The Trust That Becomes Yours

"...to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ." - Ephesians 3:18 (NIV)

When you learn a word in a new language, you have to stop and think before you say it. It comes out wrong, and you try again. For a long time it doesn't feel like yours. Then one day it comes out without effort. Do you know the day it became easy? There is no such day. The word became yours a little at a time, until it was part of how you talk.

Long ago a man named Paul saw that God's love becomes ours slowly, just as a word does. He had followed Jesus for many years, and he prayed for people who already loved God. He asked that they would have power "...to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ" (Ephesians 3:18). They already had that love. He wasn't asking God to give them more love. He wanted them to understand that love more deeply over time, the way a word slowly becomes part of how we speak.

What we believe about God comes to us the same slow way. We are told a truth about God, and we believe it. But only after years of living with that truth do we really know it. Believing it is like hearing a promise from someone you have just met. Knowing it is like hearing the same promise from a friend who has never failed you. By the end of his life Paul could say, "...I know whom I have believed" (2 Timothy 1:12). He had trusted God so long that he knew Him well.

There is a difference between believing something is true and depending on it. Think of a chair you have sat in for years. The first time, you sat down carefully. Now you sit down without a second thought, and you could not say when you became confident it would hold you. John, who was one of Jesus' closest friends, used a strong word for this kind of trust when he wrote, "...we know and rely on the love God has for us" (1 John 4:16). To rely is to put your whole weight on it.

This kind of trust grows slowly, and we aren't the ones who bring that work to completion. "...he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion" (Philippians 1:6). Think back to learning a word in a new language. It became part of how you speak so slowly that you never noticed the day it happened. Something similar happens as we learn to trust God's love. You may already trust Him more than you realize, and there is still more ahead. So we keep walking, in no hurry. Follow the longing. He opens the way.

Prayer

Father, Your love is bigger than we know. Teach us to trust it the way we trust the ground under our feet, and to keep walking into all of it we have not yet reached. Amen.