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From Oswald: "God not only expects me to do His will but He is in me to do it."

I read through the new posts last night and got stuck at what Jaque said “Indeed, “to live IS Christ”! So what would living in total trust look like? I believe it looks like scandalous freedom—like me trusting myself. “

Again, I didn’t like it but decided to sleep on it before responding. I’m realizing, this morning, that I don’t like too much meshing of me and Christ. I don’t like the words that imply it needs to be done or has already been done; I don’t like the idea of it. I feel a strong resistance to it. And Sara wrote “He tells me stubbornness is an unintelligent barrier (a barrier that hasn’t seen it and still wants to do something else) that must be blown up with the dynamite of obedience…..ouch.” And I can’t find it, but Sara wrote that she could obey despite the stubbornness.

I find myself back at the question that the Lord puts to every area of my life. “Will you believe?” Here, and in most areas, it means: Will you surrender your life (independent self, ideas of how things are or ought to be) unto death? Will you allow Christ’s rightness to be resurrected in you? Will you allow obedience to lead to trust, and not fight to have it in another order?

Sara wrote, “When we drink it requires taking the contents into our entire digestive system and distributing them throughout muscles, bones, cells, nerves etc.” But I read disturbing instead of distributing and thought of caffeine or high fructose corn syrup drinks. I study the word because I want to know God; I want to be set free into a real, and not my idea of, relational knowing of God. As I drink in the word, as it is distributed through my life, it will disrupt my digestive system (how I process life, experience, ideas).

Jaque wrote: Could we then say ‘because those who heard did not combine it with trust.?” Yes, but more than that I’m seeing that faith is the obedience that leads to trust.
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
I think that faith is hope substantiated by obedience, and that obedience proceeds and begets trust, the feeling of faith, that what we do not see will be.

Jaque wrote “He trusts me, not because of what I, in my humanness might or might not do, but because of who He is in me.” Beth Moore said once, in a tape, that she was shocked and a little appalled that the glorious God of the Universe would stake His reputation on her. When I heard that, I felt dread that He might one day do the same thing with me. But now, I’m seeing that it’s scandalous, fee living He wants from me, not to be shrunk from in dread, but to be embraced with trust, trust in Him, trust in Christ as me, and trust in myself, the true self that He is leading me into a knowledge of.

As I obey I gain trust in Him, and a trust in my ability to obey Him, knowing that it is He in me that enables me to do all things.
juls

One of the hardest "reckless truths" that I have experienced is the goodness of God. Strange isn't it?

We read about and say we believe in God's goodness but when it comes to receiving it in our everyday lives…i.e., "my" everyday life…I find that sometimes I'm worse than an infidel.

Why do you think is it so difficult to believe? What blocks our way? "to as many as received Him He gave the power to become…" John 1:12. I love that passage because, for me, (i.e., the illusive idea of myself) it's quite disturbing.

God's goodness has wrecked me; it has upset my way of doing and being and thinking. (Thank God!) For me His goodness has been behind the truth's revelation that my enemy is real, real, real and will stop at nothing to keep me from believing in it.

I don't have time to ramble on "today." Maybe we could start a new thread on the goodness of God or just continue here on this one. I will be more specific as we continue but just thought, if you so like, I'd stir something up

Love,
Jaque

Great response Mike. If trust depends on my faith in God I'm sunk, but if it depends on His faith in me–coming through "as" me, then I'm beginning to know the hope of Christ "in" me, the only hope of realizing His glory in "our" union. This is the realization (recognition) Jesus asked be given us in John 17.

Jaque