His Presence- Part 2: Abiding Presence
Yesterday we talked of God’s omnipresence, or the fact that He is everywhere at the same time. Today, let’s look at the Lord’s abiding presence.
If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. Romans 10:9-10 (New International Version, NIV)
When we receive Christ, believing and confessing that He is Lord, He comes in to our hearts to abide. The word abide means to dwell, remain, or live. When we accept Jesus, we receive the Spirit of adoption, meaning we became God’s children (Romans 8:15). We become the home of God. He moves in and takes up residence inside us.
Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? I Corinthians 3:16 (New International Version, NIV)
The word temple in this verse is the Greek word naos, or Holy of Holies. When we are born-again, we become God’s temple; His dwelling place- the Holy of Holies. Instead of dwelling in temples made with human hands, the presence of God now lives in us. Because His presence is abiding, meaning He now resides in us, we are never alone or without help. He never leaves us or forsakes us. Since He is in us, we can talk to God and we can hear Him- anytime. As we mature and grow in Christ, we learn to rely on His abiding presence to lead and guide us.
Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. John 14:23 (KJV)
Because we love Jesus and keep His Word, the Father and Jesus love us and have made their home in us. There’s a love relationship going on inside us with the Trinity. It’s a heart to heart love affair; a divine fellowship. His abiding presence in us makes us aware that He is with us.
For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. Ephesians 3:14-19 (KJV)
We are strengthened in our inner man, our spirit, because Christ dwells in our hearts by faith. We become rooted and grounded in Christ’s love and we then experience His love and fellowship. We can experience the fullness of God in us. One reason is that Holy Spirit shed His love abroad in our hearts, or poured it out in our hearts. So, we can experience God’s power working in and through us.
Christ abides, or dwells, within us. We can draw from His abiding presence at any time. We can tap into the fruit of the Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit, His wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Everything that Christ made available is in us because Christ is in us.
