The following is from W. Ian Thomas' final book The Indwelling Life of Christ: All of Him in All of Me:
"When I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Corinthians 12:10).
"The Lord Jesus acted at all times on the assumption that His Father was handling the situation, and Jesus simply took care to obey His Father's instructions. Even when He was being reviled and tortured, 'He left his case in the hands of God' (1 Peter 2:23, NLT).
"By this submission to His Father, Jesus 'learned obedience' (Hebrews 5:8) as a Man, and the obedience was total: 'He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross' (Philippians 2:8).
"Now, as God, He asks the same of you and me.
"This is what baffled the disciples. At times they must have thought the Lord Jesus was hopelessly passive, and that He was failing to come to grips with reality.
". . . The Lord Jesus could afford to be weak; He could afford to be thought foolish in the eyes of silly, sinful men; He could afford to be reviled and mocked and spat upon, because He knew He had been sent by the Father, and that into the Father's hands He had committed His Spirit, not only in death but throughout His life.
"Jesus could afford to do as He was told, and He could afford to die, because He knew that Someone else was taking care of the consequences. 'For though He was crucified in weakness, yet He lives by the power of God' (2 Corinthians 13:4).
"The resurrected Christ now lives, to continue His Life in you.
"If you are not prepared to do as you are told, no matter how weak or foolish it will make you look, then whatever you believe about the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is still academic. You have not yet entered into the good of it.
"When it comes to the point of obedience to God's clear instructions, the Life of Jesus Christ within you makes human circumstances irrelevant; for to share His life now as He once shared His Father's Life on earth is to know, as Jesus did, that Someone else is taking care of the consequences.
"I do not mean by this that God's purposes are always irrational in the light of human circumstance, nor that there is any particular virtue in being eccentric or foolhardy. What I am urging is simply that you become delightfully detached from the pressure of circumstance, so that it ceases to be the criterion of the decisions you make. You do as you are told, whether God's instructions appear to be compatible with the immediate situation or not, and you leave God to vindicate Himself and to justify the course of action upon which you have embarked at His command.
"You will not need to know what He plans to do with you . . . you simply need to know Him."
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