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The Power Of The Gaze
31 October 2010
Episode #202
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special Guests: Jacquelyn Nawrocki, Julie, and Carole Nelson
(Jacquelyn) So those that are not under authority, that haven’t been ‘looked at’, and know who they are, they’re really running around saying, “Look at me, look at me, look at me, tell me I exist.”
(M) There’s no… There’s… The demand for attention is endless, and I’ve come to have compassion about that because there will be people who come, and they demand to be the center. Or they demand… They’ll come into your life and endlessly… One person told me, “I don’t care if I make you mad, I just want your attention; I don’t care how I get it.” Well that was a tremendous deficit in her, being seen. And I know a lot about that person, she was terribly neglected by a narcissistic mother, and ah, so… Yes Jacquelyn, that’s exact… That’s what that infant began to do, began to scream for attention, flail for attention, writhe, and be loud and demanding for attention, and ah. But it’s, it’s ah…
(Carole) But as soon as that mother turned around and responded to that baby, I saw, I don’t know if it’s true, but I saw the baby first go ‘ohuhh’.
(J) Yeah, absolutely.
(Carole) Distrusting what… (John in background agreeing, “totally”) Did you see that too? Distrusting, at first distrusting, and then relax and reengage and be at peace.
(J) It was almost like the baby was, ‘are you sure?’
(Carole) Yeah, yeah I know that…
(J) Because you were strange, you were very weird. (Everyone laughs) And I don’t know who you were, and I need to make sure you’re my Mom. (John laughs)
(Julie) There’s something out of the middle of all this, I remembered something that happened years ago in Israel. I don’t know if you remember this John, but you all were taping a podcast, and do you remember you, you said to Martha in the podcast in a real tender, childlike moment, “I have to be able to look into your face and know that I’m ok.” Do you remember that? And it’s interesting that all these years later I mean really, something you knew of that principle then. And now it’s coming back. And I guess it’s just, it’s precious to me. And even talking about the Holy Spirit this morning, it’s, it’s expanding the word ‘behold’ for me, and how desperate and ok it is that I have such a huge, huge, huge need to behold the Lord. And not just to see Him, but that it’s ok that I need to see how He sees me.
(J) Yeah, I would always, uhm, I always have a fixation about the smile of God and where that smile is. And I would go through the streets of Jerusalem, and I could literally see the smile of God on certain Jews. And I would go oh my-gosh it’s right there. And it was very strange. It’s not like I walk through the states and see that, but I do, I do see it when I’m in Israel. And the reason why I believe I am aware of that is because I am looking for that smile of God on me, and I’m looking for those eyes to look at me. And yeah, I’m very aware of that, yeah. And I’ve always been aware of that. And I guess that’s why.
(M) And, and what I was trying to say is, the ah… If you keep your gaze on God, and that is hard, because we want to put it on others and on ourselves and the crisis and the government and the news, but if, if our gaze is on Him, then we see things accurately, quite beyond ourselves. And I realized later after looking at this, that what I really see is Him. And out of that seeing of Him, I can see so clearly, I can see you… If Michael Angelo said that about a piece of marble, I know exactly what that means. I see inside of what you build, and what has been done to you, I see, I see the person. But it is not that I have that capacity at all. Ah, it’s that in the looking at Him, you somehow see all things rightly. So there’s nothing more important than the gaze at Him.
(J) I’m so amazed that you, you, you connect the desire of the heart of, of every human, is to be looked upon by God. But you make a connection with those eyes to look at us, ok, because you’re willing to look at Him, and then through Him look at us, you’re able to recover what we’re unable to see ourself and communicate it somehow. And I think that that’s probably every Spirit-filled believer that’s, that’s our goal and our job, you know, is to see the Father and then to see what the Father is looking at. And I, I’m amazed that the very thing that is our deficit is those eyes; we don’t believe those eyes are looking at us. What person do you know, in hysterics… Most people don’t believe that God is looking at them. What do we… Why are we looking everywhere else? It’s because we don’t believe those eyes are looking at us. That’s why we can flagrantly go out and sin, is because we have no conscience because we don’t believe that He’s looking at us. The conscience is seared because we don’t believe that He’s looking at us. And then every Spirit-filled believer is to make that connection.
