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Seeing You Are Seen
October 12, 2014
Episode #410
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guests: Aaron, and Carole Nelson
(M) And you two! Let me tell you about you two. You refused to not exist. Everybody else got swallowed in your family, but you. But you flailed; you couldn’t not exist. You couldn’t be squelched. You couldn’t be… and you call it all kinds of different things, but it was the fight to defend your own existence, I believe. Do you think so? And you have been ever since then going wherever… See, I went wherever I wanted to go, but mine was nature and my pony. It was secluded from all other children. The two children that were there had no interest in my kind of life, so I didn’t play with anybody, but I was free to go wherever I wanted to go. And you demanded your freedom to go think, read, experience, go into.
(Aaron) I was going to say what go me going on it was my own fear of disappointment for not meeting the expectation, not meeting a perception of who I should be. And I go into self-consciousness and all of that, but I saw it. It was… I can’t explain it exactly, but it was like where I went was an attack on His existence and my existence in His existence. If I’m a child of God and God doesn’t exist, it doesn’t matter what the Bible says about me as His child.
(Carole) You’re right.
(Aaron) My existence is… The reality of who I am in Him is tied to His existence.
(M) But, Aaron, yes, amen! But the day you knew that He saw you, it proved that He existed was Matthew 13:50. He said I know you, and I like you, and I didn’t know how relevant that passage was. That day you knew you existed because He existed. It’s more than He existed. He existed, and He saw you.
(J) Umhmm.
(M) As a person. And that’s…
(J) That’s what the mountains were.
(M) And that’s what the mountain was…
(Carole) And see, I was in a place of real, of His own judgment, ok?
(M) Uh-huh.
(Carole) Of His own judgment, totally aware of my absolute unworthiness to receive, be, to exist probably. And yet in that place of utter despair and seeing myself and knowing, knowing… anyway just knowing I deserve nothing, and I throw back those draperies and there is His majesty in all it’s glory.
(M) And His dominion…
(Carole) And His dominion.
(M) Over the everything.
(J) Opening up His chest and saying, “Here’s my chest and heart,” for you.
(M) Yeah. And you began to come out of that judgment. You did.
(Carole) I did.
(J) You sure did.
(M) This is why we have to manifest God in our being to prove to everybody that He exists. I’ve said to people, and I’ve even.. what?
(Carole) That’s Art Katz’s answer of… that young woman’s answer to Art Katz, when he says, “How do you know He exists?” And she says, “Because He lives in me.”
(M) “Oh, Art, He lives in me.” And she fell back in I guess a tree in bliss, and he went… He said he was this proud, big giant was devastated. Ok. But the responsibility of us who know Him is to demonstrate that He exists, and that one way is a specific, personal love, and a knowledge of you. I don’t know. That’s so tragic.
(J) What’s tragic?
(M) People who don’t know they exist. I tell you, ahhhhhh, I got it! I’ve known it for years. I learned it forty years ago, because I came out of God’s womb demanding every person to have their right to exist and their identity. I came out fighting for identity.
(J) Right?! God needs for His Body of Christ to be poured out lavishly on those who will respond to Him and receive His love as individuals. Then His love is to be apprehended and understood together with all His people. The nature of divine love is that it is given. It is shared. It is experienced together. That’s union. (M) Let me tell you how I got there. I got it. I got it. I used to read… In the beginning of my walk I read a lot of Paul Tournier, a Christian psychiatrist. I don’t think he’s to one who said this, but if the infant in the mother’s arms or the father’s arms is seen, and if he can look in the mother’s face or the father’s face and recognize that he is seen, he knows then that he exists.
(Aaron) WOoow!
(M) If you don’t have that, you’re seeking for existence the rest of your life; for somebody to say, “You are, and you exist.” Do you understand? It goes back to infancy. If the mother or father is absent emotionally, not engaged in the child, the child doesn’t believe he exists. It’s that far back. If the child can see that he is seen, he knows then that he exists. And without that connection by the gaze in the eyes… It’s the eyes. He knows he is seen because he sees in his mother’s eyes he is seen. And that’s what restores a person who has that experience is to see, “I am seen as me. I am seen, then I exist.” And instinctively in you gut, in your spirit, you knew what the issue was. You didn’t understand it. You spoke out of instinct, that if I’m not like Martha, no, better than… You said, “I will die and I do not exist.” You said, “I will die if I’m not better than her.” Then you said, “I will not exist,” which really was the meaning of death.
(Aaron) Oh….
(Carole) Isn’t that, isn’t that Satan’s nature? He had to be better than God?
(M) Ohhh. Ohhh.
(Aaron) Ohhh.
(J) Oooooo.
(Carole) Isn’t it Satan’s nature that He had to be better than God?
(M) Well, do you see how it’s perpetuated generation by generation?
(J) Uh-huh.
