THE APEX OF ALL PRAYERS
Ephesians 3:16-19 NLT
[16] “I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. [17] Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. [18] 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. [19] 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.”
Whoever uttered this prayer had a grasp of and a passion for God’s love like no other! All of Paul’s insights, teachings, instructions, explanations, rebukes, corrections, and recorded prayers peak at this point… knowing and experiencing the love of God in Christ.
Whatever Paul has written and preserved for believers down the centuries will mean little if it does not bring us to the fulfillment of this prayer. God’s love, the source and completion of everything He has ever done, from creation in Genesis to consummation in Revelation, is all that matters.
The Apostle John must surely have grasped this truth. He was transformed from “son of thunder” to “the disciple whom Jesus loved”
by a love so great that it consumed his heart. His letters ooze the love of God. God’s love for us drips from every word he wrote, an unfathomable love so great that it drives every thought and action God has towards lost humans.
Until we, like Paul and John, see with wide-open spiritual eyes, this love of God on Scripture’s every page, and embrace it for ourselves, we will always limp along in the twilight of our salvation experience.
Knowing and experiencing this divine love creates the confidence in a belonging that nothing and no one can ever destroy.
Romans 8:35, 37-39 NLT
[35] Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?…
[37] No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.
[38] And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.
[39] “No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
A hymn composed by George Wade Robinson (1838 to 1877), beautifully expresses this sublime relationship.
(http:// www.hymnal.net)
“Loved with everlasting love,
Led by grace that love to know;
Spirit, breathing from above,
Thou hast taught me it is so.
Oh, this full and perfect peace!
Oh, this transport all divine!
In a love which cannot cease,
I am His, and He is mine.
- Heaven above is softer blue,
Earth around is sweeter green;
Something lives in every hue
Christless eyes have never seen:
Birds with gladder songs o’erflow,
Flow’rs with deeper beauties shine,
Since I know, as now I know,
I am His, and He is mine. - Things that once were wild alarms
Cannot now disturb my rest;
Closed in everlasting arms,
Pillowed on the loving breast.
Oh, to lie forever here,
Doubt and care and self resign,
While He whispers in my ear,
I am His, and He is mine. - His forever, only His:
Who the Lord and me shall part?
Ah, with what a rest of bliss
Christ can fill the loving heart.
Heaven and earth may fade and flee,
Firstborn light in gloom decline;
But, while God and I shall be,
I am His, and He is mine.”
For knowledge and experience of this love in all the dimensions of its reach, and driven by the Holy Spirit in us, Paul earnestly prays. In the atmosphere and environment of God’s love entrenched in our hearts, Jesus Christ will be perfectly at home.
All the “so that’s” of the Holy Spirit’s energy in us will culminate in a grip so strong that God’s love in all its dimensions will color every nuance in life.
Every struggle, trouble, hardship, and adversity will NEVER be able to dislodge us from our confidence in this love. God’s love, the depth of who He is, will relentlessly surround and overshadow us until, at last, we are moved from time to eternity into that and life-sustaining breath of heaven forever.
If we are still uncertain of Jesus’ love for the Father, revealed in His sublime act of sacrifice in obedience to Him, then pray! Pray, like Paul prayed, that the love that glues the Godhead together and includes us in its grip, will become as real as the earth we walk on. Let that prayer become the air we breathe until we are wrapped, encased, and engulfed in the love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.