Allowing Christ to Make His Home in our Heart for the Building up of the Church

The church as the Body of Christ is the building of God, the only thing He is after today. The church is the mingling of God and man and the building of God into man and of man into God for man and God to be one to the uttermost so that God is expressed through man corporately and man lives out God.

In order for us to build up the church as the Body of Christ we need to focus mainly on experiencing the indwelling Christ. The more we experience the indwelling Christ in our daily living, allowing Him to make His home in our heart and saturate all our inward parts with Himself, the more we build up the church.

There is a need for many things to be taken care of in the church life, but our intrinsic need is to daily experience the indwelling Christ for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ.

In Ephesians 3:16-21 Paul prayed concerning the believers’ inner experience of the indwelling Christ which results in the building up of the church as the Body of Christ. We need to take this portion of the word and pray over it, praying it back to God every day so that He may have a way to strengthen us with power through His Spirit into our inner man for Christ to make His home in our heart through faith.

Our heart is our representative: when our heart is happy, we are happy, but when our heart is sad or disturbed, we are sad. Our heart is the totality of our inward parts and the center of our inner being, being composed of our mind, emotion, will, and conscience.

Many times we are physically in one place but our heart is somewhere else. We don’t really know our heart, and many times our heart is attached to things or rejects things based on how it feels.

The Lord Jesus who is in our spirit wants to spread into all the parts of our heart so that He may make His home in our heart, occupying every part of our inner being. It is only by Christ making His home in our heart day by day that we can be built up with the saints in the Body of Christ.

Allowing Christ to Make His Home in our Heart

Paul prayed in Eph. 3:16-17 that we would be strengthened into the inner man with the result that Christ would make His home in our heart; this means that He would occupy, possess, permeate, and saturate our whole inner being with Himself.

According to the Bible and our Christian experience, our heart is the totality of our inward parts, being composed of our mind, emotion, will, and conscience; as such, our heart is the center of our inward being. Our heart represents us with regard to our inclination, affection, delight, and desire. Our feelings, inclinations, desires, and preferences all come from our heart.

The result of the Father’s strengthening us with power through His Spirit into our inner man is that Christ makes His home in our heart. When Christ makes His home in our heart, He controls our entire inward being and He supplies and strengthens every inward part with Himself (see Eph. 3:17 footnote 1 in Holy Bible Recovery Version).

Every genuine believer in Christ has Christ as life into his spirit, but not many allow Him to spread from their spirit into all their heart.

We must give the Lord the opportunity to spread Himself throughout all the parts of our inner being. For this, we need the Father’s strengthening within so that our inner man would be strong, and then a door is opened for the Lord to spread into our mind, emotion, and will.

Christ wants to settle down in our heart and make His home in us by spreading into our inward parts and saturating them with Himself. When Christ makes His home in our heart, we will be full of feelings: we will feel Him there, and we will have life and peace (Rom. 8:6).

Our spirit needs to be strengthened with the result that Christ is making His home in our heart, occupying every part of our inner being, possessing all these parts, and saturating them with Himself.

When we open to the Lord and pray Eph. 3:16-21 to Him, we are strengthened into our inner man and we are made willing to allow Christ make His home in our heart. We need to simply allow Him to make His home in us, giving Him the liberty to touch our feelings, thoughts, opinions, decisions, and preferences.

When our inner man is strengthened by the Father through His Spirit, we will allow the Lord to rearrange our inner being, saturate our emotions and mind with Himself, and influence our decisions.

May we not imprison the Lord in our spirit but allow Him to spread into our mind, emotion, and will, giving Him the liberty to saturate our inner being and occupy us to possess us for His purpose!

Lord Jesus, make Your home in our heart a little more today. Grant us to be strengthened by the Father through His Spirit with power into our inner man so that You would have the opportunity and the liberty to spread Yourself from our spirit into all our heart. Lord, we turn our heart to You. Make us willing to allow You to spread in us. We open to You concerning our inclinations, affections, delight, desire, thoughts, and opinions. Spread into every part of our inner being and saturate us with Yourself!

The More Christ makes His Home in our Heart, the More we are Built up with Others

Many times in the church life we are not built up with other brothers and sisters simply because we didn’t allow Christ to make His home in our heart.

