Turning On Your Engine

➡ Paul, the voiceover for a ministry called Your Daily Bread, discusses the concept of Christ dwelling within us. He explains that while Christ is always present in Christians, he may not always be comfortable due to our sins. The goal is to live in a way that makes Christ feel at home in our hearts, which is achieved by being controlled and energized by the Holy Spirit. This spiritual connection strengthens us and helps us grow in our faith.
➡ The text describes how Jesus metaphorically cleanses different rooms in a person’s life, symbolizing various aspects of their character and behavior. He removes harmful thoughts and desires, replacing them with his teachings and the will of God. He encourages fellowship with him and other believers, and urges the use of one’s abilities for the kingdom of God. Lastly, he purifies hidden sins, making himself at home in a person’s life, which is achieved through faith and a commitment to live according to his teachings.
➡ To truly feel at peace and at home with God, we must deal with our sins and strive to live a clean life. This can only be achieved by gaining inner strength through the Spirit of God, which requires us to surrender control of our lives to Him. Without this inner strength, we will constantly struggle with sin and anxiety, causing discomfort to both ourselves and Christ. Remember to stay strong in faith, shine your light in the world, and visit goddessgovernment.com for daily devotions.

Hello. My name is Paul, and I am the voiceover for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh at God is Government, called Your Daily Bread. Taken from Christ’s teaching of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6, verse 11. This is a daily devotion ministry, focused not only on uplifting Scripture, but Scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today’s focused discussion will be turning on your engine, indwelling of Christ.

Where there is a strong inner man, there is a result, and it says to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, with the result that, or in order that, and you have a purpose or a result, in this case, both are true, in order that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, or with the result that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, or with the purpose that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. The indwelling Christ, that is the second point, from inner strength to the indwelling Christ.

You say, well, I don’t understand that, John, because if I’m a Christian, Christ is always there. How could you possibly have the Holy Spirit in you, and not have Christ in you? It seems like it’s backwards. Well, that’s what I thought too. Wait a minute, it should say, first of all, Christ dwells in your heart, and then you would be strengthened by the Spirit in the inner man. Right? That would seem logical. But that’s only because the English is deficient here, and we must go back to the Greek. Now, we don’t need, we don’t want, I should say, to believe that, first of all, we start with the Holy Spirit, and later we receive Christ.

Right? That doesn’t make any sense. You can’t have the Holy Spirit until you have Christ, for Christ is the one who gives the Spirit. So, Christ is already in us, that’s clear from chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3. We are one with Christ. He is in us. We are in Christ. We’ve heard that over and over and over and over in this book. So, this is not referring to getting saved. He’s not saying, now that you’re strengthened with might by his Spirit, the result is going to be that Christ will come into your life.

No, no, no. That’s backwards. You say, well, what is he saying? Watch this. See the word Now, that wouldn’t be important just to say the word, except that it has tremendous significance. This form comes from a verb, katoikeo. That comes from two words, kata and oikeo. Oikeo means to be at home, to dwell at home, to be at home. Kata means down. Now, I’ve told you this many times, you may have forgotten. Whenever you have a verb in the Greek, and they add a preposition to the front of it, what does it do to it? It intensifies it.

So, kata added to oikeo means to really be at home, to settle down and be at home. And that’s the meaning of the word. Now he’s saying, he’s saying then that when you have inner strength and you’re really walking in the spirit and spirit controlled and spirit energized, the thing that’s going to happen is Christ is really going to be at home in your heart. And I dare say, beloved, there are a lot of Christians where he dwells but is not that comfortable. Would you agree to that? Why, I think all of us would agree that there have been times in our lives when we have discomforted Christ greatly.

Do you remember back in 1st Corinthians where he says, you Christians, you’re going out and committing adultery. Don’t you realize that you are joining Jesus Christ to a harlot? Now, wouldn’t you think that would make him decidedly uncomfortable? Yes. Any sin is a discomfiture to Christ. Anything that quenches the spirit that grieves the spirit, anything that saddens the heart of Jesus, any sin in your life makes him uncomfortable. Now Christ is in my life, but the question is this. Until the spirit of God controls my life. He is not comfortable there.

He’s not at home there. He can’t settle down. He’s always up cleaning up the place. Now some of you, some of you people know about that. Sometimes you come home and you ladies, particularly my wife does this, she walks in the door and she goes, oh look at the place. And you know, I’ll say, well that’s alright honey, I’ll help you. I’ll exhort you while you clean. So I follow her around the house and quote Bible verses just to encourage her. But anyway, you know, and then you clean and you clean and you get it all done and then it’s just, isn’t it great? And you just sit down and then you can talk and listen to music, whatever, and have a wonderful time.

You can be at home. That’s very little different than the experience of Christ, who enters into the life of a believer and finds that the work is not always all done. He can’t just settle down to commune with the believer. He’s got to be up cleaning the place because all is not right. The question then, beloved, is this, is not, is the question is not, is Jesus there? It’s, is he comfortable there? Is he really comfortable there? That’s the issue and in many lives he’s not comfortable, he’s distressed. In fact in some lives his process of cleaning even hurts a little bit.

