1 John 4:13 Meaning By This We Know That We Remain

How do you know that the divine is not somewhere far off but living within you? Not through belief, and not because you have been told so. You know it because you can feel it directly, a subtle sense of aliveness and presence that is always here when you grow still enough to notice.

That inner aliveness is the Spirit given to you. To feel it is to know that you dwell in the divine and the divine dwells in you, for there is only one presence and it is looking out through your eyes. The knowing is not an idea in your head. It is a felt certainty that arrives the moment you turn attention inward and sense the life within you.

Pour water into a glass and the water takes the glass's shape while the glass is filled by the water; neither is quite where the other ends. The gift is the surest sign of the bond, for a person knows God's nearness not by argument but by the breath stirring within. The fault this rebukes is doubt, the anxious hunt for proof outside oneself.

The cure is to turn inward toward what has already been placed there. God is present as that indwelling breath, the giver so joined to the gift that to hold one is to be held.