You, Christian, are the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit of God makes his habitation within you. He has joyfully, willingly, come to you so you can be near to him. This knowledge, this wonder, has powerful consequences.
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It gives assurance. If the Holy Spirit has made his home within you, you can be sure that he will never abandon you. Who or what could ever drive God out of his dwelling place? Is Satan powerful enough to displace the Spirit? Of course not. Is your sin or your desire to sin or your unbelief enough to drive him out once he has come in? Never! Knowing that you have the Spirit within allows you to live free from the terror of abandonment, free from the fear that God will give up on you. God has not only chosen to do something to you from without but has also chosen to take up residence within.
It gives hope. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is meant to give you hope in the battle against sin because as committed as you may be to battling sin, as much as you see the corruption and vileness of indwelling sin, you can rest assured that the Spirit sees it much more clearly and is much more committed to battling it than you are. You do not fight the battle against sin on your own, with only your own motivation, with only your own strength. No, you fight alongside the Spirit who is there within you, seeing the sin, hating the sin, longing for that sin to be destroyed so his dwelling place can be swept free of all defilement.
It gives motive. It gives you the motive you need to put sin to death, to attack it wherever it exists, and to tear it up by its roots no matter how deep they go. Every Christian wants this dwelling of the Spirit to be worthy of the Spirit; every Christian wants the Spirit’s dwelling to be undefiled by sin. When you know and believe that the Spirit has wonderfully and willingly taken up residence within, you have a powerful motive to full-out pursue the holiness he so loves.
Christian, you are indwelled by God himself. In the Old Testament God’s people had to go to the tabernacle and temple to experience the nearness of God. When Jesus was on the earth the people had to be in his presence to experience the nearness of God. Today each Christian experiences the deepest and most immediate intimacy, the intimacy that comes when God abides within.