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with Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
with Special Guest Jennifer W.
(M) Well I’m here with John and Jennifer, and we, recently the Lord led me to dig up a book by Derek Prince from some years ago called “Blessing Or Curse”. I think the subtitle is ‘You Can Choose’. And ah, it’s been very powerful in our midst, just to remember this basic teaching. And I’ve been struck by the fact in the scriptures that God divides things into not right and wrong, good and bad necessarily, but consistently things are divided into blessing and curse. And blessed are the poor in spirit. And we pass by that word ‘blessed’, and we don’t really get it, that it means blessing. And ah, so we, but the curse is real too.
(J) Humm. Absolutely.
(M) And we’ve really experienced, both in our midst and beyond, the power of breaking a curse over your life, and coming to understand some basic things that Derek Prince taught. He was a marvelous teacher of the Bible, a brilliant but very ‘living’ Christian. He’s gone to be with the Lord now, I think in the year two thousand and two or three. But he left a legacy to us that is still alive and so we are… Are we carrying this book?
(J) Yeah, we carry it at the website, and I believe it’s ah, $10.99, and it’s a retailing for $14.99 and we sell it for $10.99, so yeah.
(M) Great. It is very powerful. I think its life changing. It’s changed a number of lives. And it’s, it’s deeply touched mine too.
(J) It’s wrecked mine as well.
(M) (Laughter) Wreck?
(J) (Laughter) Wreck in a good way.
(M) Ok, good.
(J) Well, the other morning, Jennifer, you came and you said I have got to tell you this. And you just ah, went through and told me a number of things that the Lord had been telling you. And I was so impacted by it as well, listening I’m going, oh my gosh it just… What excited me about it is, it felt like an extension of the podcast that we have done. It was a completion of it. You didn’t even know. We haven’t even aired the podcasts that are going up next, ah, the next set of them. And ah, but it was like we took it from “The Great Lie”, and then we went into, from there to the annulment from the marriage of death. And then you took it beyond that point and you were speaking about something that just rings and resonates so true to me. And I’d just like you to kind of talk about what you were seeing. And then you know, let’s dialog with it because it is so powerful what you saw, so.
(Jennifer) Uhmm, I would need to start with the book “Blessing Or Curse”, which Martha talked about. And I actually read this book. John, you gave it to me a month ago now?
(J) Umhmm.
(Jennifer) It’s awhile. Had an incredible experience with it. Got very bubbly and light and just saw so may things about my life. And felt like all sorts of burdens were falling off left and right, and a chance to repent and revoke cursing and accept blessing. And it was just absolutely wonderful. And realized last week that I wanted to go back and revisit it because I couldn’t remember a thing (Laughter) I had read. With literally trying to recapture, not so much recapture the feeling but go back to at least that place and say ok, what did I cover there? And had no recollection really. And thought well that’s strange.
(M) That’s not strange, that’s a very typical Christian experience, (Jennifer laughs) especially if it’s important.
(J) Umhmm.
(M) I, I’ll blame it on the enemy, ok?
(Jennifer) (Laughing) Well, it ah left me befuddled, so I went back and said ok, well let’s just maybe go through this a little slower and with a little less giddiness. Although that was a really sweet time and, and was wonderful. So in this particular re-reading of it I came to, I believe it’s chapter 4 where he was talking about Deuteronomy, ah, specifically Moses laying out blessings or curses; and kind of the foundation of that for the people. And so I had not actually gone to the Bible the first time around. I pretty much stayed in the book and read the verses that he pulled and that were listed in the book. So I literally went to the Word and started reading Deuteronomy 28. And wow! It’s exclusively about blessings and curses. And by the time I hit verse 28 I realized that it was addressing my life for at least the last decade, probably longer. But in almost specific terms which maybe for those of you who’ve been reading (Laughter), and been in the Word for a long time, that’s you know, old hat now, but not for me. It was a little like finding a diary that you had written (Laughter) that was actually penned you know, thousands of years ago by someone else. And ah, I’ll say specifically ah verse 28, I’m going to go ahead and read that one. “The Lord will smite you with madness and blindness and dismay of mind and heart.” And ah, that’s maybe a little more general, but certainly an apt description of my life. And ah, read a little further and if I’d had any question of why, verse 47 took care of it. “Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness of mind and heart and gratitude for the abundance of all with which He had blessed you. And that was just piercing, and that was absolutely ah, it was as if to say, here, not only am I going to show you what was done to you, I’m going to show you why. And that was by my choice, ah, by my making. My life was exactly determined by me. Free will, self-determination, I did that. And…
(J) You know it’s really strange it reminds me of ah, Roman’s. Doesn’t it sound real familiar? I mean it’s… Read it one more time?
(Jennifer) Ah, “Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness of mind and heart and gratitude for the abundance of all with which He had blessed you.”
(J) You know that really reminds me of the Romans scriptures that we’ve been on actually with “the Great Lie”.
(M) Yeah, it’s ah 20 and 21, well 18 through 21. “Because when they knew God, they did not honor and glorify God and give Him thanks.” And that’s exactly…
(J) And then the curse comes upon you for not being willing to honor and glorify God as God, then all the curses come upon you.
(M) You know what, we don’t know who God is John. This says God gave them over to different levels. The blessing and the curse is sovereign.
(J) Ok. But that goes back to your scripture of 28. I don’t know, I’ve never, I’ve not seen this, of the fact that you’ll have insanity, basically. You know, what’s the?
(Jennifer) “The Lord will smite you with madness and blindness.”
