When Christ makes His Home in our Heart, we take Him as our Person in an Adequate Way

We first take Christ as our person and then take Him as our life; when we received the Lord, He as a person came into us, and Christ desires to make His home in our hearts so that His person would become our person for the church as the one new man.

To take Christ as our person is not something we MUST do but something we do because we love the Lord.

We love Him, we open to Him, and we take Him as our life and person.

It is not that we have to force ourselves to submit to Him but rather, we live according to the Lord’s preferences because of our love for Him.

We love Him because He loved us first, and we have His love poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

We don’t “grit our teeth” and submit ourselves to God; rather, because we love Him, because we see His love toward us, we simply take Him as our person.

This is seen in type in the Song of Songs, where the lover pursues the Beloved for her satisfaction and, eventually, is one with Him and even becomes His counterpart, His duplication, to be the same as Him in every possible way.

First, she starts as a horse pulling Pharaoh’s chariot; however, she loves the Lord, she wants to kiss Him and be kissed by Him, and she pursues after Him.

He continues to bestow His love on her, and she enjoys her love relationship with her beloved.

And as she pursues Him, the Lord deals with her and touches her personality.

She is like a strong horse, so her personality needs to be subdued.

So she loves Him and goes on until she enjoys Him in the inner chamber, and she wants to remain there until He comes.

But all of a sudden He disappears; He is like a gazelle, leaping on the mountains and skipping on the hills, and He calls her to come out to her.

But she remains in her introspection, so she needs to be dealt with until she is brought to the high mountain, to Lebanon, to attain the height of her spiritual experience.

And from there the Lord said, Come with Me to the valley where the people with all the needs are.

Then, she is asleep, any earthly defilement was put aside, and the Lord comes knocking on her door, with myrrh dripping on His hand.

He calls her to not stay in her spirituality but to come with Him to minister to the many needy ones, even to suffer with Him.

She wants to have an easy time to rest, but her Beloved doesn’t let her; He always deals with her personality.

Eventually, she is transformed into a pillar of smoke (no personality there), a palanquin carrying Solomon, a crown on Solomon’s head, and she becomes the Shulammite.

She becomes the feminine form of Solomon; Solomon’s personality has become her personality. All this takes place in an atmosphere of love and pursuing the Lord in love.

Again and again the Lord draws us, courts us, woos us, and brings us further with Him until we become the same as He is, and His personality becomes our personality.

As He deals with us in love, we take Him as our person, and we are fully one with Him; we even become His duplication, His counterpart, His match.

Lord Jesus, we love You!

We need to take Christ as our Person so that we may Grow and Mature in Life

Our concept is that we first take Christ as our life, for we receive His life at the time of our regeneration.

But actually, what is first is not taking Christ as our life but taking Christ as our person.

We do enjoy Christ and take Him as our life, and we love taking Him as life.

But first we need to take Him as our person. 1 John 5:11-12 says that he who has the Son has the life.

God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son; He doesn’t give us His life apart from the Son but in the Son.

So if we have the Son of God, we have the life, but if we don’t have the Son of God, we don’t have the life.

In other words, God doesn’t give us something called “life” or “love” apart from Christ; everything He gives us is Christ and is in Christ.

When we take Christ as our person, we have the life of God, the love of God, the joy of God, and everything that God is.

If we take Christ as our person, we will surely take Him as our life (Col. 3:4).

As believers in Christ, we need to realize that, yes, we do have the life of God in us, but even more, we have the person of the Son of God in us.

We have God’s life because Christ, the Person, lives in us. And we enjoy the life of God growing in us when we take Christ as our person.

We first take Christ as our person, and then we take Him as our life; when we take Christ as our person, we automatically have Him as our life.

He who has the Son, has the life; he who does not have the Son of God, doe snot have the life.

We have the divine life because we have Christ, the Son of God; because we have Christ in us, we have the life of God.

If we take Christ as our person, we will be able to grow and mature in the divine life (Col. 2:19; Eph. 3:17; 4:13, 15).

Sometimes we look at some saints and we see that they are so dear and they love the Lord and the saints so much, but you don’t have the sense that they are growing in life.

