Faith Is Dwelling

Faith Is Dwelling

Faith is dwellingOne of the sweetest yet also most profound words to describe faith is dwelling. How so? Isn’t it wonderful to know God dwells in us and in whom we find a dwelling place?

Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? (1 Cor. 3:16, NIV)

In peace I will lie down and sleep,
    for you alone, Lord,
    make me dwell in safety.
(Psalm 4:8, NIV)

But that’s not all why I find the word dwelling so sweet and precious for faith. It is because dwelling in Christ describes so perfectly the nature of faith.

Faith is God’s gift to us, it is God who approaches us first. And then we just allow Jesus to make a home in our hearts, to dwell in us.

Faith really is dwelling: resting in God, abiding in Christ, living with the Holy Spirit. And then amazing things happen, not because of us, but because God.

But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s! (Romans 8:9-11, MSG, emphasis added)

When God dwells in us, we are made alive in Christ. When we dwell in the Holy Spirit, the alive-and-present God creates new things in and through us. This is faith: dwelling; God dwelling in us, we dwelling in God.

 

Gracious God,
You are so amazing.
You want to dwell in me
and me dwelling in you.
And when I welcome you,
you do it all for me.
Thanks for your grace.
Thanks for making me alive,
I could not do it on m own.
Thanks for giving me life upon life.
Most of all,
thanks for dwelling in me.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen

Q4U:

Be blessed, my fellow pilgrim, as you

* [As you might have noticed, I enjoy reading the Bible in different translations and love comparing them. I have started linking the Bible verses to Biblegateway.com so you can easily read (and compare) them in the different versions I’ve used while preparing each post.].

Photo courtesy of  Mari-Anna Stålnacke. Linking up today with Dance with Jesus, Faith-filled Fridays, Five Minute Friday.

6 thoughts on “Faith Is Dwelling

  1. This was exactly what I needed to hear this morning! God dwells in us, and that’s a beautiful and important truth. May we all remember that as we head into the next week!

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