Trending
On February 14th, we celebrate Valentine's Day. It is a day in which we exchange love letters. Have you ever spoken these three words: I love you, I love you? Do not those three words mean so much both for the one who says them and the one who hears them? In Eph. 3:14-19 Paul writes a love letter to God and it is in the form of a prayer.
It is Pauls' way of saying, I love you. As most of you know, writing a love letter is no easy task. It is hard to find the right words to convey the feelings of your heart. I imagine all of our love letters would convey a different meaning of love. As one author wrote, "True love is like a vision of ghosts, everybody talks about them but few have ever seen any."
We all need a little love, don't we? Once before church a little girl ran up to me during the greeting, wrapped her arm around my leg and said I love you. But did she really understand what love is? If my heart was breaking it would not disturb her sleep. If my body was racked with pain it would not disrupt her play. If I were to die in a short time she may even forget me. But should I withhold my love for her until she understands what love is? Should I wait until she does something worthy of love for me to express love to her?
I think it is true what they say, "If there is anything better than to be loved, it is loving." We all know that a Father or mothers love for their child never stops even when it is not reciprocated or returned. Thus it is so with God's love for us.
So here is Paul penning a love letter to God. He writes, God, I know your love for us. I've experienced your love. Now duplicate your love in me. What makes this love letter so interesting is that Paul wrote it from prison. What would you be doing if you were in prison? Most of us have enough trouble dealing with circumstances that come our way outside prison walls like financial crisis, unemployment or broken relationships.
More often than not when we have to deal with a crisis outside prison walls we compound it by becoming a pain to those whom we love. If you don't believe me just ask the person you live with. Our response to problems is often despair and discouragement and depression. In the midst of our problems we would seldom find ourselves writing a love letter.
But in prison, Paul writes this love letter to God and he writes it also for us who are experiencing our own personal prisons by saying, I want you to have peace. I want you to be strengthened by God's love. Who does Paul pray to in v.14-15? If you are going to write a love letter you had better know the name of the person you are writing to.
Paul says I bow my knee before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. Jeremiah 3:19 indicates that God waits in vain for His beloved ones to call on him. He wants you to express your love to him. He wants you to call out his name. But whether you choose to write or call, begin with Our Father. When was the last time you addressed God as my Father? Jesus said pray in this manner, Our Father who art in heaven. God apparently loves to be called Father. Dear Father, I love you, therefore I bow my knee before you. You can pray in any position you choose to pray in. At night before I close my eyes I pray lying down. But Stephen prayed kneeled as he was being stoned. Jesus bowed his knee in the garden.
Daniel bowed his knee three times a day in prayer. The point is whether you stand or kneel or bow to pray, do it with reverence because God is the source or derivative of all Fathers. Freud said we invented God as a projection of our need for a father. Others say this is simply an analogy in that God is like a Father. I believe it is saying that all families are of God's arrangement.
They all derive from the same source. God is the one from whom every family on earth is named. God invented families. God, the first father, has been an eternal father with an eternal son. So he is not just a father he is the father. Because he is the father he can teach me how to have relationships based on love. So Paul prays to the father.
What does Paul pray for in v.16? He prays that we would be strengthened with God's power and his riches. To be strengthened, to be muscled, with his dunimus, his dynamite. What power? What dynamite? The power and dynamite based on his riches. You may feel free to call me up anytime this week to borrow a million dollars.Ask anytime. But don't get your hopes up.
But if you ask for God's power according to his riches, you can get your hopes up because it is his riches that are the manner in which he will answer you. He will answer you according to his riches in heaven. He will answer you according to the bank of heaven. What are his riches in glory?
I can tell you what it is not. It is not things. It is his joy and peace and love and kindness and holiness. So you can ask him Father, strengthen my love, my kindness, my joy. Now read v.16 again and look at the propositions. I pray that you would be strengthened with power, through the Holy Spirit, in the inner man. How long did it take you to get ready for church today? How much time did you spend getting the inner man ready?
Did you know the average man has 20 articles in the bathroom but the average woman has over 360? It takes my wife a long time to get ready and there is nothing wrong with that. Everyone should be concerned about the outer man because that is the frame that holds the picture of the inner man. But our primary concern should be the inner man. He wants our inner man to be strengthened with power through the Holy Spirit.
When you accept Jesus as your Savior the Holy Spirit comes to live in you. The Bible says if you do not have Christ you do not have the Spirit. The Bible says if you do not have the Spirit you do not have Christ. Rom. 8:9 says if any man has not the spirit of Christ he does not belong to him. So when you accepted Christ you did not get 10% or 20% or 50% of the Spirit, you got 100%. That is the filling of the Spirit but being controlled by the Spirit is not automatic. That comes when we respond to God's strength.
When your car battery won't turn over your car one of the first things you can do is check to see if there is any water in your battery. It is supposed to be full. Romans 5 says God pours out love into our hearts. It is as if God is holding a pitcher of water over your battery and keeping it filled so that His love can be the source for our love for others. So you got all the love you need, but it is your will that decides what you do or say with it. But when you are being strengthened with his power you have the power to make the right choices. We can never make the right decisions on our own. We will never be the kind of person God wants us to be on our own. But when you cooperate with God's Spirit you will be filled with dynamite. Let me tell you how it works. Someone makes you angry.
Before you respond you say God, help me to respond with love and then choose to say the right words or do the right thing. It is knowing that you have the power available and when the occasion arises when you need it you choose to use it. It is not getting up in the morning and praying that you will not get angry all day. It is at the moment you need his power you choose to use it. Either His spirit or your own fallen spirit will make that decision. It is your choice and there is no excuse when you fail because it was your choice.
