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Kingdom Safety
Episode #346
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
(J) Well, Martha, I feel like Repunzel’s captor, because I have locked you in a tower and said, “Come forth, let down your booklet,” rather than your hair. So I’m real excited because you have turned out a booklet. And basically our goal is I would love for you to have a new booklet every month. But Lord willing we just have to wait on His timing for things. And Jennifer came and said that there was an old CD of the month message that you did that really was relevant to this moment, this time and this season that we’re in currently in the church and in our country and in our world. And the title of it is Kingdom Safety. And I’m real excited. I went through this with you yesterday, and I was just amazed at what you brought out. Basically, you know, you brought a solution here to crisis and calamity. And I’m going to personally apply it to my life, because the truths behind it are just amazing. So you wanted to do a podcast about it, and so I’d love to hear what you have to say today.
(M) Well, I’m stumped. I spent three whole days writing this booklet.
(J) Locked in the tower.
(M) Locked in the tower, happily. And it’s been wonderful to be secluded just to focus on this. And of course to bring that forth, really I didn’t… It’s a whole new booklet. It’s not the tape as such. I’m stuck on something because the issue is entering the Kingdom, and I think what shocked you about it is I clearly say scripturaly that not all believer’s are in the Kingdom. But the major criterion for going in the Kingdom is to become a little child. And I’m stumped on that, not because I don’t have anything to say, but because I’ve got too much to say. I’ve got to reduce it. But I’ve come across something. I’ve come to a verse that says through much tribulation we’ll enter the Kingdom, and that’s kind of where I’m stuck. Let me read you the beginning of it, then I’m gonna go into it. Acts 14:32, “It is through many hardships and tribulations we must enter the Kingdom of God.” The question we ask is why… You haven’t read this section.
(J) No, this part is brand new.
(M) “Why do we have troubles? That’s our question. How could it be that hardship is the way to enter the Kingdom? Wrong question. The valid question is this, why do we need hardships and tribulations?”
(J) Hmmm.
(M) “Need troubles? Yes. For our blessing, health, sustenance and victory. We need troubles to become our true self in God. To be made stronger? No. Just the opposite. We tenaciously resist being helpless as a little child.” Do we not?
(J) Ahh, I do personally I guess; absolutely.
(M) “And the child alone and the poor alone possess the Kingdom.” So if we’re not willing to be a little, like a little child, and Jesus said in Matt. 18 to the disciples,
“Unless you turn around, go back, repent, and become as a little child, you will not enter the Kingdom at all.”
(J) Most of us think that tribulation is to test us for strength. I can’t speak for everybody, but I know that I probably translate the result of tribulation as strength. And test me so that I can, you know, be shown strong. And, and that you can test my faith so that I can shine. And so what you’re saying is basically, ah, ‘phbbbbbt’, no, not at all.
(M) It’s the opposite. So I write, I don’t know whether this will remain, but, “Tribulation attacks my soulish strength and becomes the cross that kills my independent adult self.”
(J) Hmm.
