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 3:17b-19 NIV
In his prayer for the Ephesian church, Paul prayed that they would grasp the full extent of God’s love. To know this unknowable love. And to be filled completely with Christ, the fullness of God (Col. 1:19). And that should be the prayer of each of us. Both for ourselves and for others. To know God’s love, not just in theory, but in practice. And to be filled with Him.
But these things are layered onto something else. First, we need to be rooted and established in love. If we are not, we will never understand or really know the depth of God’s love. Rooted and established are agricultural terms. For a plant to grow strong, it needs to be rooted and established in the growing medium, usually soil. If it is not, then it will never reach its true potential.
And the same is true for followers of Christ. But for us, that growing medium is love, God’s love. Love needs to be at the heart of all I am and do. Loving God and loving others. Not just in word, but in my actions as well. The more I love, the more rooted and established I become in God’s love. And the more rooted and established in God’s love I become, the more I can experience the life of God and His love for me.
