"For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God, and the LORD hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth." ~ Deuteronomy14:2

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Pleasant Stone Devotional Meditation: October 7

 “Christ in you, the hope of glory” ~ Colossians 1:27b

This glorious “green stone” verse is, tragically, one of the last to become real to so many of us. Union of this intimate kind is inconceivable to our human minds. But we are given the power to possess it by faith. Christ does “dwell in our hearts by faith.” Our part is to realize it. To realize it and make use of it.

We have not been given the chance to make a new start. We have been given an entirely new life. And this life is the very life of Christ Himself. When we receive Him as our Savior, He comes. But there is more to follow. “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you.”

There has to be more, or Paul would not have spoken this way of his beloved Galatian “problem children.” Christ comes in when we open the door to Him. We have His own word for that. “… if any man will open the door, I will come in …” But we need to “decrease that He might increase.” Sin is, after all, resistance to God. And as we continue to resist, we continue to hinder the creative power of this new and glorious life within us. The Creator God Himself has come to indwell in our mortal bodies.

And His highest will is to turn His full creative energy toward re-creating us in the very depths of our beings. But He waits for us to stop resisting. And somehow the realization that He is there in us causes us to want to let Him have His lovely way in all things. Ask the Holy Spirit to make it real to you that He is in you.

“Nevertheless not I, but Christ liveth in me.”

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