Strength to Understand

How much air can you put into a balloon? Depends on the balloon, right? How much knowledge of the love of God can you put into a Christian? Depends on the Christian.

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.    Eph 3:17-19

Christ dwells in our hearts through faith. But that is not all that is required.

For us to be strong enough to comprehend the love of God, we need a foundation of love. Strange as it may seem, we need love to know the love of God. We are not just vessels that you can pour the love of God into. We are living beings. Our capacity to hold depends on our condition.

If you wanted to know how much air a ball would require, you could use this formula. 

If you have been strengthened in some basic math, you can solve the problem. But it won’t work for a balloon. A balloon is more alive. It’s more like us. It expands and contracts depending on the outside conditions and the internal pressure. You will need a little more knowledge and strengthening to be able to comprehend how much air goes into a balloon.

This may all seem like silliness until you live with God for a while. Over time you will go through some challenging times, events that will cause you to question the love of God. In those seasons of life how much you know about the love of God strengthens you to understand how God is loving you in the moment. If your knowledge of the love of God is weak or immature, you will not be able to comprehend God’s love in sickness, in pain or through a crisis.

Just as the word of God parishes in the parable of the sower in Matthew 13, so the love of God parishes due to our weakness and faithlessness. Pride can arise in our life, pushing love out. We can say, “I quit” or “I shouldn’t have to go through this.” Jealously or envy may try to displace the foundation of love. You want what someone else has. The growth needed to arrive at your own knowledge of the love of God could be pushed away by a jealous spirit that looks at someone else and not God.

Expanding to hold the fullness of God is hard, it takes work. We can get tired and cry out in our spirit, “I want an easier life.” We hear testimonies of what God has done for others, and that He will do it for us too. But often those testimonies don’t reveal the years of seeking, the crisis of life that dug deep the foundation or the life lessons learned to become strong.

It requires strength to be filled with the fullness of God. God is a burden. The word glory is a word-picture of weight. The more glory, the more weight. This can be seen both physically and spiritually. The glory of the temple in Israel was seen in the gold, the block, the timbers. The building had glory as it had weight. Mountains are glories because they are vast, big, weighty.

The glory of God is known by the way it weighs upon us. We encounter God through His weight, His ability to impress upon us. We feel the glory of God in our spirits and often in our bodies. He weighs upon us. If you are going to carry the Lord around in your body you need to be strong enough to do it. Do you know anyone who has been crushed by the Lord?

Maybe you know a person who was not yet strong enough to comprehend the love of God through a sickness or death. In the end, they abandoned God, saying that God did not love them. Growing deep in faith and love is hard, slow work. But it yields a life of fruitfulness as we abide in Him and He is us.

As you grow in your ability to comprehend the love of God you will see His love in ways and situations you cannot comprehend now. This new understanding is not putting a positive spin on bad events. And while your perspective will change, it is more than a change of perspective. Your ability to comprehend the love of Christ will involve and require deep faith and love. The kind of faith and love gained through trials, testing, verification, and tribulation. Don’t worry. The trials of life are worth it. They are not only worth it in eternity. They are worth it now. They are working in us a deep love and faith that can hold more of God.

Remember, you’re not a balloon. God is not seeking to blow you up and pop you. God is seeking to fill you up with His fullness. A fullness described as “surpassing knowledge.” You don’t know what you don’t know, but you may also be on your way to finding out.