Choices are an act of faith. So don't spend all your time taking care of the outer man and ignore the inner man. Timothy said it this way, bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things. Believe me, today there will be people that will not treat you with love. Today someone will not be kind to you. Today someone will criticize you. The question you need to ask yourself is, am I being strengthened with power through the Holy Spirit in my inner man so I can always respond with love. What will be the result of this prayer? What will happen when my inner man is strengthened by God's Spirit? Do you know what a litmus test is? It is a test for chemical acidity.
Stick a litmus paper into a chemical and if it has an acid solution the paper will turn red and if it is an alkaline solution it will turn blue. Here is Paul's litmus test. If you pass you will be a warm blue and if you flunk it you will be an angry red. This is what happens if you have the love of God in your life. If your spirit is being strengthened by God's spirit Christ will dwell in your hearts through faith v.17a. Christology tells us that Christ does dwell in our hearts by faith. That happened the moment you received him. But this is different.
There are two words for dwelling or living. One means to lodge. The moment you received Christ he began to live or lodge in your heart. But the word here means to feel at home. Ever go someplace and you did not feel at home? Did not feel welcomed? Made you uncomfortable, didn't it? That is how Christ feels when your life is not being strengthened by the Holy Spirit. One time in the N.T. Jesus took reeds and made a whip and chased everyone out of the temple. Why? He didn't like how they were using his dwelling place.
In your heart, his dwelling place, he wants to feel at home. Even in those secret places, the closets, all those personal rooms. He has access to every area. Look, I know Christ loves me but I also know sometimes he feels uncomfortable in my life because I made him feel uneasy. Most of us keep our homes very tidy.
We like tidiness but we also don't want someone to visit us un-expectantly and find a messy home. Should we not also our home, our heart to be kept in such a way that Christ always feels at home? Does Christ feel at home when you are talking on the phone? Does Christ feel at home when you are speaking to your spouse? Does Christ feel at home in your inner thoughts?
Secondly, when our spirit is strengthened by his spirit we will be rooted and grounded in love v.17b. Paul is mixing metaphors here. He talks about plants and buildings. Why? Because roots are deep and foundations are below the frost line. Some 20 years ago Dad had a shrub out front and we got the bright idea to tear it out. We dug and dug and dug and could not find the bottom of that root. So we got this bright idea to take a wrecking bar and dislodge that shrub by its root. Guess what, that root was so deep it actually bent the bar into a U shape.
Rooted and grounded in his love means the roots are so deep that when the winds of distress blow or the earthquakes of diseases shakes your life you will still be in love with God. Thirdly, when your spirit is strengthened by his spirit you may be able to comprehend his love v.18. St. Augustine wrote about Adam's fall in the Garden and wrote, "The midst of sin fumed up and over cased man's heart and the brightness of God's love was fogged over with anger".
The natural man without Christ cannot understand the love of God. But when the Holy Spirit fills you, you can understand what you could not understand before. When I went to Hershey for a consultation with my eye doctor, he said, 'when you get these new cornea's you may see things you have not seen before.' That is what the H.S does for you. People in the world do not love unselfishly. They love to get elected or they love to be loved in return. But they cannot love like God loves until they say, God I need your spirit. What is God's love like? Its breadth is that it is no respecter of persons. His love is there for anyone who wants it. Its length is a word that is often used to describe the fading of a color.
God's love never fades or fails. Its height is that it reaches forever. "As high as the highest mountain, as deep as the deepest sea, so great is his love for me". Its depth is that he gave his only begotten son. Listen to me fathers, He gave his only son. Who can comprehend God's love? The saints can. If you have never accepted Christ as a Savior you will never comprehend it. Fourthly, if my spirit is being strengthened by his spirit I will know what surpasses knowledge v.19a. Ever experience something you just can't describe on paper? How does one describe the love of God? I can't but I can experience it. I can know I am forgiven. I can know I am going to heaven. I can know I have the presence of the H.S. in my life.
So I know what I can't know. I can know what I can't explain. Have you ever tried to explain someplace to someone who has never been there? You just can't seem to capture the whole picture. Somehow it loses its luster.
That is how the love of God is to someone who has never experienced it. Take the purest love we experience. The love in marriage or the love a parent has for a child. Now multiply that by 20 trillion and you get a picture of a drop of God's love. Believer, you can rest easy tonight, God's love watches over you. He knows every hair on your head. He even sees when a sparrow falls. How much does God love you? Like an artist loves what he paints. Like a Shepherd loves his sheep. Like a mother loves her child. The final way you know if your spirit is being strengthened with his spirit is that you will also be filled up with the fullness of God v. 19b. That is like trying to put a Boeing 747 jet engine in my Toyota. What does that mean?
It means that there are two things that cannot be hid from others -- a cough and love. When my life is an open book to God and I confess when I sin and express a desire to live for him, he will fill me with his fullness. How will I know I am filled with his fullness? I will demonstrate the same fruits of the spirit that Christ demonstrated in his life -- love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Sounds impossible, doesn't it? That is why Paul wrote v.20-21, "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us". Let us all pray that we might be strengthened in our inner man with the power of God's love. Why?
So Christ may feel at home in our hearts. So that we might be rooted and grounded in love. So we might comprehend the love of God. So we might know what we cannot explain. So we might be filled up with God. Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote: "Bitterness imprisons life, love releases it. Bitterness paralyzes life, love empowers it. Bitterness sours life, love heals it. Bitterness blinds life, love anoints its eyes''.
We live in a cold world, a spiritually frigid world filled with frozen souls. But in the midst of this frigid environment we can radiate the warmth of God's love. No matter how cold and sharp the wind blows, the love of God can warm a soul and those around you. Do you allow the love of God to penetrate your life? Are other people experiencing God's love through you? The apostle John summed it up well when he wrote, "Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us."
•••
The Rev. Dr. James Barnes is currently the pastor of White Memorial Church in Milroy.