You Have What It Takes

JESUS, THE TOTAL.

TRUST OF CHRIST JESUS SERIES

BOOK ONE

DEAN CHICQUETTE

Copyright © 2022 by Dean Chicquette

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

All Biblical quotes are from the NASB 1995 edition updated as supplied by Faith Life Group and copyrighted by the Lockman Foundation.

Contents

Prologue

Preface

Prayer

1. Right Self

2. Real Rest

3. Right Hope

4. Do Life

5. Get Dependent

6. The Cause

7. Spirit Living

8. Availability

9. Sanctification

10. Live Total

11. Merit and Grace

12. Unique You

13. Completed

14. Love For Others

15. Godliness

16. No Lack

17. God Present

18. True For You Too

19. Revived

20. Accept

Notes

Prologue

This work is pithy. It is meant to be read a chapter at a time letting you ruminate on the points that seem difficult to understand.

Changing our minds is best done when not trying to fit the new or different into the old wineskin [match old ideas]. Jesus warned us that the new and fermenting wine in old dry skins can burst the skin and waste the wine. So it is with us. Unless we become a new ‘I’ the new wine can damage our ways of thinking.

It takes a new ‘i’ to let the new wine give consideration to the new wineskin. The new wine is Holy Spirit himself. The new wineskin is the sense of self attached to God’s very Spirit. God cannot fit into flesh while flesh tries to function as if it were a god.

The flesh cannot be the source of godliness.

At the same time, our union with God, through the new wineskin of trust in God’s abilities, crates a new ‘I’. This new ‘I’ is so big its thoughts have to kick out old thoughts to make room for new ones.

For example, when I heard, in 1970, I had to ‘die to self’, I thought ‘i’ had to do it. But that very I had been crucified with Christ and no longer lived. There was a new I on the block housing and expressing God himself.

Though this is a simple statement. It has taken 55 years for me to identify with the new I. This new I is not rejuvenating the old ‘i’ but replacing it with the very Person of trust in God. The new I is Christ while the new wineskin is the I that lets Christ’s trust rule the flesh. My new self is my soul attached to his will. I am but a soul in a skin of trust in God.

So then, give each and every ‘new’ or challenging thought time to find room in your heart. You can spend the rest of your life coming to understand what the heart can embrace in a moment. The understanding does not credential truth but dresses it in a new self, fit for a public life.

(SEE GALATIANS 2:20)

The old I no longer exists, but Christ lives the new me. The life I now experience is lived by trusting in God’s Son. He is the only one who loves this new me and is even now giving himself up for me.[1]

This new ‘I’ is a new ‘us’.

Preface

I want to thank Mike Q. Daniel for his morning live YouTube group. His words have inspired much of what follows. Many of the lessons herein were taught to me by Holy Spirit when writing Simply Grace in 2017.

Prayer

Father, I recognize that you have inspired me, the literal in-breathing of the Holy Spirit within me so that I can breathe in the excitement that you are for me. I acknowledge that you are building me up through this enthusiasm for Jesus’s life within. This is you indwelling me with your abilities to will and do. For you have called me to experience you within, through my daily walk of your loving others through me. You encourage me to rest by trusting in your abilities and trusting your will for my life. I look toward you Father and know that you encourage others to trust in the name of Jesus (Jehovah Saves).

Your child, Dean Chicquette

Amen!

Chapter 1

Right Self

Self-incrimination blocks you from learning when, where, and how to trust Christ. Every time you think you can improve yourself you set yourself up for disappointment and a sense of estrangement from God’s love. Trying to silence thoughts that incriminate is useless. When you awake to the fact that you are struggling with doubt, despair, or self-incrimination you can use these things to flip things upside down by letting them reaffirm your trust in God. Making mistakes is almost inevitable. But when you recognize you are trusting yourself to improve, you can label it distrust in God’s Person alive in you. You have, at that moment, the opportunity to transform distrust into trusting him instead of your flesh self.

Right-self or wrong-self? Your choice.

