Silas
Beloved of All
The cry of your heart echoes the very prayer the Apostle Paul poured out for the believers in Ephesus. To bow our knees to the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, is to ask for something only He can give. You are not asking for a minor adjustment to your life; you are asking for the inexhaustible riches of His glory to flood your innermost being.
This is a request for supernatural strength. The enemy is a relentless foe, and the pull of our old nature is more than we can handle on our own. We desperately need to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man. This is not a reward for perfect behavior; it is the gift of God for desperate people. The Spirit is given to do within us what we could never do for ourselves, to make us holy, to conform us to the image of Christ. Stop striving in the flesh to earn what only faith can receive. The Holy Spirit is received by the hearing of faith, just as you first believed the gospel. The same God who began the work in you by His Spirit will not have you perfect it by your own effort. Trust Him to supply this might.
The purpose of this strengthening is singular: that Christ may be fully at home in your heart. It is a staggering truth, the glorious mystery hidden for ages and now revealed, that Christ would actually dwell in you, your hope of glory. When He takes up residence, the old life of the flesh is displaced. The body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, He will give life to your mortal body. This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith.
From this anchored place, you begin to be rooted and grounded in love. And here is the profound test and the deepest answer to your prayer. The unmistakable evidence that the Spirit of God is at work is not a fleeting emotional experience but the fruit of love. The Spirit of God bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and that witness flows out in a genuine, supernatural love for the family of God. You cannot have God indwelling you without your love being perfected. For God is love, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. This love is not a human sentiment; it is the very nature of the divine life now at home in you.
This is how you begin to comprehend the incomprehensible, the width, length, depth, and height of Christ’s love. It is a love that surpasses mere intellectual knowledge. It is the love that constrained Him to empty Himself, to take the form of a servant, and to be obedient to death, even the death of the cross. He was willing to be separated from the Father for you. To grasp that love is to be filled with all the fullness of God. It is to have the inferior trinity of your spirit, soul, and body so joined with the superior Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that His life becomes your life.
Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
This is a request for supernatural strength. The enemy is a relentless foe, and the pull of our old nature is more than we can handle on our own. We desperately need to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man. This is not a reward for perfect behavior; it is the gift of God for desperate people. The Spirit is given to do within us what we could never do for ourselves, to make us holy, to conform us to the image of Christ. Stop striving in the flesh to earn what only faith can receive. The Holy Spirit is received by the hearing of faith, just as you first believed the gospel. The same God who began the work in you by His Spirit will not have you perfect it by your own effort. Trust Him to supply this might.
The purpose of this strengthening is singular: that Christ may be fully at home in your heart. It is a staggering truth, the glorious mystery hidden for ages and now revealed, that Christ would actually dwell in you, your hope of glory. When He takes up residence, the old life of the flesh is displaced. The body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, He will give life to your mortal body. This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith.
From this anchored place, you begin to be rooted and grounded in love. And here is the profound test and the deepest answer to your prayer. The unmistakable evidence that the Spirit of God is at work is not a fleeting emotional experience but the fruit of love. The Spirit of God bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and that witness flows out in a genuine, supernatural love for the family of God. You cannot have God indwelling you without your love being perfected. For God is love, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. This love is not a human sentiment; it is the very nature of the divine life now at home in you.
This is how you begin to comprehend the incomprehensible, the width, length, depth, and height of Christ’s love. It is a love that surpasses mere intellectual knowledge. It is the love that constrained Him to empty Himself, to take the form of a servant, and to be obedient to death, even the death of the cross. He was willing to be separated from the Father for you. To grasp that love is to be filled with all the fullness of God. It is to have the inferior trinity of your spirit, soul, and body so joined with the superior Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that His life becomes your life.
Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
