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Simple Brilliance of Responsibility
Episode #468
November 22, 2015
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special Guest: Jennifer Wentzel
This is the continuation of a series of Podcasts started in Episode #467.
(M) Carole came to something. Her spirit began to rise with the wisdom of the Spirit. And this is a quote from her, “My faith in brilliance and ability has to die. I go to faith in myself,” and so she said, “I give up thinking and I give up trying and tear down the thoughts.” But what she went further to say was that’s it’s the old man, the old woman, the old nature. That is the simple nature of the old person, man or woman, and she said, “The solution is that that old person has to be dead.” And I said recently, “We have to come to realize it must be dead.” There’s only one, only one sin and one problem, and that’s the old man. Ok. Jennifer, can you repeat what you said earlier about how He is reducing you to nothing? It was wonderful
(Jennifer) It was just amazing to me when Martha and Carole began to share what He’d showed them this morning, because this is where He has had me. He has been just squishing me and pushing me and kicking me and flicking me, not in a terrible way, but listen, it’s pretty violent, because it requires that level of violence. And just squeezing me so that it is absolutely, positively impossible for me to do what He’s asked me to do. It is simply not possible for me to do what He has assigned to me.
(Martha) He disables us where He calls us to work…
(Jennifer) Exactly.
(Martha) And to produce. And then He disables us at it. Go ahead, Jen.
(Jennifer) Well, that’s just it. I had never made the connection before. Do you remember in Arthur Miller’s, “The Crucible?” Did you guys, in high school did you have to read that play? It was about the Salem witch trials. And there was this one man… It’s not funny. I don’t know why I’m laughing. Forgive me. It’s really not. There was this one man and the mode of them trying to break him to get him to confess is they put the heavy stone on his chest. And it’s an old torture device, and basically they add more weight. It’s this platform. And so you’re slowly being crushed to death, and the idea is that, you know, you’ll confess so that the excruciating… It’s not funny. Sometimes things that are really painful, my coping mechanism is to laugh hysterically. So inappropriate, forgive me. Anyway, so his basic line, you know, this was probably the original “Braveheart.” So they stopped the weight and they say, “Do you have anything to say?” And he basically warbles out, “More weight,” like that’s his defiance, like he’s not going to confess to worshipping the devil, because he has not, and he loves God, etc. Anyway, but this is the mechanism by which the Lord has just been stripping me of everything. It’s the weight of responsibility. I am literally being crushed under the responsibility that He has given me, the assignment that He has given me, the life that He’s given me. My life is too much for me, ok? I yell out more weight with my own life, because it’d be better to die sometimes. I’m just like I can’t, I cannot do this, and that’s exactly what I have to do. I have to die. But the issue is that, yes, it’s too much for me. It is not now, and it never has been too much for Him. And so all of this squeezing and pushing and flicking is to get me off of me. Yeah, old news. So simple. “You can’t do it. No, you can’t. So stop looking at you. Stop going to the reservoir that you believe somehow you have hidden deep within you of endurance and strength and ability. You have nothing. There is no reservoir, ok? Ok, it’s a drop of water, and it’s not what you think, you know? We read these novels and they say, “He called upon reserves that he didn’t even know he had.” Well, that’s not accurate. Accurate was Tolkien when he was talking about little Frodo who had nothing, and Frodo felt a presence bolster his. It was an outside bolstering of what he did not have, because he did not have a reservoir of inner strength to call upon. We don’t have that. That is a misnomer. That is attributing what is God’s to myself. And we’ve done it through every great work of literature. So that’s very much ingrained in me that I somehow have this hidden ability to do what He gives me to do. And I don’t. And so, He’s trying to get me off me, because He can do it. It requires miraculous, and He has the miraculous. It requires supernatural, and He is the Supernatural. And so, all of this crushing, wretched experience is all to get me to stop saying, “Well, if You’ve given it to me, I must be able to do it.” “No, the whole point is you cannot, so you must get off of you and look at Me.” And it’s just, it is kind of funny. I’m ok with laughing at that. It is funny, because that’s what it takes to bring me to the end of myself, which is ridiculous, because it’s a short walk to the end of me. You know what I mean?
