Ephesians 3:17-19 “So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, 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.”
After the death of my son, I got stuck in my grief for a very long time, and because of my feelings about this tragic loss, my conclusions were not necessarily biblical. I felt like God had given me this amazing gift and then He took it away, which led me to believe that I was unloved by Him and that He had abandoned me. As a result of saturating myself in God’s truth, I am coming to realize that I cannot let my feelings dictate how I think, act and behave, and just because I feel something very intensely, does not make it true, right or helpful. God’s Word says, “I will never leave you, nor forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5) It also says that He wants me to grasp and understand “how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” for me, and that His “love surpasses all knowledge.” So what I have come to do in my quiet time with the Lord is to acknowledge what I think and feel, then I offer that up to the Lord and I ask Him what His Word says about my conclusions and my responses. Each morning when I meet with Him, He reveals to me His truths and all He asks me to do is to ponder His Word, to consider His truths and trust in Him enough to believe that all He is saying to me is what is really true.
The scriptures say to “Cast your burden on the Lord, and He shall sustain you.” (Psalm 55:22) It also says to “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:5) And that is exactly what He calls me to do each and every day. I am to lay down my burdens, lay down my thoughts, lay down my feelings, lay down my actions, lay down my sin, lay down every single thing that exalts itself above His truth and He will reveal to me what is true, He will reveal to me what is right, and He will help me to understand how much He loves me and how He will never leave me, nor abandon me.
2 Corinthians 3:18 says, “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” It is not just Moses or prophets, apostles and preachers, who can see the Lord’s glory with unveiled faces, but all believers, every single one of us have nothing obstructing our vision of Christ and His glory as revealed in scripture. We can behold and gaze at the glory of the Lord and as we do this, we will progressively be transformed into Christlikeness, the ultimate goal of every believer. By continually focusing on Him, His truth and His Word, the Spirit transforms me into His image with ever-increasing glory and the more I grow in the knowledge of Christ, the more He is revealed in my life. When I gaze upon His glory on a daily basis, I will come to believe that I am lovable, that I belong to Him, that I am His precious daughter and that He will never leave me, nor forsake me.
– Melody
