KNOWING THE LOVE OF GOD.

DAILY DEVOTION.

DAY FIVE.

EPHESIANS 3:17-19.    That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and the length and depth and height; to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
As we know that Christ dwells in our heart through faith, we can be fully established and grounded in Christ's love. Paul says here that we should be able to comprehend, along with all the rest of the body of Christ, what is the full extent of God's love for us. The word comprehend means to take a hold of, seize and to be able to perceive. It's basically having a working knowledge of how the love of God works in the situations that we find ourselves in. Does this mean that we can totally understand the enormity of God's love, Let me answer it this way, God is infinite, He lives in eternity, so His love is eternal and infinite, we are finite beings so we will never be able to totally understand the enormity of God's love. That is not to say though that in every situation that we find ourselves, we cannot know the fullness of God's love for us that brings us through the situation we find ourselves. Paul says there that the love of Christ passes knowledge, this means that we will never be able to understand the love of Christ with our own understanding, it has to come from the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the one who will guide us into all truth. So why is it so important that we can have an understanding of how Christ's love works in our lives and how we can know how to use His love in our lives? We are meant to walk in the love of God every day, it is through our love for Jesus that we are able to walk in obedience to His word and will for our lives. Love is the fruit of the Spirit, Jesus said that it is as we walk in love for one another that people would know that we are His disciples. So how do we come to this sort of understanding of the love of God? There are a couple of ways that this happens, firstly we must develop our personal relationship with Jesus, if we don't make the effort to spend time with Him through His word and prayer then how can we expect to get to know Him and to know His love for us. we cannot live part time lukewarm Christian lives and expect to know the love of God. Of course I am aware that there may be things in our lives that can hinder us from receiving the love of God, past hurts, emotional, physical, things that have caused us to close our hearts because we don't want to be hurt again. Can I encourage you, if you are reading this and that is you, if you need to, seek help from someone you can trust, another mature Christian brother or sister, your pastor, someone you can talk to and who will pray with you to allow God to heal those hurts. God wants above all else for us to understand the love He has for us. So, we all need to be encouraged in this area of our lives, to continue to build on our relationship with Jesus, believe me, none of us can say that we have arrived when it comes to this area of our lives, we can all grow and improve in this area. Another way that we can get a greater understanding of the love of God is through our simple acts of obedience. Jesus said that if we love Him then we will keep His commandments, this simply means walking in obedience to His word and to His will. In John 15 Jesus had been talking to His disciples of the importance of abiding in the vine and how we do that is by walking in obedience, in verse eleven He said that he had shared those things with them that His joy might be in them and that their joy would be full. As we walk in obedience to what Jesus asking us to do, and walk in His love then Jesus gets great joy out of that and His joy, the joy of the Lord spills over into our spirits and we experience that joy, our joy is full. This joy goes way beyond happiness, even beyond our own understanding. It flows out of our spirit and brings with it a sense of great strength, because the joy of the Lord is our strength. Remember God is love, so when He floods our lives with His anointing like that a greater awareness of His love comes with it. Fear is one of the things that will stop us from stepping out at times to do what God is asking. When we take that step of faith in obedience that fear is broken, When we step out in love fear has to go because perfected love casts out fear, our love is perfected or matured by our acts of faith and obedience. The simply amazing thing is this, as we begin to walk in this and grow in it God is able to do far more than we can even imagine, far beyond what we can even ask or think, He can use us to do things that we would not even dream of doing and it is all done through His love and power working through us. It gets even better, God gets all the glory, not only now, but in the generations to come and even on into eternity. Let us all desire with all our hearts to have a greater understanding of the love of God and how to walk in it and in obedience to what God wants to do in us and through us for His glory so that we can see His kingdom established in our world.