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Love Confronts
7 September 2013
Episode #352
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special Guests: Gunter Nawrocki, Jacquelyn Nawrocki and Jennifer Wentzel
(Gunter) I think the word here is love. When you, when you love somebody and you know they love you, and they say it out of love because they feel for you, then you receive it, and you can give it. That’s what I know. When I got corrected I know it came out of love. And I was looking for it and I wanted it, and I accepted it. And I don’t have any bad thoughts in my mind or heart, because it was done out of love. It has been done out of love. So I think that’s the big thing right there, is the love part.
(M) You’re absolutely right, Gunter. In fact if we don’t have the love, I don’t think God would use us in the Spirit to confront. But I can say that everybody over forty-four years that I have worked with and confronted, everybody who’s left the Lord did so over correction, despite love. Even if there was love, there are people who will not be corrected. And that’s what Proverbs is about. But I am in the fear of the Lord this morning, because in Proverbs it’s clear. His response to that, “You will have calamity.” I read it, and it’s real if you don’t accept correction. And it is such a vital part of relationship. And it says it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness. Jennifer, we connect with each other only on that basic human, frail, needy, level. We love somebody that allows you to know their weakness and their humanity. And you can only connect with the humans. That’s why I said it, “Come down here, don’t think you’ve got to be above just common humanity.” And it’s on that ground that we love each other and connect with each other. And the one… correction increases the love. It creates a bond, doesn’t it, Jennifer? It creates an immoveable bond of exquisite love for each other because you’ve been willing both to love enough and to on the other side, to accept the love and take the correction. And we, we won’t make it alone; we will not, no matter what position you’re in. I can’t make it alone without your watching for my soul. And it’s a wonderful redemptive healing thing. And like I say, it’s the easy cross. If you won’t do it you’ll have a hard chastening of the Lord, and He doesn’t, He doesn’t want to do that. But I want to read Hebrews 12, just a few of the verses in the Amplified, starting at five, the second part. “My son do not think lightly or scorn to submit,” there’s the word, “to the correction and discipline of the Lord, nor lose courage and give up and faint when you are reproved or corrected by Him; for the Lord corrects and disciplines everyone whom He loves, and He punishes, even scourges”, that’s the same word used for Jesus when they beat Him with the whip. He was scourged. “even scourges, every son whom He accepts and welcomes in His heart and cherishes. You must submit to and endure correction for discipline; God is dealing with you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not thus train and correct and discipline? If you’re exempt from correction and left without discipline in which all of God’s children share, then you are illegitimate offspring and not true sons.” And then he says in verse eleven, “For the time being no discipline brings joy, but seems grievous and painful, but afterwards it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it, a harvest of fruit which consists in righteousness, in conformity to God’s will in purpose, thought, and action, resulting in right living and right standing with God. So brace up and reinvigorate and make right your slackened and weakened and drooping hands and strengthen your feeble and palsied and tottering knees, and cut through and make firm and plain and smooth paths for your feet, make them happy, upright paths that go in the right direction.” And you know, I sort of came to the Lord alone. I had no mentor. I always longed for one. But the Lord took up that reproof of me, and I’ve often said I never correct anybody stronger than He has corrected me. We ought to have a relationship with God, also that avoids the terrible scourging, if we have a relationship with God in which He can really discipline you just between you and Him. And He would do that with me. He would deeply break my heart and reveal His displeasure, as a life-style, not an uncommon occurrence. And when we don’t hear Him, or either when He wants us to be willing to so submit to Him that He lets other people correct us. I remember, John has been one of the most receptive people I’ve ever known. He loved correction. He always said, “I’m not a bastard.” If I’m corrected it means God’s on me, God’s for me. He had that view, and it’s been so easy to correct John. I never had to go through any ‘oh my God, help me.’ I was always free, and so he has grown enormously. Especially in the first ten years there were a lot of corrections. No one ever knew about it and assumed that it didn’t exist because it was private, and ah… So, and then Jennifer had to correct one of her elders, and that’s what broke your heart. And you did it weeping, and it was fruitful, so fruitful in his life. It was, amazingly brought him to where he was supposed to be. So it’s one of the disciplines of the Lord of us is to confront. And one of the disciplines of the Lord to us also is to accept the discipline.
