IN HIM!!!

Illinois River from Pine Ridge Club House photo by Kris!   

My wife and I were staying in a cabin near the Illinois River in Oklahoma.  We decided to explore!  We drove up a hill and came upon a turn off road named Pine Ridge Club House.
It wasn’t private, so we climbed the stairs to the deck.  The view from there took my breath away.  There below us was the Illinois River, the surrounding forests and farmland.  (See photo above).  Suddenly I wanted to be part of all that beauty I was looking at!                                                                                   

Then I remembered that I was ‘IN HIM!’  These two words are repeated 100 times in the New Testament!  The word ‘in’ in Modern Greek denotes a fixed location position, or state of being inside something.  We are ‘IN CHRIST’!  And Christ is in everything He made!  He is in all that beauty!  That’s why beauty is so contagious!!!  He’s in there, ‘in Him all things hold together’!  This is from Colossians 1:16, one of my favorite scriptures and one that forms the foundation for my blog.  

‘For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.  He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.’
Did you ever ask yourself what holds the atom together?  
Physicists call it the ‘Strong Nuclear Force’!  Well, what do you expect?  They are not going to call it Jesus!  But that is exactly what it is.  He is in there ‘holding it all together.’  He is omnipresent!  He is everywhere at once!!!

Read what the Apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 1:3-14!

‘Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.
In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.
And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy
Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.’

Since then, I am ‘in Christ’ and He is in all that beauty, then so am I!!!!!  And that’s the revelation!

King David had a similar reaction to God’s beauty.  He said in Psalm 27:4, ‘One thing I ask from the LORD, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.’

King David ‘gazed on the beauty’ from the outside.  We gaze on the beauty of the Lord from the outside and from the INSIDE, because the Holy Spirit lives within us!

Recognize that you are part of all the beauty you see because you are ‘IN HIM’!

AND REJOICE!