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Only the Holy Spirit
August 17, 2014
Episode #402
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guests: Aaron, and Jim Pierce
(Martha) I’m going back to Romans 7 again that Jesus said, “Yea, even hate your own life.” And the word life there means soul. So you have to come to hate your soul-life before you will ever set your mind and heart on anything other than your flesh. That, Romans, and Jim affirmed it with his own life. And you’ll become sick of your flesh over and over and over. It’s not a one-time deal. I think what I’m trying to say is we have that. We will come to hate the flesh, so that we can be rid of it. God will see to it that we will come to such disgust with the flesh that we can say, “Yeah, I hate my own soul-life. I want the life of the Spirit.” It’s no accident. Paul sets forth the entire Gospel. Romans 1it’s in; the rest of it is the redemption, 3, 4, 5, 6 is the redemption. All that is the actual facts. Then experientially he goes into the failure to even believe those facts, and he is devastated by his failure, because he loves the law of God, but he can’t do it. And that’s the flesh. That’s knowing the truth and loving the truth, but not living in the Spirit. The law of the Spirit brings the truth into actuality. It’s what I just read. “The righteous requirements of the law are fulfilled in us who are led of the Spirit. So we have to trans… make the transition between loving the law of God and being in the law of the Spirit. And that transition is a devastating failure.
(Aaron) oooo!
(Martha) Whatever, on whatever ground. It can be before God. In can be in your heart. It can be in deed or thought or whatever, but He’s going to bring you to complete and total failure. I’ve told this story that the day I realized I was a complete failure at making anything happen for God and with God, that was a day of liberty.
(Aaron and others) Hmm!
(Martha) And I got it from Sparks, always my mentor, Sparks. He said you can only know spiritual success when you have come to spiritual failure. There’s an episode some years back where I said to someone, “You do not understand you’re a failure at every phase and role in your life. You’re a complete failure in every role, and they knelt beside me in tears and said, “You’ve set me free.” To accept that Romans 7 is a complete despair takes you to Romans 8, and there is no other way.
(Jim) That is our travail. That is our dream, what started you on this whole conversation. How do I stay in the Spirit? This is on the other side of that, looking at it from people that are at Sunday school and church on Sunday, and then live and then go to Sunday school and church on Sunday and then live and they look at the words in Scriptures.. I mean, I did too. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Well, that means something different to me now than it did then, ‘cause there’s… I’m either in the flesh or I’m in the Spirit. If I’m not in the Sprit then I’m in the flesh. And I just don’t know, I don’t know that I can count people that I know that live and walk in the Spirit on one hand, that don’t live up here (laughing) on the mountain. I’m just saying, so most, most Christians, most of Christianity, they think when they read these verse, these verses right in there about being carnally minded, well, that’s looking at pornography, and that’s, you know, that’s stealing and that’s those obvious, you know, things that we do, a lot of us do. A lot of … And then regret it and repent and whatever. But they’re just not getting it. They’re not seeing where the real travail is, where the real walk is, is way past that. There’s understanding really that there’s only two ways to live. They’re either in the flesh or in the Spirit, and if you’re not living, if I’m not walking in the Spirit every minute or setting my mind to do that, then I’m not pleasing God, and I’m going the other way. I’m dying. I’m in death, actually. How do you get to know that?
(Martha) Demonstrate it. That’s the worst answer there could possibly be.
(Jim) It’s exactly the right answer.
(Martha) There’s only pray, pray and live.
(Jim) It is what happened to me. I witnessed it. I witnessed it. It was an expression of Him. That’s it.
(John) A living demonstration. You witnessed it.
(Jim) That’s what happened to me, I witnessed it. I witnessed Christ in you all, the hope of glory in one person at a time, a little bit at a time. And I knew you were peculiar. Paul said that word first, so I can say it. And I choose to be peculiar, and I enjoy it, and I love it, desire setting my mind on that kind of peculiar. So, thank you, Martha, for answering that question. You demonstrate it. He is demonstrated by walking, by lives that walk in the Spirit.
(Aaron) I just echo it. I just agree with what he said. I wouldn’t have known it other than words either had it not been lived out in front of me. And to see it lived out confounds every word about it that I had ever read, because it’s not words, it becomes… It’s like seeing that somebody lives in another reality than you do. That’s what it was for me.
