be with other believers.

We need each other. We're members of the body and a body does not function properly unless all of its members are working together. And so we gather together, we come and we occupy this building and we get edified through the gifts of the spirit and operation through those men in the pulpit, we get encouraged through the word.

But then we also each of us have gifts. That we need to be sharing with each other. Each of us has something to offer to the other, and in doing so, we're imparting the love of God and we're enabling each other to comprehend more fully the love of Christ.

So that you may comprehend with all the saints, you see, it's a collective thing. And unless you're isolated against your own will, don't think you're going to experience the love of God by, you know, just sitting at home. I'm talking to the people on the radio, not you guys, because you're all here.

But, you know, some people, you know, thank God for radio. So what a blessed thing to have such great teaching on the radio these days. And it's a little tougher with the TV because there's not a whole lot there, but, you know, there are a few things.

But, you know, some people just actually say, well, you know, I don't I don't need to go to church. I don't I don't need to go down there. I'll just I'll just flick on the radio or I'll just turn on the TV.

In some cases, they don't even do that. They just say, well, I'll just stay home, read my Bible myself. What do I need to go to church for? Well, you need to go to church so you can comprehend with all the saints the love of God, you can't comprehend it sitting at home by yourself.

You see, we're meant to be together, we're a family and we experience the love of God as we gather together now in speaking of the love of Christ. Paul says here that you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height. Someone said this and I liked it, so I'll share it with you.

The love of Christ is wide enough to encompass all mankind. Long enough to last for eternity. Deep enough to reach the most degraded center.

And high enough to take us to heaven. The width, the length, the depth, the height, A.W. Tozer, he said, because God is self existent. His love had no beginning.

And because he is eternal, his love can have no end. Because he is infinite, it has no limit. Because he is immense, his love is an incomprehensibly vast, bottomless, shoreless sea.

The love of God, the depth of God's love. You know, it really is incomprehensible. In the fullest sense, Paul says, I pray that you might know this is his prayer, that we might know the love of Christ and then he says, which passes knowledge.

Well, how in the world are we going to know something that passes knowledge? How can we know something that is unattainable in the area of knowledge? Well, what Paul is praying for here is that we know by experience. You see, you can experience something without being able to fully comprehend it, and that's what Paul's praying. He knows that it's impossible that we could fully comprehend.

The love of God, it's impossible that we could fully comprehend anything concerning God. There is a theological term that's applied to God, it's known as the incomprehensibility of God. And it doesn't mean that we can't know God at all, because we certainly can know him, and that's the main message of the Bible.

What it does mean is that we cannot ever fully know him. Not now, not in eternity. We see through a glass dimly now.

But then we'll see face to face. We'll know God. In an immensely greater way than we know him today, when we finally see him face to face, but in all eternity, we will never be able to know him in the fullest sense, because God is ultimately incomprehensible.

He is so glorious. He's so great. That as well as we will know him, we can't know him finally and completely and totally.

In who he is, that's. That's heavy stuff. God is awesome.

And you can see why. When a man, you know, the more we get to know God. Any one of us, the more we get to know him, the more we're humbled in his presence.

The more we realize. How. Insignificant we really are, and the more we marvel at the fact that he cares about us, the fact that he loves us.

David, you remember in penning the eighth song. He said, Oh, Lord, our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth when I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you've ordained. What is man that you are mindful of him? See, the more David understood the Lord, the more he didn't understand why God had any interest in him.

And that's what happens to every person, the deeper we go in the Lord, the more we're amazed that God even takes thought of us and then we end up. Praising him, glorifying him, thanking him. Willingly yielding ourselves completely to him because.

You know, it's a reasonable service so that you may know the love of God experientially. And ultimately, it's it's too deep. We can't fathom it.

It's deeper than we're able to go. And then he said that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Being filled with all the fullness of God.

We're told about Jesus Christ by Paul in chapter one. his epistle to the Colossians, that in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form. And we understand that to be a reference to the fact that Christ is God in human flesh.

But now here. Paul is praying for us that we might be filled with all the fullness of God. How can we? Finite creatures be filled with the infinite God.

Well, you know, if you were to take a container of some sort of bottle or a jar or. Cup or something and go down. To the beach here.

And just, you know, stoop down in the shore break, you could fill that thing up. To the brim. And it would be filled.

