God’s Love Is The Perfect Wave

Standing before God, Ian felt so unworthy. He said, ‘God was able to see every- thing I had done wrong in my life. I felt totally exposed and wanted to move away from the light and go back into the darkness where I belonged. I thought someone had made a mistake and brought the wrong person up. As I drew back towards the darkness a wave of light swept through me. I felt pure Love flow over me. How could God love me? I’d taken His name in vain. I’d slept around. I’m not a good man, but no matter what I said, waves of His unconditional Love continued to flow over me. I found myself weeping uncontrollably. It was so amazing that He had totally forgiven me and accepted me as I was.’

Read Ephesians 3:14-19.

This passage reveals that God wants us to not just intellectually know about His love; He wants us to experience it (v19). Father (14), Spirit (v16) and Christ (v17) are all involved in flooding our hearts with this love (v16). We’re like a tree sending down roots into a deep underground stream of God’s love (v17). We get to swim in the mind-boggling dimensions of the ocean of God’s love – so much deeper and wider than we can fathom (v18). This love-bond with God leads us into a love-bond with our brothers and sisters in Christ, who know the same bond (v18). Like a fountain, God spills over his love into our lives, until – mind-warping as this may sound – we’re as full of God’s love as God is full of His own love (v19).

‘This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins’ (1 Jn 4:10). We’re more sinful than we feared, but we’re also more loved than we dared hope for. This dual emotion of feeling unworthy because of our sin, along with feeling in awe and full of gratitude because God wants us and loves us still, is the perfect wave.

Why do you think we need spiritual power to grasp God’s love (v18)? Have you ever, not just believed in, but also experienced the unconditional love of God?