The Message version of the Bible paraphrases Romans 8:5-11 like this: ‘If God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him… It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself?’ Laid out like that, the whole business of becoming more like Jesus starts to sound a little bit more achievable. If Christ lives in us like Galatians 2:20 says, He will fill our minds, our hearts, and our souls from the inside. His new life becomes our new life, along with a new way of thinking and being. With Him in every angle of our perspective, it’s inevitable that our thoughts, words, actions, and our very spirits, start to look more and more like His. In short, becoming more Christ-like is more about living in His power than in our own striving. It’s not about desperately trying to cancel out every negative thing that we do, it’s about allowing Jesus to take over from within. The way to become the most Christ-like reflections possible here on earth, then, is to simply invite Him into your life, to live in you, every day. With that continual relationship, asking Him to ‘move into your life’ at every moment, things will start to change. Yes, it can be difficult to commit to becoming more and more like Jesus, but when you hand that process over to God Himself, you can be sure it will start to happen, a day at a time, over a life time.

What Now?

Is there a habit that you’ve been trying to fix, or something that you know you should avoid? When you feel yourself drawn to repeat the same old actions, take yourself somewhere quiet and pray out loud ‘Jesus, please move into my life in this moment’.