In this message we shall cover the remaining aspects of the Spirit’s work in the believers in the inner-life-working stage.
The indwelling Spirit is the means for God the Father to strengthen the believers into the inner man that Christ may make His home in their hearts. In Ephesians 3:16 and 17 Paul prayed that the Father would “grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into the inner man, that Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith.” Because the Father does not do anything directly, He does not strengthen us directly. It is through the Spirit that the Father strengthens us. Actually, we are strengthened by the Father as the Spirit, for the Spirit is the Father working within us. When the Father works in us, He works through the Spirit, and the Spirit’s working in us is the Father’s working. By the Spirit the Father is continually strengthening us into the inner man.
The fact that the Father strengthens us by the indwelling Spirit does not mean that the Spirit is not with us or that the Spirit will come down from the heavens to strengthen us. The strengthening Spirit has been with us from the time He regenerated us. He is still within us now. Through this indwelling Spirit the Father strengthens us from within.
According to Ephesians 3:16, we are being strengthened into the inner man. The inner man is our regenerated spirit with God’s life as it’s life. It is our spirit regenerated by the Spirit of God (John 3:6), indwelt by the Spirit of God (Rom. 8:11, 16), and mingled with the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 6:17). In order to experience Christ unto all the fullness of God, we need to be strengthened into the inner man. This implies that we need to get into our spirit, where we can be strengthened through the Holy Spirit.
Through the Spirit the Father strengthens us into the inner man that Christ may make His home in our hearts through faith. Our heart is composed of all the parts of our soul-the mind, the emotion, and the will-plus our conscience, the main part of our spirit. These are the inward parts of our being. Through regeneration Christ came into our spirit (2 Tim. 4:22). Now we should allow Him to spread Himself into every part of our heart. Our heart is the totality of all our inward parts and the center of our inward being; therefore, when Christ makes His home in our heart, He controls our entire inward being and supplies and strengthens every inward part with Himself.
In order for Christ to not be imprisoned in us but to have the freedom to settle down in the depths of our being, we need to be strengthened by the Spirit into our inner man. Therefore, the indwelling Spirit is working to strengthen us into the inner man.
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