Chapter 2

Real Rest

You don't have to be upset when you mistakenly misplace your hope and put the burden to produce godliness on the flesh. It is in repenting [thinking differently] you discover how, when, and why you got tricked in trying to be like God. Instead, you can practice ‘rediscovering’ your real self, the new man.

When you discover you are upset with yourself, instead of being captured by some growing frustration and thinking worse of yourself you can remember that you are in-dwelt by the very presence and Person of God. So, instead of beating yourself up, you can return and trust God.

When you struggle to avoid temptation you have already been captured by the lie that temptation is evil itself.[1] Subtly that voice is getting you to chant “I am evil, broken, and in need of more information or skill to avoid sin. I do not yet have what it takes. I must…!”

In these moments you can transform the doubt moment into a trusting moment. How? By transforming your self-effort into resting in what God has already done.[2]

Resting in God’s work is real rest.

Chapter 3

Right Hope

Let frustrations remind you that your hope is always and only in him. In Romans 5 it says that your hope in him never disappoints because he has already given you his Life-Giving Spirit and poured out his love into your heart by his Spirit’s indwelling. Because of this fact, you have no need to be disappointed. When your hope is in him you are resting in his abilities. If you are trusting yourself attached to the flesh’s thoughts and sensations you will suffer disappointment. Why? Because sin is distrust and distrust disappoints.[1]

Exercising hope in a crucified old man to produce life is dead works. The flesh produces death. Right now, in an instant, you can escape hope in flesh’s-control to hope in God’s-control by remembering that the very Spirit that made Jesus Christ victorious will produce his victories through you. He will change what needs to be changed as you trust in his abilities.

Misplaced hope disappoints while rightly placed hope in God with you (Emmanuel) never disappoints. By living from God’s Grace Perspective, his indwelling life, and the re-incarnation reality of Christ in you, you are encouraged. His devotion to you will be transformed into your devotion to him.

Rightly placed hope wins.

Chapter 4

Do Life

Disappointment always shows up after putting hope in your flesh’s mind and strength. To have expectations that someday, with enough information and effort, you can produce life, you are going to suffer disappointment. Only God is life and the producer of life. You can be dead, really dead, and he can raise you up. Christ for you, in you, and through you is life. The problem isn't that you are not living well enough or doing good enough or that you haven’t put your hope in the right person. It is as simple as you have tightened up. Everything goes wrong when you are uptight. You even start to make more and more mistakes as you get more frustrated and get wound up tighter.

Life in your hands is out of hand.

Your stressing out makes Christianity look like an impossible task depending on you to do God stuff without any godly abilities with which to do them. From Christ’s perspective, you can see the frustration of the flesh trying to do what only he can do. Pride is nothing more than your judgment that you, more than others, are doing the flesh well enough to keep putting hope in it. The flesh produces effort while God doing his living through us is rest.[1]

Simply put, you often suffer over the results you are getting when for God they are absolutely perfect. When you are frustrated, what you do to change negates your trusting God’s ability to reflect his very nature and character through you. Instead of being upset about how badly you are doing, you can accept the frustration as your cue to repent, change your mind, and trust God’s abilities to do you.

The fleshly mind does death.

God does life.

Chapter 5

Get Dependent

This incarnation of the life that Christ is in you is seen in the Christmas story that God was born and laid in a manger. Think of it, God being born is in itself a contradiction. The uncreated, unborn, everlasting God of all creation dressed with flesh. The very word of God, with God, and being God himself reduced himself to a human being a human as he had created humans to be, perfect reflections of his personage and will. He became one of us in order that you can be one of his. So that he could live his life as one of you so that others could see God’s way of living.

Your excuse for living is his living seen as your very own personal life. God, having been reduced to living as one of us, reduces us to be reflections of his Son’s perfect life living him. In the person of Christ, you live, move, and have your being. Like him, you never have to emulate yourself. You get to be who you are without restraints. Love has no bounds.

