“May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love” Ephesians 3:17b (TLB)
By some standards, Linda and I are newcomers to Indiana. We have only been living here for 35 years. We have only been attending Spiceland Friends for 22 years. Others have been in SFC and in Indiana for generations - many generations. They have deep roots here. Those family members who went before them put down their roots here and generation after generation have followed those roots and put them down even deeper. We all like to feel like we have our roots down in our community and feel like we know where we belong. Even though we may be newcomers by some people’s standards, we feel like we have deep roots here. We have lived in the same house for 35 years. When we were younger, we moved a lot. During a five-year period of time when our kids were all very young we lived in five different houses! So, you can see that for us it seems that we have really settled down and put down our roots.
Our theme verse above directs us to put down our roots deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love. We know that God is love and we know that God offers that love to each of us. His offer is generous and never ending. Some people like to preach and teach that God is a God of judgment and anger. They picture him just waiting for us to mess up so he can punish us. Fortunately, the Bible teaches us that God is actually filled with love and He gives that love to us. He is willing to fill us with his love so that we can love others around us. While I was thinking about what it would mean if I began to put my roots down into God’s marvelous love, I decided to look at some scriptures that describe God’s love. There are many of course, but here are a few of my favorites from the Living Bible.
- “Pay all of your debts except the debt of love for others - never finish paying that!” Romans 13:8
- “May you be able to feel and understand, as all God’s children should, how long, how wide, how deep, and how high his love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves, though it is so great that you will never see the end of it or fully know or understand it. And so at last you will be filled up with God himself.” Ephesians 3:18-19
- “For I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from his love. Death can’t and life can’t. The angels won’t, and all the powers of hell itself cannot keep God’s love away.” Romans 8:38
- “But life is worth nothing unless I use it for doing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus - the work of telling others the Good News about God’s mighty kindness and love.” Acts 20:24
- “Love does no wrong to anyone. That’s why it fully satisfies all of God’s requirements. It is the only law you need.” Romans 13:10
- “But the person who truly loves God is the one who is open to God’s knowledge.” 1 Corinthians 8:3
Meditate on these verses that describe the unfailing love of God. This is the love that we want to put our roots down deep into - year after year, generation after generation. Soak up His love and allow it to fill your life so that it overflows to others.
David Brock
David loves being with people and greatly enjoys serving as pastor of Spiceland Friends Church. He and his wife, Linda, enjoy spending time with their three grown children and their grandchildren. David is also a full-time attorney. David likes to say that his job description is simple - it is like a pizza delivery person - deliver a hot, fresh sermon each week in LESS THAN 20 MINUTES! Actually, he does a few more things at the church, but his focus on the pastoral team is preparing a Sunday morning message that makes the scripture relevant and applicable to our lives.