So to get it here requires that we learn how to receive and bring that life into the world around us. Firstly you've got to receive it for yourself. You can't give someone what you don't have. I've been in meetings where people have been touched by the power of God, set free, particularly our freedom seminar where I've done in Bible schools, we've been there for a while and we've done seminars here, or even in Lyn's restoration seminar. Then there's always a part where suddenly the place becomes filled with the atmosphere of God's love, and it's a spiritual reality, and people just cry. They just feel so touched on the inside. They feel loved, they feel alive. I've been in some meetings where people, the atmosphere of God's love was so thick no one said a word nor moved. They just sat weeping, feeling the love of God. It's a spiritual reality. You may not have had much, you may not know how to access it, but it is available for you as we'll see today. It's our responsibility to learn how to access it.
Now we're just going to have a look into Ephesians, Chapter 3, and I want to just read two or three verses here. It says now - Verse 16 - that God would grant you according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with His might, through His spirit in the inner man. This is Paul's prayer for the Ephesians believers - that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints, what is the width and length and depth and height, to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now notice what he's praying. He's praying the end result that believers would be filled with God. Isn't that interesting? Filled with God, and he says a key to it is being strengthened in your inner man, in your spirit man, by the Holy Spirit and being rooted and grounded in the love of God. So the love of God is like a soil within which a healthy spiritual life grows.
The love of God is a foundation upon which you can build a strong life that can touch the lives of others, so love of God is very, very tangible. When God's love manifests, it's tangible, it can be felt and experienced. Love of God is also incredibly practical. God so loved He gave His Son, and we read the life of Jesus, that's the practical love of God, meeting needs, touching people, entering people's lives, developing and calling forth the potential of people and finally, sacrificing His life for every person. That is tangible, absolutely tangible. So there is a spiritual dimension to it, the manifest reality of God's presence and then there's also an incredibly practical dimension to it. You can't have one without the other. They both go together. Now notice here it says being rooted and grounded in love. The word rooted means to become stable, or to have deep roots like a big, big tree going right down into the ground, and so have you ever seen a little tree in the wind? It gets blown over. See a big tree, and it stands strong in the storm. It's usually got an extensive root system, lots of little wee things that have gone down, and so it's saying that our life needs to be like that, internally rooted or drawing from the love of God.
It uses another word to create a different picture, a picture of a building going up, and the thing that makes a building stable is a foundation. So you don't see the foundation, but it supports the building. It said founded or built upon a strong foundation, the love of God. So what He's speaking of in here is that, for us to manifest the life of God, we have to deepen, strengthen the foundations and root systems of our inner life, your connection with the Lord. How that outworks of course is quite simple. We'll share with you about that, but it does open us up to start to think; well how can I get deeper rooted in God? How can I strengthen that? See, this is a core thing in the Christian life, is your personal access to being loved, valued and spoken to and affirmed by God Himself. That was what motivated Jesus' ministry in life. Paul said that's what motivated him, in 2 Corinthians 5. He says this, he says the love of Christ motivates me or compels me to go out and do things. He had such a passion burning love of God in his life, it moved him to do incredible things. I'll share with you a little bit about that tonight.