The Spirit speaking through Paul in Philippians 2:13 says, “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”
How hard it has been for some of us to become God-inside minded, to daily remind ourselves that we have Him in us, and that He is there to build Christ into us, to build the living Word into us.
Just as a mason builds a house brick by brick, so the Holy Spirit will take one truth after another and build it into us until we become Jesus-minded, love-controlled, Father-pleasers.
You remember in John 8:29, Jesus said, “For I do always those things that please him.”
For years that was my heart’s slogan.
I sought to make Him happy.
You see, He has done a perfect work for us in the great substitution. There is not a thing left undone.
If we accept that work and let God work in us, it makes us stand well pleasing before the Father.
We become beautiful to Him because His nature was not only given to us, but now He has built into us through the Spirit the new habits that belong to the family of God, the new language that belongs to the new creation.
We never talk doubt or fear or sickness or want.
We have almost forgotten that language.
We have the new language of the overcomer, the language of the man who is tied up with Christ.
It is the language of the branches of the vine.
That “vine life” has so developed in us that we become Jesus men and Jesus women.
In our assembly in Seattle, we speak of them as the Jesus men and Jesus women.
We have Jesus men and women who are going out into the world, touching it, blessing it, illuminating it with the life of Christ in them.
Why can’t this spread over the land until there arises a new race of men known as the Jesus folks?
They will be love in action.
They will be living in the Word and the Word will be living in them.
They will be doing the works of the Master.
As Jesus did physical healing and ministered largely in the sense realm, these Jesus folks will minister very largely in the spiritual realm.
And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work. (2 Corinthians 9:8)
How slow we have been to realize that it was God’s ability that could make grace abound in and through us, and that we were being so perfectly supplied by Him that we were having all sufficiency in everything.
He is our sufficiency; He is our ability; He is the strength of our lives.
We have ignored sense reasoning and cast it down and have given our recreated spirits the right of way and the Word the first place.
Notice verses 10–11:
Now he that ministereth seed to the sower both minister bread for your food, and multiply your seed sown, and increase the fruits of your righteousness; being enriched in every thing to all bountifulness, which causeth through us thanksgiving to God.
There has been little majoring of the fruit of righteousness.
I have been asked again and again, “What does it mean?” It means that same kind of fruit that we saw in Jesus’s public ministry.
You see, righteousness means the ability to stand in the Father’s presence without the sense of guilt or condemnation or inferiority. It means the ability to stand in the presence of Satan and his works without timidity or fear, without any sense of inferiority. Really, it means that you have become superior to Satan.
You have a superiority complex rather than an inferiority complex. You have come to reckon on the ability of the God inside of you. You have at last arrived at the place where you reckon on Him. You plan your work with the idea that He is there to enable you to put it over.
We must not omit Ephesians 1:19–20. I want this Scripture to become so familiar to you that it will be a constant source of comfort and strength:
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.
A more literal translation would be, “I want you to know what the exceeding greatness of the ability of God is on our behalf who believe. That ability is according to the strength of his might, which he wrought in the Christ when he raised him from the dead.”
You can’t overestimate this.
This is God working within you.
This is the one who raised Jesus from the dead.
This is the one who recreated you.
This is the Spirit who has all the ability of the God-head that is necessary for you to enjoy; so that you are not afraid of the enemy in any field.
You know He put all things in subjection under His feet, and He gave Him to be Head over all things for the benefit of the church.
Remember, this is the One who is at work within you.
Take Ephesians 3:20: “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.”
When this Scripture is understood, put into daily practice, you can know that you have arrived.
At last you are a worthy member of the vine. You are actually bearing fruit to His glory.
In my notes, I have written this: becoming God-inside-minded, knowing that the All-wise One is in me now.
That the God of all ability is in me now.
That the God of all love is in me now.
That God and I are linked up together, laboring together with Him.
We are becoming one in our thoughts and in our actions.
He and I are laboring together to carry out the great dream of grace.
The God of all grace lives in me, and so I say it over and over again, “God, my Father, in the person of the Holy Spirit, through the Living Word, is living in me.”
Now I can do all things in Him, because He has become my strength and my ability.
The limitless One is in me.
The Love-God lives in me.
At last I become God-inside minded.
First John 4:4 is not only a Scripture, but it is a living reality: “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.”
The God of abundant life is in me.
He is no longer with me to convict me, but He is in me to guide me into all the realities of His mighty ministry.
Now I can understand what Paul meant when he said, in 1 Corinthians 3:9: “For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building.”
I know what it means now to be a fellow-worker.
I know what it means to be God’s tilled land (margin).
My heart and my life are the soil where He sows the seeds of love and they are growing now in me.
I am a part of God’s dream and plan.
I am coming to appreciate what it means to have real, intimate fellowship with Him.