INCLUSION
  • About Us
  • Free Publications
    • FORGIVE ME
    • Essays
    • Short Reads
    • Books
    • Videos >
      • In His Image
    • Norman P. Grubb >
      • Key to Everything
      • It's as Simple as This
      • Life Out of Death
  • Encouragements
  • Studies
    • Thoughts >
      • Need for Unity
      • State of the Union
      • ​How It Started
      • Food From Heaven
      • Surprise
      • Knowing Love
      • Oneness-Union
      • Kingdom of God
      • Paradox
      • Heaven Now
      • Prayer of Faith
      • Rejection Personified
      • Life Eternal
      • God's Gauntlet
      • Past-Present-Future
    • Seeing Jesus >
      • GOD THE PURPOSE OF LIFE
      • Knowing Jesus by Receiving Jesus
      • Jesus is All We Need
      • Union with Christ
      • You HAVE Life Now
      • be Transformed
      • then The Spiritual
      • What then is Sin?
    • Revival >
      • GOD IN THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST
      • JESUS AS THE TRUTH
      • JESUS AS THE DOOR
      • SINAI OR CALVARY?
      • JESUS AS THE WAY
      • JESUS AS THE END
      • JESUS FOR OTHERS

ENCOURAGEMENT

I See You

2/13/2021

Comments

 
​When I view the morning light 
Through these eyes of joy
I rest in your arms ever so strong
And take one more brisk breath of hope
That this is the day we should announce to the world
In words so pure and sweet
That you are love itself 
Rushing into every heart
Ready to meet
Ready for the worlds to meet.

Here I crash, crumble and fall.
At your feet, at your feet.
I begin again with but a breath
Looking at your life
Looking back at me
Here in the now
There is no greater gain
Than not sing one more frame
Of thank you
And fall again
Into your arms of rest
And rest.
Comments

Redemption

12/29/2020

Comments

 
I remember the ancient days
When darkness ruled the heart
When justice deceived itself
And the widows and childless
Found no comfort

When the spirit of the age
Sought to correct the wrong
All day long
Placing humanity in a cage.
Dressed with hope undefined
By torturing the soul

I remember too
The night you came
Offered yourself
Not some plan
To release this soul
From flesh bound hopes

It was easy to fall for you
Yet I trembled
I cried
With joy
Your new residence
Within my living

Even now I turn away
To glitter and sway
To music screaming pain
Only to remember your arms
Ever embracing

Where can I go
There are no words
That can express your presence
Cleaning my cluttered house
All-day long shaking this body

Letting me rest
Comments

Flop Flop - Dean Chicquette

12/1/2020

Comments

 
I was raised under a system of faith that first made me feel so guilty for being human that I was convinced I needed to believe Jesus took the whipping I deserved trusting I would feel better until I was again behaving like a human.

Years into this madness I found Jesus at my door asking to take residence within me without the theology of what, why, how, or any expected results. I thew out all I had trusted to free me from fear, guilt, and shame which included any effort on my part, and let Him in.

Well, unless you have been there and done that and have the T-shirt to prove it there is no way to express to you my experience of freedom.

I call it rest. Now I simply trust Him. For what? This life and any Godliness needed in it and in the future.

I also struggled like hell to enter and stay in that rest and even now flop around a bit like a fish long out of the water. But when again exhausted of my efforts to live on my terms with my expected outcomes I find Jesus still next to me on His favorite recliner smiling that silly grin that tells me He's glad I stopped wiggling so much.
Comments

I once lived on a desert. by Dean Chicquette

11/23/2020

Comments

 
I lived on a high desert.

At night the moon acted as a spotlight throwing my shadow against the sagebrush as I trekked to nowhere in particular. When the moon slept, the stars would take its place and light my path. After a while, the silence was interrupted only by my ears straining for a sound not willing to be revealed. Then a gust of wind would dance at my feet and kiss my face only to run and hide in the arms of that same silence.

Now with even the silence gone, I entered a state of being authored by a god I could not name. Like Moses, I was intrigued by a previously unseen ‘burning bush’ that would not change its state from burning nor be consumed. Bowing to its charm I entered a rest unwilling to disguise itself with any activity or thought.

There I paused as if a stranger before an odd-looking door leading to a surprise I was not yet prepared to know. I knocked. It was already open, but I did not know it had been opened years before my birth. In fact, it has always been open. I called in, “Can someone come out and play?”

My chest leapt for joy at something that had left its footprints over every moment of my self-awareness. Its name was ‘I AM always with you.’

Yes, IT had always been there.

Frightened at this discovery I withdrew to the stars and wind and turned for home, humanity, and any distraction I could conjure. Escape itself ran through my legs and soon my heart followed with fearful cadence to my running. Once shrouded by my house and in the presence of my wife and child, I cautiously ventured toward sleep, hoping that stalking revelation would vanish with the dawn and be put to rest.

But even that phrase, put to rest, caused the desert to reappear in its all-encompassing silence. Over time, and with age itself, I began to lose command of the now too familiar distractions. Friends and family died by the hordes leaving few behind. Our dance was at an end with more shadows twirling into the dark than music to accompany. Their exit was promising my own re-entrance into His presence once this body was silenced. The distractions were all but gone.