The flesh is bounded in every way. It is your soul that is released from being attached to the death of the flesh to be joined to God’s Son, Jesus the Christ. You were designed to live your perfect life as God’s perfect child. As Jesus lived exactly as humans were designed to live you are enabled to live from the life of God in you. Just as Christ lived dependent upon the father you were made to live depending on the indwelling life of Christ.

Get dependent, stay dependent.

Chapter 6

The Cause

God has made you exactly as you were always meant to be. You were meant to be the recipient of his living you. This is the life we were designed to live. God touched the earth as he entered into his creation with his breath of life. He entered into a human named Adam. Even Christ lives by the indwelling Breath of God. If you can get a glimpse of what it means for Christ to live as a human as you then you'll begin to understand what it means for you to live the life that you were designed to live from the very beginning. You were never meant to live independently of God. You are meant to live by his indwelling life. You aren't just living for him but living because of his living you. He is not just the cause of Life, he is the producer of the life you live. For to live for God is just like Christ living for God.

Jesus honored Father God by doing what Father was doing. Visualize this, if Jesus wanted to be the cause of what the flesh did he did not need Father. But, his being a servant to Father’s will, made him a slave to what his father could do through him. If he would have succumbed to the temptation on the mountain he would have turned stones into bread and become his own cause to his own ends. He also would have jumped from the peak of the temple to be recognized as the lord of the world. Instead of him being the cause of anything he says, “everything I see from my Father is what I do and everything I hear from my Father is what I say.”

The cause of being is God.

The cause of doing is God.

Chapter 7

Spirit Living

Perfect sinless Jesus, God unified with Jesus, was God incarnate living totally dependent upon his Father. If Jesus, who had it all going on for himself, lived dependently on God how much more are you encouraged to live dependently upon God? Yes, we live for him but we do that by totally depending upon him. Every time you say yes to what he is doing it is you saying, ‘yes use me. I'm available to you.’ This is not a declaration that I'll get it done for you God or I'll do it all correctly or I'll make it happen but I am willing and available for what only you can do in and through me to be done by you and for your glory.’

You cannot live for him before you are living from him.

You cannot live from him until your life is his will lived out in the moment. You can realize that he is the cause of your life so that he can be your living testament. You can let him live his life through you. Your obedience is not doing for him but it is letting him do whatever he wants through you. So then, it is by his gifting you receive his trust seen through you, letting you live a life that only Christ can live.

God’s desire for you is to live your life as if it were totally you, while all the time knowing it is totally him. When you realize that you living ‘your life for God’ is letting him live his life through you, you will live your life without trying to live for him. When you try to do God’s stuff outside of trust you will suffer disappointment. What you want to do by flesh effort is to live a life that is for him.

Spirit living is your living the life that only he can Live.

Chapter 8

Availability

He is the beginning and the end of the Christian Life. You are the recipient and the expression of Christ's life. You don't get to take credit for what God is doing. Like it or not, you are totally dependent upon God to live through you, resulting in the praise of the glory of his grace.

Your availability is worshiping his ability.

Your trust in him is enough to give up the pursuit of seeking your needs and wants in every circumstance for what he is willing to do through you. As you trust him to meet all your needs to complete his tasks, life’s circumstances become your call to pray. “Father, to me it looks like a problem but I know this is your victory.” With this attitude, you can use circumstances to submit to both his will and ways to co-reconcile the universe to himself. Your identity becomes your affirmation, “Not me, but he!” Anything else is self-idolatry or flesh idolatry. It is you trying to be the source, causing and producing what only God can do and produce. With this truth firmly settled within you, you no longer try to use effort to fix circumstances. Your ability to gain significance, sufficiency, and security in your life is always and only accessed through his trust livened in you as he trusts the Father through you.

Your needs are real and you have God as the only thing you need.

Chapter 9

Sanctification

Your companionship with Christ’s Spirit completes you. You can thank God for Holy Spirit. As you trust him you become available for what he's doing in and through your life instead of trying to get some sense of security or identity. You can be totally available for what God wants to work through you and for you instead of trying to use things, people, or God to get what he has already given. He has given you his will. His will is that you trust Jesus Christ. Because of this, you don’t have to be a victim of your own identity or someone else’s identity crisis. Trying to get identity and value and significance is like spitting in God’s face as he is trying to breathe life into your lifeless body. He has breathed Christ’s very Spirit into you.

