I wrote last week about something exciting for a believer – how God intends to live in us, work through us and be a part of us in our daily life.  The Holy Spirit puts a seal upon us, becomes an advocate on our behalf, and helps us through our life.  He comforts us, gives us gifts and fruits, taking onwards onto Glory.

Jesus taught that the world cannot receive Him.  But we, as believers, can receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit and this fullness takes us wherever we go.  How incredible is it that God can be with us wherever we go!

In verses 10 and 11 we read:

And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin,
but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,
He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to
your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

His spirit gives life to our natural, mortal bodies!  Christ said that He came to give us life and life in abundance (John 10:10).  What followed was the Holy Spirit would be given to the life of the believer, and through the Holy Spirit dwelling in the life of the believer, comes the life in our mortal bodies through the His Spirit who dwells in you and me.  This the how to!  Christ doesn’t leave us – He tells us something and then shows us how to do it.

Without the Holy Spirit dwelling in a person, we won’t have this life in our mortal bodies that he’s speaking of, and we won’t have this life in spiritual places that God means us to have.  Without the Holy Spirit, where would we be?  Nowhere!  We’d have a faith in some small way, but to have the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit as mentioned here, is to have an abundant life, a blessed life, and a life that’s beyond anything that’s comparable in the things of this world.  He will gives us life in our mortal bodies, through His spirit who dwells in you and me!  This is a miracle and a gift of God by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

This is the opposite of what the devil brings.  He comes to steal, destroy and pull down.  The things that you’ve been given by God, the devil will try to steal.  The good things you’ve got, the devil will try to break down.  The love, life and blessing you’ve got, the devil will try to bring it down.  God builds you up!  He gives you an abundant life, more fruitfulness, a greater blessing, and ongoing help until you go onto eternity.  The devil will bring doubts, fears, awkward thoughts, and things that affect our mind.

But as an exact opposite, Christ comes and gives you a greater measure, and a greater measure of the Holy Spirit.  When we don’t deserve it, we can come time and time again with our sins.  We can come time and time again with our difficulties.  Our difficulties and our problems can become so great in our own minds, but before Christ He is there for us.  He is our helper.  This is what He set out to do – to restore us, help us, to take us from where we would be in our ordinary way, to where He wants us to be in a supernatural way.  If we go on our own route, the devil comes to steal, destroy and break down.

Who can say that when they’ve come to Christ with an issue that He’s pushed them away!  He wants us to go further on – greater, better, more of what He has for us.  This is the great life that He speaks of.  This is something the world cannot have, because he cannot see Him nor does he believe in Him.  But we for the believer, there is this wonderful passage:

And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin,
but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,
He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to
your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

I thought I’d Google that this week – I searched for whether Christians have healthier lives than non-believers.  I found a long article in the Daily Mail from 2011 written by an atheist.  She wrote about the lives of Christians and how they physically and mentally benefited, and even how IVF treatment was vastly more successful for them!

In line with the scripture above, she wrote that the Christian has a better life!  How do they have a better life?  Because Christ foretold it would be a better life.  And in order to make that happen, we have the Holy Spirit who dwells in us to make that happen.

It’s exciting!  We don’t have to be trapped in the chains of captivity!  When the devil is visually stealing from people, destroying people and trying to kill people, here is the answer the world doesn’t want to know.  The answer is there.

Many believers, when problems come, turn to themselves.  We can often turn to the sinful person we are for the answers that God Himself, and God alone, can give.  The devil will give you a fear.  Do we talk about that and go for prayer?  Or we you rely on yourselves?  If we turn to ourselves, we get our own answers and our own outcomes.  But our God gave a Holy Spirit to dwell in our mortal body, and Him indwelling in me will give me a different outcome than the one I would give to myself.  If we turn to Him with that fear, then His outcome is where I end up!

The devil cares.  He hasn’t left you alone because you’re a believer.  He’s prowling about, seeking whom he can devour; and devouring is a swallowing up of the whole thing.  But if we’re in the place where we’re in the life of Christ, and He’s indwell in me, he may devour me but he won’t devour the Christ that’s in me!  We keep standing because of that very fact.  It’s not us that keeps on standing, it’s the fact the Spirit of God is in us and holds us fast in the days where we would have otherwise been devoured.

When you get your fears, your phobias and your issues about living itself, the only place to turn to God.  Ask for the Holy Spirit to give you the strength to achieve in that place.  Ask the Holy Spirit to overcome that fear.  Ask the Holy Spirit to set you free from that bondage.  If we turn to ourselves, we cannot make ourselves free.  We cannot bless ourselves, but if we turn to Him then He can bless us and make us free.

Genesis 2: 7

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

We are not made by accident or evolved from nothing!  We are created by God, wonderfully and purposefully.  God made man from the dust.  God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life.  This speaks to me of the incoming of the Holy Spirit.  It speaks to me of the Holy Spirit coming into the life of an individual life me and you, and giving life in abundance!  That speaks to me that God, the creator of man, breathed into the dust and made something wonderful from it.

Where would that come from if it wasn’t for God?  They’re still trying to find water on other planets but by now God has created the earth, put the interesting lives on it, and all the wonderful mechanics of human beings.  He breathed into him this breath of life.  When the Holy Spirit comes into us, there’s a life that comes into us.  There’s a spiritual life of God that comes into our very beings.

When we get problems, when we get difficulties and when we get things we cannot bear, we need to turn to the manufacturer and the manufacturers manual!

God put that scripture right in the beginning!  He hasn’t lost interest in us.  He still cares for us.  He wants to help us out of our difficulties into new depths of God.  In the beginning He was interested in you and me!  The world can be so temporary, but God is interested in every single person.  He is the one who put the life into us!

If we turn to ourselves, we’re not accessing the power that God has got for us.  The result if we don’t go back to our maker, is failure; people wonder why they can’t feel the Holy Spirit, have no motivation, their work and homes are failing.  The devil hasn’t left you go.  But while Christ is in you, he can’t have you!  Christ who is in you will give you life in abundance!

God brings us life.  God reverses our losses.  God gives our victory when ordinarily we wouldn’t have victory.  God leads us forward into the life that is eternal!

If you’re experience physical difficulties, mental difficulties, and difficulties in life then bring them to God in prayer.   The answer is not found in ourselves, but the one who made us.  Christ has given what He wants for us, and He’s given us the how to do it as well.  We have to take it and go with it.  It’s up to us to take the next step.

Amen.