Lord, nothing important will happen here this morning
unless you are present .
Holy Spirit, we cannot worship
unless you make us able to worship.
Our attempts at worship will be counterfeit
unless you inhabit our worship
in purposefulness and power.
I ask,
on behalf of my people
for your directing,
empowering
presence.
Grant that this morning in our worship —
and in everything else we do here together —
we might be
filled,
clothed,
immersed,
permeated by you,
O Spirit of light and Life.
©2012 Gary A. Chorpenning; all rights reserved.
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Gary Chorpenning's Notebooks 
John 15:4 “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.”
To be in Christ – clothed and immersed
and
Christ in us – filled and permeated
That is an interconnectedness that is hard for me to wrap my mind around.
When Christ was born He became Emmanuel, God WITH us. When He ascended and then gave us the Holy Spirit, He became God IN us.
So when we ask God to be with us, I wonder…
Does the Spirit come and go from us? Do we have to ask Him to return to us or has He already taken up permanent residency? He is always with us. Is it that, the degree to which we are filled by the Spirit is dependent upon the degree to which we are emptied of ourselves?
Lord, make us alert and attentive to your presence within us.
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And I remind myself – I don’t expect to be able to wrap my mind around it. It is a relationship to be experienced, not understood.
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