Keep receiving his breathing.

You don't have to subject yourself to anybody other than Christ Jesus. When you trust God’s gift, he will be your source of security and defined purpose. This doesn't mean you won’t need but you will trust that he knows what you need and will meet those needs in his ways and in his time and by his very Person. As you trust Christ as sufficient for everything that seems lacking in this world or lacking in your experience, watch and receive instead of living to get. Your sense of significance and identity is in Christ. You were not re-created for you to expertly use Holy Spirit for your personal gain or glory.

Sanctification defined

You are made anew for Christ to use you.

Chapter 10

Live Total

You don't have to produce a result in order to cause yourself to increase a sense of self-sufficiency. Your job is not to gain some self-identity but to identify Christ at work in the here and now. God can and will meet your needs however and whenever he wants because he is LORD. You are included in his story not he in yours. The life of Christ was not given to you so you can trust him to fix you but for you to know he has completed you. Your total availability to him is his total availability to you. You are the righteousness of God. That righteousness is found in Christ. Instead of your righteousness or self-justification or self-sovereignty or self-sufficiency, God is looking for his Son who has proven his humility to his Father’s sovereignty, righteousness, justification, sovereignty, and sufficiency.

“But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption,”( Corinthians )

This Christian life is not about what you are doing with the help of God but about what he's doing without your help. He has you already, which is an entirely different life. God has equipped you to live the most successful life possible—his. God is not working on you for you to be more successful. God is not making you more effective at getting God into your own little corner of a creation of your desires.

He is teaching you to live your needs as he is available to fulfill those needs with his life. He is inviting you to trust him instead of trying to take the reins from him and gain trust in yourself. God has chosen to impact the world from the inside out by becoming one of you and living as if you are doing the living. Now that is oneness, that is union with God. The same Spirit of Christ that was in the baby in the manger has been born in you. You have been reborn in the very Spirit and Life of God. Christ is in you. Jesus within cries out as you say ‘Abba Father’. His life is sufficient and his living is inevitable.

Your trust in his living his life is total.

Chapter 11

Merit and Grace

Jesus had to include you in his resurrected form in order to send you his very Spirit so that you can be in-dwelt by him in his ‘new’ body. What he began in Christ’s body he is completing in and through his greater body. His Spirit which indwells you makes you the current incarnation of the very Spirit of God. The difference between you and Christ is immeasurable. As he walked the earth he merited Life while we are re-created capable of receiving that Life. His rightful status as the only begotten Son of God with all authority, ability, righteousness, and holiness was gained. This is so astounding that the four living creatures have been crying from eternity past holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come. So then the difference between the holiness that you have and the Holiness that he has is this.

His came by merit and yours by grace.

What he has ‘earned’ you have been given. What he has gained have you have received. This is the mechanism by which you have become like God in this world. In the book of First John, you are told that you will be like him in this world with this difference, he can cause by his own worthiness, while you receive at his expense the right to be worthy to live just as Jesus lives now through you. The same Spirit that made him capable then is the Spirit that makes you capable now. He is the source of your ability to receive from God what he is receiving from God right now.

His nature in you has re-made the you, you are.

His vessel of grace.

Chapter 12

Unique You

He died to make you compatible with his living. He crucified and resurrected you in himself. Just as Christ was born, died, and reborn you have been born, died, and reborn. The immeasurable difference is that what's true of him by merit is true of you by grace.

His living he gets all of the glory.

His life proves he has paid the cost for you. He was the cause of his Divine Life then and he as you is the cause of your divine living now. Why? So that in everything God does through you is to the praise of his glorious grace (gifting). He gets all of the recognition, for it is only he that can do through you what God requires of you. Because of this your life should look like Christ's life except it's your personality, your gifting, your history, your body, and your talents…

are, by Christ’s Spirit, a unique you.

