A mother was having trouble with her young son and daughter at the supper table. They just would not behave. She looked up and said, “Oh, God, please help me with these children.” Immediately the 4-year-old girl bowed her head in prayer. Mama was happy, thinking her daughter was asking for help to be good, but the girl looked up at her and said, “I just asked him not to help you.”
We can try to use prayer for a lot of things. Things that contradict each other. Things that just appeal to our self-centeredness. Things that attempt to manipulate God. Like Janis Joplin sang: “Mercedes Benz”
We started exploring Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3:14-19. Remember he was praying about the “inner man” and our “hearts.” He’s praying about what’s going on inside you. Your spirit, the part of you that’s way down deep. God cares about what’s going on inside you. He’s not just concerned about your behaviors and actions. He cares about your wounded soul. He cares about the brokenness and pain you carry in your heart. He cares about the failure and guilt in your spirit. God cares about your dreams and desires and hopes and joys. So in this prayer, Paul is asking for God’s touch on the inner man. He asks for the heavenly Father to bring his resources – “the riches of his glory” – into our hearts. God has what we need in our souls.
The first thing Paul asked in his prayer was “to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner man” (v16). That you have the power of the Holy Spirit to do what it takes in whatever circumstance or need you have to deal with.
Let’s go on now to a second thing Paul asked for. Picking up in the middle of verse 17, the apostle prayed “that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge…” 
Paul prayed for love. Not just any love. The “love of Christ.” “The breadth and length and height and depth.” Christ’s love in all its dimensions, expressions, and possibilities. Massive love.
That’s what we’re all looking for. Most of the time, we don’t realize that we’re looking for Christ’s love. We talk about getting approval or acceptance, maybe respect or popularity, maybe simply attention. Those things do feel good when we get them, but they’re kind of just watered down versions of the love we want.
When I was a kid, I went fishing a lot with my family and friends. Often I’d go with my dad and brother and an uncle or 2 or 3. We usually fished for catfish in the Brazos River in Parker County, Texas. Once when I was about 11-12 years old my uncle Ray was with us. I was a small sized boy – short and skinny. I cast my line, baited with shrimp or worm, out into the river. My uncle saw it and said something about how far I could cast. My dad said, “Why, he could cast it all the way across the river if he wanted to!” That really felt good – my dad was proud of me and something I could do. I felt loved. And I was.
Those are good things, but still they are only shadows of Christ’s massive love. We need those, but we need even more down deep in our spirits. We need Christ’s love.
We need Christ’s love because it heals us. 
It heals the deep hurts and scars in our souls. It heals the fears and worries. It heals the guilt and failures. It heals the pains and hopelessness.
Lisa Smith, a missionary in Nicaragua, told about a retreat with a group of teenagers. The mother of one of the boys, Jovanny, had just walked out on her family. Jovanny was devastated. He was able to reach out to God and mourn and be comforted on the retreat. Lisa said, “I watched as Jovanny wept before the Lord and talked with myself and others about all that he was feeling. I also watched as he danced before the Lord in adoration. [His] heart was aching so deeply during this weekend, but his Heavenly Father met with [him] intimately, comforted him, and held Jovanny close to His heart.
Love from other people helps with our healing, but it’s not enough on its own. Don’t expect another human being to be able to love you enough to heal you deep down inside. Don’t put that responsibility on them; it’s too much. The massive love of Christ is enough.
We need his love also because we need challenged. We all have ideas and opinions and habits and addictions and behaviors that need changed. Those things are not how God created humans to live. So they’re harmful. Dangerous. Damaging to ourselves and others. But most of them don’t feel harmful; they feel good, right? We like them. 
So we need confronted and challenged to give them up and learn new ways. We need someone to get in our faces and defy our lifestyles. Jesus does that, with massive love. With grace, mercy, kindness. With acceptance, assurance, and help. His love promises that he doesn’t hate us, doesn’t reject us, doesn’t condemn us. We eventually come to realize that he wants the very best for us. He wants us to be free from those harmful ways of living so we can have real abundant life. He lovingly challenges us to live with him.
We need the massive love of Christ in our hearts, so Paul prays that we’ll know his love “which surpasses knowledge.” Know it but it’s beyond knowing! Know it but it can’t be known! What?
Let’s don’t pretend that we can really understand the love of Christ. You can’t. You can’t get it. You can’t wrap your mind around it. You can’t master it. You can’t make sense of Christ’s love. The love of Jesus comes to us wrapped in majestic glory. It enters our hearts clothed in transcendence. Christ’s love is adorned with holiness. It is shrouded in mystery.
