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Death and Resurrection in Waiting on God
Episode #677
11/24/2019
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special Guest: Jennifer Wentzel and Joan Wentzel
This is the continuation of a series of podcasts started in Episode #675.
There is absolutely a death in waiting on God to move. We die in that waiting! But the death is NOT without purpose. We do not die merely for death’s sake.
John:
Well, some may say, you know, well why, why what is there so enticing about going through this experience? Why would you ever want to go through this experience? Why would, why would I, I a by, a by-stander just looking at this say, “I’d want any of that”? And I, I would say because we’re going to see the glory of God. It’s because of the fruit of Him working death into us, so that He could bring His life through us. And, and someone who would say that would not understand that, you know, Paul even says “Death works in me that life might work in you.”
And that is exactly the whole deal. The reason why you would want to experience something like this – even the, the waiting, the death – because there is a resurrection side to it. It’s not a death unto death for death’s sake. This is a death unto life. And so that’s why I’m excited, because I was investing in resurrection life.
Yeah, I understand! I’ve, I’ve been, I’ve been walking with you for, what, twenty, almost five years, twenty-two, twenty-five, whatever, years and I, I know now that, that it is death. That you have to, you have to, you have to die!
And, you know I, I… Before, before I would have never thought that. Before I thought you just pick it up and “Oh, my gosh! Look I got another present. It’s just like an Easter egg that’s just out in the yard!” Well, no, it’s not like that at all. It’s death!
Martha:
You, you’ve said for twenty, more than twenty years, “People want what you have but they don’t what to go what you go through.”
John:
They don’t want to pay the price.
Martha:
They don’t want to pay the price.
John:
Absolutely!
Martha:
And the price is die. And what you really said, Joan, was that we, you had no control of any of it. You had… You couldn’t… None, none of us had any control. That was the death that only God for all of us, it was only God who could, who could solve it and, and bring it to an end. And we, I wasn’t sure it would come to an end.
John:
I could make you food, I could set up vitamins, I could do whatever. I could, I could get your supplements in you. I… But there was no guarantee that any of that was going to do anything.
Martha:
Uh huh. That’s right.
John:
But I just knew that I was supposed to. It wasn’t like I was just doing it because this is what I’m supposed to do, this is what, you know… This was, this was something that He… It was His will.
Martha:
Wow!
John:
That’s, that’s totally different than just…
Martha:
That’s the issue.
John:
I didn’t just, you know, pick it up and say, “Oh, well, I’m just going to run with this.” No! I knew the will of God: “Put these vitamins in this woman’s mouth,” you know? And so I did.
Martha:
Wow. That’s the secret, John. You did it for obedience…
John:
I was obedient.
Martha:
…into His will…
John:
Yes.
Martha:
…and that’s why it was fruitful in your life. Anything else would not have been the same…
John:
Well, that’s true.
Martha:
thing. That’s amazing!
John:
It was… It’s going to be eternal because it came from, from the Head. It was, it was…
Martha:
Wow!
John:
…it was the will of God and so it has eternal benefit and eternal
Martha:
Reward!
John:
reward. Absolutely!
Martha:
Oh, that’s incredible!
John:
But if I, you know, if I just said, “Oh, well, you know…
Martha:
I’m gonna help this poor woman.
John:
…yeah, I’m gonna help her and…
Martha:
She’s old and I need to help her (laughing)!
John:
I bet, I bet, I bet she needs, you know, aspirin to keep her blood thin. That would have been wrong.
Martha:
Um hmm.
John:
I couldn’t have done logic on any of this.
Martha:
Uh uh.
John:
I just signed on and said, “Whatever it does, whatever it takes, let’s go!”
Jennifer:
John, it just occurs to me, what exactly did I think it would be to be taken into the wilderness so that He could speak softly to me? I always focus on ‘the speak softly to me.’ But where’s He doing it? In the middle of hell really! A desert wilderness is not a nice place, but He’s got my attention. Right?
John:
Right!