(M) One who hasn’t seen, one who has not been seen does not exist, then how can they be a parent to something in their arms that doesn’t exist? There has to be somebody… We have to represent God, that God sees, and when you know God sees you, then you exist. And it registers on the level you can’t, you’re not conscious of. It’s too deep. That’s why He went… The Spirit had him go to the each of the Alps. And do remember it did the same thing when you and I were in the same hotel and it was the same situation, wasn’t it? And you called, came and got me the next morning.
(Carole) “You GOT to come out right now!
(M) Yes, please come outside, because I didn’t have a window on to the Alps. You did.
(Carole) “You have go to come out because it could leave any second.” Seriously, that’s how, that’s how…
(M) Because it was so high up. That place was in the clouds. And then you got me, and you made me see His existence along with you.
(Aaron) Oh.
(Carole) I didn’t put any of that together.
(M) Well, of course not. I didn’t either. And I went, “Oh, gosh, that’s beautiful. That’s glorious. That’s magnificent.” To you it meant again that you existed, because you wanted me to see what you saw. It was important to you. It was crucial to you that I see it.
(Aaron) To be seen is to exist in the one who sees you?
(M) Through the one. Oh, my goodness, that’s what that’s about. Ok. Scott married a Russian girl, and I said to her, “I love Russian literature. I’ve read every, all the big ones, and let’s read “Brothers Karamazov” together, and you read it in Russian, and I’ll read it in English. Well, we started and what I wanted to see. Scott explained to me that Russian literature is different than ours. We have, we write a story and there’s a point to the story that I’m trying to make you see and believe in my story. And it comes to a conclusion, then I make everything prove my point. Russian literature is not that. Russian literature presents sixteen different points of view, sixteen different concepts, and you have to decide which you agree with. It’s a challenge for you to discover, and so it’s a very different way of writing. So in this “Brother’s Karamazov,” it’s a story of brothers, and one of them is a monk, and it’s a whole brilliant, complicated story. But in one of the convers… and you’re presented with these ideas and conversation through people, not through the writer. The character makes… What you said really, probably is it in your identity is in. The assignment God gave me for Carole was to take God’s view of her into me and give it to her and prove to her that she existed, because she was known. I didn’t form her into who I wanted her to be. I saw her in the marble, and I fought her for her. But in, for His creation of her, yeah. And so, one of these conversations, I think it was the monk, it says the elder… You have to come into the elder, and you put your whole being into the elder. You commit your whole being to the elder. It’s really, you could put it in our terminology, “Come under the authority of.” But it’s deeper than that. Then the elder gives you back your identity. You find your identity in the elder. See, that concept of giving yourself into another person; the whole Christianity would not only not agree, it would like to destroy that. That would be sicko, which destroys His existence.
(Carole) I just looked up, “The God Who Exists.” It’s Yahweh.
25 years ago, the Lord began to deliver me from a constant, nagging feeling that I did not deserve to exist. When I retired a year and a half ago, I found that this deliverance was not complete…I simply could not be still and just enjoy the Lord. I had to always be doing something in order to be found worthy of the Lord’s love and acceptance. Four months ago, the Holy Spirit told me to go down to our basement, lay on the couch and be nourished at the breast of the El Shaddai. For a few days I did that and would always fall into a deep, restful sleep (I’ve always had trouble sleeping). Still, I felt like this was a waste of time because I was just sleeping through my time with the Lord. One afternoon at the time the Holy Spirit told me to go down to the basement and lie down on the couch, I thought, “This is just me…it’s not the Lord. Immediately, I looked at the television and there was an ad showing a woman breast feeding her baby so I went down to the basement right then. However, I’ve not followed through with this on a consistent basis, but your podcast has been another confirmation that the Lord wants to a deeper work in this area of my life. Thank you all for this message.
this is sooooo fascinating ….. I have two young men in my life …. both of whom were given up for adoption at birth .. these two, now in their forties, although having surrendered to the Lordship of Christ many years ago, still struggle with their acceptance, still struggle to “prove” themselves ….
is it that because they were not seen at birth ( or at least have that perception) , they did not have that locked in gaze of love with their mother, that everything they do now is in reality an effort to “be seen” ???? to prove their existence??? I do believe you all have just given me a beautiful key to unlock the door so they might find peace, a deep, inner true peace … thank you…
I just sense in my spirit that we are on the brink of something very big. At the end of it waits freedom. Emancipation from bondage of trying to be replicas, instead of living in the wonderful liberty of individuals created in His image. I sense that the enemy has spun many webs around this issue, because we so want to please our God. I think that bold love, not permissive, weak love, is a weapon here. To love aright we need His courageous heart.And as always His light and truth ; actually, HIM.
Colossians 3:3 came to mind, although I feel as if I do not yet fully grasp the depth of it;
“…you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”
May the Lord richly provide,protect,bless and keep you all.
Amen!