In any load-bearing apparatus, there is a tensile limit, a maximum amount that can be supported before the compression goes beyond the allowance and it breaks. For instance, an elevator's tensile limit is the maximum amount of weight that the advanced system of pulleys and counterweights can handle before the elevator is overloaded, the cables break, and the car crashes down to the bottom of the shaft.
Similarly, humans have a tensile limit for God. We have a maximum amount of God's glory that we can possess within our person. Think of it in logical terms: man, an in-eternal, material-based, finite, fallible being does not have the capacity to comprehend, let alone hold within himself an eternal, omnipotent, infinite, holy, and transcendent Being. This task requires a powerful, sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.
Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, indicates that believers must pray so that the Holy Spirit will strengthen with power our inner beings so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith more fully (Eph. 3:14-21). Paul, quite directly, is saying that it is through the strengthening of our inner beings by the Holy Spirit that our inner tensile strength is increased so as to allow more and more of Christ Jesus, in all His glory, to fill the depths of our beings.
The reality is that, because of sin, we have hard hearts unable to receive God into our inner most beings (Isa. 6:9-10; Matt. 13:15). Only through a change of a supernatural kind are we able to receive God's grace. It is through God's Holy Spirit working in us to transform our hearts from stone to flesh, and to increase our tensile strength to allow the necessary room and strength for Christ Jesus to takeover our very lives. This is a beautiful thing: that God would, by His grace, strengthen our cores so that we could hold Him within it! Sanctification, in the truest sense. Praise God!
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