Do you remember how it felt to fall in love, where
you could hardly wait to see your beloved again, where your heart beat faster
just thinking about them? Do you
remember how it felt as a child, when your mom or dad held you, when you
cuddled into their lap, how warm and secure that felt?
Why am I asking you to remember that? Because a relationship with God can at times feel
like that and more. These intense
experiences of God’s love, of God’s presence are open to anyone, not just a
saint or a mystic. When people yearn
for a spiritual experience, that’s what they want a sense of something beyond
themselves, something life-changing. And
they should want that. Because what they
want can actually happen. But how do
they?
Here in the prayer of a man, who had felt the rapturous
joy that comes from such intimacy with God, God shows us the way. Let’s listen and hear what God has to
say.
Do you know what’s striking in this prayer? Paul is writing to people facing all sorts
of hardship, who are confronting a society hostile to them, and this is what he
asks God to give? He could have asked
for protection, for provision for their needs, but instead he prays for this? And not only does he pray for it, he prays for
it on bended knee. In ancient times, people prayed standing up. To actually kneel to pray meant a prayer of
utmost intensity. So why does Paul pray so passionately? Paul knows.
This sense of God’s presence, this deep experience of Jesus’ love will
do more for them than anything else.
When you know in the deepest part of who you are that love, you can
handle anything. And in the power of
that love, there is no limit to what God can do.
Last week, I talked about the painfully sad prayer of
Psalm 88. I shared how a walk with God
can bring you into some pretty dark places, places where you have no sense of
God’s presence at all. I shared how
Mother Teresa went through decades where she lost that presence. But that only tells part of her story. Teresa yearned so deeply for God’s presence
because she had felt it once so deeply.
God’s love became so real to her that God gave her actual visions. Those visions changed her life. They led her to begin the Missionaries ofCharity, an order that now has over 4,500 sisters serving in 133
countries! Encountering the presence of
God this deeply not only changes your life.
It can change the world.
But how does such an experience happen? Before we get there, let’s take a moment to
understand why it doesn’t happen that often.
In this prayer, Paul is doing something strange. He is praying for things that Paul has
already told these people they have.
They already have strength in their inner being through God’s
Spirit. Christ already dwells in their
hearts by faith. They already know the
love of Christ; already have the fullness of God. So why is he asking for these
things here? He is asking because, it’s
one thing to have these things. It’s
entirely another to grasp them. And that
sort of grasping just doesn’t happen every day for anything.
I’m a citizen of the United States. And I know what that means. I know our nation with all its faults has
been the greatest beacon of freedom in human history. I know that countless people yearn to come
here for that reason. I know that I
belong to a nation that inspires the world like no other. There has been no other nation like us ever. I know that.
But every now and then, I grasp it.
For example some time during these Olympics, when I
see American athletes of every color, gender, orientation, class wrap
themselves proudly in the stars and stripes, and cry unashamedly as they hear
the national anthem play, I’ll grasp it.
I’ll probably start chanting USA,
USA! I might even cry. Why? I’m feeling something deeply that I’ve
always known. To be an American, to be
part of this wondrous experiment that is our nation, that’s an amazing thing.
But most days I don’t feel that. In fact, no one does with that intensity
about anything. For those of us who are
married or have kids, we have moments when we grasp the intensity of our love
for them, how grateful we are to have them in our lives. But every day do we feel that intensity? No.
Yes, we know it’s there. But
that intensity of feeling can’t be a normal thing. We couldn’t even function if it was.
But what you
feel that deeply, it stays with you. It
sustains you. Whether it be your love of
nation or spouse or child or any special person in your life, those intense
feelings lead you deeper into that love.
They feed it. They strengthen it.
And if you are married or have a child
or even live in this nation, and never grasp the power of what that means,
well, how shallow and sad that is.
And that is why Paul is praying with such passion.
He yearns for the believers in Ephesus to feel the deep reality of what they
already have. He knows, grasping God’s
love like that, not just knowing it, will root that love deeper than ever. And
everyone needs that
The English preacher, Martin Lloyd Jones, when he
counseled troubled Christians, asked them this question. “Are you a Christian?” They’d often respond. “Well, I’m trying to be” And he’d respond, “You don’t get it, do
you?” What makes you a Christian is
knowing that you have God’s love, that God has given it to you freely and
unconditionally. Being a Christian isn’t
something you try to be, it’s a status you already have. But
Jones realized. Those struggling Christians knew that truth, but they hadn’t
really grasped it. Too many Christians, don’t realize, in the depth
of their deepest being, the reality of just how much God loves them. And if
you’ve never felt it, it can be hard to trust it’s there, especially when you
struggle or doubt.
