Silas
Beloved of All
You are reaching for something real, and that prayer from Ephesians is exactly where the answer lies. It is not a wish for more willpower or better feelings. It is a cry for the Spirit of God to do what only He can do in the deepest part of you. The strength you are asking for is not the kind you can muster up. It is dunamis, explosive resurrection power, applied directly to your inner man. In the day you cried out, He answered and strengthened you with strength in your soul. That is what is happening now.
The goal of this power is not that you become impressive, but that Christ settles down and makes Himself fully at home in your heart. The proof that He is at home will always be love. Not a love you can manufacture by trying harder or psyching yourself up. This is a supernatural work. You will know that it is His Spirit within you because the fruit coming forth from your life is agape, a genuine love for the family of God and even for those you could not stand in the natural. When God gives you a deep, tender affection for a difficult brother or sister, you are experiencing His love being perfected in you. It becomes the testimony that you dwell in Him and He in you.
You have asked to comprehend the vast dimensions of Christ's love. That kind of knowing is experiential. You cannot analyze into it; you must be rooted and grounded in it so deeply that you begin to grasp what surpasses intellectual understanding. You learn the width of His love when it embraces someone you wanted to keep at a distance. You know its length when it pursues you despite your repeated failures. Its depth becomes real when it reaches into the shame or sin you thought could never be forgiven. And its height lifts you into a life of the Spirit where you are no longer defined by your old nature. This is what it means to be filled with all the fullness of God, to have a life that is Spirit, soul, and body, governed no longer by the flesh but by the mind of the Spirit bearing witness with your spirit that you are His child.
The process requires coming to the end of yourself. The old man must be reckoned dead, crucified with Christ, so that the life you now live is by the faith of the Son of God who loved you and gave Himself for you. As long as you are staking out your own territory and guarding your rights, the love of God is not yet perfected. But as you yield to the Spirit, He writes His law on the fleshly tablets of your heart. Your faith will then stand not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God, a transformed life that can only be explained by the gospel. The very power that raised Jesus from the dead gives life to your mortal body, enabling you to mortify the deeds of the flesh and walk in newness of life. He who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all you ask or think will do it according to that power which is already working in you.
The goal of this power is not that you become impressive, but that Christ settles down and makes Himself fully at home in your heart. The proof that He is at home will always be love. Not a love you can manufacture by trying harder or psyching yourself up. This is a supernatural work. You will know that it is His Spirit within you because the fruit coming forth from your life is agape, a genuine love for the family of God and even for those you could not stand in the natural. When God gives you a deep, tender affection for a difficult brother or sister, you are experiencing His love being perfected in you. It becomes the testimony that you dwell in Him and He in you.
You have asked to comprehend the vast dimensions of Christ's love. That kind of knowing is experiential. You cannot analyze into it; you must be rooted and grounded in it so deeply that you begin to grasp what surpasses intellectual understanding. You learn the width of His love when it embraces someone you wanted to keep at a distance. You know its length when it pursues you despite your repeated failures. Its depth becomes real when it reaches into the shame or sin you thought could never be forgiven. And its height lifts you into a life of the Spirit where you are no longer defined by your old nature. This is what it means to be filled with all the fullness of God, to have a life that is Spirit, soul, and body, governed no longer by the flesh but by the mind of the Spirit bearing witness with your spirit that you are His child.
The process requires coming to the end of yourself. The old man must be reckoned dead, crucified with Christ, so that the life you now live is by the faith of the Son of God who loved you and gave Himself for you. As long as you are staking out your own territory and guarding your rights, the love of God is not yet perfected. But as you yield to the Spirit, He writes His law on the fleshly tablets of your heart. Your faith will then stand not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God, a transformed life that can only be explained by the gospel. The very power that raised Jesus from the dead gives life to your mortal body, enabling you to mortify the deeds of the flesh and walk in newness of life. He who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all you ask or think will do it according to that power which is already working in you.
