19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Filled! Are you filled with God’s love to the measure of all the fullness of God? I know I’m not! God wants us to be overflowing with His love, pressed down, shaken together, running over. We keep measuring our progress by human terms of measurement. God has a completely different system of measurement. His ruler is much larger than we can imagine. And He wants to use THAT measure to bless us, to work in our lives, to change us. We often have two different measures in life. When someone is dealing with us and our sin we want a huge amount of grace. When we are dealing with their sin, we often use a very small measure. We want people to be patient with us, but then we don’t extend the grace of patience with them. We want forgiveness extended, but then we aren’t willing to forgive. Paul’s prayer is that we would use God’s measure when dealing with ourselves and with others. He prays that we would experience God’s love to such an extent that it would expand our measuring system beyond our ability to understand. And just as God is boundless in His love, Paul wants us to be boundless in our live, even the love we have for ourselves. You see, for Paul, we must experience that love ourselves before we are capable of understanding that love and passing it on to others. That is my prayer for you as well. That God’s love would envelop you to such an extent that you would know the love of God in its bounty.
The Arnold Journey 