You're Rooted and Grounded in Love [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. He's asking that you and I, the Ephesian Christians, that all the Christians would be able to comprehend, to grasp the love of God in Christ.

That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series called Ephesians, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program today, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. So as you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org.

Or call 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. You ready for some good news? God loves you more than you can know. But you can know more of God's love today. God loves you more than you can ever know.

But you can know more of His love every single day. We're in Ephesians, we're in chapter three as we continue this study of this cosmic, majestic, beautiful, glorious announcement of the gospel explaining who the church is and who you are. And we are in Ephesians chapter three at verse 14 today. Ephesians chapter three verse 14. Paul writes, for this reason I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith that you being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according to the power at work within us to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and forever, amen. We're all looking for love. We come into the world looking for love. When I was a baby, I don't even remember it, but I know for sure I was looking for love.

You cry in the night and you want milk, but what you really want is you want to be assured that there's somebody that will care for you, somebody that will love you, somebody that will feed you. And as a toddler, when I had a boo-boo, I wanted to be able to curl up in my mother's lap because she might not have medicine that would make it feel better, but love would make it feel better. As a little boy, I wanted to have a best buddy, somebody to build forts with, somebody to play tennis with, somebody to hang out with, somebody that you could call friend.

And as I was a young man, I became interested in having a girl that would smile at me or walk with me down the hallway at the school. And then there came a time in graduating from college and I had my precious Anne and I wanted her love and I wanted to watch her walk down the aisle and I wanted to put a ring on her finger and I couldn't wait to hear her say, I do. And then we had kids. And what I wanted from those kids, more than anything else, was I just want love.

And so everything you could do to just show and receive love. And little Bennett was three. We invented a more masculine form of the Eskimo kiss. We called it nose mashes.

And just a real manly, just mash the nose together, but it's about love. And Abby and I, as she invented our expression of greatest affection was the knock down hug. And that's where I would sit down and I would face her and she'd go to the other end of the room and she would snort like a bull and she would do her foot like this.

And then she would take off as fast as she could sprint and just plow right into me and knock me over. And we did knock down hugs every day until she got so big that it started really hurting badly. That wasn't love anymore. Love, I'm just saying that there was a time in my life in which I would have thought that the hunger for love, the need for love, the want of loves was some kind of expression of insecurity or some kind of weakness.

But I came to understand something much simpler and yet much deeper than that. And it is that your hunger and my hunger for love is not an illustration of some deformity in you. It is instead the picture of health in you. In the same way that you hunger for food and that's healthy, you hunger for love because you were designed for love. The very makeup of a human being is that we operate in our soul, we operate, we flourish only when we have love. And the source of all love is God himself. So much so that John said God is love. And so if you have ever experienced any sort of real love, the genesis of that love is God himself. In love when it's demonstrated even amongst people that don't know God, the source of that love is God. Love is invisible, love is demonstrated, love is mystical and love is practical.

And love is other than the power of God himself, love is the greatest power in the entire cosmos. And so we come to this maybe the pinnacle of Ephesians and Paul is writing here in kind of one ecstatic long sentence under the unction of the Holy Spirit. And he prays that if you boil this big sentence down right into the middle, where's the verb?

What is he asking God for? He's asking that you and I, the Ephesian Christians, that all the Christians would be able to comprehend, to grasp the love of God in Christ. This word for grasp or comprehend as the ESV has it is really, there's no good English word for this. This Greek word, kadalambano, it really actually has the sense of being ambushed because it is about being overtaken by surprise in such a way that you must surrender.

This is a word that is used by Peter in Acts chapter 10, after Peter, maybe you remember the story, has this great vision in which he recognizes that the Lord doesn't just love the Jewish people, he loved the Gentiles and that the Gentiles need to be welcomed in through Christ to be engrafted into the body. And when Peter is speaking about this and he's saying, I realize that God shows no favoritism, the word that is used there for I knew or I realized or I came to understand is kadalambano. He's saying what this is, this is about a revelation that comes and catches you by surprise. It might just sneak in and then suddenly it takes your breath away or the light turns on or all of these ways that we can illustrate something that is not merely an intellectual process. I would say that over the decades of ministry, the biggest question that I've received from people is I know that God loves me in my head, but how do I discover that love in my heart?

