Turning On Your Engine – Being Rooted Grounded in Love Foundation

➡ Paul, the voiceover for a ministry called Your Daily Bread, discusses the importance of love in a Christian’s life. He explains that inner strength leads to Christ dwelling in your heart, which in turn leads to experiencing incomprehensible love. This love is not an emotion, but an act of selflessness, sacrifice, and service. Paul emphasizes that understanding and experiencing this love is only possible when Christ is at home in your life, and this happens when you allow the Spirit of God to strengthen you from within.
➡ As Christians, love should be the foundation of our lives, permeating every aspect of our existence. We should seize every opportunity to express love, making it a personal possession. This love is not just about understanding, but also about experiencing it in every situation. If love is absent in our lives, it indicates a lack of spiritual walk and the presence of sin, and the only way to live happily is to let Christ’s love fill our lives.

Hello, my name is Paul, and I am the voiceover for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh at God Is Government called Your Daily Bread, taken from Christ’s teaching of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6.11. This is a daily devotion ministry focused not only on uplifting Scripture, but Scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today’s focus discussion will be turning on your engine, being rooted and grounded in love foundation.

Now there’s a third thing, in turning your engine on with all eight cylinders, we get that in Ephesians 3.17. The first thing is inner strength. The result of that is Christ dwells in your hearts by faith. Now here’s another purpose and result clause, in order that, or with the purpose that, or with the result that ye, being rooted and grounded in love. Now, we’ll stop right there for a minute. This is fabulous. Everybody wants love. Everybody wants to know love, and experience love, and give love, and receive love, and enjoy love.

And here’s the key. A strong inner man leads to Christ being at home, which leads to being rooted and grounded in love. Now, you’ll never know love in your life until you follow the first two steps. The third one is incomprehensible love. Inner strength leads to the indwelling Christ, which leads to incomprehensible love. Another one of the purpose clauses in the Greek here. The result of Christ, now watch this one. The result of Christ’s unrestricted access to the Christian’s heart is love. You see, when Christ settles down in your life, he will begin to exude his personality.

You see, if he controls the library, the thinking, if he controls the dining room, the appetites, if he controls the living room, the fellowship, the discussions, the sharing, the conversation, the entertainment, if he controls the workshop, what is being done, the use of abilities and gifts and functions, if he’s got the closet clean, then his nature dominates, and his nature is what? Love. Love. The result of Christ’s unrestricted access to the believer’s heart is love. That’s when you become rooted and grounded in love. That’s when you really experience it. That’s when you’re able, verse 18 says, to comprehend with all saints the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.

You’ll never know that love until you have inner strength in the indwelling Christ. Until you have come to the place where you’ve yielded to the Holy Spirit, Christ settles down at home in your life, and he begins to exude his love. Then it dominates you, it roots you, it grounds you, and this is his prayer for you, that you know his love. Jesus said, the new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another. In 1 Peter 1, 21 and following, he talks about this.

Verse 22 says, seeing that you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, love one another with a pure heart fervently. This is God’s desire. Chapter 4, verse 8, he talks about love covering a multitude of sins. You know as well as I do that love is a vital part of the Christian’s experience. We are to manifest the fruit of the spirit. The first one is, the fruit of the spirit is love. And then somebody says, joy, peace, gentleness, faith, goodness, meekness, and self-control are simply subcategories of love.

Love is an attitude of selflessness. Love is an attitude of unselfish sacrifice. Love is service. I don’t think we should keep defining love as an emotion. We’ve gone through that in 1 Corinthians 13. Love is not an emotion. Love is an act of selflessness. God so loved the world that he felt emotional about it. No, God so loved the world that he did what? He gave the best that he had. If any man loves me, he will keep my words. If you don’t meet your brother’s need, 1 John, how dwells the love of God in you? You see, love is not an emotion, people.

