Ephesians 3:14-21. Stepping stones to the wide, deep love of God

¹⁴ For this reason I kneel before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family^[a] in heaven and on earth derives its name. 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 passage in Ephesians reminds me of a stepping stone journey into God’s love.  Like this picture (show graphic). We are going to venture, metaphorically, across that stream.

The first step is kneeling before God the Father. “For this reason, I kneel before the Father”  To kneel means we acknowledge God’s sovereignty over us.  We submit to God’s authority and are obedient to His precepts and values. This is the crux of the passage.....

It’s about surrender. Surrender also engenders confession;  we tell God the things we’ve done or thought, which are not pleasing to him, and in that surrender and confession, there begins in us a direct connection to God (rather like when our mobile phones show full bars of signal strength. This surrender opens our souls to God and we are now stepping onto the next step:

When we are surrendered to God, He is able to share His strength and power with us. This is an inner strength;  almost a paradox isn’t it? That something which seems weak (the eyes of the world see surrender as being weak), great strength comes. 

It’s about what goes on on the inside of us – anyone can feel close to God when everything’s going well. In fact, we might be beguiled into thinking that this is God’s favour to us and we don’t need to be surrendered to Him.  Sometimes too much sun makes a desert.  But when things are not going well, surrendering all to God is still a wise course because God’s power can overcome anything; the love of God can flow, like healing balm on our bowed heads when we kneel before God, acknowledge his sovereignty, and give thanks in all things.  If we can do this, the power of God to us, is refined and enlivened.

We’re ready to step to our next stone now;  the power of Christ to dwell in us. We can have the very personality of God living in us through the Spirit who will always point us to God. We are really becoming immovable now because with the indwelling Christ, comes the power for our souls to be rooted and established in love (this is a lovely big wide stone we have stepped on to). We are established (grounded, secure).  There are lovely verses in Psalms and Proverbs which talk about our feet being put on higher ground – on a wide and secure place.  I love that term embedded and grounded;  Being grounded means that we are solid, immovable, unable to be washed from the rock of our faith, by any wave of circumstance.  Does anyone remember Pam Ayres.  She writes humourous poems;  one of her most well-known was perhaps “I wish I’d looked after me teeth”.  They are all delivered with the lovely burr of her native Berkshire accent. But when I read these verses in Ephesians, I thought of another of her poems….I am Clamp the Mighty Limpet.  Let me read it to you… just the first few lines:

I am Clamp, the mighty limpet;  I am solid, I am stuck

I am welded to the rock-face with my superhuman suck

I live along the water line and in the dreary caves

I am Clamp the Mighty Limpet;  I am Ruler of the Waves! 

What care I for (stupid) shingle;   for the dragging of the tide,

with my unrelenting sucker and my granite underside?

This is what being rooted and grounded is like.  We become like Clamp the Mighty Limpet because we are stuck by love to the rock of God, no matter what waves of adversity wash over us.

Notice the surrendering comes before the faith and the indwelling Christ.  I think that’s where the Atheists get it so wrong.  They try and prove the existence of God;  they don’t get it that God dwells in us;  it’s about experiencing God, not proving Him first. True faith is an experience.  Yes, we have to know the Bible and the gospel but if we want to know the love of God for ourselves we have to know Jesus, as a living Spirit in our hearts.  We can know the Bible from cover to cover – that’s knowledge, but these verses tell us that God’s love surpasses knowledge. 

From that big stone of Christ indwelling us, we are finally able to step onto the next one and can grasp with others how wide and deep is the love of Christ.

Deep enough to forgive whatever we may have done;

Vast enough to enable us to forgive those who have wronged us

High enough for us to be able to love the unlovely and to be accepting of those who are very different to us, or whose views differ vastly from ours;

Long enough to overcome any temptation;

Wide enough to have victory, joy and inspiration under the most trying of circumstances.  And we are filled with the full measure of God’s riches. 

What are the riches of God?  We could spend a month of Sundays thinking about this, and I’ll leave that for another day. Suffice to say that God’s riches have nothing to do with worldly possessions, so we can’t expect to ask God to win Lotto. They are spiritual assets; the full measure of divine attributes, passed on to us, changing us from glory to glory, from a God who delights in making us holy. 

And finally, we have these lovely concluding verses:

 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever”

You see, it’s all about God power – his power in us can do much more than we think or imagine.  It’s all about power…..

And it’s all about surrender….

It starts with the first step onto that stone of submission to our heavenly Father God, who then waits for us to invite the Christ to dwell in us, which is really the beginning of the journey to us knowing the wide, deep, grace and mercy of the love of God

Let me close in prayer:

Lord of all, at whose behest the quiet stars and steadfast moon hang in their appointed spaces and who has bequeathed to us the beauty and bounty of the earth;  God of the unfathomed universe and King of the Angel host, we acknowledge that you are Lord of all things;  Sovereign Being. 

But you are also the God who loves us with the full measure of your Being.  We turn to you and ask you to come afresh to our hearts and there begin the fire of healing love to burn;  there begin to be Lord of our hearts, Shepherd of our lives, Guardian of our souls and keeper of our heavenly treasure..  Amen.

What is God's grace like?

