Rooted and Grounded in Love

This year, Frontier's school theme is: Rooted and Grounded in Love (from the apostle Paul's writings in Ephesians 3)

The focus is on our hearts; the inner man, not merely the externals like simply *doing* the right things but with the wrong motives in our hearts.

Mr. Miles (Frontier's president) gave a great teaching and brought up some good questions we should all ask ourselves. I thought I'd share them with you too!
Paul is asking God to do 3 things in the lives of the Ephesians and, in the larger context, the lives of all believers.

1) "that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being..." (verse 16)

2) "...Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith" (17a)

3) "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." (17b-19)


We definitely need to make Christ the Lord of our hearts and of our lives. There's no dispute there, but if He is going to be dwelling with us there, certain things must happen-through the Holy Spirit's power and our obedience.

The questions to think about are these:

 Would Christ be pleased to come live in your heart? 

If it were symbolic of a hotel or a rental house would he consider it clean, inviting and friendly? Or would he feel unwelcome from all the clutter, dirt and half-hearted attention from the hosts? Think of a 1 star hotel in the bad area of town... hostility, dysfunction and chaos abound. Would you want to stay in those types of hotels? Would Christ desire to dwell in this type of heart?

Let's take this symbolism a bit further: If He truly is Lord and master, is he able to make changes to make it look and function the way He would like it to? 

If Christ is to dwell in our hearts as Lord and master, shouldn't He have free, unlimited access to re-arrange our heart? I mean, we all do that to our houses. (or travel trailers!)
We need to remember that our main priority is loving and glorifying God, and this is part of the process.

Like a young tree shooting down roots into the ground, we need to be rooting ourselves in Christ and receiving our spiritual nourishment through Him. Strength and stability are found here. It should be a solid foundation that will withstand harsh weather and all kinds of trials. Our love in Christ should be this same way!

The real danger is to know this with our intellect only, thinking this is simply enough... but it's not. We need to be a doer of the Word, motivated by love for God and love for others.

Thankfully our Great God did not leave all of this work up to us. He gave us a helper- His Holy Spirit- to help us grow by His power, and through spending time with Him in His Word.


Mr. Miles also shared a great quote by Hudson Taylor:

"The life that was to be exceptionally fruitful had to be rooted and grounded in God in no ordinary way."


Comments

  1. JoAnneSeptember 7, 2018 at 2:48 PM

    Just seeing this post, but what a great message! The Holy Spirit is calling me about getting back to attending church and developing church family relationships. I've been listening to pastor Carey on line, but that's not the same as having a church family and supporting a church itself. It is time. I am done with the paperwork and the Nana struggles... I need this. Thanks for the nudge for your Gma!

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