You bow your knee, and I see what you are asking for. It is the very thing the Apostle bowed his own knees to request on behalf of those he loved. You are not asking for a lighter cross or a smoother road; you are asking for the inward strengthening of the Holy Spirit, for Christ to settle down and feel at home in your heart, and for a living, personal comprehension of a love that stretches farther than any horizon you have ever seen. That is a petition after God's own heart, and it is one He delights to answer.
Sometimes we come to the throne as beggars with a handful of dry crumbs, asking only for relief from a present ache. But there are other times, and this is one, when the Spirit himself has breathed a larger prayer into us, and we find ourselves asking for the ocean when we have only known a thimbleful. You are standing before the fullness now. And here is your comfort: the fullness does not dwell in you, nor does it need to be manufactured by you. It pleased the Father that in Christ should all fullness dwell. You are not sent to the cistern of your own feelings or to the broken pump of your own resolves. You are sent to him in whom all the fullness of the Godhead has taken up permanent residence. And from that fullness, the receiving has already begun. Every true child of God is a receiver from the first hour to the last. You came with nothing but your sin and your misery, and you received grace. You come now with nothing but your emptiness, and you shall receive more grace. Grace does not conclude with the first draught; it opens the capacity for more, and then fills that enlarged capacity.
Do you see what the Apostle asks for next? He prays that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. The word means to settle down, to abide, to feel at home. It is one thing to have a passing guest who knocks at the door of your soul and stays for an hour; it is another thing entirely when the Lord of Glory hangs up his hat in the hallway of your affections and makes every room his own. You long for that. You long for the centermost chamber of your being to become a sanctuary where no strange fire burns. But remember, your heart does not become fit for his indwelling by your own scrubbing and scouring. Faith is the door. Faith is the open hand. The Spirit strengthens the inner man so that the hand of faith may cease its trembling and take firm hold, and then Christ steps in. He does not wait for you to furnish the house; he brings his own furniture, his own light, his own peace.
And then comes that request which makes the intellect stagger and the heart grow wings: that you, rooted and grounded in love like a great oak driven deep into the soil, might be able to grasp what cannot be grasped, the width and length and depth and height of the love of Christ. Do not be alarmed if you feel yourself a little child wandering among these mountains. Did not the Apostle himself feel lost in its lengths and breadths? You will spend eternity discovering what you have begun to taste today. The love of Christ is not a pond to be measured with a plummet line; it is a sea that knows no shore. But oh, the joy of launching out upon it! Sometimes the knowledge of that love comes wrapped in a black‑edged envelope, through sorrow and loss. Sometimes it comes as a father's hand in the dark, leading you by a way you did not know. But always it comes, and it surpasses the mere intake of the mind. It passes knowledge, yet it is known.
And what is the end of all this? That you may be filled, not half‑filled, not filled to a comfortable level, but filled up to all the fullness of God. Who can utter it? It is as if an empty shell on the shore were to contain the whole ocean. Yet so it is. Union with Christ means his fullness flows into your emptiness. He is the Head, and you are a member of his body, and the life that pulses through the Head must reach even to the least and feeblest part. You are nearer to him than anything else can be. Distance is annihilated. You are not merely painted with his name as a penny bears the image of the queen; you are being conformed to his very likeness, and the work has already begun.
So take heart. The Lord himself must direct your heart into this, and he will. He who laid his hand upon the helm of your soul will steer the whole vessel straight into the harbor of his love. You have asked; you are asking still. He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that you ask or even think. Not merely up to the brim of your prayer, but far, far beyond it, according to the power that already works in you. The power that calmed the sea, that called Lazarus from the tomb, that upholds the stars, that power works in you now. To him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end.
Father of our Lord Jesus, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, I ask you now for this dear soul, according to the riches of your glory. Strengthen them with might by your Spirit in the inner man. Let Christ settle down in the center of their affections, feeling entirely at home there. Root them, ground them in love, and give them the sweet, enlarging knowledge of a love that can never be charted. Fill them, Lord, fill them with all your fullness until they overflow. Unto you who are able to do far more than we can frame in words, be glory forever. Amen.
"We bow our knees to You, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, asking You would grant us, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power and might through His Spirit in the inner person, that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith; that we, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints, what is the width and length and depth and height — to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that we may be filled up and overflowing with all the fullness of God. Now to You who are able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to You be glory in the church through Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen, Eph 3:14-20."