With the fullness. Of the Pacific Ocean. Now, obviously, not all the Pacific Ocean would be in it.

But what would be in it? It would be the Pacific Ocean. In your bottle. And so, likewise.

When God fills us, he fills us with all of himself. There's you know, you can't divide God up into little parts. Oh, here's a part of me for you and a part of me for.

Him and a part of me for her. So, in other words, when we get God. In dwelling us, we get all of God.

It's it's a mind boggling idea. We can't really grasp it, but it's God himself who dwells in us. And of course, the realization of the significance of that will just increase as we go on deeper and deeper with the Lord.

And as we go on in eternity, I think Paul is not thinking only about the present. But I think he's also thinking about the future. He's praying not only for the immediate, but he's praying for the saints with eternity in mind.

And of course, being filled with the fullness of God, the realization of that is going to increase. As time goes on and as we pass out of time into eternity now, once again, as Paul is uttering these words in prayer for these people, he does realize that he's praying for things that are, you know, to a certain degree, inconsistent. And so having finished his prayer, he goes into what is known as a doxology.

He goes into a high praise of God. And listen to what he says in verses 20 and 21, you might know these verses. If you don't, these are ones you want to commit to memory now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according, remember, according to the working or according to the power that works in us to him, be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.

Amen. So Paul says, I'm praying for you that you'd be strengthened with might according to his spirit or through his spirit and the inner man, Christ dwelling in your hearts by faith, rooted and grounded in love. And now that you can comprehend with all the saints and to know the love of Christ that passes knowledge.

And I'm sure the recipients of this official epistle initially were saying, well, Paul, you're praying all this stuff for us. But at the same time, you're telling us that this isn't a possibility. What do we do with that? He says, never fear now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think.

Isn't that great? God is able to do. Notice the words he uses exceedingly abundantly. Above all that we can ask or think that is mind boggling.

Exceedingly abundantly above all I can ask or think, Paul is thinking some great thoughts, he's thinking some glorious thoughts, he's thinking some thoughts that are. Even to his readers, Paul, are you sure this just sounds inconceivable, but he says that God is able to do above what I've asked for you. Exceedingly abundantly above what I've asked for you, and he's even able to do above what I've thought for you.

That is glorious. And that leads him into that to him, be the glory in the church by Jesus Christ. Amen, God be glorified because he's able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think.

Remember that when you're praying. Remember that when you're saying, Lord, you know, I don't know if you can handle this. Remember, he can do exceedingly abundantly above all you can ask or think according to the power.

Now, in closing, real quickly. Paul knows that from the human perspective. Some of these things are impossible, but he knows all things are possible with God.

But what Paul calls us to here is he calls us to this glorious spiritual exercise and he calls it to us or he calls us to it for the health of our souls. You see what Paul is saying is that the great occupation of our lives. Is to be going deeper and deeper in the love of Christ.

And being filled. With the fullness of God. That's to be the great occupation of your life, you know, whatever you do.

You have an occupation, I trust. And. God bless you in it, but that's not.

The main purpose of your existence. That's not why you're here. The main reason you're here.

Is to. Go deeper in the love of Christ and to be filled more with the fullness of him. And your primary occupation.

Is to give yourself to those things that lend to that end. Meditating upon God. Praising him living for his glory.

It's taking time out to consider, to contemplate these things. It's good to take something like the incarnation of Christ and to just let your mind be taxed to the limit on it. To just think about it from every angle that the word who is God became flesh and dwelt among us and think of all the implications of that and just meditate on it, just chew it over.

That's good. Spiritual exercise that deepens you in the love of Christ and it fills you more with the fullness of God. It's good to think on the cross.

The suffering of Jesus, what he went through, what he did for us because of his love, those are the kinds of exercises. That we need to be occupying ourself with it with along with the good works that he leads us into as we go along. And so.

May God indeed grant these things. And we have confidence that he will because he's able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we've asked or thought. Let's pray.

Lord, thank you. So much. For the great, great, great things that you've done.

And Lord, sometimes we get a glimpse of it and we. Soar into heaven. Our souls are thrilled and.

Lord, we love those experiences and Lord, other times we just feel so dumb. Spiritually. So numb, so hard, so blind, so oblivious.

Oh, Lord, may we have less of that and more of just that sense. Of your glorious love. Root us and ground us in your love, we pray in Jesus name.

Amen.