This is the age of knowledge; the age of science; the age of the provable. People take great pride in what they have learned; and that that which is known can be proven to be true. Such knowledge we value highly.
  But we pay a price for all this knowledge and all this sophistication. That which we encounter through subjective experience is discounted, as are our emotional life and our spiritual life. For all this we pay a very heavy price. Life becomes drained of all that makes human life most noble.

Earlier ages had a much sounder grasp of man’s real need. The Westminster Confession had it right when it said, “The chief end of man is to know God and to serve Him for ever”. Over a century earlier Augustine of Hippo said, in that famous dictum, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and out hearts are restless till they resting Thee”
  How much in view of all this we need to make our own that great prayer of Paul’s for the Ephesian church which we read just now. And this morning I want to concentrate particularly on part of that prayer:
  I pray that you...may have power...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.

To grasp the measure of the love of Christ.
The love of Christ, says Paul ‘surpasses knowledge'. It can only be known through experience. Paul uses a word from Greek philosophy. We can’t really work out for ourselves what the love of Christ is
        But what to those who find? - Ah this
             nor tongue nor pen can show.
        The love of Jesus, what it is,
             none but his loved ones know.
Do you know? My tongue can’t tell you. All I can offer is to use the Word of God to point the way. Paul describes it in four ways.

Width
How can we limit the love of God in Christ? We put up, we erect boundaries; boundaries that are not there in God’s heart, in terms of whom it will encompass or its extent in our lives. Hymn writer F W Faber put it this way:
        For the love of God is broader than the measures of man’s mind.
            And the heart of the eternal is most wonderfully kind.
All- all stray of the narrow path of God’s will. Yet his love is one that watches over us and, like the shepherd, goes out after the lost sheep and when he finds it he picks it up and embraces it. God wills that all men repent and come to the knowledge of salvation- though some, many, will refuse. But none, none is beyond his scope. John 3:16 reminds us that God sent his Son that whoever believes will not perish but have eternal life.

Length
Because of the Lord’s great love for us we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail (Lam 3:22)
God’s love goes on, and goes on
God never gives up on us. We may give up on Him; He never gives up on us. Hid love is from eternity to eternity. Human love tends to be so fickle; to come and go; to blow hot and cold. We love someone so long as...!  That’s the hidden agenda; that’s the lesson we all learn.
  Do you doubt your staying powers? Do you fear the future? Then remember the length of the love of Christ. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. (Rom 8:39)

Height

Christ’s love will lift us to the height of glory. The Cross, the forgiveness of sin: they are wonderful and foundational. Till we know the forgiveness of sin; till we have knelt before the Cross and  received new life through the shed blood of Christ we are not Christian. But that's just starters! Having started how we struggle to attain to glory. Let us remember Jesus; the One who is the author of our faith is also the One who is its completion. The height! The glory!

Depth

The love of God was his total abasement. It was becoming man. It was the mockery, the humiliation, rejection, violence and death. It was the Cross and the grave. And this God, in Christ, loves each one individually. Having loved his own, he loved them to the end.
  The depth of Christ’s love is deeper than any depth of our life or experience. Nothing which we have done- or could do, which is not forgiven. No circumstance, no tragedy is too deep. Underneath are the everlasting arms

Finally, I want to look briefly at that phrase in Paul’s prayer:
  that you may be filled to all the measure of the fullness of God
What is Paul on about here? It almost boggles our minds. Let me repeat it:
  that you may be filled to all the measure of the fullness of God
I think we get a clue in a phrase from 2 Peter, where he speaks about our being partakers of the divine nature. (1:4)
And another clue is in Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer in John 17 where he is praying to the Father for all believers:
   I have made you known to them and will continue to make you known
   that the love you have for me may be in them (v26)
He wants that we love him as the Father does. The Father adores the Son. They have loved each other from all eternity. That is the love Jesus wants us to have for him, so that our hearts will be consumed with love for Jesus. If that is Jesus' prayer for us, do you think he will rest with it unfulfilled?

That will be true intimacy of worship. That is the true end of our worship. That we abandon ourselves in love for our Lord and Saviour. We shall only fully do so, as we know his love for us. And when we thus abandon ourselves in worship we shall, to use a phrase of Mike Bickle’s “give ourselves to him in unparalleled affection and obedience.
 
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