Dec 18th - indwelling

I was at a carol service on Sunday evening and one of the lessons was from Isaiah 11

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
    from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
2 The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—                       
    the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
    the Spirit of counsel and of might,
    the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—
3 and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.

He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
    or decide by what he hears with his ears;
4 but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
    with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
    with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
5 Righteousness will be his belt
    and faithfulness the sash around his waist.

I dont know how many times I have read or heard those verses over my lifetime, but as I was sitting in church on Sunday evening something suddenly occurred to me which I hadnt thought of before.    ' The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him ( Jesus ) '   and that Spirit is the very same Spirit that lives in me.  The Spirit that Jesus told the disciples would come upon them and empower them and send them out.  The Spirit that has been given to me so that I might know the Father and do even greater things than Jesus did.   When Jesus ascended into heaven He gave you and me the job of being Jesus to the world and enabled us to do that by imparting His very own spirit into our spirits so that we could have all the resources of heaven at our disposal.

So that made me wonder what would happen if I replaced the word ' he' with ' I'  and ' his' with ' my' in that passage.   Read this slowly and read it as a promise - emphasise with word 'will' in your mind and see what happens.  It is even better if you read it out loud.

2 The Spirit of the Lord will rest on me
    the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
    the Spirit of counsel and of might,
    the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—
3 and I will delight in the fear of the Lord.

I will not judge by what I see with my eyes,
    or decide by what I hear with my ears;
4 but with righteousness I will judge the needy,
    with justice I will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
I will strike the earth with the rod of my mouth;
    with the breath of my lips I will slay the wicked.
5 Righteousness will be my belt
    and faithfulness the sash around my waist.

That will have different resonances with different people but the bit which really grabbed my attention was in verse 4.  Words are mighty when they are spoken by the Spirit of God.  They can bring down strongholds,  destroy the enemy and devastate wickedness.   I don't remember that very often.  And I rarely give permission for the Holy Spirit to be all He wants to be in my life.   If I did, I would be so like Jesus people would probably want to kill me.