This is one of the greatest facts of revelation, one of the most important to the believer, and one of the most precious to the love-ruled heart.
The New Testament gives us three relations that God sustains toward man: first, God for us; second, God with us; and third, God in us.
To have God for us guarantees success. “If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). If God is on our side, we are sure to win.
If God is for you and you know it, you become utterly fearless. No matter how foreboding or how difficult the situation may be, you are calmly assured that you must win.
There can be no defeat if He, the great unseen One, is with us.
To have God with you is to walk with love. It is the arm-in-arm walk with the Man of the ages. You have the consciousness that He is not only for you, but that in every place in life, He is with you.
No matter what the circumstances may be, your Lord is with you.
How the knowledge of this fact lifts the heart. How it buoys us up with confidence.
John 14:23 says, “If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” Jesus and the Father will live with us in our home! What a protected and quiet place it will be!
Jesus said:
I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. (John 14:16–17)
The Spirit was with them in Christ, but the hour was coming when Christ would go away, and the Spirit would make His home not only with them, but actually in them, making their bodies His temple.
This is one of the richest of all the truths about Him.
In Acts 2:1–4, we read of the Holy Spirit’s coming into the upper room and filling it with Himself, so that the disciples were immersed in Him.
They saw tongues of fire upon each other’s heads, typical of the way the message of the good news was to be proclaimed by tongues of fire, anointed of the Spirit.
Then it declares that they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.
First, He immersed them, then He manifested Himself upon them, and then He came into their bodies.
Immersion or baptism in the Holy Spirit is not indwelling. You can be immersed in water and not have water in you.
You can be baptized in the Holy Spirit and not receive the Holy Spirit as an indweller.
Baptism in the Holy Spirit is the hour of the new birth.
For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body. (1 Corinthians 12:13 ASV)
They began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. The tongues were not the evidence of His indwelling; they needed no outward manifestation to prove that. He had come in to make His home in their bodies.
Now the message they preached would be their evidence. Their godly lives that followed and their love walk demonstrated His indwelling presence.
It was a wonder day. It was man’s great day when God glorified those humiliated bodies and came into them to make them His home.
Who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to subject all things unto himself. (Philippians 3:21 ASV)
Sin humiliated our bodies, making them mortal, subject to disease and death. Now, the Holy Spirit glorifies them by making them His home. God at last is making man’s Satan-ruled body His temple.
Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s. (1 Corinthians 6:19–20)
This is one of the most solemn truths of the great revelation, that God makes Himself the companion of every act of our lives.
He comes into our bodies to make them His pulpit and to make our lips His mouthpiece through which He is going to give a message of love to the world.
Philippians 1:20–21 gives us a little more light on this subject: “But that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
Galatians 2:20 says, “It is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me” (ASV).
How little the church has made of this fact. There is no fact about the redemption that is to me so utterly marvelous. It is a miracle of grace, an act of love transcending anything except Calvary.
God is actually making His home in our bodies.
Only a few of us are conscious of God in our bodies. You hear men constantly talking about their lack of power and lack of ability.
He planned that we should not think of what we are going to say when we are compelled to give our witness, but that He, Himself, through our lips, would make the great confession.
But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you. (Matthew 10:19–20)
How little we have appreciated this. How few of us have dared to let Him loose in us and give Him His freedom. The Holy Spirit is to speak in you, to take you over.
We know that spiritualists and mediums yield themselves to the unclean spirits that take them over and speak strange things through them.
Why can’t we be taken over by the Holy Spirit so that He will speak through us an unadulterated message, fresh from the heart of the Father?
To most of us, the indwelling truth is but a dogma instead of a reality. It is just a doctrine that we talk about, not a great fact that causes us to rejoice.
Colossians 1:29 tells us how the Spirit wrought in the apostle Paul, “Whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily,” or with ability.
Paul was God-inside-minded. He knew that in him was the Spirit whom Jesus had promised should guide them into all reality.
He knew that the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead had made His home in his body. He knew that that Spirit could heal the sick, raise the dead, and bless the multitudes with messages that would produce faith and the new birth.
He knew that the omnipotent One was dwelling in him and he dared yield himself to the sway of that mighty One.
Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us. (Ephesians 3:20)
God is able to do things beyond our comprehension in us and through us. This is one of the most blessed truths. How we ought to yield ourselves utterly to the sway of this indwelling One!
