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with Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
and Special Guest Rosemary Lokers
(M) Then I got into Matt.7 this morning, that’s just where I am in my reading. And I realized from the second part of the Beatitudes, Jesus says, “The eye is the lamp of the body, if your eye is clear your whole body will be full of light. No man can serve two master’s, he will hate the one and love the other”, and then He goes on to talk about worry. And I’ll just be honest with everybody, since I’m been on this, both in our lives and on the podcast, the Lord has shown me that I tolerate a lot of worry in me, and I fail to call it fear, and fail to face it or deal with it. And so I’ve really been on my face confessing worry. So here I am opening this chapter on worry. One of my favorite writings on the website was the “Lily” which was written many years ago.
(J) “Consider The Lily”.
(M)Yes, “Consider The Lily”. And in my struggle, how much I hated the Lily. (Laughter) I think I might write it just a little differently now, but not a whole lot. But it says, “the lily does not toil or spin” and I saw that toil is effort, and effort that is toil is out of worry, not out of security. God wants us to work from a position of security, not to gain security. So the lily does not toil to gain provision, and the lily does spin, well to me that was worry, toil is effort and spin is worry. What it means is, I was telling Rosemary this morning, two precious words to me have become helpless and hopeless because that thrusts you onto God. I think at some point, if God is merciful to you, He will bring you to helpless and hopeless.
(J) You know something, when you said, helpless and hopeless, I thought about how the book “Hinds Feet On High Places”, ‘Much Afraid’ went up to the mountains to follow her Beloved and she did it with ‘Sorrow’ and ‘Suffering’, but you’re saying there are two companions that are literally walking with you, and Sorrow and Suffering, does it end up saying what they’re becoming? I think Grace and Glory, or something like that.
(Rosemary) Being hopeless and helpless is sorrow and suffering.
(M) Sorrow and suffering produce the helpless and hopeless.
(J) But it just reminded me, the two companions, how she had to embrace them to go up. If she didn’t embrace them she wouldn’t have made it. But she had to leave the fearing, which was her family, she left the family of the valley of humiliation and she went up. Much Afraid, even the name, she was a fearful, timid, little, crooked mouthed waif. But when the Stag told her we’re going up the mountain with these two characters I’m sending you, two companions, she thought oh wonderful it’s going to be something great. And then when she found out it was ‘Sorrow’ and ‘Suffering’ she said oh, what are you doing to me? So you’re saying the companions to come up, are hopeless and helpless. It just kind of goes along with that, and it was just immediately what I thought about.
(M) And even to be hopeless and helpless is one of the most frightening human experiences. We’ve always got something to hang onto, even if it’s yourself; but when you realize the reality that there’s nothing that can save you, help you, keep you, sustain you, that in itself does produce fear, but it does thrust you to Him.
(J) So the difficulty of life is what drags you out of that fear.
(M) Yes, exactly.
(J) It’s not the ‘ease’. Because people that are afraid think that ease would pull them out. If you just gave me the money to get through this month. If you just gave me something, you know, if you just solve this sin issue, if you just. But that’s not what God uses to bring us out of out fears.
(M) Right, we come out really by faith alone. We don’t come out by change of anything. And to have faith, I’ve always said, if you have to lose everything else.
(J) If you have to be hopeless and helpless.
(M) Yeah. But this (the Beatitudes) is so wonderful because it goes into the basic worries of life, what you eat, what you wear, how long you will live, or how tall you are, whichever translation you read. And Jesus said, “Why are you worried?” But I saw again how it’s connected to love. Because what you believe will sustain you will be what you love. And what you love is what you will worship. So ‘the perfect love that casts out fear’ is when you love God more than you, and you no longer have two masters.
(J) The amazing thing is that in that book that’s exactly what she had to do. She had to cast her love upon Him, leave herself, her inner fears, and then she could go up and be changed.
(M) Well I’ve never read that book. I didn’t particularly like it, but it has blessed me through people who have read it. So for you to bring it in.
