EXPERIENCING THE GLORY OF GOD (1)

¹⁶I ask the Father in his great glory to give you the power to be strong inwardly through his Spirit. ¹⁷I pray that Christ will live in your hearts by faith and that your life will be strong in love and be built on love. ¹⁸And I pray that you and all God’s holy people will have the power to understand the greatness of Christ’s love—how wide and how long and how high and how deep that love is. ¹⁹Christ’s love is greater than anyone can ever know, but I pray that you  will be able to know that love. Then you can be filled with the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16-19 NCV)

The glory of God is the manifestation and revelation of His love. We experience the glory any time we feel the love of God in our lives. Our Lord passionately invites us to abide in His love, “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love” (John 15:9 NKJV).  Abiding in the love of Christ is the sure way to experience His glory. The Psalmist declares, “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty” (Psalm 91:1 NKJV). This scripture summons us to intentionally cultivate intimacy with God. If intimacy is implied, then abiding “under the shadow of the Almighty” must imply abiding in His love. Only those who abide in God’s love will have access to His secret places. The secret place of the Most High is the place of glory. It is the place of face-to-face encounter with God. God directed Moses to create a physical representation of the secret place of the Most High: “You shall put the mercy seat on top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the Testimony that I will give you. And there I will meet with you, and I will speak with you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim which are on the ark of the Testimony, about everything which I will give you in commandment to the children of Israel” (Exodus 25:21-22 NKJV). This makes it clear that the secret place of the Most High is the place of most intimate relationship with God. It is the place of the highest manifestation of His glory. Only love can take you there.

The Apostle Paul therefore made four prayer requests for believers namely,

First, he prayed for spiritual strength for all believers –“I ask the Father in his great glory to give you the power to be strong inwardly through his Spirit.” This strength flows out of the glory of God and is imparted to our spirit by the Holy Spirit.  The goal is to make us spiritually strong. Second, he prayed that love becomes the foundation of our Christian life – “I pray that Christ will live in your hearts by faith and that your life will be strong in love and be built on love.” Our life of faith in Christ is strong to the extent it is standing on the foundation of Christ’s love. Love is the evidence that Christ is alive in our hearts. Hence the Word of God declared, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us.”(1 John 4:7-8,12 NKJV). Love is our identity card as Christ’s followers (John 13:35).  

Third, Paul prayed for power to understand the greatness of Christ’s love for us – “And I pray that you and all God’s holy people will have the power to understand the greatness of Christ’s love—how wide and how long and how high and how deep that love is.” This presupposes a lifelong quest for understanding of the incredible love of God for believers. It implies diligent effort to understand the meaning and the implication of God’s love in its multifaceted dimensions –its width, its length, its height and its depth. As Christians, we have no greater business than to explore God’s love.

Then finally, Paul prayed for revelation knowledge of God’s love –^“Christ’s love is greater than anyone can ever know, but I pray that you will be able to know that love.”  The only way we can know what cannot be known is through revelation (Matthew 16:17). Revelation is knowledge supernaturally imparted in the mind of the Christian by the Holy Spirit. This defines for us a never-ending prayer project.  We cannot imagine a greater prayer point than to seek for the experiential knowledge of the love of God. The ultimate purpose of God in all these is so we “can be filled with the fullness of God.”  To be filled with God is to be filled with His love because God is love.

God is calling us as a church to make love the centre and the circumference of our lives and activities. We should have no greater goal than to learn how to abide in God’s love the rest of our lives. When you learn to abide in God’s love, everything you do becomes a response to His love nothing more, nothing less.