Stop Living Like You’re Going To Run Out On June 25, 1967, the Beatles debuted a new song during the first live international satellite broadcast in human history. Roughly 350 million people across 25 countries tuned in at once. It was the first time technology had connected the world in real time, and the most influential band on the planet had the chance to say anything they wanted to all of it. They chose “All You Need Is Love.” Credit where it’s due: they weren’t wrong about the diagnosis. We do need love. Our families need it, our communities need it, you need it. But the Summer of Love built its vision on a definition of love untethered from commitment, more about self-expression than self-sacrifice, more about discovering yourself than denying yourself for someone else. We’re still living in the wake of that definition. There’s a sad irony here too. Less than three years after that broadcast, the band that sang “all you need is love” had broken up. We shouldn’t judge them too quickly, though. We’re all prone to the same thing. Marriages fall apart. Friendships dissolve. Churches split. Left in our own power, none of us are naturally quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger. A Letter Without a Fire to Put Out Paul’s letter to the Ephesians stands apart from his other letters in an important way. Most of Paul’s writing is reactive. He writes to Corinth because they keep finding creative new ways to sin. He writes to the Thessalonians because they’ve quit their jobs, convinced the end is imminent. He writes to Timothy because fear has gotten the better of him. Ephesians isn’t putting out a fire. Paul is painting a picture: a church where enemies become family, where broken people are made whole, where love isn’t just defined but actually displayed. And right at the hinge point of the letter, before he tells anyone how to live or love, Paul drops to his knees and prays. Specifically, he prays that the church would be filled with the fullness of God’s love. Why start there? Because your vision of God’s love determines the shape of your entire life. If you believe God is distant, you’ll live anxious. If you believe his love must be earned, you’ll live like a performer. If you believe he’s withholding, you’ll live fearful and controlling. But if you believe he delights in you, you’ll live secure. There’s a real difference between knowing God loves you and actually believing it. Gradual, and Multi-Sensory Paul’s prayer reveals two things about how this comprehension actually happens. First, it doesn’t happen all at once. Paul prays in a kind of staircase: being strengthened in your inner being, then Christ taking up full residence in your heart (not just visiting, but holding keys to every door, including the ones you keep locked), then becoming rooted and grounded in love as your actual operating system, and finally being filled with the fullness of God. This is the slow work of spiritual formation, becoming a person with greater and greater capacity to both receive and give love. Second, it doesn’t happen in one way. We tend to assume love is something you learn in a classroom, like memorizing facts about the ocean. But Paul prays that we’d “know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge.” That’s not something you take care of in a single lecture. It’s something closer to diving into the water itself. You experience God’s love in community, when people pull their chairs closer instead of pulling away from your honesty. You experience it in practice, in things like Sabbath rest, which you can’t learn from a textbook, only from doing it. You experience it through the Holy Spirit, who ministers directly to your deepest wounds. And you experience it in both moments and marathons: the instant where you finally feel like you don’t have to hide anymore, and the long seasons of endurance that shape you over years. The Problem Was Never Scarcity A couple adopted a five-year-old girl from Haiti named Addie, whose parents had died in an accident. Her first night in her new home, she watched her two teenage brothers devour an entire dinner and clear the table. She went quiet, convinced she’d just witnessed the last meal she’d see for a while. Her new mother didn’t just tell her there was more food. She walked her to the fridge, the pantry, the freezer, and showed her everything. “Honey, you’ll never go hungry again.” That’s what Paul is doing in this prayer. He’s opening the fridge. He’s opening the pantry. He’s saying: stop living like an orphan. Stop living like God’s love is scarce. Look around. There is more than enough. The problem was never a shortage of God’s love. The problem is our capacity to receive it. Many of us are sitting at the Father’s table still living like we’re starving.