(J) Well you know something, you’re not into allegories and all your writings are so straight forward, and it’s not like you veil anything. So when it’s an allegory it’s almost like a mystery and to work it out seems like, just tell me the stuff. At a certain point in my life, back in the early ninety’s I was so touched by that book; but it’s a real touching story. I realize that was a process He was taking me through. I think it’s a process He takes us all through.
(M) And from time to time we go back and realize the meanings of the symbols there. And it’s been wonderful to be taught the book; I’ll have to read it.
(J) Yeah, you’re getting all the reflections.
(M) Yes I may read it one day, when I have the time.
(J) Well you’re getting all the riches anyway.
(M) The interpretation of the book is better than the book. In any event, you can’t serve two masters, and when I saw, oh this is what I saw that got me, is that worry is evidence of self-love. It’s not so much that Satan is your master, or the world is your master, it’s that you love yourself enough to make a master other than God. It still keeps going back to love. And I’m going to know from now on that any worry is evidence of self-love. And any fear is loving yourself more than God. That’s why to love God is to be totally free of fear. Because I think love and fear are bound up together in us. If you really love something you fear the loss of it. If you love a person, you fear the loss of them. Well if you love God you don’t have to fear the loss of Him, but you do have to fear Him, because He is the last word. He is the Eternal One that we will face.
(J) When you try to separate yourself from your very Creator it’s like separating yourself from yourself.
(M) Wow, yes.
(J) And you’re isolating yourself away from yourself, and then you’re food for the enemy; you’re fodder. That just strikes me, how can you not love the Creator that knows you and is you. If you separate yourself and say He is bad, He is not good to me, like the original lies, if you separate yourself from that, how in the world can you separate yourself from yourself or from your Creator? He’s the One that made you, He’s the One that knows you, He is the only Love that will ever love you.
(M) To see all this, to me, brings out many, many life experiences of mine and of others I have walked with and watched. To see that God pursues compassionately and jealously to reveal our fears, because that is the obstacle to our loving Him and believing Him. It’s just loving God and giving to the poor was somehow wound all together for me this morning and woven like a tapestry, to see that only the one who doesn’t fear gives to the poor. We’re just so grateful for what the believers are giving to the poor down here, and hope to have much more updates and stories.
(J) We’re going to have many more pictures now that Rosemary’s gotten connected this waywiht her Mac. She’ll be able to send us pictures of progression of different things that they’re going through.
(M) There lives here are just so different than American lives, and they’re so comfortable with it. But there are so many things that I think would interest people about just their everyday events and people they’ve known. We visited last night with a lovely lady a Honduran, with a Canadian husband who live here, and she was just gracious and lovely and speaks perfect English. There are just so many acquaintances that they have and interesting things. Again I’ll say that my hope is to open a window to the mission field. Because believers, the Third World is so far from our way of life. When we get off the plane, I’m always struck and grieved by the decadence, by the filth, by the trash, the falling down buildings, the traffic, the heat, the beggars. It’s just stepping into a totally other universe from what we live in. It’s sort of like if we can give people a visual of what it’s like. And then we’ll have the joy of a place to give to the poor that they can see something happen from it. It’s not obscure where it goes into the pot with a million other givers.
(J) This is what I’m hoping is going to happen with Bob and Rosemary’s website is that it’ll be a window, and that people will be able to peer into the window and be able to see what’s going on in Honduras. In individual lives, in people’s faces, not just a country, but faces, individual people.
(M) Names. And believers with need who find God provided. And Rosemary commented that it was so perfect that this gift to build a house for this family could go through the church. So that neither the church nor us are known, so I hope God will allow us to do it that way. And be led of the Spirit. Those who send and those who listen will pray we will be led of the Spirit. That’s the safest way to do it.
(J) And the Spirit knows exactly where He wants it to go.
(M) Someday I want Bob and Rosemary to share their experiences of when they first came and they had such compassion in giving, and all the things they learned about giving down here. So that’s what’s on my heart. It’s those who don’t fear who can give lavishly to the poor. It’s so wonderful.
(J) Thank you for sharing that.
(M) And thank you Rosemary; and back to the computers!