It is selflessness. It is sacrifice. It is meeting someone’s need. It is serving somebody. It is dying for somebody. Greater love hath no man than this, than that a man feel really emotional about his friends. No, greater love hath no man than this, than that a man. What? Lay down his life for his friends. It’s always sacrifice. It’s always selflessness. It’s always giving something. It’s always serving something. And if we’re ever going to know what it is to serve, and to sacrifice, and to give with unlimited generosity, it’ll only be when we know the incomprehensible love of Christ.

And we’ll never know that until he is in the indwelling Christ who is at home in us. And that’ll never happen until we’ve experienced the inner strengthening of the Spirit of God. And this is the turn on, people. This is what is going to make the difference. Once the Spirit of God takes over, Christ settles down and is at home, and we become rooted and grounded in the love that is his nature that permeates us. You know, I find that is exactly what happens in my own life. That when I realize my own sinfulness, when I deal with my own weakness, and when I really walk in the Spirit, Christ is at home in my life, and things are right in my life, I just feel love.

I just have a desire to serve. I have a desire to meet needs. I find myself doing things that I normally wouldn’t even do. Rooted and grounded in love. And then it says not only will we experience it, we’ll be rooted and grounded in it, but verse 18, we’ll even comprehend it. Now a lot of people don’t comprehend love. Love, you know, that’s a common deal, isn’t it? You see it in the paper now and then. Somebody will ask a bunch of famous people for their definition of love. People don’t, they don’t know love.

You know what? You can’t know it unless you experience it. One time somebody asked Louis Armstrong to explain jazz. Louis Armstrong is a great jazz trumpeter. They said, Mr. Armstrong, could you explain jazz? And Louis Armstrong said, man, if I got to explain it, you ain’t got it. And he’s right. And if you’re asking about love, if I got to explain it, then you ain’t got it. But if you got it, you’re not looking for the explanation. You comprehend it. Verse 18, then you will be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.

You can know it. You can comprehend it only when you experience it. Now, I have a lot of things I want to say about that love, but I’m going to have to wait till next time to say them. But let’s review quickly. First of all, poor praise. O Father, that they would have inner strength, strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man. And the result of that will be indwelling Christ. Christ will settle down and be at home. And the result of that will be love. It will permeate their lives. And oh boy, when that happens, then the prayer of Jesus is answered.

Father, that they may love one another as I love you. Now that’s talking about the foundation, the basis, the root system. That’s where it all starts. You can’t have a love experience. You can’t have a love life unless you have love as a foundation, love as a rock bed. The roots have to be love. And so he says, as Christ fills your heart, love rules. Love is the foundation. Love is the bottom line. Love is that which everything else is built upon. Now we know, according to Romans 5-5, that when we were saved, it says the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

The moment we’re saved, God’s love comes in us. His love is there, and it’s expected that we love. It’s the most normal thing in the world for a Christian to live a love life. In fact, Paul wrote the Thessalonians and said, nobody needs to teach you how to love. You are taught of God to love one another. Right? You are taught of God to love. That’s just basic. There shouldn’t be any question about that. That’s just normal. That’s just living out the Christian life. That’s just doing what is natural. As obviously Peter says it, that you, when you were born again, were born again unto unfeigned love of the brethren.

Now let me say it this way. If you don’t experience a total life of love, it is not because it isn’t there. It’s because you have never allowed it to function. Which is easier? To breathe or hold your breath. Well, you’ve been breathing all morning and never thought about it. You don’t get up in the morning and say, now I’ve got to breathe. Keep breathing or you’ll die. Keep breathing or you’ll die. Keep breathing. Don’t stop. Keep breathing. You breathe. Period. Nobody has to do anything. Because the pressure of the atmosphere around you exerts its pressure on your lungs and forces you to breathe.

It’s very difficult to hold your breath. You try it for a long time and you explode. It’s just very difficult. You’re fighting against the natural. When you became a Christian, the most natural thing in the world was this. The love of God is shed abroad in your heart. It should permeate you. It should exude from you. It should touch everybody around you. It should be a way of life. But some people are holding their breath. And your own self-will holds your breath, resisting the love of God in selfish pride. Love is the most normal thing for a Christian to do.

