The Purpose of God's Spirit in Us

Jesus died once for anyone who believes in Him. We will eventually be raised with Christ into immortality, because death no longer has any mastery over Christ in us.

We used to be slaves to sin, but now we owe our allegiance to Christ as slaves to righteousness (Romans 6:1-18). Each moment of our life, we submit our plans to God's direction (Proverbs 3:5-6).

Through the sanctification process by His Spirit, the carnality in our body and soul decrease and He increases within us (John 3:30). Even our physical life is His.

Through His life within us, although our body may go to the grave, our spirit and soul live forever with God. We are filled with the Holy Spirit and are part of Christ’s Body (Romans 8:9).

The Spirit transforms our life by giving us His fruit (Galatians 5:22-23). We exhibit fewer carnal characteristics in exchange for the nature of God.

We have more love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, meekness, self-control and faith. We have less greed, anxiety, deception, evil thoughts and actions, pride, rebellion, impatience and intolerance for others.

God's Spirit calls us to a life of faith and obedience, and we respond by relinquishing the depravity in our life in exchange for the holiness of God (Romans 12:1-2).

Our life is hidden with Christ in God through the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:17; 2 Peter 1:4; Hebrews 3:14, 6:4; Romans 6:11). As we realize that we are already dead in Christ (Colossians 3:3), we no longer control our life; He does.

God's Spirit is more and more able to express Himself through our body, spirit and soul – our mind, will and emotions – as we live a surrendered life to Him.

Prayer:

Father God, You are waiting for us in Heaven (Matthew 6:9), but You are always with us through Christ and Your Holy Spirit, even to the end of the age of grace (Matthew 28:20). We give You all of the praise and glory due to Your name. We cry "worthy" to the Lamb who gave Himself to be slain for us before You even created the world (1 Peter 1:20).

Thank You that Jesus sent the Spirit of truth to come and guide us into all truth. The Spirit speaks Your words to us and reveals to us what is yet to come (John 16:13). As our triune God, You come to make Your home in everyone who obeys Your Word and the teachings of Christ (John 14:23).

Thought for the Day:

The purpose of God's Spirit within us is to sanctify our carnality, to transform us into the nature of Christ, to guide us into all truth and to comfort us in every affliction.

God's Divine Nature

 

To all of those who repent and believe, the Lord Himself is our inheritance (John 3:16-18; Numbers 18:20). We are a habitation for the Lord Most High (Hebrews 5-6). We live and move and have our being in Him (Acts 17:28). Once we enter this realm with the Lord, we enter His rest and cease from our own works (Hebrews 4:9-10). We stop seeking our own will and we start to live in His will instead. Each new trial is another opportunity for Him to impact our world through His divinity within us (Colossians 2:9-10).

When we lose our peace over some issue, this is a clear indication that this issue is an idol in our life. As we seek the Spirit’s direction about it, He reveals to us the carnal beliefs, which we still cling to in our life. As we confess this as sin, we can then relinquish it to God’s Spirit to remove from our life. The next time the issue appears, we find that it is resolved and no longer a concern for us anymore. God’s Spirit imparts all the fullness of His divine power within us through His fruit (John 14:20).

As we focus on the fruit of the Spirit, we start to realize that God’s Fruit, which is the divine nature of God, gradually replaces the negative aspects of our personality. We exchange hatred with love, depression with true joy, discontentment with peace, irritation with patience, criticism with gentleness, backbiting with goodness, pride with meekness, excess with self-control, and worry with the faith of God as we are controlled and guided by His Spirit. We are free from bondage to the flesh.

Love means to hold affection for others; joy provides us with exuberance about life; peace brings serenity; patience is the willingness to stick with it no matter how hard or frustrating something gets; gentleness supplies us with compassion from the heart; goodness is kindness that pervades our entire being; meekness allows us to serve God and others with humility; self-control comes when we allow the Holy Spirit to guide our responses; faith is trusting that God knows what He’s doing

We have eternal life by our relationship with the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He sent (John 17:3). We know Him personally and experience the power of His resurrection in our life (Philippians 3:7-12). As estimation of the value of this world decreases, the value of His goals and will for us increases. We stop living for our self and live instead for Christ. Like Enoch, we walk with God. As we seek Him and His kingdom, He gives us, through His divine power within us, everything we need to do His will on this earth (2 Peter 1:2-4).

Prayer:

Lord Jesus, in You resides all of the fullness of the triune God, and You dwell in us as we dwell in You (Colossians 2:9; Romans 6:8). We await the richest portion of your fullness to fill our entire being (Ephesians 3:16-19, 4:13). We are crucified with You, and therefore, we live in this world for Your glory (Philippians 1:21). Yet, it is not we who live, but You who live in us and through us (Galatians 2:20). We are changed from glory to glory, and we slowly mature until we share in Your divine nature (Ephesians 4:13).

Thought for the Day:

As we express Christ’s character in us, which is the fruit of the Spirit, we walk in obedience moment by moment and we do not sin or fulfill the lusts of the flesh.

A Deeper Walk

Sinners are in mortal combat with God. They fight in opposition to everything God is and what He stands for. Once we come to Christ in repentance, asking for forgiveness, He exchanges our sin for His righteousness. We enter a union with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). Their triune life permeates our spirit and soul, and heals our body. We unite our life with the Spirit and He carries out His plans in, through and instead of us.