(Jacquelyn) I just, I want to put this in that we don’t sit around with an eye toward correction. We don’t sit around judging each other, or looking for faults. That is not the reason for our coming together as a body.
(M) Thank you, Jacquelyn, that is so true. The Holy Spirit has to come on us. The Holy Spirit has to be the one Who initiates it, because we’re not, you’re right, we’re not looking, we’re not judging or inspecting. And a lot of that goes on in Christian circles, but thank you.
(Jennifer) In addition to that, a lot of the correction in this Body takes place with respect and discretion and privacy, one on one. When I received a word of correction for my elder, someone who was my elder, which was very difficult for me because the Holy Spirit has no respect for age (she laughs). He doesn’t respect my human hierarchy. He’s, about the person and whatever is needed. I went in authority. I had submitted to authority, I had talked to Martha about it. But it was not something that was done in front of everyone. It was a one on one deal. And my experience has been, when the whole Body is involved, it is because it is a critical… It’s like the I. C. U. Ok? If the whole Body has to come to you, that’s because you are perishing, and perishing hard, and the Holy Spirit comes with a ‘whollap to break through whatever it is that is holding you fast and killing you. That has been my experience. When I’ve had the whole Body looking and praying and listening for the sake of my soul and giving me words and saying, “The Lord is telling me this is a stronghold here that needs to be dealt with, and this…” It was a critical situation in my life. That is what was required for that moment. But I have found the Lord to be imminently respectful, and cherishing, and not violating of me at all, at all. In the same way that if you come into the emergency room in critical care, they cut your clothes off. It’s, you know, a stripping you down and a plugging you in, and sometimes they’re battering you and bruising your ribs, and cracking your ribs trying to, you know, save you with the machines and all the rest of that, because you’re dying and the alternative to doing that is that you die. I think that in the same way some of the more intense confrontations that involve a lot of people are for situations precisely like that. Uhm, and now that I’ve viewed them that way I can see that its extreme love. But also the Holy Spirit knows when and how. So in addition to Jacquelyn saying we don’t come together and looking around like ‘hey’ (she laughs), what’s going on there? It’s also His correction is so kind; it’s so kind. It’s the same way that I would think it’d be a rare thing for a parent to go nuts on their kid in the middle of everyone in the world. Do you know what I mean? No, mostly you see parents taking their child into another room or out of the situation away to be quiet, because the child matters, and they have a soul, and its fragile and you don’t, you know, you don’t kill that. You don’t snuff the flickering wick, and neither does the Lord, ever.
(J) Yeah, if you’re ‘coding’, you have to, you have to address it now. It’s a deadly, dying issue. But the thing I see with what you’re saying, Jacquelyn, is it’s not an inspection. It’s not a purposed inspection. We’re not a sniffing on a regular basis, looking to correct. And I would think that would be, fall under the immaturity and legalism, yeah and definitely legalism. Definitely it’s immature. To be involved with correction and sniffing on someone on a regular basis, trying to find the fault, that’s real immature. It’s real immature. And, you know, I don’t have to do that. The Spirit of the living God is so able and so willing and so does correct and bring correction and adjustment and, you know, correction is not a dirty word. It’s the adjusting or the fine tuning or the course correction. You know, it’s a course correction. You’re going down the wrong path. You need a course correction, and someone’s looking out for your soul and saying “You’re going head long into oncoming traffic on a one-way street. Hello!? Flip around!”
First comes Love–first! Just wanting to know so I can try, in my human strength, to confront or fix the person/situation never brings fruit. Love Is–always!–the answer. Discernment and correction come from the Spirit; condemnation comes from my ‘old man’. This has been a question for me lately as I was being corrected. Bless the Name of Jesus Who gave this word for the podcast.
For years I have listened to your podcasts, read your material, seen you on facebook… I want to thank you for all this life you are transmitting to me! And although you don’t know me, it’s not the same for me… In a way I can say that I know you, therefore I have come to love you! And appreciate you! Thank you for giving to the Lord… I am a life that has been changed… My path has been enlightened. My eyes have been opened. I have seen myself in greater reality, as well as our Lord Jesus… Thank you! Thank you so much!!