At the core of our physical being in our circulatory system. Blood flowing through our body is evidence of life and the source of life. Well if there is a ‘bloodstream’ to our emotional and spiritual life – then it has to be love. Love is what flows between us and God. Love is also what circulates between us and others around us.

Now you can do all kinds of great things in Christian your life – you can pray; you can read your Bible; you can volunteer in some community service, you can serve the Church in some leadership role; you can smile at people and bless them with acts of kindness – you can do whatever you feel the desire to do; but love should be at the core of all those things. Every legitimate ministry should be motivated and empowered by love and the source of that love must always be God. Of course if there’s something faulty in your blood your whole body suffers. You may get by for some time but if you put enough stress on your body then a faulty blood supply will eventually bring your whole body down. So too with our spiritual life. If we don’t truly understand the love of God or have never really learned how to receive the fullness of God’s radical love, then sooner or later the weight of our life and the pressures upon us will challenge that core deficiency and our whole life, in spiritual terms at least, will be in real trouble.

Unfortunately, this truth can be so subtly disguised and even deliberately hidden by Satan. The enemy of God loves to see us build impressive, outwardly magnificent lives. He convinces us that who we are on the outside is what life is all about. He does not want us to examine our foundations or what is at the core of our being.

If that foundation of God’s love has not been firmly established; if the life’s blood of God’s love is not flowing into us and then through us, then eventually we will see all kinds of problems emerge in our lives. They might be physical problems, emotional and relational struggles; anger or jealousy. Lust or destructive attitudes may emerge; performance orientation can take over which may give rise to compulsive work habits; a spirit of criticism; marriage problems and the most common one of all – depression and anxiety will rare their ugly heads when our emotional and spiritual foundation is not strong. There are many different symptoms which can manifest over time when we are not secure in God’s love and don’t know how to fully participate in love and pass it on.

The ability to receive the love of God deep into our lives and allow that love to fill us to overflowing so it then touches those around us, is foundational in every respect in our lives. This is true first of all in a chronological sense. As a new born baby you needed to be loved in a way that you understood. When babies cry they need to be taken care of. They need to be loved by having their needs attended to. They need to know that we are coming when they cry. This is a foundational experience for every human being. From the first day we open our eyes we need to know that there’s love in the world. We don’t know all the philosophical aspects of love – we just need to know that somebody’s there to take care of us – that’s love. That is the bedrock layer of the foundation of love. If that is laid securely then a lot of other skills or abilities to receive and to give love can be built on top of that.

Now it is also true that the ability to receive love and to pass on love is foundational not just psychologically – but it’s also foundational theologically. Let’s take another look at these amazing words from the Apostle Paul:

Ephesians 3:14-19  “For this reason, I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name … (God is big on ‘family’) … I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power … (then, having a foundation in love, then you will be able) … 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.”

God’s desire and plan for us is that we would experience life in abundance. If that is going to happen – then what is wrong with us needs to be healed and what doesn’t belong needs to be removed so that more of God’s personality, more of God’s wisdom, more of God’s being, more of God’s power, more of God’s essence, which is love, can invade our lives. That’s what it means to be “.. filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

That’s where we are headed. That’s the promise of God to each one of us here now: that we will be filled to the measure of all God’s fullness! God is love and so to be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God is to be filled with, saturated with, overflowing in love. But Paul reminds us here that this will not happen unless we are rooted and grounded, or established in love.