Made New: An Ephesians Book StudyНамуна

LOVE.

There are songs. Books. Movies. Greeting cards. There’s even an entire holiday celebrating it.

It can make you feel and do crazy things like staying up all night talking about life with a loved one or driving hours to spend time doing something you enjoy. It can give you the energy to research every little fact about an issue/person/place/etc, or it can motivate you to care for an ailing loved one. It can look extravagant or ordinary.

Love truly is a powerful thing. We’ve heard the saying, “Love covers a multitude of sins.” But for us, love covers ALL sins. It helps us persevere when we feel no hope. It can be the motivation not to quit. Love often doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t have a specific timeline or formula for when it happens in our lives.

In Ephesians 3:14- 19, Paul prays for us to know love, not from a human perspective but from God’s. He challenges us to be “rooted and established” (v.17) in love so we may be “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (v. 19).

We tend to look for other things besides God to fill us up, don’t we? It might be food, social media, work, approval from others, alcohol, etc. When we look to the things of this world to make us feel loved, we can be left feeling alone, unseen, and unvalued.

But in Paul’s prayer, he challenges us to allow ourselves to be FULLY loved.

What would that look like for you? What would your life look like if you entered each day with the concrete awareness of being fully known and loved?

Maybe you’d stop being self-conscious about your appearance and embrace exactly how God made you.

You might want to join a small group instead of staying home, assuming no one would want you.

Maybe you’d start the hobby you always wanted to try but felt too embarrassed.

Maybe you’d have the courage to forgive yourself for what you did before you knew better, and you stepped into a life fully loved, fully forgiven, and finally free.

Response
1. Paul challenges us to live a life based on God’s love for us rather than in the world. Where or how are you currently seeking to be loved?

2. If you’re honest, is it hard for you to believe and accept God’s love for you? What is one step you can take this week to begin embracing God’s love for you?

3. Take time to write a love letter from God to you. How do you think He sees you? What does He want you to forgive yourself for and allow His love to cover? What are His favorite things about you?

Weekly Memory Verse
"I pray that out of His glorious riches, He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 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, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."
Ephesians 3:16-19

Written by Michelle White