Within

Jesus spoke to His disciples the night before His crucifixion. 

 

“A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you” (John 14:19-20, NKJV).

 

Jesus was speaking of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit that assures us of God’s presence within us. God has given us His Spirit as proof that we live in Him and He in us (1 John 4:13).

 

“When I am raised to life again,” Jesus told the disciples, “you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.”

 

When we really know in our hearts that we are in Him and He is in us, our lives are impacted. We live in the freedom of His grace. We experience the new life He has given us in all its fullness. Doubt and fear may try to rise in our minds but it is easily defeated. We believe that greater is Christ within us than anything that comes against us (1 John 4:4).

 

Is this true about us? That Christ is greater within us? We have been crucified with Christ. It is Christ who lives in us. And we live by the faith of the Son of God who loved us and gave His life for us (Galatians 2:20). To experience the fullness of the new life that is ours, we have to believe what we have received in Christ. The battle to believe what we have been given is within the mind. We have the Holy Spirit to teach us. We must allow the same faith we had for salvation to now convince us of the new life that is ours. Old things have passed away. Fear is done. Doubt is defeated. Christ, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:17), lives within us. All things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:17).

 

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2, NKJV). 

 

We don’t conform to the image of any belief other than God’s truth. We can’t allow what the world or our natural minds tell us is true. We conform to the image that God has of us by the renewing of our minds with the truth of His Word. Only then are we even able to agree with what God thinks about us and experience the plans He has for our lives.

 

Do you experience God within you? He is in you, and you are in Him. You don’t have to call His glory down. He rises from within you to convince you of the image He has of you. When self becomes less, He rises to be more. His glory is within you. 

 

And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one.

—John 17:22-23a (NKJV)

 

© 2021 Lynn Lacher

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