And that's what I want to talk to you about today. What the Puritans called being seized by a great affection, what Paul says kadalambano, to be overtaken and ambushed by the amazing love of God, because everything in your life will change if you would know the love of God. And so I want to talk to you today in some very practical terms to hopefully help answer from this text and from the gospel in general, what are the obstacles to receiving and comprehending and being overtaken by the love of God, knowing the love of God in your heart?

What are the obstacles? What's the spiritual battle that's going on there? What are the practical ways that you can position yourself to come to know the love of God more deeply and more richly? And so join with me as we think together about just why it is and how it is that you are rooted and grounded in the love of God. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series.

It's time to find out who you really are. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues.

Here once again is Alan Wright. Okay, the first question here is, why does Paul pray that we, together with all the saints, would have power to cada lombano, to lay hold of, to be overtaken by, to comprehend, to get in our heart and our inner being, literally our inner man, why is he praying about this? There's so many things that Paul would have possible to pray for us. I mean, at the heart of this epistle, he might pray that they have more boldness, or he might pray that they have more faith, or he might pray that they show more obedience, or that they might become better witnesses, or I pray that you become more giving, or I pray, I mean, you'd be more trusting. Any number of things, but what he focuses at the center of Ephesians, and at the center of all of Paul's prayers, is right here, I'm praying that you would know the love of God.

And so what is so, so, so important about this? The importance of the love of God cannot be overstated by Paul. In fact, what he does is he links the knowing of the love of God with the fullness of God in your life. So if you see the so that, why does he want us to experience the love of God? It's because so that, at verse 19, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. To be filled with God, to be filled with the Holy Spirit is, in Paul's mind, is inextricably linked to knowing the love of God.

I cannot overemphasize this. To be filled with the Holy Spirit is to be filled with an awareness of the love of God. The love of God. You see, you could have the anointing of the Holy Spirit come upon you. You could even prophesy boldly, pray in the tongues of angels. You could have a faith that could move mountains. But Paul said to the Corinthians, if you had that, but you don't have love, you don't have anything.

You see what he's saying? Is that just because you have an anointing on you does not mean that you have the fullness of God. Even if God worked a miracle through you, which he could do, he could work a miracle through an unbeliever. But the link here behind the fullness of God in your life is to know the love of God. For anyone who knows the love of God is filled to the utter fullness of God. That the nature of the Christian life is that you're rooted and you're grounded in the love of Christ.

This is the thing that matters most, is what he's saying. This is what it means to be filled with God. And the gifts of the Spirit, as wonderful as they are, they are not the fullness of God. The love of God fills you with God himself, because God is love. And what this means is that love stands preeminent, again, over all virtues of the Christian life. There is, and there's faith, and there's hope, and there's love. But the greatest of these, the superlative, the ultimate is love.

Love never fails. Paul says elsewhere that faith works by love. So it's important as faith is, and we know the Bible says that without faith it's impossible to please God, but love is the very thing that enables faith. Because to the extent that you know that God loves you, then you can trust him.

There is no trusting someone that you do not believe that they love you, because it is only to the degree that you believe that someone loves you and has your best in mind at every point that you can surrender to them. The whole capacity to surrender to God depends upon a revelation of the love of God. You cannot manufacture faith. Faith is something that happens as a gift that follows the revelation of the goodness of God all the time at every point before you're ever born and for all eternity towards you in Jesus Christ.

Hallelujah. We love, John said, because he first loved us. So this prayer is so important, because if you are going to love anyone at any point, it is only possible because God has first loved you.

You cannot love without having been loved. And John says that perfect love casts out fear. You can't just cast out fear. You can't just cast out fear like a demon.

You have a process that takes place that displaces fear. And it is the love of God. And it is the perfect love of God. Because wherever there is an imperfect love, there is always a question mark. What if I'm not loved tomorrow?

What if I do something today that causes me to not be loved? But the gospel announces a perfect love that has been perfectly manifest in Jesus through a legal transaction on a cross wherein the God who is love put his only begotten son in your place so that you would be absolutely assured that at every point in your life, whether you're having a good day or a bad day, whether you feel full of faith or you feel full of doubt, this you can count on. God loves you.