(M) “We will be strong. Human nature is not only self-sufficient, it carries enormous soulish strength, and that strength must die. So we need pressure to be made helpless before God,” which is where you get all the blessings. Personally this is… The reason I’ve got so much to say is I’m in it. I’m in a time of weakness, sort of a spiritual weakness, not physical. But I know that always God has to reduce me to that weakness so I can be trusted to speak for Him. I had it last week before the tape of the month. I sat down with all of you all and I said, “I have nothing. I don’t know if we can do a tape of not.” And you all laughed at me. And I think in you hearts you said ‘good’, which you usually do, which means I’m utterly devastated of any participation in the message. I have nothing. And when it came out, it just flowed like a river and went on for two hours, and made a tape for all of it. But anyway, before every conference I always want to be strong. I always want to have everything in order. I always want to have, know exactly where I’m going, and never does He allow me to do that, because He has to reduce me to the child so that I can speak from inside the Kingdom. I know it well. Oh my goodness, I’ve known it for forty years. But in me, that old nature wants strength in myself. So, I don’t think we understand that what Jesus died to, He took that old strong nature, and He didn’t live by it. He had that nature within Him, but He’s the only human being from Adam and Eve, who would not live by the strength of the soulish nature. Nee makes a long point about how magnificent the innocent soul, original soul, how strong it was. It was able to rule the earth. And so Satan tempted Adam and Eve on one point of self-sufficiency, and that was knowledge, because they had the strength of soul to do it. And so God… The soul is corrupted, utterly corrupted. Anyway I’m not going into that in the booklet, but I just want to talk about that because I realized something this morning out of my prayer to Him this morning. I’m so weak, I have to work today Lord, and I don’t, I don’t have the, I don’t feel the anointing to do it. So He said go to Psalm 18, which is one of my life, central Psalms. And the first thing it says in the Amplified, it says, “I love you fervently and devotedly oh Lord, my Strength.” Second verse: “The Lord is my Rock,” not I don’t have a rock, or the Lord gives a rock, “The Lord is my Rock, my Fortress, my Deliverer, my God, my keen and firm Strength in Whom I shall trust and take refuge.” And I’ve known it before. The occasion of this Psalm was then David was delivered. It says, “The words of this song on the day when the Lord delivered David from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul.” There’s a particular weakness that comes to you when you’re under assault by the enemy through a person. There is a weakness. There is a draining of energy. The enemy goes for energy. And I’ve noticed a long, long time that David called the Lord his strength, just as He does in this Psalm. And it goes on to Psalm 18, to verse 32, “The Lord girds me with strength and makes my way perfect.” Then He says in 39, “You have girded me with strength for the battle.” And all of this is about what God did, that David didn’t do. God did it all for him.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) And I think I’m just gonna have to write a booklet about it, because there’s Jacob, who had strength to take care of his own destiny, which could have been given to him freely without all of the work and trouble he went to. And he had to be reduced through wrestling with God until he was struck in the hip. Why are you looking so funny?
(J) There’s Abraham, who, you know, did his own strength. There’s Moses, who had his own strength. There’s John Enslow, who had his own strength.
(M) And the thing we hate and the most frightening thing we have is weakness, and I’ve been seeing through this about David what a crisis it is for men to be made weak and how difficult it is to accept it. So David had a huge opposition in Saul; probably wore him out physically running in the Engedi and hiding in caves and looking for water and all the things that we know from having been there. But David was a mighty young man who killed Goliath with one stone in a slingshot. But to reduce him to this place where he had no strength but the Lord took enormous work. And it’s taken an enormous work in my life. I’ve come to it over and over and over again, where God just I think… We don’t know the name, Makkeh. He strikes you down, but it is to give you, to bring you… It’s not to punish you. It’s not even to chasten you. It’s to reduce you to the reality that in us is a little child. The new creation is a little child, leaning, trusting. And you know what, John? The Amplified translates faith. One of the things I say in this booklet is the church taught me to be strong and have faith, and for me to do it. And I couldn’t do it. And I came in the Amplified to see the definition of faith is, “The leaning of the entire personality on God in confidence, absolute confidence in His goodness and trust.” That leaning is faith. And Hebrews, “Looking away unto Jesus, Who is the author and finisher of our faith.” Leaning and looking away from self to Jesus is faith. So you can’t have a really genuine faith unless you are reduced to being a little child.
(J) ‘Whewww’, hmhmm. (Martha chuckles.)
(M) And that’s, that’s what trouble and tribulation is about. It’s much more. There’s chastening in it sometimes, always, probably. There’s discipline. There’s an attack of the enemy, but God’s entire agenda is to give supply, sustain, miraculously keep us. And He cannot do it so long as we’re God in our own strength. So that’s why tribulation and hardship leads us into the Kingdom. Go ahead, sorry.
(J) So does He break us down with our inability to be strong? Does He break us down that way?
(M) Yes. I think it’s in the story of Jacob, wrestling. When he was broken he held onto God for the blessing. “I will not let You go unless You bless me,” but only when he was broken and crippled. And so it’s like the… Phillip Yancey tells about the shepherd. If he’s got a lamb or a sheep that’s independent and willful, he breaks the legs, puts them on his shoulder, so that they can’t wander anymore. Seems harsh, terrible, but it’s actually bringing us to our destiny and trying to get us into the place where we can live in Kingdom abundance, which is God takes care of everything.
