Christ Makes His Home in our Heart by Spreading in us to Become our Person Today

We need to continue steadfastly in prayer and in the ministry of the Word; first, we continue in prayer in a steadfast way, and then in the ministry of the Word, and in particular in Ephesians 3:17 we see that Christ may make His home in our hearts by spreading in our hearts to become our person in our daily living.

Lord Jesus, we give ourselves to You to continue steadfastly in prayer and in the ministry of the Word. Amen, Lord, may we continue in prayer in a steadfast way, and may we be in the ministry of the Word! We want to be in Your word, be filled with Your word, and be men of God filled with the breath of God, the living word of God. Make Your word so living to us. Fill us with Your word. We want to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly until we overflow with the Word! Amen!

Before we can continue steadfastly in the ministry of the word, we need to continue steadfastly in prayer. The word is important, even very important, but for us to properly get into the Word and appropriate the Word, we need much prayer, even prayer in a steadfast way.

We need to be men of prayer, those who pray one with the Lord. Prayer should precede the ministry of the word, just as the apostles practiced (Acts 6:4).

The word of God is so rich, so full of meaning, and so full of revelation; we need to dig deep in God’s word to be filled with the riches of Christ in His word, and we need to have these riches under our tongue, ready to minister them to others for the building up of the church.

For example, we may come to Mark 1:15, which says that the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has drawn near, so we need to repent and believe in the gospel.

This is not just a simple verse showing us the need to repent for the kingdom; this involves many deep matters such as the kingdom of God, our need for proper repentance, the gospel, and the time being fulfilled.

The kingdom of God – what is the kingdom of God? Why do we need to repent for the kingdom? What does it mean to repent? What is genuine and proper repentance? Do we as believers still need to repent? What is the gospel?

How can we enter into the kingdom? What does it mean that the time is fulfilled? What does it mean that the kingdom of God has drawn near? A

ll these matters need to be unpacked and enjoyed by us in our prayerful consideration, and we need to get into the depths of God’s word so that we not only cut straight the word of God but even more, be able to impart life and life-supply to others as we continue stedfastly in the ministry of the Word.

An Example of the Ministry of the Word: That Christ may Make His Home in Your Hearts

An example of the ministry of the Word in a rich way is Ephesians 3:17, which says, That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into the inner man, that Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith.

We may be quite familiar with this verse, but we need to dig into its depths and obtain the riches of Christ in this verse. The Lord doesn’t want to only visit us but make His home, His residence, in our heart. For this, we need to be strengthened into our inner man.

What is our inner man? Before we were saved, we only had the outer man, which is our flesh, and the soul, which was our person. Everything we did originated either from our flesh or our self. But when we were regenerated, our spirit was made alive, for Christ as the Spirit came into our spirit.

Now our regenerated spirit is our inner man, having God’s life as its life. Our inner man is our spirit regenerated by the Spirit of God (John 3:6), indwelt by the Spirit of God (Rom. 8:11, 16), and mingled with the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 6:17).

Now we have not only the outer man but also the inner man; there are two men in us, two persons.

If we want to experience Christ unto all the fullness of God, we need to be strengthened into our inner man. We can testify that many times our inner man is weak; even though we may have set times to read the Bible or pray, our inner man is not that strong, and we are easily distracted.

Especially in this age filled with distracting things, entertainment, and devices, we are so easily distracted from our time with the Lord. We need to pray to be strengthened by the Father through His Spirit into the inner man so that Christ may make His home in our hearts.

Paul bowed his knees unto the Father that He would grant us, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into the inner man, that Christ may make His home in our hearts through faith.

The Bible refers to us as souls – our soul is our person, representing us (Exo. 1:5; Acts 2:41). We human beings are souls, not spirits; our personality, our very person, is in our soul. Our outward vessel is our body, and our inward vessel is our spirit.

However, as believers in Christ, we have the divine life of God in our spirit, and our real person is our inner man, our regenerated spirit indwelt by the Spirit of God.

Our old person – the soul with the human life – has been crucified on the cross (Rom. 6:6), and our new person is now our mingled spirit with the divine life.

We need to be strengthened into our inner man so that we may stay in our spirit and not be distracted by outward things or by any thoughts, feelings, or decisions.

When our inner man is strong, Christ can spread into every part of our inner being – our mind, emotion, and will – to make His home in our inward being.

Christ is in our spirit, where He came through regeneration (2 Tim. 4:22), and we need to allow Him to spread Himself into every part of our heart.

Our heart is the totality of all our inward parts – our mind, emotion, and will, together with our conscience. Our heart is the centre of our inward being.

When Christ makes His home in our heart, He will saturate, permeate, fill, and control our inward being, and He will supply and strengthen every part with Himself.

This is what He wants to do as He seeks to make His home in our heart.

He wants to no longer remain only in our spirit but spread from our spirit into our mind with its thoughts, our emotion with all its feelings, and our will with its decisions and stubbornness.

He wants to occupy and fill every part of our inner being with Himself so that He may express Himself through the way we think, feel and decide things.

Lord Jesus, we open to You today: make Your home in our heart. Father God, strengthen us according to the riches of Your glory through the Spirit into the inner man so that Christ may make His home in our heart through faith! Amen, Lord, strengthen us into our inner man. We come to You and we exercise our spirit to contact You. Thank You for regenerating us with Your life! Hallelujah, God in Christ as the Spirit came into our spirit and has mingled Himself with our spirit to make our spirit our inner man. Oh Lord, strengthen us into our inner man. Strengthen us to stay in our spirit and not be distracted by thoughts regarding so many things. Strengthen us so that our whole being may come back to the inner man and stay there! Amen, Lord, we want to be in our spirit today. We open to You. Spread from our spirit into our mind, emotions, and will. Occupy and saturate our entire inner being with Yourself. Amen, Lord, make our mind be the mind of Christ! May we have Your feelings, Your thoughts, and Your decisions! Make Your home in all our heart through faith! Amen!