Even after decades of being Christians and being in the church life, some saints may not grow in life, even though they love the Lord and they love the church.

Why is this? One reason is that they did not take Christ as their person.

They love the Lord for all that He does for them, and they receive what the Lord gives them; they simply enjoy the supply He renders to them, and they love Him.

But they never take Christ as their person, and they are not subdued, so they do not grow in life.

They may be faithful to the church and remain here, being in the sphere of the church life and even helping with many things in the services of the church, but they do not grow in life.

We can grow in life only when we take Christ as our person. We grow with the growth of God; to grow with the growth of God means that Christ, the person, grows in us.

The genuine growth in life is the addition of God to us, the growth of the person of Christ in us.

How do we grow in life? It is by allowing Christ to grow in us.

We need to take His person as our person, and His likes and dislikes as ours.

We should no longer be children, tossed about by waves of teachings in the sleight of men, but grow in life by holding to truth in life.

We need to grow up into Him in all things, who is the Head, Christ.

We grow in life by holding to the Head, Christ, so that we may receive the growth from Him.

As He grows in us, we grow into Him in all things, and His person becomes our person.

As the Head, He controls every part, every member of the Body; our growing must be growing into this Person, who is our Head.

Lord Jesus, we take You as our person today. You are our life and our everything. Thank You, dear Lord, for coming to mingle Yourself with us. Thank You for coming into us as a Person. Grow in us today. We do not want to remain infants or childish in our spiritual life; we want to grow into Christ in all things. Amen, Lord, we take You as our person so that we may grow and mature in the divine life! May Your person grow in us so that we may grow with the growth of God. May Christ increase in us and may we decrease. Amen, Lord, we take You as our person in our thinking, our decision-making, our desires, and our feelings. May Your likes and dislikes be our likes and dislikes, and may Your preferences be our preferences. We hold to the truth in love so that we may grow up into Christ, the Head, as our Person in all things!

When Christ makes His Home in our Heart, we will take Him as our Person in an Adequate Way

The Bible may not specifically say that Christ wants to be our person or that we need to take Christ as our person, but we are told again and again of how He wants to be our person.

For example, Eph. 3:17 tells us that Christ desires to make His home in our hearts. We may read this and think we understand this, but this is a deep matter.

We may invite a brother to stay with us for a few days, but we do not allow him to make his home in our house, because our house is our own home, not his home.

Christ doesn’t want to be the guest of our house – He wants to be the host of the house, He wants to make His home in our heart.

He wants to make our heart His home; He wants to settle down there.

Many times, however, our heart is like a prison to Him, for we allow the Lord to do only this or that in us, and we reject His speaking to us when He wants to go further and make His home in us.

He wants to have the liberty and the right to fully settle in our heart.

When He came into us, Christ came in our spirit (Gal. 6:18; Phil. 4:23; Philem. 25); the Lord today is with our spirit (2 Tim. 4:22).

But He wants to spread from our spirit into our hear to make His home in us.

This means that He wants to make His home in all the parts of our heart – our conscience, our mind, our emotion, and our will.

The Lord does not want to remain imprisoned or confined to our spirit; He wants to make His home in us and house Himself permanently in our heart.

He doesn’t want to merely be a visitor in us; He wants to be the owner of the house.

When Christ makes His home in our heart, we will take Him as our person in an adequate way.

Our heart is the center of our inward being; the Lord wants to spread and move into our heart to take control of our heart.

However, we may not be willing to allow Him to do this.

For example, when we set our mind on the things of the flesh (Rom. 8:5), the Lord wants to redirect our thoughts; we, however, may tell Him to stay in our spirit and not come into our mind to bother us.

When we want to do something that is of the flesh, the Lord within us may speak to us and bother us, but we may reject Him and brush Him aside; this is to keep Him confined to our spirit.

We may go shopping and we may really want to buy certain items, but the Lord within us may not agree with it; if we do not listen to His feeling within us, He cannot spread into our heart to make His home there.

We need to let Christ touch our imnd, emotion, and will, so that He may spread in our heart and make His home there.

How can we do this? We don’t let anyone touch our inner feelings, desires, thoughts, and preferences because these things are what we are, what we like, and what we dislike.

