Love and Your Spiritual Growth

When you get into your car and turn the key, or push the electric start, the engine roars to life. Your engine has great power. Power to move your car forward at speeds once thought impossible to achieve.

One fact is true about starting your car. You need the key…either in your hand or in your pocket. Your car key unlocks the power of your engine.

Spiritual growth is similar.

Have you ever felt powerless to grow spiritually?

Of course you have…so have I…often actually.

To grow spiritually we need power. Consistent, constant, power. Just like your car needs to draw power constantly from your engine to continue moving forward.

I have found the power to grow spiritually comes as we experience God’s great love for us. I didn’t say as we learn about God’s great love for us. I said as we experience God’s great love for us. To know a thing and to experience it are very different.

As we experience God’s love for us something happens. There is a power, a presence of God. This power and presence of God creates spiritual growth within us.

In Ephesians 3:17-19 the Apostle Paul wrote:

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

This is my prayer for you today. That you will be rooted and established in the love of God for you. That because you are rooted and established in God’s love you will have power. Power to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.

See, I know that as you grasp the magnitude of God’s love for you your life will change. I know it because I have experienced it…I continue to experience it.

The thing is though, that this love Paul is praying about “surpasses knowledge.” So if it surpasses knowledge, how do we learn about it?

That’s simple. As we are rooted and established in the love God has for us, God shows us his love that surpasses knowledge. The result is you are filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Does that sound like something you want? Filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. I do. I want that. I really want that!

I remember as a kid, my dad made me go out beyond the back yard and dig up some pine trees. Each tree had a large tap root extending deep into the ground from the middle of the tree. The tap roots were strong, powerful, and hard to cut through. The tap roots held the trees firmly in the ground. The ground gave up its nourishment through the tap root buried deep into the earth.

You have a tap root connecting you to God. Your tap root is God’s love for you. It is strong. It is powerful. Through God’s love for you, you are connected to God with a powerful bond. God demonstrated this bond through Jesus Christ. Through God’s love for you God nourishes you and gives you spiritual strength.

That is the key. As you are rooted and established in love, you will have power to grasp how wide and long and high and deep God’s love for you really is. This power will create spiritual growth inside of you.

Love, then, is the key to experiencing the spiritual growth you desire.