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with Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
(M) John, I think I’ve come to the real solution to fear; all the rest is periphery. I know you won’t be surprised that I’m going back to that. I’m working on the end of the book on Cain and Able. It’s been in the works for probably three years now. And I’ve known that I needed to experience something before I could finish it. And I think what it has amounted to, is fear. I had to experience fear; and it has become a Cain type fear. I do have to live through what I write. It becomes very real to me. And I think the solution, the subject is, my life long subject is the sovereignty of God. That He is that big and that vast, and that evil has no power.
(J) That’s the whole premise of “All and Only”, I mean it’s about the sovereignty of God.
(M) And that book sells less than the others, because people don’t really believe in the sovereignty of God.
(J) Nor want the sovereignty of God. You can love me God, through “Adoration”, but don’t give me sovereignty with “All and Only”.
(M) Don’t be that big.
(J) No, and then you can also give me warfare with “Chariots of Fire”, but please, please, please, don’t be sovereign.
(M) Let me have a little control, over events, and over myself. We’re sitting out here on John’s deck on a beautiful fall day; and here comes the cat meowing; and we’re looking out over his garden, so that’s the background you hear. But sovereignty is my subject I return to over and over again. And I really believe that you can’t know the sovereignty of God, unless He reveals it to you personally. It’s not a doctrine, it’s not an actual thing you can lay hold of entirely. And recently, the Lord came to me again with His sovereignty. I think one of the men who experienced fear the most in the Old Testament is David. I think I counted one time thirteen times the spear had been thrown at him to kill him. The real fear, underlying all other fears, is the fear of death. And though I know well that Christ has conquered that, when you come down to it, that is the terror of humanity, is the fear of death. And I think what the Lord is showing me, is something David came to. He went from saving his life and fearing for his life, to slowly through a process of facing his fears and writing about them all through the Psalms. In the end he came to so believe in the sovereignty of God, that when a man cursed him, for the blood of Saul, and one of his men wanted to kill him, David said, leave him alone, God has bidden him to curse me. Now that knowledge of God, we don’t have much of.
(J) Not much at all, we’re immediately propelled into warfare, or our rights, but to believe that the sovereignty of God dwells even within your enemies is huge.
(M) Its a huge faith. David believed not only that the man was allowed to curse him, but that God had bidden him to curse him. And the context was, when Absalom was taking the throne, and David simply left; he said God gave me the throne, and God can restore it to me again. It’s that level of trust in God. There’s absolutely no fear, in that level of trust. So the real remedy for fear is faith in the sovereignty of God. And again I think God has to come to you, that has to be revealed to you from heaven. And if you face your own fears as you walk, God will come to you with that. I ran across something you have written John, on Gods sovereignty. One thing you have learned here is, sovereignty over the past, and sovereignty over the present.
(J) What was it that I wrote?
(M) Irrevocably God; I just ran across it this morning. But it was about sovereignty. You see humanity tries to resolve sovereignty and freewill by logic, and it can’t be solved that way. It’s a spiritual mystery. But it is the solution to your fear of man, your fear of your self, your fear of Satan. Any fear is actually a belief in something other than Gods absolute control.
(J) Its faith, yeah?
(M) Its faith, in the wrong thing.
(J) False faith.
(M) I see what I’ve done. I went to talk about David, ‘cuz I really don’t want to talk about this. To really meet the sovereignty of God is far more frightening, than anything you could fear in life. As He has taken me through some things, and opened my heart, I’ve come once again, to a level of real resistance of Him. And, He showed me that any resistance of any person is resistance of Him, any hatred of any person is hatred of Him. And He went from there, to give me a promise; and I asked Him a couple of questions, and He went an answered them. And He began to just unfold to me, the absolute sovereignty He has over my life. And I think, in a measure that I have never comprehended before, I know that I am owned. I didn’t choose to be owned. I have asked and taught to choose to accept that you are owned. But I had never seen, that regardless of whether I accepted it or not, I am owned. He bought me. And He takes that ownership absolutely with every right He has to it. And what He began to show me was, His absolute sovereignty, over everything in my life. What He showed me that was awesome, was, His motive in it, is love. If it were not love, what He has done to me would be cruel, and diabolical. Because He has taken from me, virtually everything I loved and wanted.
