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Day Of Accounting
Episode #298
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guest: Julie
(Julie) This is going along with what you’re saying. I forgot a part that I saw. The Lord showed me that my daughter was free to go with Him, because I had chosen to be in my solitude and accountability with Him, and so I wasn’t needing anything from her. I wasn’t pulling from her. I wasn’t draining her life. And that is to me what you’re saying too, that when… It just was huge; I had no idea that it worked that way. But it’s like He was showing me that if I won’t be in my solitude with God, if I won’t take the responsibility for my life and my needs and my responsibilities to God, if I won’t do that, then I’m going to abuse everyone around me. I’m going to be pulling from them and draining them and expecting them. It’s like I… You had said something to me at one point. You said, “Now let go of her feet and let her fly.” And I could see that that’s what that’s like. If I’m irresponsible, it’s like I’m binding up the feet of everybody around me, whether it’s spouse or children or whatever. I’m expecting them to be God to me, or meet my needs. And that’s so much of what I think solitude for me has become is it’s fundamentally about me taking my needs to God alone and accepting the responsibility of my life alone with God. And I didn’t realize how even as a parent that means then that I free my children to find their own lives with Him, and I don’t require them to serve mine.
(M) I read from Acts 17:31; I don’t think I gave the reference. And I’m not satisfied with that, with The New American. “He charges all people everywhere to repent, to change their mind for the better; and heartily to amend their ways with abhorrence of their past sins, because He has fixed a day when He will judge the world righteously, justly, by a Man Whom He has destined and appointed for that task. And He has made this credible and given conviction and assurance and evidence to everyone by raising Him from the dead.” He’s fixed a day. There is a specific time when we will face Him with our choice.
(J) Well, really to face Him now in our solitude, or then we’ll face Him then. I mean, what are you going to do at that point, you know? Nothing. But you can choose the facing, between now and then. You can do it now, it’s dealt with; if it’s then, well…
(M) One thing Julie said to me in private, and I think it bears saying, and I really didn’t, didn’t know this in quite this term. She said, “You discipled me to absolute accountability.” She said it in terms of her responsibility. But she said that I discipled her to accountability, by accountability; and I didn’t realize this. It’s absolutely true. I didn’t put that phrase on it, but that is discipling, that is helping someone… I used to say when I first started discipling people, and was first called to disciple… By the way, we’re not called to counsel, we’re called to disciple, and disciple means discipline. Counsel means I’ll tell you what to do and you can do whatever you like. (John laughs.) And ah, no, I don’t believe in counsel, I believe we’re called to disciple; the word means discipline. So when I first began to disciple I would say to people, you think discipling means that I solve your life for you, instead of you, but discipling means that I bring you, encourage you, support you, as you assume responsibility for your life. I’m training you how to be accountable, and how to be responsible, and I’m not here to go to God and hear everything for you.
(Julie) And when we first started, when you first started discipling me, you helped me to accountability like nobody else in my entire life. I mean, my every motive was exposed to you; my everything was exposed to you. It’s like God told you everything, and I see how, and there were times where, there were times where I would fuss at Him, “Well You don’t ever cut me any slack at all.” And I guess in that day, a couple days ago, I, I, it just turned and it just led me to such worship of Him for that because that was so wonderful. It was wonderful that He did that, because it gradually shifted over to where I understood in alone with God. I mean, you just helped me see. If I didn’t go to God and get the wisdom that I needed for a situation, it was my fault. I couldn’t say, well I just didn’t know how to do it, you know, or whatever; or I just made a mistake. I mean you would, you would just continue to hunt me down to the fundamental laziness that was in me and address it and deal with it, that my basic responsibility was to go to God, and I had no excuse if I didn’t. And I’m just grateful, because that is a sure foundation to be set on.
(M) Well, I wish the hearer’s could see the big smile on her face, and the laughter, (Martha is chuckling as she says this) that it’s joy now; it’s joy. And, and I’ll tell you this, she’s one of the handful of people who wanted to be discipled and was willing to be corrected. We don’t want to be corrected; basically we don’t want to be corrected. We’ll, we’ll say, we’ll make up a reason not to be corrected. But for me it’s the crisis of every life, because I have seen so clearly the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth.
(Julie) You, you helped me realize through it that you never discover your life until you’re willing to be in that accountability. I think that, at least for me, I didn’t want to be that responsible. I didn’t, I didn’t want to have no excuse. I didn’t want in every single situation, every single relationship to be under the eye of God, if I could have figured out a way not to. (Martha is chuckling.) But on the other side of it, I realize that the Lord pressing me into living in that absolute light, that’s also the place I discovered everything of the life that He had given me, by being, being there in the difficulty of facing my sin, and facing my motives, and facing who I was, and facing my inadequacy, and just everything. That’s also the place where He can show you.
(M) Well, I keep going back to the scriptures, it’s John 3:18, well 17, “God did not send His Son into the world to judge, to reject, condemn, their sins, but that the world should find salvation, be made safe and sound through Him.” It’s so amazing that this God Who requires such a standard, would so bend down, give His Son, so that we would pass the test.
(J) Hmhm.
(M) He’s done it all. There is now no reason not to be accountable, because the Blood of Christ makes us acceptable. The Life of Christ has been given to indwell us, and He’s just, He didn’t, He doesn’t want to judge, condemn, and send people to the lake of fire, which is very real. It’s not a myth. Ah, “Whoever believes on Him, so that,” there’s that wonderful “so that”, “whoever believes, trusts, clings to, relies on Him, Christ, shall not perish, come to destruction, be lost, but have eternal, everlasting life.” That is what God wants. He wants us to become accountable and live in the light in this life, so that we can become like the Son, and when we meet Him the scripture says we will not be ashamed. That is possible, to stand before Him faultless, blameless, above reproach, by standing in that accountability in solitude now. “He who believes in Him, who clings to, trusts in Him, will not be judged. He who trusts in Him never comes up for judgment. For him there is no rejection, no condemnation, He incurs no damnation; but he who does not believe (in Christ), cleave to, rely on and trust in Him, is judged already. He has already been convicted and has already received his sentence because he has not believed and trusted in the only begotten Son of God. He is condemned for refusing to let his trust rest in Christ’s name.” Now, you see, it’s a choice. We have the choice to see accountability, to go into the Light of God. That great ‘if’, if you will, here’s what you’ll have: the Blood of Christ and fellowship, relationships, Body life. And 19 is just chilling, “The basis of the judgment, the indictment, the test by which men are judged, the ground for the sentence lies in this: Light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than Light, and more than Light, for their deeds were evil. For every evildoer hates, loathes, detests the Light, and will not come into the Light.” You see, if you love darkness you will make yourself busy and avoid that Light, “but shrinks from it, lest his works, his deeds be exposed and reproved. But he who practices truth, who does what is right, comes out into the Light; so that his works may be plainly seen, wrought with God, divinely prompted, done with God’s help, in dependence upon Him.” And those are the scriptures, that passage I go back to over and over again, because the basis of judgment is the Light, what we do with the Light that we have. And we will be judged for the Light we refuse to have. We are accountable for the Light God gave that we said, no, no I won’t have it. So the absence of the fear of God is what takes people down a pathway of absolute darkness and destruction. Accountability gives you the fear of God, to know that He’s going to have the final word. You can do what you like now, but He will have the final word.
