He Loves You

Paul’s Prayer for Spiritual Growth -- Ephesians 4:14-21 (NLT)

¹⁴ When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, ¹⁵ the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. ¹⁶ I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. ¹⁷ Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. ¹⁸ And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. ¹⁹ May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

²⁰ Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. ²¹ Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.

I've read this passage several times in the past, but tonight,....tonight it hit me a little differently.  Tonight I read it in a different version (the New Living Translation) and for some reason, it just hit me in the gut.  I read over and over again.  Each time sinking deeper and deeper into conviction.  Each time, tears coming closer and closer to the surface.   Oh how I want the world to know how wide and how long and how high and how deep God's love is.  Oh how I want to know.  How badly my soul longs to fully grasp it.   Because the truth is, our world's view of love is broken, my friends.  We base our view of love on earthly things: circumstances, desires, situations, past (and present)  experiences.  And we live in a broken world with broken views and we say "God can't love me" or "God can't be love" because of this thing or that.  But God's love ...it's perfect and it's not of this world.  I can't even understand how perfect it is.  The fact that He sent His blameless Son to die in our place, to teach us what we need to know in order to live this life for God and then to be wronged, to be betrayed, to be tortured and killed in a horrible way, to be sacrificed and conquer the grave all so that you and I can spend eternity in the presence of our Almighty God... simply astounds me. Like, words cannot even express how crazy amazing that is to me.  I cannot grasp it.  In all my human understanding, I cannot grasp that kind of deep, sacrificial love.  I can only be grateful for it.  So, so grateful.  And all I can think to do is shout it from the rooftops (or the blog-o-sphere, whatever...).  How badly I want the world to know.  How badly I want my friends and family and facebook stalkers :) to know of the love of Christ. To say to anyone who might stumble upon this silly little old blog that Christ LOVES YOU. With tears in my eyes and my heart a wreck, He loves you.   He loves you with a love you can't understand but only need to accept.  You don't need to work for it.  You don't need to prove that you're good enough. You don't need to figure things out first.  You just need to accept it. Accept that He loves you with a love that you can't understand and certainly don't deserve but He.LOVES.YOU. It's like I can't even type it enough.  Right now, right where you are today.  Whether you've been a Christian all your life or you've never heard of this guy named Jesus...He loves you and He wants you as His own.  This was Paul's prayer and it's my prayer too.  That we all would know the deep, deep, love of Christ.  That Christ would make His home in our hearts as we trust in Him.  That our roots would grow deep into God's love and keep us strong.  And I pray that today you and I will experience the love of Christ.