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Two Makes Church
July 13, 2014
Episode #397
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guests: Jennifer Wentzel
(Martha) The Body is, as John describes, a symphony, an orchestra of different instruments, and there’s so much lost when there’s not that permission to sing.
(J) Ok. So let me ask you a difficult question, Madamn. What would you say to the person who’s listening who would say, “But wait a minute, I don’t have a Martha, John and Carole and all ya’ll hanging out. I don’t have a symphony of people that I can work with, that I can sing with?
(Martha) We have many friends like that, John, and I think for some out there in other states and perhaps beyond, we are the church, but when I despaired of the denominational church, I read Nee. And Nee is very bold about it, that there comes a day when you leave denomination. I have never, I’ve never had it in me from the Lord to condemn anything. If there’s a denomination, God permits it, and I was in one when He found me, a godless situation, and He found me. And it just made me hungry; in that emptiness it made me hungry. But, I can say this from experience. When we realized that the church we were in was going to kill the Spirit wherever He arose, including in me, we sat there for years in that church because God said so. But I began to pray, and I’ve told this story, but it bears repeating it in answer to your question. I began to pray, “Lord, You said You would build Your church. I want to see You build it before I die. I want to see it one time. I want to see You build Your church. I’ve never been in church, Lord. I want to see it.” And I had a passion to be in a situation where God built His church. I did not lift my hand. I did not tell a soul. I did not share it. I did not talk about it. It was a secret between me and the Lord. And I prayed eight years before it even began to spark. And then it became something I never expected. It became that He moved us here in Suches. I never planned that. He did it. He moved several people that are now gone, God bless them, on to other things and some not too happily as Sparks would tell his own story about such. I never dreamed or planned that. I dreamed any of it. I never dreamed Shulamite Ministries. Shulamite Ministries was birthed in one meeting, and so God built His church as He has built it and on His terms in His way. And that… If anybody out there is hungry for that then I suggest you pray with passion to see it, to experience it ‘cause actually what we have on the podcast is just the icing on the cake. What we’ve been through this morning has been a great, I feel, enormous presence of the Lord in worship, and that can’t be recorded. So there is, and that happens, worship happens spontaneously. We might begin to listen, but the Holy Spirit is the One Who brings forth the worship. We can praise. That’s what we can do, but when it goes into worship, it is the Spirit being pleased to bring the worship of the Son. So there is so much more to… I covet it for everyone, John. And it doesn’t take but two to be church. And, but God has built this group. I am not responsible. I didn’t do it, but I did pray and dream and hunger and desire it.
(Jennifer) And I think with that, with the praying for that… I’m thinking of a situation, and I can’t go into detail but it was a situation I very much wanted to be free of, delivered from. “Dear God, help,” sort of thing. And I was miserable, and I thought why am I staying, this should be addressed. This should be different. I should, I should leave; all sorts of things were possibilities if you will, things that I considered and mulled and sometimes daydreamed about. In addition to the prayer though, it was surrendering to where I was, to what the situation was, and to knowing that when I was meant to be delivered from it, I would. And I say that because it’s the craziest thing. I am not patient. I’m not, and I am not longsuffering when something is impeding on my peace and comfort. I despise it and them and I have a quick temper. I’m saying these things, not… Just to let you know. This is very not Jennifer, and what I’ve found is the more I gritted my teeth and without any oooouuuu, said ok. Ok. Fine. Ok. Ok. Yep. Yep. It wasn’t pretty. It didn’t start out pretty. What it became was more about Him, less about me, and in that what I found was the source of that torment became a source of delight to me. It just completely flipped. I loved, where before I loathed. I had peace, where before it was, it was just an agony. It was just awful. And it wasn’t just about the praying. It was the miracle He was able to do by my surrender to Him. It was the miracle that He wanted to show me, which was nothing ostensibly changed about the situation, not with the person, not with me, not with what was actually going on. Nothing changed there. Everything changed with what He did in me, with Him in me. He came in and was Peace in a place where Jennifer had no peace. He came in and was Love and Patience where I would have thrown the baby out with the bathwater and not looked over my shoulder as I walked away. It was miraculous, and it was Him in me. It was something that was deeply intimate between Him and me, and I would have lost that if I had had my way, if I had said, “You couldn’t possibly, as a good Father, want me to suffer this way, day in and day out. Since I know that you don’t, I going to take matters in my own hands and get out.” And I would have missed out on Who He is in it, and how He came in and showed me that even in a situation that pushes every single one of my buttons, He is more than sufficient, not just to hold me and keep me contained, but to let me thrive and prosper in it with Him. So it’s very doable, and I say that to somebody who’s out there, you have no idea what He wants to be to you personally, intimately. Never mind the people around you. Never mind anything else. I would encourage them to surrender because they don’t know what they might miss of knowing Him. It changed a lot for me in that place. Yes.
