359. We could not be images of God according to his likeness unless he were within us and were our life from our very center. God's presence within us and God's being our life from our very center follow from what I explained in 4-6 above, namely that God alone is life and that we and angels are life-receivers from him.

The Word tells us that God is in us and makes his home with us; and because the Word tells us this, preachers are fond of telling us to prepare ourselves to let God come into our lives so that he may be in our hearts and that our hearts may be his dwelling. The devout say the same in their prayers. Some [preachers] talk and preach more explicitly about the Holy Spirit, who they believe is within them when they are filled with holy zeal as the source of their thought, speech, and preaching. I have explained in 51-53 of Teachings for the New Jerusalem on the Lord that the Holy Spirit is the Lord and not some God who is a separate individual. The Lord actually says, "In that day you will know that you are in me and I in you" (John 14:21 [20]), and he says similar things in John 15:24 [4] and John 17:23.

3411. Verses 15-17 And all the wells which his father's servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines stopped them up and filled them up with dust. And Abimelech said to Isaac, Go away from being with us, for you are much mightier than we are. And Isaac went away from there, and camped in the Valley of Gerar and dwelt there.

'All the wells which his father's servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines stopped them up' means that people who possessed knowledge of cognitions did not wish to know interior truths that came from the Divine and so effaced them. 'And filled them up with dust' means by means of earthly things. 'And Abimelech said to Isaac' means the Lord's perception regarding that doctrine. 'Go away from being with us, for you are much mightier than we are' means that they would not be able to tolerate those things because of their Divine content. 'And Isaac went away from there' means that the Lord abandoned interior matters of doctrine. 'And camped in the Valley of Gerar and dwelt there' means that He did so for lower rational concepts, that is, He abandoned interior appearances for exterior ones.