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| Cape May, New Jersey |
Love and power do
things. New Testament scholar Klyne Snodgrass writes that “To know Christ’s
love is to be transformed by love and expanded into the fullness of God.” In other words there is an extraordinary power
available to believers, a power that can and will accomplish far
more than we ordinarily think or imagine. It comes by the Spirit. It accords
with the riches of God's glory. John Piper says this "is the very
fullness of God, as humanly unimaginable as that sounds."
So
Paul kneels. And prays these words…
16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may
strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so
that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
And I pray that you,
being rooted and established in love, 18 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, 19 and to know this love
that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the
fullness of God.
This is why the early church exploded. People
were filled with love, power, and the fullness of God. This is not about a
program or formula. You don’t need money to do it. It's all about cultivating
the relationship. As N.T. Wright says, this “means knowing God as the
all-loving, all-powerful father; it means putting down roots into that love -
or, changing the picture, having that love as the rock-solid foundation for
every aspect of one's life." (NTW, Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters, 39-40)
Today, pray to know who you are in
Christ, and all that is available to you.