Indwelling Life Overview – Part 1

Wednesday, September 21, 2022

When God designed the human race, He had the abiding life in mind (John 15:1-11).

The Lord created us spirit, heart, soul, and body for the express purpose of living by Christ’s indwelling life. Understanding how He designed you enables you to abide in Him.

The body contains the soul, the soul contains the heart, and the heart contains the spirit. But the body, the soul, the heart, and the spirit are distinct. Understanding this helps solidify the distinctions between these parts of you and how these parts work together to live by and express Christ’s indwelling life.

This might be stating the obvious, but the indwelling Spirit is the only way you can live the abiding life. The indwelling Spirit alone makes the impossible possible.

Christ in you is the difference maker in your life. But if you don’t know He dwells in you, it won’t make any difference in your life.

But when you know Christ dwells within you by revelation, it’s the difference between joy and sadness, selfless love and self-centeredness, peace and anxiety, hope and despair, purpose and aimlessness, victory and defeat, faith and unbelief, purity and lust, power and impotence, maturity and immaturity, and humility and pride.

A revelation of Christ in you is the difference between knowing Christ intimately and merely knowing about Christ intellectually. When the eighteen-inch gap between your head and heart is closed by divine revelation, your life will be dramatically different.

As it pertains to living by Christ’s indwelling life, a revelation of Christ in you is the only way you can live the abiding life.

But after receiving a revelation of Christ in you, you can then experience spiritual growth because you know the indwelling Spirit has been grafted to your spirit. Your life can be fruitful because the Spirit has been fastened to your spirit.

This means you have a direct pipeline to His life. Plus, you are always connected to Him, whether you feel it or not. Therefore, you can know Him intimately, more deeply than you know anyone else.

Your spirit-to-Spirit connection to the indwelling Spirit is the linchpin to producing Christlike fruit. As His divine life flows directly into your spirit, His life can then flow like sap into your heart, soul, and body, making you a fruitful branch.

Bryan Kessler