Whether a new Christian or a seasoned believer, they often have a similar conversation, each confessing to struggle with prayer, breaking old habits, or finding joy and peace in the Christian life. We need to ask ourselves a question that often lurks behind our other struggles: How can I truly know and feel God’s love for me? What is in understanding divine love?
“The Love of God in Our Hearts” by Comfort Ekundayo centers on the essential message of Christian faith: living each day in the reality of God’s love. Rather than focusing on miraculous events or dramatic spiritual experiences, the book emphasizes the quiet, continual work of the Holy Spirit in helping believers understand divine love:imparting God’s love, peace, and hope. Ekundayo encourages readers to recognize that true transformation and authentic faith come from experiencing and sharing God’s love daily.
Unlocking the Experience of God’s Love
Understanding divine love can’t be that hard. He says he loves us. We know it. We believe it. But it is possible to know the correct principles, participate in a healthy church, and even lovingly lead others and still remain spiritually cold, dry, and distant. We know that God loves us. But the powerful truth often remains intellectual. Perhaps you can relate. The Ephesians might have.
Prayer: Gateway to God’s Love
The Ephesians seem like the stars of the early church. Yet even the Ephesians struggled to experience God’s love. This challenge is as old as Christianity itself.
Our posture in prayer is often quite revealing. If we are sitting at a desk with my Bible open and writing prayers in a journal, that is an appropriate posture for praying for understanding and wisdom. Lying in bed, praying as we fall asleep is an appropriate act of submitting my life completely to God. But if we are on our knees praying aloud or with groans too deep for words, that is a moment of deep struggle or passion.
But there is something strange about the apostle’s prayer. He asks that Christ dwell in our hearts, that we know the love of Christ, and that we be filled with all the fullness of God. It is strange because in chapters 1-3, he told us that each of these three things is already true in us. Why would he pray so intensely for what we already have in Christ?
The Ephesians know these things, but their knowledge is not enough; There is another level of knowledge and experience that they lack.
When Paul prays that we may “understand” all that God has for us (v. 18), this word could mean “to wrestle with,” “to plunder and loot” a place, or “to overcome” someone. What does Paul want us to wrestle with? With ourselves, with our souls, with our flesh, and our inner being?
No, he prays that we may understand the love of Christ, striving to bring it into our hearts.
The Spirit’s Role: Revealing Christ’s Boundless Love
How does the Holy Spirit help us experience God? Paul’s prayer finds its climax here: “And I pray that you, being rooted and grounded 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 3:17-19).
Paul describes a perfect combination of knowing and experiencing the love of Christ, and there are a few ways we can cultivate this combination.
Slowing Down: Creating Space for Divine Encounter
Haste is one of my greatest struggles in life. Even when I manage to slow down and dedicate time to God (what a phrase!), I find it hard to quiet my racing thoughts. Haste quenches the Holy Spirit, so we must let go of it and dedicate time to prayer that seeks and listens to experience God’s love.
Meditation: Letting God’s Word Transform You
Paul’s prayer is that God will strengthen us with power through His Spirit in our inner being. He is praying with all his energy that we will learn to read the Bible, pray, and strive to introduce these truths into our hearts. This is the practice of biblical meditation.
George Müller discovered the importance of this:
I saw that the main and most important matter to which I should dedicate myself each day was to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing I should be concerned with is not how much I could serve the Lord, how I could glorify the Lord, but how I could bring my soul to a state of happiness, and how I could nourish my inner being… Now, what is the nourishment for the inner being? Not prayer, but the Word of God; and here again, not simply reading the Word of God, so that it merely passes through our minds, like water through a pipe, but considering what we read, reflecting on it, and applying it to our hearts.
The Cross: The Ultimate Portrait of Love
Paul’s prayer is that we may understand the love of Christ, not just the love of God in general. Why does he emphasize Jesus’ love for us? To remind us that we must meditate on the cross.
He prays that we may have the power of the Holy Spirit to experience God… so that we may understand how wide, long, high, and deep is the love of Christ.
Why does Paul emphasize Jesus’ love for us? To remind us to meditate on the cross
To paraphrase Keller: How wide? Wide enough to encompass us just as we are.
How long? “To the very end of the age,” said Jesus (Matthew 28:20).
How high? As high as the heavens where He reigns.
How deep? Deeper than the grave, deeper than hell.
Many readers throughout Christian history have seen in this phrase a reminder of Jesus’ body lifted up on the cross, stretched out from hand to hand, held high and deep from head to toe. We cannot comprehend the depth of God’s love for us in Christ. It is always deeper still.
There is no better way to introduce His love into our hearts.
Slow down and set aside time. Meditate on the Word. And grasp with all your strength, with the eternal power of the Holy Spirit, the great love of God in Christ demonstrated for you on the cross.
Are You Hungry For A Faith That Feels Real, Powerful, And Overflowing With Love?
The Love of God in Our Hearts by Comfort Ekundayo is your invitation to a deeper journey with Christ. Start reading today and see how understanding divine love can enrich your life!