Let’s don’t just bring his love down to our level and think that’s all there is to it. I’ve heard someone describe God’s love as “God has your picture on his refrigerator.” I understand why we do that – trying to make a connection in people’s minds, something they can relate to. We have to do things like that. But don’t leave it there. Don’t sentimentalize his love. Don’t humanize his love. Don’t make it just frilly and lacey, and don’t make it just tough and hard-nosed. Don’t think his love is only as good as the best human love. It’s bigger than that – wider, longer, higher, deeper. Christ’s love is beyond our intellect, beyond our comprehension, beyond our explaining. It “surpasses knowledge.” You can’t understand it. You can’t make sense of it.
You can’t get it…but you can have it. You can experience it. That’s what Paul meant when he prayed “to know the love of Christ.” You can know it by experiencing it. It can be a real thing happening down deep inside you. You can feel it. You can be touched by it. The love of Jesus can affect your soul, move your spirit, stir your heart.
Many times the objective fact of Christ’s love has gotten me through and kept me going – knowing Romans 8:5, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” 
That’s an objective, historical fact: Jesus died on a cross in about the year 30 A.D. and that was God showing his love. It’s not a wish or a feeling. It happened. It’s a done deal. It’s not going to change. At the moment it may feel like God doesn’t love me, but the fact is he has proven that he does. We need that.
But God doesn’t intend for that to be all there is to knowing the love of Christ. He wants his love to be something happening in your soul that you can feel, you can sense, you can experience for yourself.
A woman named Barbara Milligan became a Christian when she was young then she started having a lot of doubts about God’s love and her salvation and even God’s existence. She read the Bible, went to camp, listened to sermons, participated in Bible studies, but the doubts didn’t go away. In short, she wasn’t able to trust God. Summing it up, this is what she said happened. “During those years of doubting, I experienced God being with me in many ways… I experienced God’s presence, God’s guidance, God’s compassion, God’s comfort, God’s nurturing, God’s strength, God’s love and many more aspects of God’s character. I experienced God through nature, through other people, through circumstances, through words and pictures and impressions, and increasingly often through the Bible. God used those experiences to gradually vanquish my doubts. My unhealed wounds from the past had caused me to doubt God, while my conscious mind wanted to trust God. And because my doubts were on a feeling level, not on a thinking level, God addressed them emotionally, not intellectually. Hearing, reading, and thinking about God’s love for me, and all that Jesus had done to demonstrate God’s love, did not diminish the doubts. I needed to experience God’s love for me before the doubts would subside. And as I began to experience God’s love, my heart began to open to the living truths of the Bible.”
I went on a spiritual retreat several years ago, alone in the mountains of northern Colorado. I was going through a hard time, struggling with some issues in my life. I spent most of the first day reading “The Pursuit of God” by A.W. Tozer. That night I built a campfire and looked up at the star-filled sky. The Lord grabbed my soul and reminded me that the Jesus who made all that loves me personally. He didn’t just say he loved me – I felt his love pouring into me. There’s a worship song that says, “In moments like these I sing out a love song to Jesus…” I started to sing that, but God said, “No, don’t sing. Let me sing to you.” I didn’t hear with my ears, but I felt with my heart – in my spirit, in the depth of my inner man – Jesus singing: “in moments like these I sing out a song, I sing out a love song to Mike, singing ’I love you, Mike,’ singing ’I love you, Mike,’ singing ’I love you, Mike, I love you.’”
That’s the kind of thing Paul was praying for. The massive love of Christ is a reality that can come into your life, your spirit, your heart, and make a difference within you.
So part of Paul’s prayer was about “being rooted and grounded in love.” Like a tree rooted in the soil, plant yourself in Christ’s love. Like a building set on a foundation, set yourself on Christ’s love. Make his love the place where you live – the environment of your soul, the atmosphere of your spirit. Stake your life in his love; nail yourself to it.
I encourage you to take time every day to set yourself in Christ’s love. Talk to God about it – whatever thoughts or questions or doubts you have, talk to him about them. Express in your own words your need for experiencing his love. Tell him about your desire to feel his love. Ask him to help you have his love within you. A really good way to get started would be to use this prayer of Paul as your own. Pray it for yourself. Pray it for others, like Paul did. Read other Scriptures about God’s love. Sing a song about his love. Get quiet, wait, listen. Do whatever works for you. Not as a duty, a religious requirement. And not as a way to get God to love you. As a way for you to open your inside for Christ’s massive love to move in.
You may be all kinds of things, but you are loved. You may be young and energetic; you are loved. You may be old and tired; you are loved. You may be potbellied and bald; you are loved. You may be insecure and afraid; you are loved. You may be frazzled and stressed; you are loved. You may be confused, anxious, angry; you are loved. You may be guilty and ashamed; you are loved. You may be rebellious and hostile; you are loved. You are loved with the massive love of Jesus the Messiah.
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