Quickened and Possessed

From 1 Timothy 3 with notes:

"No one can deny how great is the mystery of our reverence toward our God, resting as it does on the one who showed himself as a human being, and met, as such, every demand of the Spirit in the sight of angels as well as of men. Then, after his restoration to the Heaven from whence he came, he has been proclaimed among men of different nationalities and believed in all parts of the world..."

You and I must so personally interact with all aspects of Jesus' life that He's no longer outside - something to be known about - but, in reality, inside - the Life of our lives. Do you actually know that instant right before He stepped off the throne and became a fetus in the womb of a poor teenage girl? Do you know His steps up the mountainside to sit down on a dusty rock and teach a crowd of the "poor in spirit"? Do you know His eyes, blurred with blood trickling down from the thorn-crown, as they search across the faces of the scoffers at Calvary? Do you know the grin on His face as He steps out of the tomb, stretches, and greets the pinkish face of the sunrise?

Our interaction with the Good News of the four Gospels teaches us to know - and FOLLOW - the ways of the Jesus who's living in us. We'll spend less and less time with the thoughts, "Is that Him? Was that thought from Him?" and more time walking with Him by faith. 

Consider this thought from our old friend, Andrew Murray: "How much clearer and more glorious does the truth [of His keeping and maintaining His life in us] become when the Spirit [teaches us] that Christ is in us; and [in] that, not only as a tenant in a house, or water in a glass, in such a [way] that they continue quite distinct, but rather as the soul is in the body animating and moving every part of it, and never to be separated from each other except by a violent death… Yes: it is thus that Christ dwells in us, penetrating our whole nature with His nature. The Holy Spirit came for the purpose of making Him thus deeply present within us. As the sun is high in the firmament above me, and yet by [its] heat penetrates my bones and marrow and quickens my whole life, so the Lord Jesus, who is exalted high in heaven, penetrates my whole nature by His Spirit in such a way, that all my willing, and thinking, and feeling are animated by Him. Once this fact is fully grasped, we no longer think of an external keeping through a person outside of us in heaven, but rather become convinced that our whole individual life is itself quickened and possessed by One who, not in a human but in a divine, all-penetrating manner, occupies and fills the heart. Then we see how natural, how certain, how blessed it is that the indwelling Jesus keeps the blessing and always maintains the fulness of the Spirit."

Yes, Jesus; more of you, more of your Spirit, more of your indwelling Life superseding our lives and personalities!