Living in Him

Closely allied to the thought of making a pilgrimage into the life and heart of God discussed in the last posting is the idea that God wants us to live in him. Willard makes this point in The Divine Conspiracy as well. "God's desire for us," he writes, "is that we should live in him" (p. 18).

This is a massive statement that we mustn't hurry over. One doesn't have to read Willard for long to discover that he doesn't waste words or use them lightly. When he makes a statement like this, simple though it is, he is expressing a profound idea.

What does Willard mean when he says God wants us to "live in him"? We commonly speak of people living in a certain place. We, (my wife Nola and son John and I), live in Wyndham. When we speak in this way we mean that we are located in Wyndham, have our home there, eat and sleep there, worship there, play our sport there, and do our work from there. Wyndham is the sphere in which our life functions are exercised - at least, for the most part.

This helps us to understand what it means to "live in God." It means to make him the environment, the context, the atmosphere in which we exist. It means that all our thinking, decision-making, acting, and planning takes place in the presence of God, with reference to him, and in dependence upon him. Jesus lived "in" his Father in that sense. There was nothing he did that didn't have reference to his Father. He "lived and moved and had his being in him" (Acts 17:28).

A second example comes to mind. We say that a fish "lives in the sea". By that we mean that the sea is its habitat, its natural environment for function, the region in which it exists and performs its functions of life. According to Willard, God desires that we have that kind of relationship with him.

If that is true - and I believe that it is - it is an incredible idea. God's desire for us is not just that we know about him, and give him a portion of our time and money. He wants us to make him the sphere of our existence. To use another picture from life, he wants us to put our roots in him and draw our life from him. That's how much he loves us. Indeed, as Willard writes, "That shows what, in his heart of hearts, God is really like - indeed, what reality is really like. In its deepest nature and meaning, our universe is a community of boundless and totally competent love" (p. 18).