(M) And I’ve seen you do it John, it’s not, it’s not confined to me, I’m, I’m seeing all of you do it; that you are able to see because you are looking at Him. And, and one thing is, it’s kind of a, a whole picture, because you won’t look at, you won’t gaze at Him knowing that you are seeing unless you know that He loves you. And so sometimes He has to bring a neglected child in to, to be loved so that they can see. And I can tell you that it requires coming under the ‘mother’ of the Spirit. Jacquelyn was talking about authority, but it requires coming under the authority of the Holy Spirit wherever He establishes it, because then you can see what, what is ‘seen’. You can accept the gaze of the Lord through the Spirit and the vessel of the Spirit. I’m nothing but a vessel, and you all are vessels and you see.
(Carole) This story comes to mind, so ah, it so ministers to me. I was in the office one day and John and come over and had taken some beautiful pictures of ah, these spiders that we have around here. And spiders really creep me in a lot of ways. But it was a beautiful picture. And ah, but it was creepy too. And so John, after he shows me this picture he says I want to give you a palate cleanser; and I thought what? Anyway I didn’t get it but. So I open up this picture and it’s a picture of the dog and the cat laying on each other, and I went ‘wowwwwwww’. And that’s what the Lord does, that was the ‘mother’, having seen kind of a frightful picture, the Spirit, the Holy Spirit comes in and… I don’t know how to put this. He gave me a picture of peace and comfort and… Anyway I just wanted to tell you that because you were the vessel. It so affected me, your doing that so affected me that it caused me to fall in love with you more. (Carole speaks with deep emotion) It did.
(J) (John breaks over this)
(M) It’s because John, you saw, years ago, the child in Carole.
(J) Umhmm.
(M) And you’ve always called it forth.
(J) And I’ve always seen the Father’s embrace of you, and how…
(Carole) When you ministered that, I came home and it had to grow in me, what happened, because it stunned me. I didn’t even, couldn’t even take it in at the time. But overnight I realized it caused me, that act, that heart act, caused me to fall in love.
(J) Hmm.
(M) Oh, precious Carole. I think we’re supposed to fall in love with each other in the Body of Christ. (Everyone laughs) It’s totally pure. Oh that’s wonderful. (Background comments)
(Jacquelyn) I’m thinking of somebody I know that’s mildly autistic, mentally disabled. And I look at him I see somebody that’s dirty and unwashed and stinks, and I don’t want to be around him. But I happened to be with this, this person for three or four days one time, and it was like God in me started looking at him. And I started to see his childhood and I started to be angry with his father because he left this boy. And I was able to fast, I think three days for him, just crying out for God to help him. And then I just sort of left it, left him with God and I didn’t think much about it. And that happened three or four years ago, maybe two, I don’t know, but the last time I heard anything about him the comment was made, “he is changing.” And that was God looking at him, seeing him, seeing what happened to him, acknowledging what happened to him. And that’s God versus Jacquelyn looking at him and saying oh, he smells, and I don’t want to be around him.
(M) You know, I know there are people that just come through, and if you, just pass through your life, and if God gives you eyes to see them they are changed without a word. Without, without the necessity of a relationship, just to be seen. It is so healing. But it comes from living gazing at the Lord. That’s what David did. I want one thing, one thing, Psalm 27, “To behold the beauty of the Lord, to meditate in the temple all the days of my life.” He wanted to see the Lord, and look at the fruit of the life just from seeing. We make it from, we make it doing and saying, and all this stuff, and it’s just looking away from everything that would distract unto Jesus, and it’s keeping our focus there. Then we become the gaze of God, the eyes of God, literally, the eyes of God into this world. And I’ve had experiences like that with people, one man in the airport that I’ve told about.
(J) Hmhmm, hmhmm.
(M) And ah, some other things that come to mind. The gaze at God gives you His eyes, and you become His eyes into the world. What a ministry. Anybody can do that. All of us should and can. I think Julie’s doing it with her class that she talked about at the conference. She is seeing them, literally seeing, they’re adoring her, they’re trusting her because she sees them. It’s Mmm! I’m thinking of somebody’s child here John, that you’ve had eyes for; and no matter where she was, or who she was, you said, “she’s Gods.” You never believed her wanderings at all. You just kept looking at her in the Spirit, because you’d seen her, God had shown you her, she was His, done, done deal.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) It wasn’t even real.
(J) Uhuhh.
(M) Where she went, was it? So see. That’s faith! That comes from looking away unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. That’s faith. Oh, I didn’t do the conference well enough.
(Carole) It just means another conference.
(M) Well it just means the podcast, you all are helping me teach it. (Martha laughs)
