The Potential

None of this is a first century invention; it is the fulfillment of an ancient promise. The ancient writings insist that God actually comes to live inside those who yield to Him.

Isaiah spoke of “the exalted God who dwells with the contrite and lowly.”

Jeremiah and Ezekiel prophesied, saying God would “put His Spirit in you” and move you from the inside to know, and to live in God’s Life. Jeremiah said God promised a new Agreement: His law would be placed within His people and written on their hearts, not on stone.

Through Zechariah in the late 6th century BC, God promised, “I am coming, and I will live among you.”

God spoke through a man named Joel and promised to pour out His Spirit—get this—on every kind of people.

This is far more than divine assistance from a distance, or a bunch of rules or rituals!

Jesus showed up on the scene, stepped into time and promised, “I will be in you” and the Father and I will “make our home” within you, His followers.

The mystery that was “hidden for ages and generations” was revealed: “Christ in you, plural, the hope of glory.”

God sends “the Spirit of His Son into our hearts,” so that it is “no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us.”

“The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them.”

Paul asked the believers in his day, “Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you?” And he prayed for the Family of God that Christ would dwell in their hearts through faith and that they would be filled with God’s fullness.

Paul also unapologetically declared, “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they don’t belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you… the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of His Spirit who lives in you.”

Our very bodies become sacred ground—“temples of the Holy Spirit”—because the Spirit of God dwells in us.

Whoever is joined to the Lord is “one with him in spirit.”

Believers are being built together as “a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.”

This indwelling is mutual and relational, not mechanical. “Remain in me, as I also remain in you,” Jesus says.

And “I will live with them and walk among them.”

John, a disciple who walked, talked, and shared meals with Jesus, and who lived through most of the first century, wrote that whoever confesses Jesus as God’s Son “lives in God, and God lives in them.” “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.”

The result is that His life becomes our life: “your life is now hidden with Christ in God,” and Christ “is your life.” “To live IS Christ, Anointed.”

According to Peter, another hand-selected follower of Jesus, believers become “participants in the divine nature.” Believers are “living stones” being built into a spiritual house. And this “I in them and you in me” results in visible unity.

The life of Jesus is meant to become visible in our mortal bodies.

The storyline of Scripture has one destination: God does not merely reform us from the outside. He gives a new heart, places His own Spirit-DNA within to “scale” and to multiply in His community-body-ekklesia. That’s what He left us to do before His Return. His Spirit-gift DNA unites us to Christ, just as He was united to His Father, and makes purchased people by His Blood His living home. But only for those willing to lay down the crown of self-rule, and receive, instead, the eternal Life that flows from the King, and from the River around His Throne.

We then “are partakers of the Divine Nature” with “the Anointing IN you, the hope of Glory, the Mystery withheld for Ages and Generations!”

This is “THE Eternal Life” that is communion with the Creator-God and the Timeless-Life. That’s not just “heaven” and “paradise” per se, and certainly not just a mansion over the hilltop where we get to see “auntie” again. It is a New Adventure, starting in the Now and moving both directions into Eternity. Life that is truly Life. “Tell everyone about this whole new Zoe Life!” said the jail-break angel to the apostles. And they did.

Live it. Tell it!

And what about this present age, made of temporary compounds and cells, molecules, atoms, entropic structures and wealth and reputation? The closer we, together, arrive to the Jesus-Life after the ReBirth He insists is a requirement, the more things change day-to-day. We will be more and more capable of Seeing, and seeing-through, as Jesus did… gravity, appearance, men’s hearts, nature, storms, illness, insanity, pride, fear, insecurity, and all forms of physics and quantum consideration. He is and will always be Master of Time and Matter. And He wishes to wean us up into our “Kingdom of Heaven” DNA, as He Lived. “Doing nothing we don’t see the Father doing, saying nothing we don’t hear Him saying.” Growing day by day. Not perfect. But forgiven, and so much more than human. At last. And He desires to share His very nature, to Fill the vacuum with Himself, with “whosoever will.”

Can you See it? This is not a discussion about doctrine or belief system, western or eastern. It’s not a ritual or a song or anything to do with attendance on a holy day. He deeply desires worshipers, but that is not a meeting, it’s a Life. Read it in John 4–7. It is not about willpower or good deeds, or obedience to “commands.” It is rather about Him. Every day all day, and joining ourselves daily to others with Abraham’s Faith and God’s evident Spirit-DNA. Spurring each other on as we are often together, somehow, somewhere. Read it in Hebrews 3:12–13, Hebrews 10:24–25. It is simply put: losing our lives into Him and His Eternity-Life, His Heaven-DNA by ReBirth and Regeneration into Him.

And this WHILE we “knock the ball out of the park” in the arenas of human life. “In the world, but not of the world,” as the most effective, respected, honorable, successful students and workers imaginable. The first will result in the second. We’ve watched it Happen just like that for over 40 years now.

We are so far less than perfect, yet so much more than flesh and blood.

“Seated with Christ (the Anointing) in Heavenly Realms.”

“I See Heaven open and the Son of man standing at the right hand of the Glory of God.”

“In the body or not, I know not.”