¹⁴ When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, ¹⁵ the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. ¹⁶ I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. ¹⁷ Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. ¹⁸ And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. ¹⁹ May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

²⁰ Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. ²¹ Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.

4 Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God. ² Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. ³ Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. ⁴ For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future.

Ephesians 3:14-4:4

Dear God, the verse of the day from Bible Gateway was Actually Ephesians 4:15 (¹⁵ Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church.), but I wanted more context so I kept backing up. As is common, you can’t just quote a sentence or two from Paul and get the context, so I ended up going back to chapter three to find the beginning of the thought. I think starting at 3:14 kind of gets me there even though it starts with a reference to “this.” “This” is referring to Gentiles and Jews worshipping you together and his plan for Jesus to carry out his plan. So with all that setup, I want to spend some time with these verses.

I love the passion of Paul in verse 14. He falls to his knees when he thinks of “this.” There aren’t many times I just fall to my knees in awe of you. I’m sorry, and I feel ashamed to say that, but it’s true. To some extent, I’ve lost my awe of you. Even now, as I sit here, I don’t think I have enough awe of you. I think too much of myself in your presence. I think to much about what I can take from scripture as opposed to what you are teaching me and giving me through scripture and the still, small voice of your Holy Spirit. Is this act of praying to you in this moment an act of worship or just an intellectual exercise of mind?

When I look at verse 16, do I look to you to empower me with inner strength from your Spirit? I love the image of you, Jesus, making your homein my heart and my “roots growing down into God’s love and keep[ing me] strong.” I hope I’m doing that. If I truly understand how wide, long, high, and deep your love is, then I will be in awe of you.

Skipping ahead to chapter 4, this is where I really wanted to go. I didn’t expect to feel so much from the end of chapter three there, but you’ve given me a lot to think about. What struck me when I first read these verses this morning was Ephesians 4:2: Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. I was listening to an interview with a man this morning who has been through a spiritual journey with you. He started out as a worshipper. He was a celebrity who embraced you and the Evangelical Church embraced him. But as time went on, the rejected him because of some of his social justice opinions. When he realized they were so at odds on some of these areas and he was convinced they were wrong about them, he started to question what else they might be wrong about. That was the beginning of a transformation of his faith. When asked about where he is now, he said he’s more comfortable with “nuance” than he was before. He understands there are some gray areas where we don’t have to agree to worship you.

That’s what I thought of when I read Ephesians 4:2-3: ² Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. ³ Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. Satan’s Plan A is to divide us. It’s a great plan because it really plays into our insecurities. It plays into my insecurity and self-pity. It plays into all of our insecurity and self-pity. When I’m not willing to forgive someone, it’s usually because I’m hanging onto my rights and not thinking about what your best is for that other person–maybe at my expense.

Father, help me to love with nuance. Help me to allow for others’ faults as they will hopefully allow for mine. Refine me. Help me to really see you as you are–as much as I humanly can. I don’t know that I’ll ever fully grasp how in awe of you I should be, but I know my roots can grow deeper into you. Help them to grow deeper into you. I love you and I thank you for loving me.

I pray all of this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen