Last week we talked about how it is Holy Spirit who makes God’s Fatherhood real to us. We need Holy Spirit if we are to grow in revelation of who our Father is. So this week, we will be looking at another aspect of our relationship with our Father; being that He lives in us and we live in Him.
John 17:21-23 says and this is Jesus praying to Papa God, “I pray for them all to be joined together as one even as you and I, Father, are joined together as one. I pray for them to become one with us so that the world will recognize that you sent me. For the very glory you have given to -me I have given them so that they will be joined together as one and experience the same unity that we enjoy. You live fully in me and now I live fully in them so that they will experience perfect unity, and the world will be convinced that you have sent me, for they will see that you love each one of them with the same passionate love that you have for me.”
We have become accustomed to hearing that Jesus lives in us because we are told in Galatians 2:20 that it is no longer us who live but Christ who lives in us. If Papa God fully lives in Jesus and Jesus fully lives in us, then Papa God is in us too! But how is this so since Jesus and Papa God are both in heaven? Great question. 1 John 4:13 says, “And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us.”
For us Pentecostals, we have become accustomed to the fact that Holy Spirit lives in us. We believe in the baptism and infilling of the Holy Spirit. As an aside, theologically, we know that Holy Spirit does join to our physical bodies because they have not been redeemed. We also know that He does not join with our soul because it is messed up and is in the process of transformation. So He is joined to us through our spirit which is the real us. The part of us that is in submission to God and is fully saved. So we know that about Holy Spirit and Jesus but it turns out, it does not stop there.
You can think, wait, 1 John 4:13 is referring to Jesus. But actually, it is not. If we read it in context it says as follows in 1 John 4:7-16, “Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us. And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us. Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.”
So reading that in context, it is actually talking about Papa God. His love for us caused Him to send us Jesus to die for our sins. It is because of that same love that He has given us His Spirit so we have evidence, that God lives in us and us in Him. This is mind blowing stuff. That we have God living on the inside of us. Yet we go through life worried, stressed, worn out, burnt out, trying to figure things out or whatever it may be. We have God living in us and we (believe it or not) are in Him. The Apostle Paul put it this way in Acts 17:28, “For in Him we live and move and exist. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are His offspring.’”
As Papa God’s children, we should be oozing God wherever we are. We should walk in a room and the atmosphere changes because God walked in the room in us. We should be having conversations with people, and they walk away blessed and encouraged because God spoke to them through us. We should be going through life’s difficulties full of hope and faith knowing we are not alone.
So why don’t we? Is it because we compartmentalise our lives and God is allowed full expression on Sunday between 10am – 12:00pm in our church services and we lock Him up in a box during the week? Why is it that we are surrounded by people who need God but never get to experience Him even though He is in us and us in Him?
We’ll continue this next week.
Love and blessings,
Melissa Tsingano.
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