love and a kitchenaid mixer

Last weekend I was at a women's retreat at Camp Lebanon. What a great weekend. The weather was gorgeous, the fall colors were in full swing and the company was sweet. The speaker was a real treat, too. It was my friend Susie Larson. One of the things she said that really stuck with me was about God's love for me. She touched on how powerful it can be to say, "You love me!" as if God were saying it right to me instead of me always saying, "I love you" to God. Try it. Sometimes we're more comfortable with saying "I love you" and not really embracing God reciprocating that love. Some of us think we're undeserving of that love so it's easier to not imagine him extending it to us. So this week as I drive to work I've been praying that God will show me in a big way each day how he loves me. And I'm looking for it. I haven't seen clouds in the form of crosses, but I have seen him in the little things. It's been really cool.

This morning I was reading Ephesians 3. I came upon verses 17-19. Here they are:

...And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

It got me thinking. Because I made the decision to follow Christ, I have been rooted and established in that love. So that's a done deal. That's where many of us stop. But Paul urges us to grab a friend ("together with all the saints") and explore that love. See how far it goes. See how deep it is. Test it, take hold of it, fall into it, depend on it. Discover how intense it can be. That should be our response to the gift of his love.

Let me give you an example. This one might not apply to all of you (my multitudes of readers) but I think you'll get my drift. Let's say I gave my best friend a brand new Kitchenaid Mixer. Like the industrial one. Costs me $500 and it came at a great sacrifice for me. I present her this mixer and she's super excited. She can't believe I would do something like that for her! But instead of using the mixer she sets it on her counter and just looks at it. She shows it off when people come over and occasionally uses it to quick mix up a boxed cake or something easy. But she never really explores the potential of this incredible piece of machinery, this expression of love. She's happy with just having it. How disappointing for me. Here I was hoping that she would max this baby out. That she would come to me and say, "You have no idea what I did with that mixer today. I pushed it hard but it never let me down. My little hand mixer gave out on me but that Kitchenaid one never slowed me down. It tore right through that 9-grain whole wheat bread dough like a Mack Truck through fog." That's how it is with Christ's love. Our response to his love should be to max it out, to run with it, to embrace and explore it. He wants us to search the depths of it. That's what brings him pleasure!!

The end of verse 19 tells us what will result when we grasp this love: that we will be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. WOW! Isn't that what we all want as Christians?? Don't we all, deep down in the depths of our souls, want the fullness of God in us? So many of us (me included) settle for less than fullness. We function on half full, or maybe even one quarter full. I don't know about you, but I want that fullness. And so I'm going to grasp how wide, long, deep and high that love is.

Maybe the Kitchenaid mixer doesn't make sense to you. Maybe for you it's a fully-loaded Jeep that is made for serious off-roading. But you only take it on the neighborhood roads. Or maybe it's a huge house that someone gives you but you only live in one room instead of inhabiting all 10 rooms.

Take your gift of love, grab your friend's hand, and push it to the limits. I imagine you'll find that there aren't any limits...