I went to the farm today - in Henty, NSW, Australia.  The countryside is quite beautiful at the moment.  The seeds Timmy planted have been beguiled by the recent rain, into sending their tender green shoots up above ground. It turns the whole countryside into parkland.

My grandson and I went out for a walk;  he in his paddock-basher pram and me with my trusty gumboots.  I looked out prospective picnic spots under the grand old pepper trees, within sight of the house.  There are lots of low-slung limbs for climbing too.  There are spots to build a fire and burn a snag;  all the better to eat it, with bread and sausage sauce. And then there are the potential cubby-house spots!  Oh!  The whole place is full of them!

We went down by the creek, where there are also copious picnic spots;  we perused the dam and I gave my 18mth-old grandson a gentle reminder never to go there unless a big person was with him.  Dams are dangerous places for kids, but also hold lots of possibilities, later, when he’s bigger, to go yabbying and chuck rocks in the water, and go tadpole gathering.

We meandered on, and the little bloke's chubby  finger pointed out “tactor”, and “shee”…We finally turned down towards the gate and his little head had dropped and he was asleep.  That’s when  I began to pray.  I asked God to be gracious to a lovely man who is waging a terrible battle with a tumour, at the moment. Even as I prayed, I had to leave room for the thought that he may not win the battle in the way we often think, when we pray such a prayer. 

I realized afresh, that God’s grace is not always about our health or comfort or prosperity.  If we think about God in those terms; only believing in Him when we are healthy and comfortable and prosperous, then if calamity strikes, our relationship with God also breaks down and we disconnect ourselves from the very grace and power which can allow us to overcome that which we battle.  If that happens, we are bereft indeed.

God’s grace is always about our spiritual health.  In this day and age, we rarely think about our spiritual health;  we aren’t concerned any more (like medieval people were) about what will happen to us after we die.  But it’s much more than that too;  God’s grace is always about giving us strength and integrity, so we can live our lives here and now, with richness and compassion and dignity.  It even allows us to pass on that grace to others, though we are in the midst of our own fiercest battles. 

A story of a man who was a long way from home, during the Depression in Australia

This is one of my Dad's stories.  He spent most of his life at Eugowra in the Central West of NSW in Australia.   He left school when he was 13 to save the farm from foreclosure during the Depression, so his Education was a bit scant, but he had a flair for stories....

"This epic concerns and American Negro; who appeared in Eugowra out of the blue, as it’s said. He was a big man;  His name was Harry Esperance, and he'd come from the Deep South in America. If you want proof of his name, have a look in the Presbyterian Church in Eugowra. His name is on one of the chairs near the altar.

He was a decided asset to our little village because he set up his living quarters in what had been the picture theatre;  what was the Imperial theatre.  Built in 1927, it was no sooner completed than it was burnt to the ground. Then rebuilt. A supermarket now occupies what was the Imperial theatre. The old open air picture show building ultimately became the shire depot - after black Harry was laid to rest in the local cemetery.

Black Harry got busy to set up a market garden on the block I once owned. On North St. The house on that block was destroyed by a flood on 18^th May 1950. That date I vividly remember. More of that later; it’s a tale all to itself. Harry got going on the open ground between that house and the old open air pictures premises. He had two green thumbs; the vegetables fairly streamed of that land. People went to him to buy. What Harry got up to was to haul his produce around the district in a covered wagonette. Which, same, today are exhibits in rural museums. It is a four wheel conveyance, usually hauled by a half draught horse. In a pair of shanks. Like on a sulky. Sometimes two horses did the haulage. In which case the wagonette was equipped with a pole; with a horse each side if it. The upper part of it was covered by a canopy, made from heavy canvas, held in shape by a frame of wood. The front part had a bench seat on it, that would seat two. The canvas canopy projected out over that seat. I can vividly remember that wagonette coming into Prospect, apparently with no driver in it. Until it got fairly near. Then a bit of white would be visible. Harry’s teeth showing in a grin like a split in a chaff bag. He, at a distance, was totally invisible against the dark interior of that covered-in conveyance. And, to borrow a line from that old southern, when he arrived he was welcomed hearty. He didn’t get chicken and wine; he got tea and cakes. And sold a lot of what he had for sale. Vegetables.

The annual visit of the circus duly came around. We missed Harry; until the populace started to take their seats. We soon found Black Harry. At that time, the travelling circus shows had their own brass band. No such thing as “canned” music then. Circus hands were expected to be able to ‘double in brass’,  as well as set up the Big Top. A lot of them could. Harry was going for his life on a big brass band instrument, half his size. Playing the paying guests to their seats. Even now, every time I hear the Destiny waltz, I can see Black Harry putting his very soul into that beautiful old waltz. Likewise, The Missouri waltz brings back memories of that man. He never told us about his ability to play those instruments. What we did find out about that man was that he’d been a seaman in the American merchant marine. Also had been a circus hand who could double in brass. Hence his appearance in that circus band. The reason he settled in our little village was his age. He was too old to be a seaman. And the rough life of a circus hand was then beyond him. Because, then, in the depression, there was no such thing as social service. So Harry got himself 224 miles away from the water front. To become a very useful member of our little bush community. We eventually forgot his coal black skin. He was very much respected. And in due course was buried in our cemetery."