I remember my then three year old son wrestling with theology when he asked, “Mom, if Jesus lives in my heart and I eat food, will it go near Jesus?”
I’ve had my own theological wrestlings this week about God in me as I try to wrap my mind around the words, “Abide in me and I in you.” It’s one thing for me to try to make God my dwelling place, but then He turns around and says He’s going to choose to dwell in me too.
So that’s my abide pondering for this week – the fact that God abides in me. The God of the universe lives in me. What? When I think about that, so much in me says, “Are you sure You want to do that?
“I mean, I know me. I know that mixed up in all the redemption You’ve done there’s still a fair amount of depravity. I’m a sinner, God. Why would you want to do that?”
But that’s the great and awesome mystery. He’s not a God who redeems from afar. He gets right up in there and transforms from the inside out. He dwells in me while still renovating me into a place more fit for a king.
I’ve been asking Him to help me grasp this more deeply. I like the way Henri Nouwen puts it in his book Return of the Prodigal Son, “I am called to enter into the inner sanctuary of my own being where God has chosen to dwell . . . it is the place where I am held safe in the embrace of an all-loving Father who calls me by name and says, ‘You are my beloved child, on whom my favor rests.'”
It makes abiding even more appealing to know He’s already met me more than halfway. It’s a place where I can rest, trust, be loved. He abides in me. Wow.