If Christ is not constantly making His home in our heart to saturate and occupy our inward being with Himself, we will live according to our preferences and inclinations, and we will prefer certain saints while avoid to talk to others.

We may love all saints in the Lord, but we may not prefer some – even though the Lord put us with them in the same locality, in the same district, and even in the same home meeting. But when Christ is able to make His home in our heart, we will be able to be built up with all the saints (see Eph. 2:21-22; 4:12, 16).

When we allow Christ to occupy all the inward parts of our being, we will love all the saints regardless of our natural preference because Christ loves all the saints.

Often the building work is frustrated because we don’t allow Christ to make His home in our heart. We may have a lot of knowledge, we may have a certain function in the church life, and we may be eager to meet with the saints and enjoy the Lord; but if we don’t allow Christ to make His home in us, we may be puffed up by our knowledge, we may be proud of our function, and we may be individualistic in our enjoyment.

But when we have Christ making His home in us, we will forget about anything else and just seek to be built up with others, admitting that we need their function in the Body and loving them with Christ Himself as our love.

Our heart is crucial when it comes to the building up of the church: we need to have Christ making His home in our heart, and then we will be built up with all the saints in the Body of Christ.

The genuine church life is the issue and result of Christ making His home in the saints’ hearts, and the content of the church life is the Christ whom we all take as our life and person. On this matter I was really touched by brother Witness Lee‘s writing,

In order for Christ’s word in Matthew 16:18 concerning the building up of the church to be fulfilled, the church must enter into a state where many saints allow Christ to make His home in their heart, possessing, occupying, and saturating their entire inner being. The more Christ occupies our inner being, the more we will be able to be built up with others in the Body (Eph. 2:21-22; 4:16). The reality of the Body life is such an inner experience of the indwelling Christ. The Body of Christ is the consummation of our enjoyment of the unsearchable riches of Christ and the consummation of the experience of the unlimited Christ making His home in our entire inward being. The New Jerusalem is the ultimate issue of Christ making His home in our heart. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, pp. 3390-3391)

The Lord needs us, His believers, to allow Him to make His home deep down in our heart so that we may build up the church with this Christ who is wrought into us subjectively. Will we allow Christ to make His home in our heart? He wants to – we just need to allow Him.

The condition of our heart is crucial in the building up of the church; if our heart is disturbed, troubled, or sad, it is not easy to build up the church.

We cannot “control” or “direct” our heart; rather, our heart is deceitful above all things (Jer. 15:9), and no one knows it except the Lord.

We need to open to the Lord in prayer and allow Him to make His home in our heart so that we may be filled with the riches of Christ and be built up the church as the Body of Christ to consummate the New Jerusalem.

The more Christ occupies our inner being and makes His home in us, the more we will be able to be built up with others in the Body of Christ.

Lord Jesus, make Your home in our heart for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ. Lord, we don’t know our heart, we can’t change our heart, and we are not even willing to change, but we open to You: make Your home in our heart today! Occupy our inner being and saturate our inward parts with Yourself. Lord, make our heart Your home for the building up of the church! We take You as our person and give You our heart: spread in our mind, emotion, and will so that we may live out Christ and build up the church!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, bro. James Lee’s sharing in the message for this week, and portions from, The Way to Build up the Church (by Witness Lee), as quoted in, the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Vision, Practice, and Building up of the Church as the Body of Christ, week 8 / msg 8, The Building Up of the Church as the Body of Christ (2) – Through the Inner Experience of the Indwelling Christ.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Lord, deeper make Thy home in me / ’Til ev’ry room belong to Thee, / That Thou might fully make me Thee / And so full rest Thou have in me. / So also deeper into Thee / I’d make my home, my rest in Thee; / A pillar in Thy temple be / And stay in Thee eternally. (Song on Praying Eph. 3:16-21)
  # Make home in my heart, O Lord Jesus, / Make home in my heart, I pray; / That we may be filled with Your fullness, / Make home in my heart today. / To Him who is able to do it / Above all we think or say, / We open our hearts wide and welcome / Him into our heart today. (Hymns #1134)
  # Person, Person, Jesus is our Person, / Living now in us. / He’s our tastes, our attitudes and actions; / Oh, how glorious! / Our Person, Lord, Thou art / Make home in all our heart. / As life in every way / Be our Person, Lord, each day. (Hymns #1240)