(Martha) Oh, Jennifer, thank you. It’s all… You’ve put it down to the bottom line, and it’s to know Him. Thank you. And that does take surrender
(J) I just say that the big issue is to look for Him where He’s speaking. And, you know, if you don’t have a Body that is with you, look where He is speaking, because that’s the order for the day for you today. Where is He speaking to you today? And don’t miss it because you think that, “Well, I don’t have fifteen people that are walking with me, or I don’t even have one other person in this entire world that’s walking with me in the Spirit.” You know. But no, you may not, but you do have the Living God, Who wants to reveal Himself to you everywhere. So, you know.
(Martha) I was with these people years before I ever told my agenda. And I finally one day said, “I’m discipling people to be able to survive alone in martyrdom. I’m training them for martyrdom.” Ok. From being in the Body, I’m training them to be alone, not together, not to need each other on the ground that belongs to Jesus, alone, but to meet Him and be able to function individually, secretly alone with Him. I’m discipling martyrs. And one day the Lord, I was kind of discouraged, not about this group, but about my book, “All and Only” is not really a desirable by the majority of Christians because it’s about the sovereignty of God and the suffering under that sovereignty. But anyway, I was kind of grieving about that with the Lord, and He said, “You have martyrs in this world you know nothing of.” So, I have a martyr mentality. And John has said to me, “You are a living martyr.” But my point in that is I know two people who are set aside alone, and it has been very difficult. John’s two years of solitude was difficult, but it was the foundation of his healing, his relationship with God, and he’s often said he put God on trial and God answered. And so, there is that setting aside that is the preparation to be in a Body. It is sometimes… I sat in that church. They had practically thrown me out because the Holy Spirit was moving in a little teeny, teenage class, and they put an end to it. Yet we stayed, and my husband and I went to the pastor, and he said, “No, no, we love you.” But I knew that they wanted to be rid of me, so resigned and sat there in that church for at least two years. It could have been longer. And I had a wonderful time with the Lord. I didn’t hear half of the sermon. I didn’t need to, and when I did I knew, because I was reading a lot at that time, he was plagiarizing all kinds of material without giving any reference. And so, I couldn’t do anything about that. That was, to me, immoral. And I learned later, ironically, that it was true. But in any event, that’s… Yeah, Jennifer, I can attest to that, and John can too. So, I’m saying, if you’re in solitude, there is a divine appointment. You can long for Body life. You can pray for Body life, but if God’s assigned you to a solitary time, that is sovereignly, a sovereign blessing too. Thank you for adding that, Jennifer. I wouldn’t have thought to go there.
(J) Don’t miss the day of your visitation. And that’s…
(Martha) Yes. Yes. Yes, don’t miss it. And sometime ago, some months and months ago I told this group. I said, “We will be scattered.” And we have to learn. So, the scattering has been my being gone so many months with my family’s health crisis, and we’ve not been able to meet very much. But there’s still, there’s such strong connection in another realm. Anyway we’ve made the circle of what Body life is and what solitary life is. He had me in solitude for several years when I first came to Him. I knew not another living soul that even knew Him. And other times He’s set me aside alone and they’ve been memories of bliss.
So beatiful company is the voice of those walking alone with Him.
Thank you so much.
Beautiful!
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you–Martha and Jennifer for this most vitally powerful message! I SO appreciate the very clear details in what you said!
Blessings and love to you all in the name of Jesus Christ
Linda
Early on in married life, we attended ‘least objectionable’ church (sort of like ‘least objectionable viewing’ for tv). Sometimes the Lord met us in church and sometimes He did not. I was terribly disgruntled and wanted real church–but one day the Lord reminded me of something my spouse, who cannot easily read, said years ago. It was this: ‘What did Abraham do? He had no Bible. He had no pastor, no church. Yet he knew God.’
Yes, your wife was so wise.
I believe Abraham was being Church, because Church is communion with God. Look at His words at the Lord’s Supper. Church is intrincated with Him: His body (bread) and sufferings (cup): “take them to be one in you.” In that communion there is Church, just because the Church communes with Him. Church is oneness of deep unheard of communion, nothing alike flesh knows, and it is yet to be revealed what we will be.
We will be something beyond all wonder.
“Intrincated” does not exist in English… it would be “interwoven”.