(J) Isn’t that what we all accuse Him of, is His cruelty, and His diabolicalness?
(M) Yeah. And I went back to think about the healing of my mothers death. He said, just as you suspected, meaning a suspicion of malice. Just as you suspected, I took your mother, and I am good, therefore it’s good. My dear friend Vicki sent me a quote, just the other day. As I was in the middle of this sovereignty thing, and she implied it was from me. It said, “all disaster is swallowed up in His supremacy, and becomes not just benign, but beneficial.” And I said, Vicki, I know that’s me, but where is it? I don’t remember and I need it right now. And it was the story of my mothers death in “All and Only”. She said it’s in the chapter called “Me”. So, it’s interesting that once I accepted the sovereignty over my mother’s death, including all the suffering that came from it, and once I thanked Him for it, that is gone. There is no residual resistance to God. But He revealed Himself as sovereign to me. And, ah, His sovereignty has to be revealed from heaven. It’s too big. In our little group, I call it my famous Tuesday that He showed me these things. He has come after everything, to secure, not only that I love Him alone, but that I want only Him. He brings us….He has bought us, John. His love, and His blood, paid for us. He has the right to do anything He lies, to take anything He likes. It’s heavy, it’s heavy, I know. But, I cannot give myself to Him, to the degree that He requires. He has to crunch me into it. And that is not cruel, that is loving. I’ve never felt such absolute love as I felt that day. Even though I realized it was “love cruel as the grave”; that it would consume everything that I was holding onto. Fear, everything that I feared, He’s pressed out of me fears, so that He could destroy them. He’s crunched out of me what I love, so it’d be only Him. So you can see why I didn’t want to tell this. I’ve told two people in the middle of this, and it ‘ruined’ their lives. This is the Song of Solomon, “love is as strong as death”; that means it consumes everything and it kills everything. It kills everything but your love for Him. And He goes after you, or He did me, to push out of me where I did not want Him to bother me. I don’t want Him to take something from me. Jealousy, meaning His jealousy, is as hard and cruel as Sheol, the place of the dead. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a most vehement flame, the very flame of the Lord. And, I need Him to possess me. I need Him to have that kind of pursuit of me. Someone wrote, “I want Him to pursue me.” I said, don’t worry, He is. He is every day. He’s pursuing in what He’s destroying, in what He’s taking, what He’s removing, what He’s causing you to confess. That is His pursuit of you. And it is relentless; and you can’t stop it.
(J) And though it’s a grand love affair, it doesn’t look like the romance story of you’re knight in shinning armor, you know, whisking you away.
(M) Right, right; and no happy, happy land.
(J) No happy land. It’s tears. And it’s His pursuit is ah…
(M) And it’s violent John, it’s a violent and relentless pursuit. And I didn’t really want to say that.
(J) Yeah.
(M) But in that, I’m gaining a sense that He’ll win, I won’t fail, He will win my contest with Him of whose in charge, He will win, because He is determined, He is motivated by His love. He was motivated on the cross, by His love, and the joy that was set before Him. That’s was the scripture says. And He will destroy, everything that stands in His way, of loving me, even me. There was a thread on which I stood, before this visitation from the Lord. The thread was, ‘yes’. If I had said no, I believe I would not know what I’m telling you.
(J) Ok, so you believe that when you made the yes statement, when you said yes, then, all heaven pursues you vehemently.
(M) Now, I know that He will come back again, and He will push again, because I’m owned. That is so clear to me; that is a sovereign choice. I didn’t choose to be owned. I didn’t choose to know Him; He chose me. What He gave me was a scripture that says, “I’ve turned my wrath from you, and I’ve turned it against your enemies.” Then I said, tell me what you were angry with me about, so He did. I don’t remember specifically, it was, loving what I love, instead of Him; and hating what I hate, instead of accepting it from Him, as love. It doesn’t really matter what it was. And I had to say, ok, I’m owned. I have no choice about that, except to join Him, and to die where He says die. The pivot is the cross.