We do not simply create a contract with God, but we enter an intimate relationship, which includes a unified life. God purifies us in increments, going deeper with each penetration of His holy fire, until we radiate Christ’s nature from within us. He replaces our carnal nature with the fruit of His Spirit, which is actually the very nature of God (Galatians 5:22-23). The less we function out of our humanity and the more we wait on God, the more He expresses His character in us and through us.

As we embrace His divine nature, we are filled to overflowing with His nature, and His very life flows out of us (Ephesians 3:16-19 Amplified Bible). We embrace His presence in us with our thoughts, choices and emotions. Our unity with Christ invades every cell in our body and we live as the temple of His Holy Spirit. We are constantly aware of this holy relationship and our ever-increasing intimacy with Christ. There is no longer an inner contest between the flesh and spirit.

We freely choose the leading of God’s Spirit in each moment of the day (Romans 8:14). Our human way of thinking and feeling passes away, and we are now an entirely new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). We walk in communion, fellowship and accord with Christ within us (2 Corinthians 6:14-15). We belong to God’s household as co-heirs, priests and saints. Resting in Christ is not another religious activity to perform. It simple involves complete surrender of our human life to the kingship of Jesus Christ (Matthew 11:28-29).

We bow before our God and Maker (Psalm 95:6). As God recreates the nature of Christ in our soul, we manifest God in ever-increasing levels of maturity and glory (2 Corinthians 3:18). Forgiveness eliminates our confessed sin – past, present and future. The more we experience Christ as our life, the further away we run from the world, straight into our Savior’s waiting arms (Colossians 3:4). Gradually, God replaces our human limitations with His eternal power and divinity.

Prayer:

Lord Jesus, our union with You is based on faith in Your faithfulness. Therefore, unbelief separates us from You for eternity (John 3:18). When our trust fuses with Your faith, the Son of God who loves us and gave Yourself for us, we have perfect unity with You (Ephesians 5:2; Galatians 1:4). By faith, Your divinity freely flows through our body, soul and spirit (2 Peter 1:4). Our intimate bond with You is broken only by our propensity to sin. However, if we walk in accord with the direction, wisdom and love of Your Spirit, we will never fulfill the lusts of our flesh (Galatians 5:16, 25). We eventually walk by Your Spirit as a matter of course for our day.

Thought for the Day:

The degree to which we exhibit the fruit of the Spirit in our life corresponds with the depth of our love for and obedience to Christ within us. 

Divine Union with Christ

 

Holiness is the bond of our union with Christ in us. As Christ sanctifies our soul, this bond also produces unity with God in wisdom, love, joy, power, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, meekness, self-control, spiritual vision and faith, which flow from His divine nature within us. This Godly character enables us to minister to those to whom God leads us and gives us the opportunity to allow Christ’s light in us to shine in such a supernatural way that people will see us, yet glorify our Father in Heaven (Matthew 5:16).

Prior to living a Christ-centered life, we served others out of obligation, or from a desire to be loved in return. With obligation as our motive, we set our self up for disappointment, emotional exhaustion, anger, resentment and bitterness to take root in our soul. However, once Christ’s Spirit transforms our old, carnal nature, we serve others from our love for Him instead. We do all things as unto the Lord (Ephesians 6:7; Colossians 3:23). We no longer serve to the point of burning out or subsisting with overwhelming negative emotions.

With our love for Christ as our motive and our focus, we follow the Spirit in everything we say and do. It is our pleasure to please Him in thought, word and deed. The more united we are with God in faith, love and wisdom, the easier it will be for us to unite with His will for our life. This is the only way we receive true freedom and fulfillment from our union with the divine Trinity. Jesus was our supreme example of this. He did nothing that He did not see our Father doing first. Jesus’ fullness of joy came from doing only our Father’s will (John 4:34, 6:38).

God is our eternal fountain of blessings and the provision of everything we need to live in godliness and to share His truth with others. When we only serve as the Holy Spirit directs us, our heart is soon full of praise to our Father God. Our prayers are less often filled with requests for our self, because we know that God already supplies all of our needs according to His glorious riches (Philippians 4:19). The holier our heart and life, the more triumphant, joyous and relieved we feel in our daily life.

Now that we are born of God, we dwell in love, because God is love. We exhibit His love to the hopeless masses of humanity around us as the Holy Spirit directs us. We live a successful life as we function in the center of our Father’s will, performing only those deeds planned for us prior to the beginning of time (Ephesians 2:10). Our faith in His faithfulness increases beyond the temporal aspects of life, and soars with God’s Spirit into the eternal realm. The Holy Spirit sanctifies us until we are perfected in the image of Christ within us.

Prayer:

Lord Jesus, in our union with You, we merge the human with the divine, the natural with the supernatural, ignorance with wisdom, the lesser with the greater and the inferior with the superior. We find a fountain of supply for all of our needs in the provision of Your divine love. We thank You for submitting Your will to God’s in order to provide us with freedom from sin and eternal salvation through your death and resurrection.

Thought for the Day:

Whoever abides in the will of God, shall live forever in eternity.
– 1 John 2:17