Get a little chastening. Let me give you an illustration. Back in, don’t need to turn to it. Genesis 18 and 19, God was gonna bless Abraham with a son. You remember that? Abraham and Sarah. So the Lord was going to do this thing and it was a monumental thing. I mean this child was going to be Isaac and this was going to be the first seed of the Abrahamic covenant ultimately to resolve in Christ. This was going to be the first real Hebrew if you want it in terms of what really happened.

This was the first Jew in effect, the first of the seed to be known as the nation Israel. Isaac. And it was a monumental time for this thing, it was a big deal, it was so important the messianic line was born and so God was going to make a special visit to the earth. Oh yes, the incarnation of Jesus Christ was not the first time God showed up here. In fact in Genesis 18 he arrived at Abraham’s house with two angels. Remember that? Just came walking down the path with two angels.

You’re saying what form was God? I don’t know. Apparently some kind of a visible form, not unlike a human form. But in fact he came there and Abraham said to Sarah, Sarah, we have got company like you won’t believe Sarah. You’ve heard of important company? God is here. And two angels. And then of course later in Hebrews 13 it says you better be careful too, you might entertain angels unawares and it’s referring to that. So what happened of course is Sarah really went in there and whipped up a wonderful thing and God actually came into Abraham’s house and had fellowship.

And you know what that tells me about Abraham and Sarah? That tells me that they must have been righteous people or God wouldn’t have been comfortable there. You know that? God wouldn’t have been comfortable there if they were not righteous people even though they were in the plan. And the reason I believe that is because in the very next chapter you have a most interesting situation. In the very next chapter, in the 19th chapter, Lot was living in the city of Sodom. And the Lord planned to destroy those cities but the Lord wanted to warn Lot to get out of there.

But have you ever noticed that the Lord sent the two angels and never went himself? He was comfortable in Abraham’s tent but for some reason or other he wasn’t comfortable in Lot’s house even though he had a relationship with Lot and Abraham. And the same thing is true of Christians. We have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ but that does not necessarily mean that at all times Jesus is comfortable in our lives. Would you agree to that? That’s really an important thing. But when you are strengthened by his spirit in the inner man then he’s comfortable.

When your life is resolved into the control of the Spirit of God, when you have yielded a moment-by-moment living pattern to the Holy Spirit, Christ can settle down because as the Spirit controls your life he keeps it clean. He keeps it clean. Some of you have read the little booklet called My Heart, Christ’s Home. If you haven’t you ought to get it and read it. It’s a good little booklet. I read it many many years ago when I was just a kid and it makes a person’s heart. It does a kind of an allegory where a person’s heart and life is like a house and Jesus comes to the house and starts checking it out.

The fact that Jesus is there indicates the person is a Christian and Robert Munger who wrote the book describes it this way. First Jesus went into the library which is the control room of the house, right? What you read which is like the brain where all the information is stored and Jesus goes into the room that is the mind, the brain and he finds on the shelves all kinds of trash and garbage and junk and evil and bad thinking and bad human philosophy and useless stuff and stuff that’s not going to help you and a lot of neutral things and he just takes it all off the shelves throws it away and puts the word up there, the control room.

Then he goes to the dining room and the dining room is the room of the appetites, right? And the room of the desires. What do you really feast on? What do you really hunger for? What do you really want? And he finds a worldly menu, a menu of riches, a menu that includes prestige, a menu that includes things, materialism, lusts of the flesh and he takes it all out, everything out of there and puts a new menu in and it is the food that really satisfies the will of the Father.

Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. So the library is cleaned up and the word is there and the dining room is cleaned up and the only thing on the menu is the will of God and you can get it in any different shape and form you want it but it’s all the will of God and so the will of God becomes that for which you hunger not your own fleshly desire. Then Jesus goes to the living room because the living room is where you share and you fellowship and he goes in there and he finds that that’s where he’s neglected.

There’s a lot of activity going on but nobody pays any attention to him. He’s just there and all the fellowship and all the activity is going on and he’s just there. I mean you can imagine that. Just think of it this way. Imagine the best friend you had spent an entire day with you from dawn till midnight, the whole day, at your side the whole time and all the while loving you and all the while wanting to say to you, you know, here’s a good thing to do. Oh I don’t think you should do that.

I’d like to encourage you to do this. Well, all day long you never bothered to even acknowledge the presence of your friend. You never even said hello. You just went about your business, sometimes giving an elbow, stepping on a toe, just complete. How long do you think that person will be your friend? About one day, probably be pretty disillusioned. Jesus is the same kind of a friend only in a greater way and it’s very likely that as near as one day last week he spent an entire day with you through which you never one time bothered to acknowledge his presence.

