Greater Than He Who is in the World

The full verse says “Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” – 1 John 4:4

Through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we have become the children of God. Children of the God who loved us so much that he sent his firstborn son to death, just so that we might possibly choose Him. Just for the chance that we would choose to be his children. That is crazy. 

I could go on and on about how amazing just that fact alone is. But today I want to talk about how our God is greater than anything else. We have the Spirit of the Lord inside of us, and that means that through Him we have overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil. 

Despite this, bad things will continue to happen to us. There will be death, there will be failures, and there will be truly scary moments in our lives. If we rely on our own strength, our own intellect and our own communication skills, we will eventually reach a point where our competence can not carry us anymore. We will hit a wall that we cannot overcome; we have limits as human beings.     

When I first became a Christian in 2021, I was obsessed with trying really hard to change my bad habits and try to become a good person. I would analyze my life, set goals for myself and plan out how I would achieve those goals. Yet every single time I would fail. I would see little to no progress and be left in the exact place I was before I set those goals. It didn’t make any sense. I would read the scriptures and see the life that Jesus wanted me to live, yet I felt as if I was making no progress. This was a cycle that went on for months and only ended when I came to the end of myself. 

What has changed between now and then is that I learned how to surrender. To be honest, I just gave up. I gave up trying to change myself. I gave up trying to quit bad habits by myself. I gave up and gave those things to God — that’s when I saw him start to move. He started to change my heart and attitude towards things. I started to see real change in my life. Things that I had been fighting to change for months started to unravel, and things that I wasn’t even trying to change started to shift.

I didn’t fully understand why this happened back then, but now I understand what happened. It is because “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” My own strength was not even close to being enough, but God is so much stronger and greater than me that it is honestly kind of funny that I would even try to do things myself. 

So this is my encouragement to you who are reading this: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, which is within you, are all way stronger, smarter and greater than you. If you are struggling, if you’re going through a hard time, or if you are in need — please stop trying to fight on your own. Realizing that “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” is one of the best things that you can do as a Christian.

Written by SAU Marketing student Francis Kwashie.