Jennifer:
So I, I think for me it just occurs to me that I don’t know it yet, although I can say that my life is blown up in the best way also agonizing all over the place in the aftermath of, of all of that.
He has my attention. I’m in the wilderness. I’m in the wilderness for the purpose of removing obstacles to my hearing Him, to my seeing Him, to my communing with Him. He can speak softly to me in the wilderness because it’s just me and it’s just Him and there is nothing else – not my agenda, not my I want this. I mean, I’m nothing! I’m nothing and in a place of nothing.
So somewhere in every single one of us, and I don’t know where, but I think that He probably removed an obstacle that needed to be removed. And I can’t wait to see it, because John’s right, it is eternal on the other end. I don’t have to know it and I didn’t know it going through it. But it’s never without purpose, eternal purpose for Him.
Martha:
Oh! And amazingly in the middle of it, I wrote a big book, thick book on forgiveness and He gave me the power to do that, the physical stamina to do it, and some days I wrote for eight hours. And that was impossible! That was absolutely impossible in that place. And then when the book was done, back I went. And it was gone and published and then my little siege of grace ended, too, and I went back to being pretty helpless.
But, it’s, it’s such a mystery. He is such a mystery. Joan, you said about Nicodemus…
See, the thing about God is that we’re called to know Him and He’s so strange. And so when we see the strange things happen, what does it say about Him? We don’t, we don’t know! He is like a… anyway.
Joan:
Reading in John 3 and I’ve read the story of Nicodemus may times but just saw something so interesting and it kind of went along with where we were in this where we didn’t know. We just simply didn’t know anything and it was difficult for all of us.
But Nicodemus came to Jesus and He said, “Master, we know that You are a man sent from God because of all the miracles and the wonders You do.”
And I could just never get Jesus’ response! But Jesus said to him, and I’m reading out of the Passion: “Jesus answered Nicodemus, ‘Listen to this eternal truth. Before a person can perceive God’s kingdom realm, they must first experience a rebirth.’”
I said, “God, what does that have to do with anything?” I just can’t… I really… I mean, this is how I read the word. “God, I can’t get that!” But I saw that Jesus’ answer to our “I know,” which is the flesh, we think we know what’s going on, was, “No, Nicodemus, you’re not born again. You don’t see the kingdom. You can’t even perceive it because you haven’t had a rebirth.” And we all need a rebirth to be able to perceive that this is God.
And then He goes on to say, “And you can’t enter without it.” But I saw that kind of what we were in is a… Then He goes on to say, “You know the Spirit wind blows as it chooses. You can hear its sound but you don’t know where it came from or where it’s going. So it is within the hearts of those who are Spirit born.”
And this was a time of mystery for all of us, an amazing time of mystery. It was death, it was mystery, it was bewilderment. And I feel like we only had one real word and that came from Jacquelyn during that time. And she saw Martha being shot out of a cannon! And I thought, “How, when, and where is this gonna happen?” But, you know, it was true, it was true. But that was our one word we kind of hung on was Jacquelyn’s word about Martha.
Martha:
Okay. What you just said, Joan, and I was shot out of a cannon. I had one instant healing and it was a, it was a extreme, beyond-belief fatigue. I never put this together but I, when I was shot out of a cannon, I was sitting at my desk and all of a sudden, every symptom was gone in a flash and I, I felt like I’d, I had been shot out of a cannon.
I called my daughter and I said, “What did you pray?” And she said, “Oh, Isaiah 40, ‘Those who wait on the Lord shall gain new strength.’” And I didn’t know till this minute that even her prayer was under the mandate to wait on the Lord. Those… So this is forever one of my most powerful scriptures. “He gives strength to the weary, to him who lacks might He increases power.” Now He didn’t seem to do that for me. “Yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles” and the Amplified, I think, says, “Toward the heavens.” “They will run and not get tired. They will walk and not become weary.”