(J) Madness and blindness, so that’s just amazing.
(Jennifer) Ok. So He gave me the ‘why’, and then the part that was very specific to me, and I won’t get into detail because it’s wretched. Ah, let’s just say that I have, I could have been diagnosed as clinically depressed for the last decade. I believe that’s probably how the medical community would term it. Ah, a very, very deep depression. And here it was right in front of me in Deuteronomy 28:66, “Your life shall hang in doubt before you; day and night you shall be worried and have no assurance of your life. In the morning you shall say ‘would that it were evening’, and at evening you shall say ‘would that it were morning’ because of the anxiety and dread of your mind and heart, and the sights which you shall see with your own eyes.” And that is ‘pitch-perfect’ day-in and day-out, my life, and what it was which was shocking. And it was shocking however in a glorious way in this sense because I have been delivered from that.
(J) Hmmm.
(Jennifer) And He’s so faithful to go on and talk about that. So immediately He had me keep reading. And when I hit Deuteronomy 30:1-3 it was all right there. “And when all these things have come upon you, the blessings and the curses which I have set before you, and you shall call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you. And you shall return to the Lord your God and abbey His voice according to all that I command you today, you and your children with all your heart and mind, and with all your being. Then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you, and will gather you again from all the nations where He has scattered you.” And that just leapt out of me. “Will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and will gather you again.” Umhmm.
(J) Well you know the word that really strikes me in there is ‘when’. He knows we’re going to do it. He knows we’re…
(Jennifer) It’s not and ‘if’.
(J) It’s not an ‘if’, it’s when we go down that path, because we will, because that’s just the way we are in our humanity. When we down that path He will turn it around for one…
(Jennifer) Well, and it’s also, everything about this screamed covenant to me, because it’s
God’s promise, which is ultimately what led me back to “The Great Lie”. Ah, because He literally says in Deuteronomy 30:19-20, “I call heaven and earth to witness this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, the blessings and the curses, therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live.” And that’s a covenant, right?
(J) That is, absolutely.
(Jennifer) So that is, that is it. Twenty of course goes on and says not just that you may live, “and may love the Lord your God, obey His voice and cling to Him”. So there it is, you choose life, but within that life you “love the Lord your God, obey His voice and cling to Him. For He is your life and the length of your days.” And ah, so that’s what He’s saying, it’s a ‘do this’, and I will be faithful to complete the covenant on My end. Ah, which just, you know, after living in just despair for so long, ah even though I had been released from it before I was reading all of this, it’s just, it’s a promise in writing, you know, it’s an assurance. And the first thing that popped up into my head was the verse that Martha quotes in “The Great Lie” which is “He is not a man that He should lie.”
(J) Right.
(Jennifer) You know we need that assurance, because we are men, and we do lie. (Laughter) So, so we kind of approach everything, including God, as liars.
(M) Maybe, maybe not.
(Jennifer) Yes. Well maybe He means it, and maybe it’s not quite there. And I just said that over and over again. And the question came, ‘will you believe that covenant?’ Will you believe it? And that in turn just opened up this huge picture to me, of like I said my life was a product of my choice. I chose death, I chose rebellion, I was in complete rebellion to the life that God had given me, to everything that I was given. I did not serve Him, I was not grateful. So, He said well if you choose this, this is what you get, you know it’s all right there. And ah, there’s nothing unfair about that. Unfair would be if there was no redemption from that, no possibility of deliverance, and He is ever gracious and kind, and ‘that’s not all she wrote’.
(J) Right, right.
(Jennifer) Ah, that there is a way back from that. So that in turn kind of ah, when I went back to “The Great Lie”, which of course I did immediately, I was like that popped out of my head and that’s there for a reason and… Ah you know in it Martha talks specifically about making peace with everyone in your life. “Make peace with Me”, Hebrews 12:14. And she goes on to further explain the revelation He gave her about that, which is “Accept, accept, accept the life I have given you, desire no other life. When you receive the life I have given you, I will show you the life I have given the life I have given you.” You know I read “The Great Lie”, and was cut to the quick by it, because it is fundamentally it is the root of everything. Not just the fall of man, but the fall of Lucifer. It’s the root of everything. And you know, I had said OK, I purpose to accept my life. Here we go, accept, accept, accept. (Laughter) And I said it with all sincerity, I wasn’t kidding and I wasn’t being flip about it, but there wasn’t I think a fundamental understanding of what exactly ah, that meant. And where He took me was, OK, you’ve been in a prison of your own making. You built it brick by brick, all around you. And ahmm, you have now recognized that, you’ve confessed that you are sin, nothing but sin, every sin there ever was you are. Ah, you’ve repented, you’ve surrendered, you’ve loved Me. So here I’ve thrown open the door to your prison and there’s light coming in and it’s chasing away the darkness in your prison. But am I still standing in the prison, albeit in the patch of light, but have I moved out, do I believe His covenant?
(J) Umhmm.
(Jennifer) Do I take the step further, the leap of faith, and be completely vulnerable and say ‘You are not a man that You should lie. You do not trick me. You do not lie to me. You have said if I do this, if I love You, if I obey You, if I hear Your voice, if I cling to You, these things, then my fortunes are restored. You have compassion on me and You gather me to You.’ This is the promise. So it’s not enough to just accept it and to just believe it. And I firmly believe that until that moment I was still in my prison, albeit with the door open and standing in a chunk of light. But I hadn’t stepped out in that I wasn’t living like a beloved daughter. I wasn’t’ living in the promise of His covenant. So I had not made the real leap of faith.
