Read the transcript from today's video devotional.
Let me give you the context of this verse. Jesus is sitting down with His disciples. This is very shortly before He is going to be arrested and murdered, and His disciples are worried about this. They're concerned. They don't want Jesus to leave them. So, He is telling them in this time He has with them that He's actually going to return. He's going to come back and He is going to be with them, and not only with them, He's even going to be in them.
How Will Jesus Return?
Right before the verse I just read, Judas—not bad Judas, good Judas—Judas asked Jesus. He said, "How is it that You will manifest Yourself to us and not to the world?" He didn't understand. How is Jesus going to be crucified, be gone and then come back, and He was going to be with them, but He wasn't going to be with everyone? He didn't understand how that worked.
Evidently, when Judas heard that, he was expecting that Jesus was going to return physically. That's what he meant. But Jesus was not going to return physically. He will one day, and we're still waiting for that. But He wasn't going to return physically in glory for all of us to see. What He meant was that He was going to return privately and personally to those whom He loved.
How was He going to do that? He said, "My Father will love them, and We will come and make Our home with each of them." Here's what that is: the Holy Spirit. This is the coming of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, who is God, who is referred to as the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit would come and He would make His home in those who love God.
Do You Love God?
The question—a good question to ask—is, do you love God? If you love God, God has made His home with you. If you don't love God, He has not made His home with you. I’ll ask again do you love God?
According to this verse, here's one way to figure that out: Do you seek to do what He says? Not, do you love Him perfectly or do you obey Him perfectly? Not even, do you love Him better than the next person or better than you used to? It's simply asking, do you love God? That means, do you have right now, as you're listening to this, do you have affection for God in your heart?
If you do, then God has made His home with you. God has taken up residency in your heart. It is personal. It is private and it's permanent.
The Power of the Indwelling Spirit
Let me read you what one book says about this: "The doctrine of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is perhaps the most practical and powerful doctrine of the Christian faith, because it brings the entire scope of God's redemptive work down to the personal, intimate level. You are not just justified, you are indwelt. You are not just forgiven. You are inhabited by the God who forgave you. This transforms everything about how we live."
