December 18, 2022 STRENGTHENED AND FILLED
Ephesians 3:16-19 “that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man; so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.”
What a prayer for you and I! We may give a lot of attention to our outer man and we may spend much time and energy meeting the desires of this outer man; the outer man has all sorts of cravings-to look good, to get attention, to do the things that make us ‘happy,’ to impress others-and the list goes on. The scriptures refer to living according to the outer man as living according to the flesh. For those who do not know the Lord, their only option is to live according to the outer man-or the flesh. This is not to say that our physical bodies or evil or any such thing; God made us and gave us an amazing physical body, and we should take proper care of it. The condition of our inner man, our inner person, is of upmost importance because it is the core on our being and it truly defines who we are and it is the primary motivator of our lives. God desires that our inner man be strengthened through His Spirit who lives in us. The goal is not that we will just be strengthened, but that we will be strengthened so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith! Let us not skip over that-Christ, the Son of God wants to dwell in our hearts!! Because Christ is holy and pure, without sin, and will not co-habit with sin, our hearts must be pure-and it is the Holy Spirit that prepares our hearts. For this reason, we must listen to the voice of the Spirit and be quick to obey His voice and to work with Him as He works in us. We are not perfect, but we do have the Spirit of God enabling us to live in a manner that pleases our Father. The important thing is that we yield to the Spirit rather than to our flesh. When Christ lives in our heart, we experience abundant blessings. One blessing is that we will be “routed and grounded in love.” This love is not human love, but the love of God, and this love of God that is rooted in us can be expressed to others; it is the same love Jesus demonstrated while on earth. Also, when Christ lives in our heart, we will begin to comprehend just how awesome and how far-reaching the love of God is. We will discover that the “love of God surpasses knowledge,” and we will be “filled up to all the fullness of God!” The one that does not know God personally, is limited to human knowledge and is void of the transformational power of the love of God. Let us yield to the work of the Spirit and be strengthened in our inner man-so that Christ may live in our hearts.
Colossians 2:6.9: “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in Him, rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.” “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness.”
Blessings,
Buddy
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