Prayer: A 14-Day Devotional By Tim KellerSample

The reason that the love of God in Christ is infinitely wide and infinitely long is because it is infinitely deep. How deep is the love of God? Without Jesus Christ, talk about the “depth of God’s love” would be simply an abstraction. Without Jesus Christ, God could send you sixty volumes, with every page saying, “I love you deeply, I love you deeply, I love you deeply,” but it would still be an abstract concept, not a life-changing reality. To genuinely understand the depths of God’s love you must know the depths to which Jesus Christ went in order to love you. How deep did he go? “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” That is hell. He was thrown into the deepest pit anybody ever went into, and he went in voluntarily. He went down and down and down—to the depths. Because of the gospel, you can know that God’s love is infinitely wide and infinitely long because it was infinitely deep.

Excerpt from PRAYER by Timothy Keller
Reprinted by arrangement with DUTTON, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, A Penguin Random House Company. Copyright © 2014 by Timothy Keller