Chapter 13

Completed

Christians express Christ's life to one another as we live selflessly, edifying one another as Christ did through his disciples. The disciples after Christ left and after Pentecost became Christ’s extended body. His new bodies were made capable to cause others to witness his resurrection. It is by the very trust of Christ Jesus, you receive the Spirit and authority to trust Christ walking out now what he walked then, total obedience to Father’s will.

By this trust and immediately, you, like Jesus, can so love one another as to lay down, right now, self-living and embrace other-living. Your sacrificial love and edification transform the flesh’s desire to live to get from God to live for what you can give to each other. Your living for what you can get from the world damns the trust that Christ is sufficient to overwhelmingly complete his grace in others. Your empowered life is Christ recognizing Christ alive within them and so witnessing this fact that they submit to Christ’s love for them by loving one another. The world, he said, would know you by your love for one another.

Embrace God’s sacrificial empowerment.

The story of Christmas is also about your incarnation in that baby in a manger. It is about his life coming in human form so that you, by his life, could live a life that proves he is resurrection. You are the proof that what he merited has been gifted to you by his Person living through your behavior. The Spirit of Christ walking in your flesh is dependent upon the life of God. Just as what was true then for Jesus, is true for you. You give just like he gives. You operate in the exact same way that Christ operates. He was then only what Father in him was doing, saving the world, loving the word. He was made sufficient because he submitted to Father’s will. Now, in you, that same humility is your sufficiency. He is also your security. He is your significance. In fact, you live just as he lives.

“By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.”( John )

Love himself has completed you.

Chapter 14

Love For Others

The gift that is in you, the grace that is in you, and sufficiency, are all about the empowerment to express Divine Love to everyone else, even at your expense. Your hope that what is Christ's is already yours is governed by his radical availability to accomplish whatever he wants through you. He expresses only his sacrificial incarnation again through your needs. Once the need is recognized, you get to be the conveyance of Christ's life as the package of his grace to somebody else. Just as Jesus was Father’s gift he opened up before us on that first Christmas so you are his modern-day reborn gift of Christ's life of humility to a world of prideful folk. Every day is a possible Christmas for someone. As you walk hubby before your God people see the gift revealed.

Nothing is more prideful than you trying to live for God.

Apart from his divine abilities at work in you, your message can only be, “look at me”. In contrast, the reborn person proclaims, “look at Jesus”. Any message that says you are bettering the work of Holy Spirit by flesh efforts to improve is satanic. Efforts to earn grace are veiled efforts to enslave God to your will. But by the Person of Mr. Grace,[1] you get to be the Divine Love that he was then that brought peace and tidings of great joy, for he is all-sufficient despite your circumstances or the circumstances of those around you.

The re-born life meets life’s circumstances with Christ’s Divine Love, joy, peace, and hope. The greatest weapon he has given you against pride is his love in the Person of his Son Jesus Christ. Dependency on his sufficiency is a life of love. No circumstance you may encounter escapes the finished work of love. I want to say that again. You cannot enter into a circumstance of neediness where Christ’s work of love has not been completed. The conveyance of Divine Love into every circumstance of other people's lives is walked out by the grace you have received and shared with those who are suspect of themselves if not haters of themselves.

What Christ is for you he is for others through you.

Chapter 15

Godliness

You are his instrument of grace speaking love, life, forgiveness, and sufficiency, to others. You have the authority to let them know they can receive him who is their love, life, forgiveness, and sufficiency, for others. Jesus was born complete in needy circumstances so that he could be a need meeter in those circumstances.

This dark world needed light. Light is love. God is Love.

