Ephesians 3:17b-19 (NIV) 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.

When we think of love the way that we understand it, we need to realize that it is totally different than what the Word of God says about love. The love that we experience and offer to others is but a very imperfect shadow of what true love is. But the thing that really separates what we know about love and what the Bible says about love is the fact that God is love (1 John 1:8). How do you even begin to explain love from that perspective?

Yet the Apostle Paul, in an incredible passage of scripture inspired by the Holy Spirit, prayed a prayer for the Christians at Ephesus that they would not only get established in the love of God but that they would be able to get a hold of how enormous it is. Then he includes a phrase that contradicts itself: he prayed that they would know this love that surpasses knowledge. In other words, he was praying that they, and we today who study and read God's Word, would be able to know the unknowable. How can we begin to know that love that surpasses what we can know and understand? In the prayer that Paul prayed, he gives us the answer. He first prayed that they may have power to grasp it. The power that He is talking about is the power of the Holy Spirit. In other words, he was praying that God Himself would enable them to grasp the enormity of His love. Since God is all-knowing, if He fills us with Himself (the Holy Spirit), then through Him we can begin to bypass the limits of our human knowledge to get a glimpse of the hugeness of His love for us.

But in order to experience His infilling to that level, we must do what the Apostle Paul said at the beginning of this prayer. We must root and establish ourselves in the very love that we at first do not understand at all. In other words, we have to put our faith in Jesus and seek Him with all our heart and soul. We must make a commitment to follow Jesus without wavering. We must pray, read the Word and live the life that Jesus told us to live to be able to be on this journey of knowing the unknowable. But even a glimpse of this unknowable love is transformational. It changes the way that you see everything in this world going forward. It's in that way that we can be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God, as unimaginable as that seems. Thank the Lord that it is His faithfulness that accomplishes this and if we stay near to Him, He will do it (1 Thessalonians 5:24)!

Pastor Joey Vazquez