(J) Well, when you first asked me to write, I was totally incapable of doing it. I mean, I was, I just couldn’t do it, and I basically would have revelation. It was awesome revelation from God, but I could not literally could not put it down in words. Absolutely, and so I would try, literally try. That was the problem. I would try to do it, and then I would bring it to you and it was, it was sticky and convoluted. And to find the pearl in there, you had to go through a whole bunch of gooey oyster. And it took, you know, it was years. Basically what you would do, is you’d say, “Just tell me.” And you would write it for me. You’d literally, you’d sit down and you’d just say, “Dictate to me.” And so I’d tell you what I was seeing. You would type it out, and then we would work it into something. And that was how the first bunch of writings were. And then, what I really realized was, what I was doing was I was fighting. I was trying to produce… And Jen, you’ve even said it, “You were a man kind of struggling with himself.” And I was. Because what I was doing is I was trying to… You know, it was wounds of, you know, thinking you’re stupid stuff and all this other stuff. There was that. There was… It was basically the old man trying to bring forth spiritual revelation.
(Martha) And may I interrupt and say, John, that the problem was not accepting yourself and trying to be what you were not. And what God told me in the beginning was that you’re a simple man. Well, actually what I didn’t know then was that all of us are really simple, as in simpleton. But you’re really a simple man. Accept that. And you had to in the process accept who you are. And then God said, “This man is a genius.” And I’ve often told the story that your genius is in your simplicity. And your simplicity is in your responsibility. You are probably one of the most practical people I’ve ever known. You are in reality. In your childhood, you were in the most amazing place of absolute reality. You knew the truth when nobody around you really was telling the truth or doing the truth. But you were committed to… The truth was obvious to you. And so that’s what made you brilliant; the truth. But a lot of that transition was coming to accept yourself as yourself. And so your brilliance came from your practicality and your responsibility and your simplicity of thinking. That was your brilliance.
(J) And then I came to the point that I started celebrating the simplicity, and then I hated the complexity. And that’s kind of where I’m at now. I’m like yuk, I just can’t stand the convoluted way of saying it. I just want it simple, simple, simple, simple, simple, and straight forward. Yeah, and so now, you know, now I’m given the responsibility, the crushing responsibility of having to write, you know, every other day, you know, a 500 word essay of, you know, of whatever; and characters or what ever it is, I don’t know what it is anyway. But, you know, having to produce a blog every single week, several times a week, you have to be simple. You couldn’t complex it and do it. It’s just… Unless you were some, you know. I don’t know what you’d have to be. It’s certainly not me. But I was wrestling with it. I was wrestling at the beginning. I was fighting, and it was evident. The fight was there, it was evident. You could see it.
(Jennifer) That, John and I had this in common in several areas. But, John, your struggle with your early writings, it was the pride of self-hatred. You did not see your worth. You didn’t see yourself at all the way you actually were in the Lord. You could not see it. The wounds of rejection, all the rest of that. And so, you were in a battle. It was still a pride battle, but in your case, who you were was insufficient and unacceptable. So it was, you would not receive who you were, because you could not see yourself with God’s eyes. You had listened to the enemy for a very long time. That’s what we do with self-hatred. It’s still the same thing. It’s just the flip side of the coin. Instead of, “I am better than everyone else.” It’s that, “You are worse than everyone else.” So, it’s still pride, and it’s still the playground of Satan, and he’s quite good there. But I think what’s so amazing is watching how the Lord opened your eyes to see what He’d given you, and the brilliance that He’s given you, which is far beyond, frankly, what you were trying to attain, which was this human idea of intellectualism. You were down here… And we do that. We hold these things as beautiful, and the Lord would take us up into the heavens, and we’re content with, you know, a slightly shiny rock in a pit of mud. And that’s, you know. It’s been amazing to see those garish trappings come off and to see it shaved down to the brilliance that is you. And it’s simple, but it is His own brilliance in you.
I am extremely blessed by this. Complicating humanity is very draining.Best to allow Him to be all in everyone!
Jennifer, my son and myself are very familiar with this hysterical laughing when things are just way too difficult, heavy,sad or bad to handle!
Love you all.
Yes… frankly yes.
And you know what is most amazing of all? That the choice to breath in the Brilliance of Christ is a VERY SIMPLE ONE! The most simpleton child has the choice of giving up power and its many facets rooted in pride.
It is amazing how His power really steps on our weakness. He likes to do that, and He not only honours it, but defends it and puts a wall of separation between our power and His power.
Thank you for this, people.