He showed up as your Christmas gift. You get to walk in the light, life, and love of God in Christ reconciling you to himself and everyone else. This is why you enjoy peace in circumstances that are not joyous or peaceful. He is sufficient. You are the candle lit by the fire of God for others. Christ’s grace and love met you where you needed love the most. Now, in you, he meets them where they need love the most. Apart from Christ’s divine discernment, wisdom, and availability you know you cannot author love to those seeking to destroy you. That is okay because your union with Christ is God’s ability to do what he wants no matter the circumstance. So let God, who is really good at loving people, forgive those that are hurtful to you. He is really good at it. God is really good at loving the unlovable. Christ is really good at being sacrificially loving and gracious. He is at peace around the people creating chaos. You will never be the cause of godliness. It is the fullness of Christ that faces these circumstances. Are you ready to express his sacrificial love?

Christ is great at being Godly.

Chapter 16

No Lack

Christ is alive and working powerfully in you today. He is already living the good news. Peace had come with joy personified. The truth is God has already shown up. He is already alive and working powerfully in you to do his good pleasure. In 2 Peter, Peter wrote to the believers that they had everything they ever would need for life and godliness in Christ Jesus. Every spiritual blessing in the heavens. Everything God has to offer has been given. Every blessing of Heaven is already yours in Christ. Then Paul wrote in Ephesians his prayer that you would begin to know by the revelation of the Spirit the incredible power and hope that is already true in you. It is already present within you. This means you already know that the hope you have in Christ is sufficient. You know those abilities at work within you to be Christ working through you. Right now you are seated in him next to the Father. This is already true.

You are not waiting for God to show up you're showing up with him.

Never invite God to show up. Wherever you are is where he is walking. My friend, you are his holy ground. When the angels said, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come.” For you, they were declaring he had taken residence within you. Once you learn that the finished work of Christ by grace is true for you right now you can spend the rest of your life enjoying his presence. He has entered his bride to produce the fruit of love, joy, peace, and much more. Your availability for all he is available in you to be is complete. He can't get any more in you than in you. He can't be any more yours than yours. God will never be closer to you than he is right now. Either you trust him and live out that trust or you distrust him and strive after what you already have.

Once you learn the finished work of Christ by grace is already true and you really rely on that truth, it is then you get to begin to enjoy his presence instead of striving after his presence. In Christ, you are already whole. You are already complete. You are already perfect.

You are lacking nothing.

Chapter 17

God Present

Your life in him is not in the brokenness around you. That doesn't mean there isn't brokenness in this world but it means your trust in God has overcome the world. Christ has already fulfilled the hope of all ages. You already have the joy and peace found in him. He is the life divine already living in you. Christ did not promise you peaceful circumstances but he promised a sense of peace in you in un-peaceful circumstances. He did not promise you that every circumstance was going to be joyous but promised you his indwelling joy while suffering difficult circumstances.

Your joy and peace of God is his Person.

Jesus was born fully God and fully man so that humanity could see what a human actually looks like while suffering humanity. Amazing, you know what humanity was made to look like when you recognize humanity is selfless love. Until then all you can see is flesh-driven humanity hoping the self can do it. Yet humanity was created to put hope in a self that is derived from the soul livened by the Spirit of God. Jesus grew up in his circumstances while progressively expressing what was already true of him with the Father. You too grow up in grace and stature with the Father and humanity. You don’t become more like God but less like a selfish self trying to be a human without God being the cause of your humanity.

Your God, incarnate, lived then just like you do you now. You increasingly trust his ability and availability and yourself as lacking nothing. Who you are includes a soul and flesh[1] while the everlasting self is God’s life-giving Spirit giving life through you with a new body. When exercising effort to become or gain more of God’s stuff you are repudiating the message that you are already divinely empowered, beloved, worthy, whole, and complete, lacking nothing. You are already completely present in the Divine Life of God while in this body and suffering circumstances.

The Lord is in his temple, glory to God in the highest.

Chapter 18

True For You Too

Just like Jesus, you are already complete when you trust you have been born anew in Christ. Everything that was true of Christ in the manger is true of Christ in you. He never had to become more Christ. He was born the Christ. He just shed any doubt about himself. He let Father be exposed by his becoming naked before humanity. Likewise, in Christ, you cannot get better. Life is not defined by doing more for God to be more Godly. Life is not you managing sin better. When Christ was completely helpless and dependent he was still fully Christ. He, in you, allows you to be completely helpless and dependent. The most mature Christian is the one who is totally available to God by being the least available to their self. The glory of God is goodwill toward others at the expense of the selfish life.