In order for Christ to be able to make His home in our heart, we need to be strengthened into our inner man.

Our inner man needs to be strengthened with power through the Spirit by the Father so that Christ may make His home in our hearts (Eph. 3:14-16).

We are too strong in our mind, emotion, and will, and we are so weak in our spirit.

Sometimes we may be so strong in our will to do something or make a certain decision that we will not allow Christ to change that decision.

But we are so weak in our spirit. So we need to be strengthened into our inner man so that Christ may spread from our spirit into our heart.

How can we be strengthened into our inner man? It is by calling on the name of the Lord, confessing our sins, and asking the Lord to forgive us of our failures and cleanse us with His precious blood (1 John 1:7, 9).

We need to contact the Lord, open our being to Him, and apply His precious blood; His blood cleanses us and washes us, and His Spirit strengthens us within.

The more we contact the Lord by calling on His name, the more we are strengthened into our inner man.

The more we call on the name of the Lord, the more we are filled with Him, the more we enjoy His riches, and the more we are strengthened into our inner man (Rom. 10:12-13).

Then, our inner man is strong, and the Lord has a way to spread from our spirit into our mind, the leading part of our soul, to saturate our mind.

He spreads into our mind, emotion, and will, and He makes His home in our heart.

The more we’re strengthened into our inner man and Christ makes His home in our heart, the more we take Christ as our person in an adequate way.

His mind becomes our mind, His emotion becomes our emotion, and His will becomes our will.

Christ becomes our person in reality when we allow Him to make His home in our hearts.

Our living will simply be the issue of Christ working within us; it will no longer be us who live but Christ who lives in us (Gal. 2:20).

Lord Jesus, make Your home in our heart today. We open to You. Oh Lord Jesus, cause us to be strengthened with power through the Spirit into the inner man so that Christ may make His home in our heart through faith! Amen, Lord, make our inner man strong. We come to You; cleanse us and wash us with Your precious blood, and fill us with Your riches so that our inner man may be strong. Amen, Lord, strengthen us into our inner man so that You may have a way to spread in our heart and make Your home there. We don’t want to limit You to our spirit; spread, dear Lord, spread into our mind, emotion, and will! May You have a way to spread from our spirit into every part to saturate our mind, fill our emotion, and occupy our will! Lord, we just open: take over our entire inner being and fully settle down in us, thus making Your home in our heart! We allow You, Lord Jesus, to make Your home in us so that we may take You as our person in an adequate way!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by the brothers in the message for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1971, vol. 1, pp. 277-278, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Knowing, Experiencing, and Living the All-inclusive Christ for the Genuine Church Life (2023 spring ITERO), week 3, entitled, Taking Christ as Our Person for the Church as the One New Man.
• Similar articles on this topic:
  – Christ Growing in Our Heart (1): The Revelation in the New Testament, via, Living to Him.
  – Christ making His home in our hearts, a portion from, Life-Study of 1 & 2 Samuel, Chapter 30, by Witness Lee.
  – Lord, Make Your Home in our Hearts, article at, New Jerusalem blog.
  – Where Is God’s Home? Read more via, Bibles for America blog.
  – Growing by taking Christ as our person, a portion from, One Body, One Spirit, and One New Man, Chapter 6, by Witness Lee.
  – Outline for International Blending Conference in Warsaw, Poland, May 2023 – Knowing, Experiencing, and Living the All-inclusive Christ for the Genuine Church Life.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – As the center, as the kernel, / Of God’s plan our spirit is; / Calling on the name of Jesus / Makes our spirit one with His. / From the center to circumference / God would saturate each part; / Feeling, mind, and will renewing, / Making home in all our heart. (Hymns #1325 stanza 4)
  – Oh, strengthen my spirit, Lord Jesus, / Oh, strengthen my spirit, I pray; / Oh, strengthen my spirit with power / And spread to my heart today. / Into my heart, into my heart, / Spread into my heart, Lord Jesus; / Make home today and have Your way / In all of my heart, Lord Jesus. (Hymns #1134 stanza 1 and chorus)
  – 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 stanza 5)