Good morning my friends. These are exciting days in which we live. I hope you are excited to be a participant. Indeed I hope you are a participant not a spectator. Take a leap of faith and participate in today. It may change the rest of your life. We are continuing with Ephesians 3.
There is a move of God that has begun and it is beginning to make its way through city after city. It begins ever so subtle but as it builds in his people everything changes. For us it began in our prayer meetings where the past moves of the Holy Spirit also began and it began with a keen awareness of the assurance of answered prayer. Then prayer after prayer was being answered. As this happened God began to re-establish in his children an overwhelming awareness of his love. Sound simple? It is, but this is not just knowing God's love it is experiencing it, having the Father wrap his arms around you and sing over you with such assurances of his love that it is hard not to explode.
With this re-establishing the root of his children we began to see everything change. The worship became a response to this love not a means to try to become aware of God. As trials and difficulties hit the root maintained a joy in our center that could not be touched. It defies any reason. To love people is becoming an easy thing because we are not trying to love with our feeble love, instead it is a response to God's love and it is done with the overflow of his love for us. There is such a great desire for the lost, that they would experience this love for themselves. There is a passion that has returned for all of the things of God. Sounds all rather ordinary in written form but please believe me this is an incredible thing that has turned our church upside down. From it we are experiencing tremendous growth but we do not care about numbers. It is the thrill of seeing more and more people caught up by his love that is causing so much excitement among us.I now understand Paul's words here as if I had written them:
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. vs. 16-17a
The riches are the spiritual blessings that he has poured out on us. It's the "inner being" that is so important. As the Father establishes his love for us as the center of our "inner being" things begin to change. For far too long we have had it backwards. We have had our love for God as our center. We do things to try to please him. Churches run social and outreach programs. We do lots of charitable work and a lot of things almost like it is part of a job description as we love God by loving others. But that is backwards. What we do must be a response to his love for us. We love because we are loved. We serve because we are loved. We give because we are loved. When we do things because we are loved then nothing will effect it; not hardships, weariness or anything else because we can do all things through him who loves us. It is the result of the overflow. Our whole perspective changes.
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, 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. vs. 17b-19
This is what this move of God is all about. As the Father re-establishes the proper root in his children we are beginning to grasp the enormity of his love for us. It is overwhelming. It gets to a point where we can no longer grasp it with our mind but it becomes an experience of our soul; we begin to be filled with the fullness of God. Our pain becomes nothing compared to knowing him. Our sacrifices are nothing compared to this love. Even God's work takes a very distant second to Jesus. We knew all this stuff in written form but now it is a matter of experiencing it from the root.
We consider this a move of God because nothing in this world, no amount of preaching or teaching could cause this "understanding" to grip us as it has. Only the Father can change our root. Only the Father can re-establish his love as our center. Get ready, its coming your way and it is completely life changing. If you want it now just ask. "Lord, I want to experience your love. I want it to be real to me. I want to know you better. I want everything I do to come from the overflow of your love for me." Do it, and witness what he does with those who seek him.
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39
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