Even now my body has joined in the mutiny, leaving me with an empty schooner’s riggings creaking, declaring the best had passed. Unwillingly, I discovered myself once again before that open door but I know the name of the one on whom to call. With shame, I bowed to the silence and re-discovered, from the inside, the “I AM always with you”. The betrothal to Jesus had now become a marriage feast.

I was one and the same time married to this ineffable presence who not only authored and finished the events, but the heartbeats to go with it. I discovered a desert full of all I needed for both living this life and remaining in that union with life itself from which I had tried so hard to ignore. I had joined the wind and had begun a dance for which all are invited.

​Thank You, Jesus.
Comments

Forgive Me for all the times I…by Dean Chicquette

11/23/2020

Comments

 
Forgot to look into your eyes
As if I was meeting you for the first time
Or not leaning over really close
To catch your every word
Nor enjoying the warmth of you
Snuggling up within my space
And forgetting
You just want to be near

Yes, I have ignored you taking time out of your living
To enjoy my life
Forgive my hearing your story
As an addendum to mine
Or ignoring your touch
As if it were out of time
And my clamoring to be seen
When I forgot your face

I heard your pain and saw your tears
But hid my tears for shame
Forgive me for turning my music up so loud
I could not hear myself much less
Seeing your dancing to my tune
And see your oneness dressing my loneliness
For so trying to get noticed
I let slip the opportunity to notice you

I have counted my own breaths
Forgetting why I breathe
Even how I breathe
Watching your story unfold
I was too busy to see it
How it fit with mine
Then you touch me again
Ignoring the past

Forgive me for letting you
Experience the dark
All alone
Lost in it
And my not even shouting in
Nor listening for an echo
Broken by your call
Broken by your whimper

And most of all
Forgive me for not loving you

Dedicated to the Christ who has walked with me in the form of Linda now for 53 years on her 76th birthday.

I love you, Linda!
Comments

Dependent Receivers

9/18/2020

Comments

 
“we forever remain the dependent member in the union.
And the union is never safe until we know that.
So, until you have a few good knocks on the head and discover your conceited self, you're not safe to know the union. Maybe you've had plenty of knocks. They're the healthiest thing we can have. We've got to be made safe and understanding for this tremendous relationship.
He is the Lord. We are the co-operators. We are receivers.”
Comments

He is my LIVING

9/15/2020

Comments

 
Reading the scriptures pointed to Him.
Knowing Christ as a historical figure didn't do it.
Knowing Him as a great teacher, no one follows, didn't do it.
Knowing Him as MY Savior opened a world of possibilities.
Being filled with the Holy Spirit is amazing but all too often egotistical.
Trying to complete what He began to do in and through me has failed every time.
Entering Him, as if He were my rest, freed me from trying to be like God.
Then Christ revealed Himself not only in me but living out through me as me.
Now i look to what He is doing.
And i get busy.

I LIVE in Him and He in me, yes He is my life and LIVING

Enjoy!
Comments

A Better Way Of Thinking #41 He Is Present

9/14/2020

Comments

 
All too often, when faced with disaster, we think God must have taken a vacation. Nothing could be further from the truth. He never closer nor more ready to be your answer than when we cannot be our own answer.
Comments

A Better Way Of Thinking #40 God is Too Big

9/14/2020

Comments

 
How about every time you run across a very big problem face to face, or on social media, you say out loud, "God TOO big to salve this one." Go ahead and laugh too.
Comments

A Better Way Of Thinking #39 Apprehended to Apprehend

9/12/2020

Comments

 
All our (worldly) lives we are taught to set a goal and then strive toward that goal. When have we ever been taught or practiced to put the life of Jesus as that goal? When have we listened to Paul's teaching?

Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, 14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 15 Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you. [Phil 3:13-15 NKJV emphasis mine]  
Comments
<<Previous

    Categories

    All

    Archives

    February 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020

About  Us

email request

Encouragements

Contact

Copyright © 2015 Dean & Linda Chicquette
  • About Us
  • Free Publications
    • FORGIVE ME
    • Essays
    • Short Reads
    • Books
    • Videos >
      • In His Image
    • Norman P. Grubb >
      • Key to Everything
      • It's as Simple as This
      • Life Out of Death
  • Encouragements
  • Studies
    • Thoughts >
      • Need for Unity
      • State of the Union
      • ​How It Started
      • Food From Heaven
      • Surprise
      • Knowing Love
      • Oneness-Union
      • Kingdom of God
      • Paradox
      • Heaven Now
      • Prayer of Faith
      • Rejection Personified
      • Life Eternal
      • God's Gauntlet
      • Past-Present-Future
    • Seeing Jesus >
      • GOD THE PURPOSE OF LIFE
      • Knowing Jesus by Receiving Jesus
      • Jesus is All We Need
      • Union with Christ
      • You HAVE Life Now
      • be Transformed
      • then The Spiritual
      • What then is Sin?
    • Revival >
      • GOD IN THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST
      • JESUS AS THE TRUTH
      • JESUS AS THE DOOR
      • SINAI OR CALVARY?
      • JESUS AS THE WAY
      • JESUS AS THE END
      • JESUS FOR OTHERS