Daily Devotionals for Women - Today's Encouraging Word from Scripture

Your Nightly Prayer

Love Surpasses Knowledge
by Britt Mooney

TONIGHT’S SCRIPTURE

"… and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." - Ephesians 3:19

SOMETHING TO PONDER

My wife and I took a mission trip to a village in Fiji. We swam in a beautiful lagoon, ate the best food from the ocean, and ministered hope to amazing people. Everywhere we looked, it was like a postcard moment. And we developed intimacy with the village within that week.

I could write thousands of words about the trip and even share phenomenal pictures. Yet you wouldn’t know the village or the full reality of the Spirit-led trip. I could give you knowledge, and it might make you long for a similar trip. But you can’t know the full experience.

A few other people do, those with us on the trip. Speaking of our trip, it’s like an inside joke. “You had to be there.”

In the same way, we can talk about God’s love, even invite others to him, but God’s love must be experienced to be known. Paul writes about this in Ephesians 3:19. He uses a couple of different words here. He prays for us to “know” God’s love. This is gnonai in Greek, meaning becoming one with, experiencing something or someone. It’s relational. Then Paul says this love goes beyond “knowledge,” or gnosis, which means an intellectual, informational understanding, purely mental.

In our modern Christianity, we can quote verses on God’s love or repeat 1 Corinthians 13, but we can get a parrot to do that. Those are important truths, but God’s transformation happens through a deeper, relational understanding. We must experience him to know him. He’s a real, living being who longs to share his love with us.

Let us engage the Father, experience his love in a true relationship, as he offers and desires.

YOUR NIGHTLY PRAYER

Heavenly Father,
I open my heart to experience your love. I don’t want intellectual knowledge alone. I long to know you in relationship. I seek to know you, not just about you. Let your Spirit guide me beyond words and verses into real communion with you. Reveal your love to me in Christ. Meet me in the still moments, stir my heart and spirit, and let your love transform me today.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen.

THREE THINGS TO MEDITATE UPON

1. Do you have any experiences with friends that no one else could understand unless they had “been there”? What are a couple?

2. How have you experienced God’s love in relationship? How has that healed your heart?

3. How have the verses about God’s love in Scripture become real to you as you relate to God? How does that help you love others?

Britt Mooney Britt Mooney lives and tells great stories. As an author of fiction and non-fiction, he is passionate about teaching ministries and nonprofits the power of storytelling to inspire and spread truth. Mooney has a podcast called Kingdom Over Coffee and is a published author of We Were Reborn for This: The Jesus Model for Living Heaven on Earth as well as Say Yes: How God-Sized Dreams Take Flight.