Do you know what's deep and wide besides the ocean?

"Deep and wide, deep and wide, there's a fountain flowing deep and wide."  Remember that song from Sunday school?  If not, you missed out.  In my little Baptist church, the hand and vocal dynamics we did while singing this little ditty made the song a crowd favorite. But, as a 3rd grader, I'm not sure if I understood what fountain was flowing deep and wide. I was told it was flowing for me, but what was in the fountain?

This morning my eyes fell on the passage where the words to that song came from.  Ephesians 3:14-21 talks about the importance of believing by faith that God's love for us is SO high, wide, deep and long that with the power of the Holy Spirit working in us, our lives can be strong in love and built on love. AND, what's even better is that verse 20 promises that, with God's power working in us, God can do much, much more than anything we can ask or imagine.

This still doesn't explain what's in the fountain though, does it? Well, another lyricist explains that. William Cowper, in the mid-1700s wrote Hymn #192, from my baptist hymnal:  "There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's veins; and sinners, plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains."  So what makes God's love for us so high, wide, deep and long? He allowed his  one and only son's blood, shed willingly for you and me on the cross (John 3:16), to appease (to atone for; to satisfy) his wrath against sinners so that, if you and I will humbly admit that we need this cleansing and plunge ourselves willingly into the fountain, his blood will cleanse us and we'll lose ALL our guilty stains! AND God's love, so high, wide, deep and long will fill us with such power and freedom that we'll believe that he can actually do for us much, much more than anything we can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20 ncv).

We resist this concept though, I think for three reasons. Either we simply don't think we need Christ's blood in order to be saved from eternal separation from God (because we're trying hard to be good people worthy of God's favor and we feel that should be enough for God to like us enough to let us into heaven), OR we think we've been too bad for God to accept us into heaven thinking 'how could he ever love or forgive a person like me,' OR we are just plain creeped out when talking about blood and blood sacrifices and we can't understand why there's power to cleanse and redeem via someone's blood. Well, if you fall into one of the above categories, let me challenge you to reconsider.  God's love is deep and wide for all of us and he proved that love by sending his son to provide the necessary blood sacrifice for you and me so that we can go free to trust that he can do immeasurably more than we could ever ask or think according to his power that is at work in us (Ephesians 3:20 niv).