In Ephesians 3:17-18, we read, “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may 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.”
Spiritual Depth for Their Shallowness
Paul said, I don’t want you to be shallow Christians. I want you to be rooted, I want you to be solid, he says, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.The word “dwelt,” is a Greek word which means to be at home, to settle down, to be welcome.
Dwell is a domestic term. Then, he says “rooted.” This is a horticultural term. What is he saying? He is saying, I want the root to be deep. The root is the part of the tree that only God sees. Sometimes we see our young people go off to college and get into drugs or fornication. What went wrong? They weren’t rooted.
Paul says, that Jesus might dwell in their hearts; that they might be rooted. Dwell: that’s a domestic term. Rooted: that’s an agricultural term. Then Paul talks about “grounded”. Ground: that’s an architectural term. We are to have a foundation or something that we can stand on.
During my teenage years, my Dad launched a family business called Davis Brothers Nursery and Grandma’s Garden Shop. We grew more than 30,000 hanging baskets, along with tens of thousands of shrubberies. I learned so much about life and leadership during my teenage years.
With our family business came the responsibility of designing and constructing our greenhouses across our acreage. When building strong greenhouses, it is critical to learn how to dig deep post holes for the greenhouses. It takes a lot of hard, tenacious work to build a strong foundation. Once the all of the postholes are dug deep and the 4X4 posts are placed and secured in the holes, the roof can be solidity placed and secured on the posts and the greenhouse built. The key is, the foundation must be laid as strong as possible.
So, what do we pray? We pray for spiritual wealth for their needfulness, for spiritual strength for their weakness, and for spiritual depth for their shallowness. Don’t let them just be shallow. We want them to be grounded and rooted for the tests of life that will come in the future.