The center of our faith is the love of God shown to us through Jesus Christ. "Jesus Loves Me This I know for the Bible tells me so". A simple affirmation of faith, that most of us have sang before. It speaks to that child-like trust in Jesus.

But for some folks they do not yet see the simple wisdom in "Jesus loves me". I have talked with some folks who say, "Oh you deluded Christians, you just have your religion as a crutch, you need it as a psychological comfort. You make up this idea of God because you can't cope with life. Christianity is an escape from life."

There is some truth to this. We Christians have at times used Jesus Christ as an escape from life. We make our own little cocoon of "Jesus and Me" and forget about the rest of the church's mission or we make church an escape from life. We have forgotten that while God does provide comfort and sanctuary, God's love also challenges, inspires, provokes, and strengthens us to engage the world's troubles, rather than flee from them.

Paul grasps the scope of this love in this section of Ephesians we heard this morning. He speaks of God's love being big; love that surpasses knowledge. He speaks of a love that makes him want to fall on his knees before the Living God. While some might dismiss Paul as sentimental poet, remember that this is the same Paul who led the campaign to wipe out Christianity. He began as an enemy of Christ, feared by the Church, and was changed into its most passionate apostle willing to face beatings, dangerous voyages, public shame. And now in the Book of Ephesians, we see he writes about God's love from, of all places, prison.

And from prison Paul's prays for us "I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth, and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with the fullness of God."

Wow! Which Golden Verse jumps out at you? "That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith"? "Rooted and grounded in love"? "The power to comprehend with all the saint." " That you may be filled with the fullness of God.

There has been much written about how Christians have experienced the love of Christ. We know that Paul himself writes about being encountered on the Road to Damascus by a vision of the Risen Christ. We know the story, this Paul who was an enemy of Christianity was travelling to Damascus to "root out" the new Christian church that was growing there. Paul was feared by the church since he had been put in charge of destroying it. And yet, in the mystery of God, Christ came to him, challenged him, changed him, loved him and after sending him to share in the life of the Church, Christ sent him out as an apostle (A builder of the Church).

So when Paul wishes for us that we might be filled with God, he knows very well that this can not happen by our own efforts. Instead it is the power of Christ at work in our hearts through faith. That is why the fool says there is no God. He is unwilling to open himself to the possibility that there is God. He can not see that which he can not open himself to imagine. He is closed. He is narrow.

Today we live with many such people. We live in an age which has exaulted science to the place of a god. People say, "If I can not see it, can not touch it, can not measure it, it is not real." There is an English Idiom for this kind of thinking, "Seeing is believing!" With some of life this is true, we are not denying science, but rather showing it is limited. There is a kind of knowing which comes by faith. Perhaps we might change the idiom around and say, "Believing is seeing." We need faith to open us to a new reality, faith to see more to life, faith to see power of Christ at work in our hearts, and to welcome its presence.

As we journey by faith towards being rooted and grounded in God's love there are stages. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), spoke of the four stages of growing in love. The first stage is love of the self for the sake of the self. "Looking out for #1" as some say. The second stage is the love of God for the sake of the self. "I love God because I want to go to heaven." The third stage of love is where we discover that God is real and at work in the world, and we love God for who God is. But he says there is a fourth stage, It is where we return to love ourselves, but as God loves us. "Just as I am ..." says the hymn writer. We enter into a relationship with God, or more accurate, we discover all along, that even when we were self absorbed or even an enemy of God, that God's love was seeking us out.

This is why we Christians understand God as the Trinity. Three in One. Three persons but one God. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. While other religions have rightly understood the unity of God, that there is one God alone; This is called Monotheism, we Christians have been shown by God, that God does not sit alone in being One, but rather is in relationship. Always in relationship, with God's self, and now with creation.

If that sounds confusion, it is because it is. God is mysterious! When we Christians are asked about who our God is, we tell the story of the relationship between Israel and God, then of course between Jesus Christ(God the Son) and the Creator (God the Father), which of course leads us to the most mysterious person in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit (God the Spirit). In the future, we will explore the Trinity further in words, however we Christians believe that in order to understand this Triune God, we must go on a journey. We call that journey discipleship. Following Jesus!

The truth of Christianity is that we start in faith but then our faith grows as we follow Jesus. Jesus taught his disciples to "The Kingdom of God has come near, repent, and believe the Good News." God's love is here, change directions, and start living the Good News life. And it is along the way inwhich we discover this knowledge of God at work in us. It is in fellowship with the Church where we encounter the comfort of Christ growing within us, but also the challenge to love others who are difficult people where we discover the grace of Christ growing within us. It is in loving the world, and people who's love is small where we discover how big God's love is. For them, and for us.

Yes, there is a kind of knowledge which comes from books, I encourage this kind of study. We need bible study, we need Christian education, we need to acquire information and skills. However, the kind of knowledge that Paul hopes for us is the kind which comes from opening up oneself in faith to this God we know in Jesus who brings us near God the Father. And who through the power of the Holy Spirit can give us not just information and skills in love, but change us into the likeness of Christ; the fullness of God dwelling in us. This is a God who can transform us that we together might bear not just any love, but the love of God as God's people.

And as the Church, broken as we are, inexperienced as we are, sometimes frightened as we are, Christ has called us, along with a host of others, to be the bearers of the Good News of God's love. For as we share this love, we learn it, we grow in it, and most importantly it transforms us, converts us, and embraces us in this love God which is Jesus Christ. And this kind of love does not seek to escape from the world, but rather to enter into its suffering that it might know the reconciliation and grace of Christ's love.

As Paul says, "Now to him by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever."