EPHESIANS: Rooted and Grounded
EPHESIANS Number 37:
Paul goes on in Ephesians 3:17-19 “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.”
This is his prayer for the saints of Ephesus, and it is one on which we can pattern prayers of our own. First, we might be reminded that Christ does indeed dwell in our hearts. We don’t see Him there nor physically feel Him, yet by faith we are assured that He is there.
We might also remember that we are rooted and grounded in Love. John tells us that God is Love, and in Romans we read that He has poured His Love into our hearts. It is the self-giving agape’ Love of God in which we are rooted and grounded.
This is that magnificent love of which we read in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. Love that never fails. This is love so vast that it can be comprehended only by those who are in Christ Jesus, the Source of Love Himself.
And it is this reliance on the indwelling Spirit, the knowledge of just how firmly rooted we are in Him, the comprehension of His Love and His energizing power, that is the fullness of God. Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well that if she drank the water He gave her she would never thirst again. He said that it would well up within her as an ever-flowing stream. We are filled to this kind of fullness. Overflowing with the Life of Christ.
Peter knew this. In 2 Peter 1:3 he wrote that “His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue”. Paul put it yet another way when he wrote to the Colossians that “in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power” (Colossians 2:9-10).
Finally, in Ephesians 3:20-21, Paul glorifies God saying, “Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.
We echo that sentiment. It rings in our hearts. I pray that it will resound from the core of our being as we live our lives here in the valley of the shadow of death. May the world be awakened at every encounter with the children of God.
