“Received and Assimilated”

    Something will fill the hearts of human beings. Created as “vessels,” we will either receive and assimilate the one Content for which we were made and exist, or we will seek other things or persons to occupy our innermost being (Romans 9:22-23).

    Born again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ have received the Content for which God created us.  We have received Him.  “I will dwell in them” (II Corinthians 6:16).  The issue for us therefore becomes assimilation.   Do we increasingly know, believe and affirm that we are not merely ourselves, but that we are ourselves, as inhabited by the living God?  We must, because the Christian life involves far more than beginning reception.  It must also involve ongoing application to the wondrous gift given when we believed, the gift of God Himself revealed in us by the indwelling Holy Spirit.  “Ye are the temple of God… As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him” (I Corinthians 3:16; Colossians 2:6).

    We are ourselves, with all the characteristics of humanity, as well as our particular personalities, histories, inclinations and ways of responding to the fact of our existence.  If we have believed, however, a greater truth and reality pervades the center and circumference of our being.  Christ lives in us, and we live in Christ. Again, we are not merely ourselves.  We are ourselves, as inhabited by the infinite and everlasting God.  No other content can fill and fulfill our hearts. Nor can any other interest serve as the guiding light of peace, contentment, joy and enabling.  “He is thy life” (Deuteronomy 30:20).

    This truth received birthed us into the eternal life of relationship with the Lord Jesus.  This truth increasingly assimilated matures us into those who rightly know themselves, but more importantly, who know the God in whom we “live, move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).  This day and this very moment offers the possibility of remembering, believing and affirming the wonder of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). God made our hearts for this gracious bestowal of Himself, and no other content suffices to fill and fulfill us.

“This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.”(John 17:3)