God's Spirit

I know I keep going back to this but if Dad is right and John 15:7 is the most powerful verse on prayer, then I need to meditate on it a lot!  I like to look at in in context.

John 15:5-8 (The Message)
I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you're joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can't produce a thing. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire. But if you make yourselves at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon. This is how my Father shows who he is—when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples.

I have to be joined to Christ.  Remain connected to Him.  I need to make myself at home with Him.  Christ and His Words at home in me.  That can't happen unless God's Spirit lives in me.  God's Spirit won't dwell in me unless He is comfortable there.  At home.  Can God live comfortably within me?

I Corinthians 6:19-20 (The Message)
Or didn't you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don't you see that you can't live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body.

In order for me to remain in God and he in me, I need to surrender my life and my body to him.  It's not enough just to choose to live for God.  I have to freely and fully surrender my life over to His control.  Have I created a "homey" environment for God?  Can he dwell comfortably within me?  Am I "at home" in Christ?

Where do you feel as comfortable as you do when you're at home?  Of course, where ever Mom & Dad lived always felt like home to me.  My grandmother's house (which my grandfather built when Mom was 12) was always home.  Aunt Sis' house is always home to me, no matter where she moves.  But the places where I feel at home are actually pretty limited. 

There are certainly many places where I feel uncomfortable.  How do you suppose God, who is Holy, righteous, and just, feels around me?  Just the thought of it makes me uneasy!  Praise God, He has clothed me in righteousness!  I need to respond by allowing God to live through me.

1 John 3:21-24  (The Message)
And friends, once that's taken care of and we're no longer accusing or condemning ourselves, we're bold and free before God! We're able to stretch our hands out and receive what we asked for because we're doing what he said, doing what pleases him. Again, this is God's command: to believe in his personally named Son, Jesus Christ. He told us to love each other, in line with the original command. As we keep his commands, we live deeply and surely in him, and he lives in us. And this is how we experience his deep and abiding presence in us: by the Spirit he gave us.