What does it look like for you to live his living you?

As Jesus trusted Father as sufficient for every need including a resurrection, God's glory is seen in Christ's living his life in you. As he was totally available for what God wanted to do through him you are available to Christ in you who is still totally available to Father’s will. You walk in divine sufficiency to the praise of the glorious Grace of God in his Son reproduced in many sons. You can be excited to see what God will do through his life in you. The challenges let you trust him in public. You need not be concerned about where you might fail to trust him. He is faithful even when you might be unfaithful. You might skip depending upon him for a moment. Just turn and return. The moment you return to total dependence upon him he returns totally redemptive and alive in you to go forward. Because everything is already yours in him nothing to lose, nothing to gain, and nothing to prove. He is radically available to you when you are radically available to him.

Christ takes over what you hand over.

Chapter 19

Revived

There is no censure on those who are in Christ. You have no excuse to distrust God’s ability to reproduce his life in you. But if you do, you can immediately exchange that distrust for trust. Trying to get back to God is putting confidence in the flesh, especially its feelings. You have fallen away from grace when, at any level, you think you can do God’s stuff.

Only God can do God.

The flesh cannot even do good flesh. Why would you spend one split second trying to empower the flesh? You know that trying to empower the flesh to do the right thing at the right time is impossible. Jesus said, “Don’t prepare, just trust Holy Spirit to defend you.”

You are a child of God ready to love the doubting soul into the arms of the loving God. You can be that kind to yourself when you have doubts. God has perfected you through loving you at Christ's expense. Whatever it cost him to love you he is ready to spend through you on others. His life in you is ready to die for others. His servanthood to Father’s heart of love never ends. It is the love of God that was resurrected in Christ Jesus and is now housed in those who trust in one simple prayer. “Not my will be done Father, but your will be done.”

A weak flesh does not define the will of God. His having sanctified you in Christ Jesus is his sovereignty to place you in his hand and do with you what he desires. You become his instrument each moment you rest in his ability to do. Even if you fail to trust he gets his way. Just as Jesus could not be the Christ except by total surrender to his Father you too have no identity apart from your continued surrender to Holy Spirit. Jesus as the firstborn among many brethren has become your friend. You know what he is up to. By accepting Christ having to be crucified you qualify to experience his resurrection. Having been revived in him you are also his children and co-heir with Christ in the family fit for God's new creation.

You have his divine nature.

Chapter 20

Accept

Emmanuel (God with us) means little until it sinks in that it means God in you. Not a force or huge suggestion. Not some mis-useable power. Not a commodity nor a qualified promise. Emmanuel for you is God facing off to Job asking him when he ever sought his advice. You are always available to God. Even if you should rebel like Jonah he can resurrect you and cause you to do his will. God with you destroys the you that thinks it can make God do anything, much less love and protect it. Christ as God in you allows no other gods including a fledgling self. Christ in you is walking you up to others and unwrapping Christ’s person, power, and love right before them. As you do, that same love is recognized as ready to take over. Your trust in his sufficiency to indiscriminately love others will make him known.

Jesus said, “If they reject you they reject me.”

Notes

PROLOGUE

1 “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”

(Galatians 2:20)

2. REAL REST

1 “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”(Hebrews –)

2 “For He has said somewhere concerning the seventh day ‘And God rested on the seventh day from all His works’;”(Hebrews )

3. RIGHT HOPE

1 “Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose, because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin,”( Peter )

4. DO LIFE

1 “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”(Matthew )

14. LOVE FOR OTHERS

1 Search “Simply Grace” by Dean Chicquette (available on Amazon).

17. GOD PRESENT

1 Soul is comprised of knowing, wanting, and choosing which decays with the flesh senses. Without Holy Spirit there is no life that continues. With the Spirit of God the soul goes on knowing and doing the will of God.