And it will never change. All of this and more is why Paul is making this his prayer. It is simply put to say that other than knowing Christ himself, knowing the love of God is the most important thing that you can know in your life. And if you know everything else, but you do not know the love of God, then you are missing it all. So this is the heart and the prayer of Paul. And this is what matters most. God's love.

He loves you so much. The reason that Paul prays is not just because it's important to the infinite degree, but the reason he's praying is also because there must be something supernatural that happens in order for you to comprehend this love. See, if there were no need for God to intervene, if there were no need for something supernatural to take place, then why even pray about it? Instead, he prays that you would have power, might, strength. This is the Greek word dunamis.

This is the same word that Jesus used when he told the disciples to wait in Jerusalem until Pentecost had come because they would be clothed with dunamis. This is the word for power, the power of God. And what Paul is praying here is that there would be a power, the power of the Holy Spirit at work in your inner being, in your spirit man, inside of you, in your deepest place, that born again place within you that has the capacity to receive revelation from God, that you would have the dunamis of the Holy Spirit at work within you. Why is there a need for power? Because there is more to God than you can understand in your mind. And so there needs to be a power at work.

If you're going to comprehend what can't be comprehended, if you're going to be seized with a great affection that cannot be aptly described with human words, something spiritual happens. Has anybody that's ever walked with God at all knows that the more that you know God, the more you know that you don't know God? Anyone who's ever learned anything knows that the more that you learn, the more you find out what you don't know. The smartest people in the world are the ones that know that they don't know that much.

It's true. I was sitting at lunch talking to my son Bennett who finished his freshman year, and he is doing lots of math for his major, his engineering major, and so he's got lots of math. It would make me cringe to do so much math. And I said, so, Bennett, I said, when we were young and we knew two plus two equals four, we didn't know enough to know that algebra existed.

You're just excited you know two plus two equals four. You don't even know enough to know that algebra even exists, much less conceive of doing algebra. And then when you do algebra and you're excited that you're doing some algebra, you don't even know enough to know that calculus exists. When I did algebra, I didn't even know calculus existed. I didn't know what it was.

I'd heard the name. I didn't even know what it was. I took one calculus course in college, and that was the end of math for me for the rest of my life. And I didn't know what was beyond it, so I was sitting there talking to Bennett because he had just finished calculus three. And I said, so, this semester, excuse me if I need to run out here and throw up, but he's taking three math courses this coming, and I was like, you've got three math courses in one semester coming up. I said, so let me ask you this. If we didn't know that algebra existed when two plus two was four, I said, now you've taken calculus three. I said, what is it at this point that you don't even know exists? And he just sat there quietly.

And I said, aha! That proves my point right there. You don't even know what you don't know because there's no point at which that you know enough that you know it all. Instead, the more that we learn, the more we learn that we don't know, and God is infinite, and His love is greater than you can comprehend in your mind. And the beautiful thing of walking with God is the more of the love of God that you experience, the more of the love of God there is to experience. And so you need the power of the Holy Spirit to reveal this to you. Flesh and blood cannot reveal this to you. So Paul's praying. If it's something flesh and blood could reveal, there's no point in praying about it. This is something that requires prayer. Pray about this. So Paul's praying that we have dunamis, but he's also praying that we'd have dunamis, the power of the Holy Spirit at work.

Because there's a battle going on. Allen Wright, today's teaching, you're rooted and grounded in love. Allen is back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and a final word.

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When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Allen Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, pastorallen.org.

Allen, as we kick off this, this is part one of a three-part teaching series. You're rooted and grounded in love. Praise God. Amen, amen.

And I was just saying, there is a battle that is going on. We're in a spiritual battle, and part of the spiritual battle, you're in a battle, and part of that battle is to keep you from experiencing the love of God. So tomorrow we're going to pick back up on some of the obstacles that we may have to receiving and experiencing the love of God. Christianity is not theoretical.

It is not a mere assent to principles or even an adoption of an ideology. It is a relationship, and God very much wants you to know His love and experience it. So Paul prays for this, because it's something that's supernatural, and I'm praying for you. And I look forward to sharing more about this tomorrow, but you can know this. Every single person is not only loved by God, but can experience the love of God. Today's good news message is a listener-supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.