(Martha) I want to post our booklet on the other reality. I like ‘another reality.’
(Aaron) I was just thinking practically one thing He has shown me. It’s like that verse in John. I forget where. “If you love your life, you’ll lose it.” And I realized I’m either in Adam or Christ, new man, old man. But practically I’m either in self-love, which is the old… That’s all the old man is about. The law of death is all self-love, and if I’m in self-love, I am in death and imparting death. Or I’m in selfless love, losing it. There’s no other. To me the test of love has helped answer the practical question of how do I live it? ‘Cause if love fulfills the commandments, I’m either loving to fulfill the righteous requirements of the law or not.
(Martha) So this is the Christianity that most people want. “I want God. I’ve seen enough of Him that I want God, but I also want me.” And that is the mixture that will cause God to spew that one. That’s the mixture that God cannot abide. “Would that you were hot or cold.” It’s the lukewarmness. And that’s the mistake every person who misses out on that ‘other reality’ as becoming the only reality you have, is the unwillingness to lose self completely and completely have God. You will have either one or the other, but to have both, that’s gonna be a madness and a mixture, and a complete repulsion to God. It’s not possible to have death and life, self and Christ. It’s not possible to have both, and have any kind of reality.
(Aaron) I’ll read it again. Romans 8:5, “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on things of the Spirit.” It’s competing loves. Do you love the things…? Because when I love selfishly, I can have a type of love, but it’s self-love. It’s how does this person benefit me? How does this situation benefit me? How does God benefit me? How does He bless my life vs. the things of the Spirit are ‘another love’ and the flesh and the Spirit, it’s like two competing loves. To love. And I set my mind on what I love. And if I love myself more than Him, I will set my love on myself.
(Jim) My logical mind takes me to… It’s all a lie. The love of myself is a deception. I’m lying. I am a lie. I mean myold man is all about a lie. There’s nothing good about me, so this love of self is a deception, and that’s all Satan has anyway. So he’s doing, he did a good job there. It all comes back to truth and lies to me; everything. The love of myself, it’s easy for me to call that a lie, fifty three years of it.
(Martha) It’s why Jesus requires that we hate our soul-life, and why Romans 7 is there. It is a requirement to hate your own soul, and we are, by nature, love our own soul. But the process of the cross and the chastening of the Lord, and the humiliation of life brings you to hate yourself, hate your soul-life and its nature, and then you’re ready to walk in the Spirit. It’s kind of phenomenal to me for Paul to come to that, because he was so gifted, so educated, such a important man. And for him to come to love himself, come to hate himself in Romans 7 was no small work of the Spirit. The Spirit brings you to hate your own soul life, if you have any direction toward the Lord at all. And I think of the times that I’ve worked with people with self-hatred, and I’ve tried to talk them out of it. I probably should have encouraged it.
(Aaron) Ha!
(Jim) In the years that all this appeared, he was probably going through some inner healing kind of stuff, working it out. Truth instead of all the lies.
(Martha) Uh-huh. He didn’t have an audience in the desert. He didn’t have an audience in the desert.
(Jim) He had Jesus.
(Martha) He had Jesus. That’s good.
We think there is some place to “hide” from God. But here is not such a thing. FLESH lives breathing in the lie of that hiding. “My cave where I am god and God is NOT God.” That’s why the moment you stop hiding and acting as a complete idiot-Adult, His Kingdom pours in and on and through.
To nakedness He seems to call us in. The Holy Spirit’s main work in a soul is to strip. Strip, strip ,strip… and then more strip. And when you think you are done, more of it. Curious enough, He doesn’t want us stripped and naked.
But that’s His Story of (intimate) Love with each one.
Word’s worthy of my need. Thanks for sharing and offering me further fuel for the fight to stand doing all to stand and to stand therefore. My spirit says thank you and I confess my soul is screaming, “What above me,what about me?!” That is my beginning place for this day of ‘Come follow Me.’ How thankful I am to sup at your table and know there is always more. More of Thee Lord less of me to be discovered and digested. Have a great!