English Source
"…that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to all the fullness of God." — **Ephesians 3:17b–19**day5.morning.p1.epigraph[Eph.3.17b-19]
Paul also writes about this in **Colossians 2:9–10**: *"For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over every ruler and authority…"*
day5.morning.p2The fullness of God is in Christ. And if you have yielded to Christ the Savior, you become one with God through Christ. All of God is in Christ, who is in you, and our part is to yield to Christ within us.
day5.morning.p3The way we are filled up to all the fullness is by knowing the love of Christ. This is the starting place. The transformation begins when we receive the love God is offering us. When we receive the love of God and our new position in Him, His fullness begins to fill us and spill out into our lives. Again, this isn't just a single transaction we make with God — receiving His love. We receive His love for us in every circumstance for every issue, trusting Him to redeem us and meet our needs.
day5.morning.p4But this can't happen if we have accepted lies, living from our own ideas or agendas about how we think life should go. There won't be room for us to be filled up with Christ's love. We have to deal with those issues first.
day5.morning.p5So, how do you get filled up with the love and knowledge of Christ, exchanging your understanding for His? Sometimes it helps to see a picture of how this process works. Imagine the whole of your life on a timeline. You've had all kinds of experiences and beliefs. An experience as simple as a rude or dismissive comment someone said to you in second grade can have a major influence in your life. Something someone said to you can be as intense as being sexually abused or orphaned or experiencing a traumatic death. God has something to say about all of it, no matter how big or small.
day5.morning.p6We can call these experiences points of pain or places of lack (represented in the diagram with an X).
day5.morning.p7**[DIAGRAM in the source book]** — A simple sketch showing "YOUR LIFE" (a small figure) with several Xs around it marked "place of lack," and an arrow circling upward toward "GOD" labeled "fullness." The arrow depicts the movement from emptiness/lack toward being filled by God.day5.morning.p8.epigraph
We build our beliefs around what happened to us in those experiences. Our beliefs are a mixture of our (broken) response to our life experiences and the systems around us — family values, the society we grew up in, authority figures who have influenced us. Beliefs can also come from our own personality, but remember, it's your fallen personality. The root of it is: *I am going to do whatever it takes for me to be okay.*
day5.morning.p9This belief that it is up to you is the root of our humanity without God. *I'm going to do whatever I have to do to be okay,* even if that means *"I have to punch you in the nose or elevate myself so I look like a good person, a person who wants to bless others and be a good Christian."* The motivation behind these actions is about what I think I need to do to be okay. We can develop a posture of *"this is coping — just making it through, trying to survive."* The capacity for these coping strategies is in us from the time we're born, and the beliefs and behaviors develop over time.
day5.morning.p10Throughout our lives we've stored within us thousands of experiences, often not knowing what's going to trigger something in us or how we'll cope. All along the way, we each have God's embedded blueprint of needing deep communion with Him, so we start to feel frustrated, sad, hopeless, lonely, bumping into our lack over and over. At some point, our coping skills are exhausted, stop benefiting us, and our triggers stop us from being able to move through life. We call that a *"stuck place."*
day5.morning.p11Talk to God about an area of your life that you need His love to fill.
day5.invitation.p1- Pause and think about your day today.
- What did the Lord reveal to you related to today's invitation?
- How will this truth affect your relationship with Him on a daily basis?
- Ask the Lord what steps you should take to implement this into your daily life.
- Thank God for this revelation. Pray for this truth to take root in your life.
Translation (SV)
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