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(Presented by Lisa Bishop)
In Ephesians 3 Paul prayed the following prayer over Christ followers. These are familiar verses in the Bible but take these truths in and let Paul’s prayer sink into your heart and soul.
I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. 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. 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. 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 (Ephesians 3:16-19, NLT).
Do you know how wide, long, high, and deep God’s love is for you? Paul goes to great measures to attempt to capture the vastness of Jesus’s affection for his sons and daughters, for you. He wants your roots to grow down into God’s love, to experience the magnitude of Christ’s love so that you will take hold of the fullness of life and the power of God at work in you. I don’t want to live thinking that God’s love for me is lukewarm, or that in some way I am unlovable. Do you?
If you live from a place of being unlovable, if you buy into the lie that God does not really love you or that there is some way you have to earn his love, you are giving the enemy a foothold, a strategic position from which he can advance and multiply his lies. Satan’s greatest attempt is to convince you that you aren’t loveable. This leads to isolation, fear, anxiety, and addiction. When you are not fully convinced of God’s love for you, you will go looking for love in all the wrong places.
When you feel unlovable, stand firm in truth. Remind yourself of Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3. And, recite these words to yourself, “I am convinced that Jesus’s love for me is gigantic and generous. I trust in God’s love for me and my roots are deeply grounded in his love. The love of Jesus gives me strength. My heart trusts in him.”
Let this be a reminder to you to trust God’s generous love for you.