Never one time and yet he’s your friend forever. It’s a good thing it’s based on him not you, right? And so the living room is a place of fellowship but you’ve got to have the right fellowship and so this is where you need to spend time with Christ and you can clear out a lot of those worldly acquaintances and a lot of that wasted activity and a lot of that stuff that doesn’t have any redeeming virtue at all and spend your time with Christ and listen to this, spend your time with people who have Christ living in them.

See, forsake not the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is and much the more as you see the day approaching because this is necessary to provoke yourselves to love and good works. Spend time with Jesus and spend time with people that Jesus lives in. Very important. Well then he goes to the workshop and he goes to the workshop and he finds fantastic tools, a beautiful workbench and the guy is in there making toys, just toys and Jesus says you got all this ability and you can’t produce anything more than a toy? Jesus wants to take all your abilities, all your capacities, all your capabilities and cause them to produce things for the kingdom, cause them to lay up treasure in heaven, cause them to make things that have eternal value.

So he changes the whole format in the workshop. He gets all done, I mean the library’s all fixed, it’s got the right kind of stuff up there to control everything. The dining room is great, we got the appetites all set on the will of God. The living room is settled, we’re in there fellowshiping with Christ and people Christ lives in and the workshop is ready. We’re down there using our tools and our abilities to make things for the kingdom. But there’s a strange odour coming from someplace. It’s nice and clean but something stinks, you know like when the meat leaked under the ice box or whatever and the Lord isn’t too happy.

There’s something dead in here he says. And the guy says look you come into my house you clean up everything. I mean leave me one closet will you? That’s all I ask. You can have the dining room and all this stuff, just that’s my closet. The Lord says no I want that closet. That’s the closet full of personal sins, the hidden things, the dead things. And the man became very angry because Jesus had every other room. But Jesus gave him the command, open it. And he opened it and it was full of evil things.

Those little secret things that nobody knows about, those things that go on in your mind, those things that you do when nobody sees you do them. And Jesus cleaned that out and when he got all that done then he was at home. See? Now that’s what it means in verse 17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. And that’s the key to it people. We can’t see that he’s at home, we have to believe that he is when we know our lives are pure. By faith we accept that Christ is at home.

If somebody says to you well how do you know Jesus is at home in your life? You say well I believe it by faith. I believe by faith that he came into my life. I believe by faith that I confess my sins and he cleanses them and purifies me. And I believe by faith that if I’m being pure and confessing my sin and dealing with my sin and repenting of it and turning from it and endeavouring to keep my life as pure as possible in his power, I believe by his promise that he is at home in me.

Somebody told me the other day that they were praying for a certain person because he wanted to accept Christ just to stay out of hell. But he wanted to go ahead and live just as worldly as he wanted to. He didn’t want Christ messing with that stuff. Well I don’t know if he’s a Christian, maybe he is. God is gracious enough to accept somebody’s faith and then have his heart broken by their disobedience. That’s happened a lot. But I’ll tell you one thing, I love the Lord Jesus Christ too much to do that to him.

To say to him I’ll take everything you can give but don’t expect anything out of me. You give me all you’ve got forever and I’m not giving you anything I’ve got for time. That’s a bad, bad attitude. If I really love the Lord Jesus Christ then my desire is not to grieve the Lord. My desire is not to make him uncomfortable in my life. My desire is to make him at home, right? And so the lordship of Christ is to extend to every room in your life. He wants it all.

Now, after you’re yielding to the Holy Spirit and you are strengthened with power in the inner man and the Spirit controls your life, the result is you become Christ centred and you become clean. And Christ settles down into every dimension of your life and he is at home in you. Listen people, that is an incredible condescension. Do you understand that? That the God of the universe should settle down and be at home in me. What a magnificent thought. This was Jesus’ great prayer in John chapter 14 and verse 23.

This is what he said, if a man love me he will keep my words and look and my father will love him and we will come unto him and make our home with him. See God the Father, God the Son, they want to come and be at home in my life. They don’t want me dragging them into a wrong behavior. They don’t want me dragging them into an evil place. They don’t want me exposing them to an evil deed. I have to realise that everywhere I go and everything I do involves the Lord.

That’s a basic Christian truth. I have to practise his presence by faith, that’s what he means by faith. I have to know that he’s there, to believe that he’s there, to believe that he’s only at home in my life as I’m dealing with sin. I want the Father to be at home. I want the Son to be at home. I want the prayer of Jesus to be answered. I want to be one who loves him and he says, and if a man love me and keep my words, we’ll be at home in him and you can’t do that unless you’re strong in the inner man.

You’ll never be able to obey the Word of God. You’ll never be able to avoid sin. You’ll never be able to deal with sin. You’ll never be able to confess sin, repent from sin, turn from sin, keep the rooms clean in your house. You’ll never be able to do that until the Spirit of God has granted you inner strength. And that will never happen until you give him control of your life. Never happen. And so all the while you don’t have that inner strength, Christ will never settle down and be at home in your life.

You’ll be a constant source of anxiety to him and chastening to yourself. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of the turning on of your engine, Indwelling of Christ. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always live a way. [tr:trw].