But Paul knows that if these Ephesians do experience
it, that the power of that love will carry them through anything. They will discover the courage not to deny in
the darkness, what they have seen in the light. That’s why he prays for this experience to
strengthen them in their inner being.
Paul is telling them. I don’t
want you to simply have some emotional experience of God that fades in a day or
two. I want you to experience God’s love
so deeply that you, not only, never forget it, but the power of it changes you
forever.
Paul is telling them. I don’t want you just to get infatuated with
God. I want you to fall in love. That’s why he prays that they be filled with
the fullness of God. Paul isn’t giving
them some mystical mumbo jumbo. He is
saying, I want this experience to so fill you that it changes you. So instead of being filled up with
insecurities and fears, resentments and self-righteousness, God starts to fill
you, to you, to create in you a love that can withstand anything.
So how does this experience happen? You ask Jesus, and as you ask, you seek, and
you don’t do it alone.
Why do you ask for it? Because it’s a gift. You don’t earn it. It comes as you ask. And you keep asking until it comes. The great mission pioneer, Hudson Taylor,
kept one prayer in his Bible as his bookmark.
The prayer’s first line went like this. "Lord Jesus make thyself to me, a living, bright
reality." And every day, several times
each day, Hudson Taylor made that his prayer.
He asked. That’s where it begins,
with asking, simply saying, God, make yourself real to me.
But as you ask, you seek. You seek as Paul puts it to comprehend the love
of God. But comprehend doesn’t do this
word justice. In Greek, this word
literally means to wrestle someone to the ground and rob them. Now why
does Paul use this word? It’s because as
you go through life, you can miss the power of God’s love unless you literally
grab it and wrestle its reality into your very heart.
A good bit of the time, when I am with my son, I am
just doing the job, feeding him, changing his diaper, playing with him, and
that’s all good. But every now and then,
I look at him and realize that what a miracle he is, this little child my wife
and I brought somehow into this world.
And the reality of that just blows me away. And when I am doing that, I am wrestling down,
grasping a reality that too often I miss.
But when I do, it gives everything, even a diaper change, more depth
than ever before.
Paul is asking you to do the same with comprehending
God’s love. And in Jesus, God has given
you a way to grasp that love like no other.
In the last two weeks, if you’ve been paying
attention to the news, you’ve probably heard of the Khan family. And I am not interested in stepping into the
mess of those current events. But I
haven’t been able to get the story of Captain Khan’s death out of my head. You see. Khan was inspecting a guard post when a taxi
began to speed right towards him and his soldiers. But Kahn didn’t run away from the car. He ran toward it, a car that was literally a
bomb. And he took the blast, a blast
meant for a mess hall just inside that gate where hundreds of soldiers were
then eating. On that day, he made the
ultimate sacrifice for his soldiers. And
those men and women know they owe a debt to Khan they can never repay. That moves me.
It moves me not only because of the nobility of that
sacrifice, but because it reminds me that’s what God did for me. In Jesus God took the destruction speeding
towards me. And in Jesus God did it,
even though I was his enemy, even though I had done nothing to deserve the sacrifice. But he did it because he loved me. And that is a debt I can never repay. And as I think about that, I begin to grasp
just a little bit the height, the depth, the breadth of God’s love for me.
But to experience that love, you can’t do it alone. That’s why Paul says, that you comprehend
this love with all the saints. This sort
of experience happens in community.
Growing up, it happened for me in my church youth group. At other times, it’s been monks in Georgia or
young people in France, but it always happened with others. That’s why we gather in community. And in that community, we usually just get a little hint, but as we ask and seek, then God will give us far more, a moment when it hits us,
when we grasp just how deeply God loves us.
And when those moments come, they will carry you through. They will carry you through darkness. They will carry you in joy, and in sorrow, in
sickness and in health. And they will
create in you, something new; something wondrous; the fullness of God. So ask and seek, that you
might grasp the height, the breadth, the depth of the love God has for
you.
No comments:
Post a Comment