Power to Know

Ephesians 3v17-19 (ESV) 

“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.” 

The Greek word ‘dunamis’ is usually translated power in the New Testament - it means to have strength, to be able or capable of doing something, to have great ability. Our word dynamite derives from this word and, I think, we often have the idea that God’s power is always spectacular and very evident. We thrill to see or hear of healing, deliverance, amazing interventions and wonderful transformations, but could we miss some of the less evident and slower ways God is working powerfully in our lives and in others? We may not experience many instances of God meeting us in spectacular ways, but we can each know the Holy Spirit at work in us in less evident, slower but ongoing ways.  

So we are going to look, over the next few days, at some of the ways God wants to work in us by his power - and some of them are quite surprising.    

We probably don’t think about needing God’s power to understand truth but Paul prays for the Ephesian church that they will have power to grasp and know the love of Christ. I think that God’s power is particularly needed here because this is something many of us have difficulty in really grasping.  

To believe that God loves me with a love that is so wide, long, high and deep that it cannot be measured or exhausted is mind-blowing and beyond our comprehension. We very much need God’s help to absorb it and internalise it. As we do so, some of our fears and anxieties and insecurities will diminish. This process may take time but we have God, in his power, by his Holy Spirit, working on our behalf to achieve it - so we can be confident that we will continue to make progress as we are open to God and trusting Him. 

Prayer — Thank you, Lord, for your unending, immeasurable love for me. Help me to understand it and receive it and live on that foundation. Let your love be more and more evident in me.