The Spirit of God comes into your life. He fills your life with love. He begins to rule your life. You yield to Him. Christ settles down. He’s at home. His love permeates. And as it permeates your life, you should be characterized thirdly by incomprehensible love. And it should start by being the very root and the very foundation of your life, the very basis of your life. Then he goes on to a second element of it. Not only is it the foundation, but if you’ll notice in verse 18, he says, you may be able to comprehend this love.

Now, in the Greek, the verb comprehend is a compound verb. There is a Greek word, lambano, which means to receive something. And then there is catalamba, which is an intense verb, meaning to seize or to grasp for your own. Or it’s like you, if somebody was really possessive, you say they’re graspy or they’re possessive of something. That’s the verb. And that’s what’s used here. You not only have a life that is built on love, but you have a life that possesses love as a personal possession. You literally seize love. You make it your own as a way of living.

And so it is then that we not only have a foundation of love, when Christ fills our life, but we seize love grasping every opportunity to love as a personal treasure, a personal possession. It is the most desired thing, something you want to seize, something you want to grasp, something you want to cling to. Further, he says at the end of this little section, the beginning of verse 19, that we can know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge. So it is the foundation of our life.

It is that which we seize for every moment in our life. And it is that which we experience. The knowledge here, being the knowledge of experience. To live a life built on love, to live a life that grasps every possibility of love in every situation, to live a life that comprehends love, is only possible when you’re filled with the fullness of the Spirit of God, who causes Christ to be at home and exude into every dimension of your life the fullness of his own love. Listen, if you claim to be a Christian, but you don’t have love as the root and the ground of your life, if you don’t, in every situation, seize love as the expression for that situation, and if you don’t understand and comprehend and know love experientially, then the problem is not that the people around you are giving you trouble.

The problem is clear back in verse 16. You have never yet yielded the control of your life to the Holy Spirit, because he will produce, as a beginning fruit, love, Galatians 5, 22, and then Christ will be at home and his love will permeate. Listen, if your home and your relationship at home, husband and wife, is not a relationship of love, it isn’t the fact that you can’t get along because you have personality conflict. It isn’t a problem of personality at all. Listen, in the Bible, you are commanded to love every believer equally.

Now, if you can’t get that kind of love, at least for your wife, it’s not a problem of incompatibility. It’s a problem of iniquity, selfishness. People say, well, I just don’t love him anymore. Well, then you’re in an act of disobedience. And by the way, if you just loved each other just with agape love, just Bible love, you’d love everybody like God loves you, and believe me, you could get along fine if you loved like that. You don’t even need much romance. Believe me, you start loving the way God loves and you’ll find romance.

See, we miss the point. The absence of love is the presence of sin. The absence of love is the presence of iniquity. The absence of love means you’re not walking in the spirit or the partner’s not walking in the spirit. You say, well, boy, I’ll tell you one thing. I’ve loved so long and look at the way I’ve been treated. Yeah, well, so did God and look at the way he’s been treated. Has it affected his love? Oh, you would bring that up. You know, I’m just trying to show you, you know, there’s only one way to live and that’s to live with love.

There’s only one way to live, to live filled with love, to be a forgiving, kind, tender-hearted, loving, gracious, merciful, gentle person. It’s the only way to live. It’s the only way to have happiness. The only way to have that is to have Christ permeating your life with his lordship and his love because the spirit is in control. The only way to live is to have that ground and that root of love and then to live every situation seizing love in that situation, experiencing love. And if you don’t have it, you’ve missed the point.

You’ve missed it. Right at the basis, you’ve missed it. This is the bottom line of the Christian life. We are to be creatures of love. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of the turning on of your engine. Being rooted and grounded in love foundation. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. And may your faith always lead the way.

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