If the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is in you, you become a limitless possibility in your community.
And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. (Ephesians 1:19–23)
You get a picture here of the omnipotence of God, the utter greatness of God, and that greatness, that ability, is in us.
Romans 8:11 says, “If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.”
This same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead does dwell in you. You have asked Him to come in, and He has taken His place in you.
The same ability He had when He raised Jesus from the dead is in Him now. He can touch that sick and diseased body of yours and make it whole. He can speak through your lips words that will bring salvation to the lost, health and healing to the sick, strength and courage to the defeated. You have the life-giver in you.
A man is recreated by the Holy Spirit through the Word.
James 1:18 says, “Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth.” It is the living Word that has given birth to us through the Spirit.
The same Spirit that recreates man has come into you. The same Word that recreates man is in your heart. You are living it now. As you live it, it becomes a living thing, a life-begetting thing on your lips.
I have stood before congregations and seen hundreds of men and women born again through the words that passed through my lips by the energy of the Spirit.
I have seen hundreds healed by the words on my lips.
All I said was, “In the name of Jesus Christ, pain, leave this body. Woman, by His stripes, you are healed. Go in peace and praise Him.” That simple formula of words from the lips of one in whom He dwells brings healing and salvation.
Colossians 1:13–14 illustrates this: “Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.”
Before the Holy Spirit came to dwell in you, He translated you out of Satan’s family and kingdom into the family of the Son of His love.
It is the same Spirit who dwells in you that poured eternal life into your spirit and made you a son of God, an heir of God, and a joint heir with Jesus Christ.
John 3:5–8 tells us that it is the Spirit’s work to recreate men. It is the Spirit’s work to build the love nature of the Father into our very being.
The Holy Spirit has taken us out of the sense knowledge realm. You understand what I mean by sense knowledge. That is the only knowledge that natural man has, so he denies the knowledge that comes through the Bible.
When the Holy Spirit recreates us, He pours the very nature and life of God into our spirits. We are translated out of Satan’s family into God’s family.
For it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure. (Philippians 2:13 ASV)
God is at work within you, building the love nature of the Father into you, renewing your mind through the Word, healing the sick, and living the Jesus life in you until Romans 8:11 becomes a living fact.
But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken [give life to] your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.
The life-giving power of the Spirit in you is pouring out health and healing to others around you.
Philippians 4:13 is true in your case. “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me,” or who is my enabling ability.
You have God in you. He is the limitless God. He is the God who made David’s aim so accurate that he smote the Philistine.
He is the God who enabled Elijah to stand in the presence of the angry king and build an altar that He honored by fire from heaven.
He is the same Spirit who wrought so mightily through the early church.
There is a threefold ministry of the Spirit with each one of us: first, He recreates us; second, He builds the nature and life of God into us; and third, He ministers to the world and to the church through us.
Psalm 27:1 is actually fulfilled in us: “Jehovah is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? Jehovah is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (ASV). The Holy Spirit becomes the light, the illumination of your intellect. He illumines your whole spirit nature and your mind.
He is your salvation. He brings you salvation. That means deliverance. He makes redemption a reality to you, not a theological subject for discussion, but a living reality in your daily life.
He makes you to say, “Of whom shall I be afraid?” The Holy Spirit can make you strong with the strength of God.
I prayed for a woman who had been bedfast for a long time. She immediately got up and came down to the church. That was the Holy Spirit imparting life to that physical body.
Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. (1 John 4:4)
It is the love God inside of you, making love greater in you than selfishness and its child, hatred, in the world.
Selfishness and hatred are the blighting curses of the human race.
The indwelling love God is the only cure for selfishness. This is the very genius of Christianity. It is God in us, His ability in us.
He takes the weak, the useless, and the outcast, and makes them the leaders by filling them with Himself. He takes common men and makes them supermen.
He made mere fishermen to become empire builders, and a tent maker to be the voice of God!
God imparts to man His ability. He not only recreates him, gives him His life, making him His own very child, but He makes it possible for man to become a partaker of His own wisdom.
I am confident of this: that it is possible for a child of God to so walk in the wisdom and ability of God that he will actually become a superman.
You will know how to use the name of Jesus and all the authority vested in that name.
E. W. Kenyon, The Hidden Man: The Secret to Living in the Spirit Realm (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 2025).