“…so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 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, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:17-19. AMEN!  There are some great prayers in Ephesians. I pray that stuff for myself – often. I know I definitely need the power to understand what HIS LOVE LOOKS LIKE – that’s why I read, study, and chew over whatever I read in the bible.

Here’s another scripture that was rolling about in my heart today along with the one from Ephesians.  “Behold what manner of love the Father gives that we might be called the sons of God…” 1 John 3:1. For me that translates into: ‘take a good look at what KIND of love the Father gives us.’ 

First of all I want to say that our human ideas of love, contrasted with the reality of His love, seem very different to me. Our idea of love is nobody ever says NO to us, we get EXACTLY what we want whenever we want it, and we are indulged and petted by others as being ‘special’ and ‘worthy.’ These peculiar thoughts come from our current civilisation’s idea that anyone can be rich, famous, and popular if they are prepared to work at it. Baloney! Many a talented human being is now in their grave unrecognised by the rest of us – it is God Who exalts people … and He hides others.

Reading the book carefully will stomp on all that human deceit!  We simply must stop cherry-picking out verses we like and claiming them … and start asking the Lord God what HE WANTS. The bible is a whole book, it is not just a collection of ‘gimme’ verses. Paul is praying for each of US that we would have the power to understand how comprehensively big God’s love is. Which means, BTW, that in our natural selves we don’t get it! Spiritual stuff cannot be understood by our natural minds. (1 Corinthians 2:14) In other words it doesn’t make any sense to us! 

He then goes on to explain what God’s kind of love looks like – how comprehensively overwhelming and all-encompassing it is. The reason I pray those verses over my life is because I don’t want my idea of love anymore – that stuff is based on meeting my own needs and plans… or avoidance, or anger, or retribution. At the very least – my idea is self-serving! Instead, I truly want to choose GOD’S IDEA OF LOVE. 

At this point I need to realise that God’s idea of love nailed His Only Precious one-of-a-kind Son to a tree! Ya might want to think on that one for the rest of your life. 🧐 

To the world around us, Father God’s action for our salvation looks merciless, graceless, and loveless, because the Lord Jesus was totally innocent of any wrong doing – He only did humanity good! Even the bystanders at the crucifixion questioned how Jesus could be Who He said He was, when God was allowing this to happen! Can you see how squirrelled-up man’s thinking is?

This shows me how ingrained self-centredness, self-preservation and self-satisfaction is in mankind’s psyche. The reality is that solitary act actually proves that God’s love will go to any lengths to rescue humanity. “He Who did not spare His only Son …” (Romans 8) Yet currently, at the bottom of mankind’s thoughts is something like this … ‘God is there for my benefit – if you are suffering you must have done something bad.‘ 😳 Here’s a big thought:  maybe “and forget not all His benefits” is more about us not going to hell than it is about us having a big house with all the trimmings, living a comfortable life, or having overseas holidays etc.etc.  

It seems to me that we’ve thrown God’s idea of love right out of the window! God’s love is a different KIND of love. We’ve lived for years on the premise that God saved us to spoil us rotten – giving us what we want, or what we think we need. The reality is – His Precious Son died for us so we would have the power to live for Him, and be that kind of love in action toward other people. It’s about multiplication, not gain. And that’s quite a contrast. We need our minds renewed – daily. 👋🏻