“For out of His fullness [the superabundance of His grace and truth] we have all received grace upon grace [spiritual blessing upon spiritual blessing, favor upon favor, and gift heaped upon gift].” John 1:16 AMP
Oh, the unfathomable riches of the grace and mercy of God! Can we ever truly grasp the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of which the Lord continually loves and cares for us? When I think of the pit from which He rescued me and keeps me I am undone! Apart from His grace upon my life, I most certainly would have been consumed. Of that I am certain. Yet He had other plans! Plans beyond anything I could have ever imagined! He chose to save me simply because He loved me! And, when that “kairos” day of His mighty salvation came, I experienced one miraculous grace encounter after another. He came with forgiveness, and love, and healing, and deliverance, and peace, and joy, and hope, and strength, and provision, and so much more! He came with Himself and He has never stopped coming! It is who He is!
I have worked at Mary’s Song for nearly twelve years now and I have seen this same beautiful redemptive love story unfold over and over again in the lives of countless women whose lives were also otherwise hopeless. Christ cares deeply for His children and He is moved by the sense of their affliction. Whatever the need, He is there in all sufficiency. He is the answer to every longing and the satisfaction of our every desire.
Check out this quote from William Barclay on the fullness of Christ: “The word that John uses for fullness is a great word; it is pleroma, and it means the sum total of all that is in God. He meant that in Jesus there dwelt the totality of the wisdom, the power, the love of God. Just because of that Jesus is inexhaustible. A man can go to Jesus with any need and find that need supplied. A man can go to Jesus with any ideal and find that ideal realized. In Jesus the man in love with beauty will find the supreme beauty. In Jesus the man to whom life is the search for knowledge will find the supreme revelation. In Jesus the man who needs courage will find the pattern and the secret of being brave. In Jesus the man who feels that he cannot cope with life will find the Master of life and the power to live. In Jesus the man who is conscious of his sin will find the forgiveness for his sin and the strength to be good. In Jesus the pleroma, the fullness of God, all that is in God, what Westcott called “the spring of divine life,” becomes available to men.”
No matter how much of Christ we have experienced, there is always infinitely more! Every extravagant, and wonderful, and utterly over-the-top display of His grace in His redeemed is only a drop in the ocean of His inexhaustible fullness! I have seen many miraculous things far beyond my wildest expectations and yet I have a joyful anticipation that even greater things are on the horizon!! He cannot help Himself! It is WHO HE IS!