Christ Makes His Home in our Heart by Spreading in our Inward Parts to Become our Person

As those learning to continue steadfastly in the ministry of the word, we come to Ephesians 3:17, and we prayerfully consider what does it mean in our experience for Christ to make His home in our heart.

He came into us in our spirit, and now the Lord is with our spirit. However, He wants to spread into our heart and occupy, saturate, permeate, and regulate our mind, emotion, and will. When Christ spreads into our hearts, He becomes our person.

We need to take Christ not only as our life but also as our person. We take Him as our life by calling on His name and by pray-reading His word; in this way, we gain more of His life, and we can live because of Him.

But Christ also wants to be our person; that is, He wants to live in us as the person.

We have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer we who live; we, the old I, have been terminated and crucified, and now Christ lives in us – Christ, the person, lives in us (Gal. 2:20).

If we look at our daily living to see who lives in us, we realise that it is still us who live; in so many ways and in so many situations, we still live, expressing ourselves.

We need to take Christ not only as our life but also as our person in our hearts.

We need to let Christ make His home in our heart by spreading Himself into our inward parts to become our person.

On the one hand, Christ is in the heavens, enthroned far above all; He is the exalted Head of the Body and the Ruler of the kings of the world. On the other hand, Christ is in us, in our spirit, and He lives in us.

He is in our innermost being, in our spirit; He is joined to us and we are joined to Him as one spirit. However, we need to enjoy and experience Him day by day.

We need to let Him deal with our emotions, mind, and will, and we need to let Him work Himself into us.

We may have many memories which trouble us, and we may be plagued by anxiety and anxious thoughts; we need to be strengthened into our inner man and let Christ make His home in our heart through faith so that He may become our person.

The only way that Christ can be our person is for Him to make His home in our hearts. For example, in our married life, it makes a great difference when Christ is our person.

When Christ is the husband’s person in the married life, the wife can sense it, and she can take him as her head and obey him in the Lord.

When Christ is the wife’s person, the husband senses it, and he loves her even as his own body, laying down his life for her, for he loves the Lord and sees Christ lived out in her.

However, if the husband or the wife do not take Christ as their person, the other can sense it, and there are problems, arguments, and exchange of words in the married life. Oh, Lord Jesus!

It is the same in the church life; as we live the church life in oneness with the Lord and with the saints, enjoying Christ on the ground of oneness, we need to take Christ as our person by letting Him make His home in our heart.

This is not a doctrine, nor is this a good thought to give us a good feeling that Christ is making His home in our heart; this is something for our Christian experience.

If we take Christ as our person in our hearts, the person living in our hearts will not be the self but Christ.

This means that there’s a kind of battle taking place in us: the flesh fights against the spirit, and the self tries to control us and subdue us so that we do the will of the self.

In our innermost being, we have the Spirit flowing in our spirit, being one with our spirit, and spreading from our spirit. But everything else around our spirit is fighting and opposing the Spirit’s spreading and Christ’s making His home in our heart.

May we learn to turn to our spirit and take Christ as our life and person. May we ask God to strengthen us into our inner man and make our spirit the strongest part of our being.

When we experience Christ in such a subjective way by Him making His home in our hearts, we will not criticise others nor will we judge them, for we realise that we all need to be strengthened into our inner man for Christ to become our very person.

We will even pray for others, so that the Father would strengthen them through the Spirit into their inner man for Christ to make His home in their heart through faith.

When Christ is not our person, we do things in the self and in the flesh; but when Christ is our life and person, when Christ expands in our heart and takes possession of our heart, He makes His home in our heart in a full way, He saturates our heart, and we no longer live by the self but by Christ.

Lord Jesus, we take You as our life and as our person today. Cause us to be strengthened into our inner man so that Christ may make His home in our hearts through faith. Oh Lord, bring us back to our spirit again and again. We want to turn to our spirit, be in our spirit, live in our spirit, and do all things in our spirit. Hallelujah, Christ is in our spirit, and He is spreading into our mind, emotion, and will! Amen, Lord, we take You as our person. Live in us today. Express Yourself through us today. Expand in our heart. Take possession of our mind, emotion, and will. Make our heart Your home in a full way. Saturate our whole being with Yourself, dear Lord, so that we would no longer live by the self but by Christ. May Christ be expressed through us. May Christ live in us! Amen, may Christ be our person, the One who lives in us and is expressed through us! We pray this for ourselves, for those in our family, for the saints in the church life, and for all believers in Christ! Amen, Lord!

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 on this topic, and portions from, Life-study of Ephesians, pp. 268-270, by Witness Lee, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Ministry of the Word and God’s Dispensing for God’s Economy (2026 March ITERO), week 1, “Steadfastly in Prayer and in the Ministry of the Word” – day 5.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – ’Tis when the Spirit strengthens us / And Christ His home makes in our hearts, / The Father’s fulness with His love / Will fill us in our inward parts. / In Christ, the Father we possess, / Receiving Him for all our need; / In Spirit we experience Christ / As life and everything indeed. (Hymns #243 stanzas 5-6)
  – My old person has been nullified; / With my Lord upon the cross he died; / Now in nothing shall he be applied; / He’s dead to me. / My new Person in my spirit dwells; / Springing in me as a bubbling well; / Flowing out until each part He fills / With abundant life. / Christ, my Person, in my spirit lives; / And my heart to Him I’d daily give; / That my inner man could have a home / And a place to settle down, yes, / A place to call His own, and— / There be my complete reality, / There expressing all He is to me, / Living in my heart abundantly / As my Person real. (Hymns #1180 stanza 1)
  – 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)