But see even she, even y’all had to wait! Even she had to wait to know what to pray. And she’s, she’s been just an unbelievable intercessor for me but she, she knew exactly what she had prayed when I asked her. She was waiting on the Lord. So everybody had the same mandate although it manifested in different ways. Isn’t that amazing?
Joan:
And we truly had no idea where the Spirit was going in any way for Martha, for John, for Jen, for Jacquelyn, for me, for Dave. We had no idea. And from day to day the nothing, nothingness was there. But yet God was at work and there was to my knowledge never a time without a CD of the Month, without a podcast. God intervened mightily. He wrote. He ministered. He was there through the whole thing. But it, from the day-to-day standpoint it seemed like nothing.
Martha:
Oh, I have a current miracle that demonstrates the whole thing.
John:
Yay!
Martha:
A precious young woman in my life, I’ll call her Allie, several times she’s had the threat of breast cancer and every time she has come out of it without any.
She called me again and was scheduled for yet another biopsy and I didn’t pray. I didn’t try to pray. I didn’t try to know what to say. I didn’t start praying. I didn’t do anything. I started waiting. I didn’t ask God anything. Just He knew what I was there for, I was showing up for.
Have you ever done, been working at something but you really weren’t there? You may be working in the kitchen but your mind is on something else, you’re waiting maybe for someone to come to the door? That’s how I lived for a few, few days. I, I was going along looking like I was living but I was not here. I was before the Lord not saying a word. I was waiting.
And when I heard the word, it was this, “It’s not possible! It’s not possible for Allie to have cancer.” So I called her… I sent, I sent her an email.
But that came from waiting. We don’t know how to pray. I just read it in Romans 8. We don’t know how to pray like we should pray. We have to wait on the Spirit who will give the prayer. And so it was the simplest thing in the world because I had no prayer, no nothing and all I did was just go in the state of waiting and listening for His voice and when it came it was so absolute. And, of course, she called today and there is no cancer.
So waiting is really how I’ve lived for fifty years because I’ve always had nothing. I had no Bible education. I had no credentials. I had no knowledge. And He threw me in deep waters of working with people, and I knew that I could, oh, I could mess up bad because I didn’t know squat.
But He always gave me exactly what I needed and He was always there. But I’ve always had to wait for everything. And so if I have a, a gift to give out of what I’ve been through, it would be, “Wait on the Lord!”
“The Everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth does not become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable. And those who wait for the Lord shall gain new strength” even if it takes a long time!
Death and Resurrection in Waiting on God – Episode #677 – Shulamite Podcast
There is absolutely a death in waiting on God to move. We die in that waiting! But the death is NOT without purpose. We do not die merely for death’s sake. And we don’t stay in the wilderness of death! A new and glorious LIFE awaits us on the other side.
Praising Him for even in what seems like unended waiting – He is my closest comfort. He does the waiting and I cling to Him.
This is for sure, Love you Tammy! Thanks for commenting and always being a source of encouragement and prayer.
for many, many years there is an answer, a result, a change, I have been waiting for …..
and recently, finally, I have discovered that the answer is not all that important …
what is important is the One who calls me to be with Him during the wait …
the One who shelters me in the death of me during the wait …..
the One who is faithful and kind and gentle in the wait …..
and there is a river of life in the valley of the wait ….
in the nothingness there is the holy whisper …
just the whisper …..
come to Me …..
Truly this is beautifully stated. Thank you for sharing Andrea. It makes me hungry. Love you big!
This is so good. I am finding that waiting brings death to control, if we will give up our hand wringing and trust in Him. The longer I wait, it also convinces me that it is only His power to go and do, and not mine to take any credit. Oh how sweet it will be when His will is accomplished both in me, and in the situations I wait for Him to resolve.
P.S. I have been feeling much better this week and was not only able to do daily chores around the house, but go on short walks, and even an all day field trip! Looking forward to finishing all my supplements and getting them off the counter!! Praise God.
Continuing to stand with you Celia! Thank you for sharing your life and love.
Blessing you and your body!