Day 10
Week 2, Day 10: Intimacy Grows In Love
We often talk about love as an action. A verb. But I’ve come to realize that one of the greatest gifts of love we could ever give to God is receiving His Son, Jesus.
Love starts with realizing that love doesn’t start with us at all. It starts with Jesus. And what a relief that is.
It seems like one of the greatest barriers to intimacy with the Lord is when God’s love remains more conceptual than experienced. Understood, but not transformative. Known, but not treasured.
When we think of intimacy, it’s intrinsically linked with desire, longing, and fulfillment. It’s relationship language and implies closeness. But when we think of our relationship with Jesus, would we describe it as one marked with desire, longing, and life-transforming vitality? Do we experience communion with Him? Are we captivated by Jesus?
If I’m honest, there are days my desires and longings aren’t fixed on the One to whom I pledge my life. It would be amazing if they were! How wonderful would it be if all I wanted was Jesus.
Praise God, we aren’t left to face our wandering desires on our own. God Himself helps us love Him by loving us first (1 John 4:19). Intimacy is developed in the presence of God, not in our willpower to seamlessly practice spiritual disciplines, and the good news is that, as believers, we are God’s chosen dwelling places.
The Apostle Paul prays a prayer of spiritual strength over the believers in Ephesus, and he doesn’t pray for greater willpower. He prays that Christ would “dwell in your hearts through faith” and that, being “rooted and grounded in love, you would have the strength to comprehend the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:17–19).
I love Don Carson’s commentary on this passage. He says,
“This is not a prayer that we should love Christ more. That’s worth praying, but it’s not Paul’s prayer here. It’s a prayer rather that we should better grasp his love for us.”
This distinction is so important.
So many of our prayers are directed toward becoming better at loving God. We ask for greater discipline, greater devotion, greater consistency, greater desire. Those things are good to pray for.
But Paul points us somewhere deeper: to understanding what we have already been given. The pathway to intimacy isn’t simply to try harder to love God. Love isn’t manufactured through discipline. Love is awakened by being loved.
The more we comprehend the love of Christ, not merely as a theological concept, but as a reality we experience, the more our hearts are drawn toward Him.
Receiving God’s love in our day-to-day lives looks a lot like taking Him at His Word. If God says we are right with Him, then we’re going to believe it. No measuring. No keeping score. No trying to prove that we’re worthy of the love we’ve already been given.
Let’s all make the decision to set aside our metaphorical measuring sticks today. They aren’t accurate anyway. Instead, let’s take time to thank Jesus for the fact that He obliterated those sticks a long time ago. That he died and rose again, and in Him, we get to live in a loving relationship with God forever.
Listening Prayer:
Heavenly Father, would You help me to understand how great Your love is for me? Holy Spirit, would You reveal to me specific opportunities throughout today to receive the gift of Your Son, Jesus?
Prayer:
Lord, I thank You that Your blood speaks a better Word over me. I turn away from any other words or voices that have said anything contrary to Yours, God. I reject them and come into agreement with Your will and way, which is for my good and Your glory. I pray a fresh zeal would ignite in my heart for You, starting today. Be at home in me. Lord, I pray that I would experience Your love in both familiar and entirely new ways today. You’re so good and worthy of all my devotion. I love You, Lord. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Resources:
Ephesians 3:14-21
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 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. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
Romans 5:8
“but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. “
Romans 8:38-39
“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
John 15:9
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.”
1 John 4:19
“We love because he first loved us.”
Galatians 2:20
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Don Carson’s Commentary, “Praying for Power”