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with Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
(M) This is the key, “we love because He first loved us”.
(J) And responded.
(M) And responded, yes. We allowed ourselves to be the child who responded to His love.
(J) To the flute and the dirge.
(M) Yes, He came to me in both songs. He came to me with the death of my life as it was, even though there was no problem and no outward failure. Internally I knew I was wretched, and He came to play that dirge for me and I heard the song, and I mourned and I wept and I wept, and I cried out to God. And because I heard Him He began to speak to me, and then He began to pour out His love on me. So I don’t know the Christian life, apart from that experience, that is the foundation of love. But if you don’t build on the foundation of love, you have nothing. You will do nothing.
(J) Book knowledge.
(M) Right, dead works. One thing He showed me is that you’ll never die for Him, unless you receive His love. You’ll never follow Him, because everything you do will be the motive of love. And if it isn’t the motive of love of God, it will be the motive of love of self. The motive is going to be love. But instinctively as we’ve said, the person knows the guilt; may not know why. I have often gone in with God’s love, and you would think it would be so welcomed, but it isn’t. It’s sometimes scorned, mocked, rejected and spat upon, just as His love always has been.
(J) Right, right.
(M) So there is a capacity to not respond. We have the ability to respond, but we don’t always do it. So fear is very greatly linked with love. And the love is the foundation and the motive. And the more love you receive from God, the less fear you’ll have in your life. If you think back on your struggles with fear, they are really unbelief in His love.
(J) Right.
(M) If you know He loves you then you are safe. There is a peculiar safety when you lose your life because you love Him, and you’ll never lose your life if you don’t love Him. Every flaw of the Christian walk is a flaw that has to do with love.
(J) That’s why Jesus knew about Peter, and could say what He said, because He knew that yes, he did have that love that would choose to die, but he didn’t have the maturity to do that. But he did have that and he knew exactly where he was going to go because he had embraced the love, he had embraced the life coming at him.
(M) And the other companion of fear is hatred;
(J) OH
(M) “If someone says I love God and hates his brother, he’s a liar”. What has he lied about? That he believes God’s love for him. The person who rejects God’s love believes God rejected him, and he rejects God. Does that make sense? If God’s love comes, and you reject it, you believe God rejects you, and so you reject Him. Suppose God’s love comes in the form of suffering, or chastisement, and knowing that is that He needs to break down a door in you so that He can give you His love. And you do not respond to that as He wants you to, you don’t weep over the dirge, you reject God Himself, you don’t just reject life, or the person, or the enemy, or the friend, or the lover, or whatever, you are rejecting God. And when you do, you will believe that He rejects you. You will put on Him the rejection, and then you will reject your brother and you will reject your sister in the Lord. “This commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.” Meaning that love is the core of obedience. See John, what I’m seeing is that fear is the absence of love. It’s the failure to receive love, it’s the failure to give love, and fear takes you straight to the enemy, because it is unbelief in the love and power of God. So fear I’ve said is unbelief, and this is what the unbelief is, God doesn’t love me, He loves you, or He loves them, but He doesn’t love me, because He doesn’t do what I want. He doesn’t give me what I want and He doesn’t make me important like I want to be. God will not give us position, importance, significance, prosperity, He will not give those things to us if He knows we will equate them with His love. His love is equated with being nothing. Am I making it clear? I think Song of Solomon says if a man were to give the whole of his house for the sake of love it would be utterly despised. You cannot earn His love, it’s insulting to Him, and He will despise your offering. You cannot earn it, that’s pride, and you cannot demand that He prove His love, by making your ambitions come to pass. But you see the remedy then for fear is to respond to God. Now, it may be that you have to respond to His judgment.
(J) Because you didn’t respond to the love.
(M) Yes, that could be. You have to respond.
(J) As He comes, when He comes.
(M) Yes. Right. Judgment is a form of His love too. If you’re still alive and you’re under the governmental hand of God, its love, to save you, in this life, you don’t have to live with it eternally. But fear is, though we have dealt with it in a number of ways, I don’t think I’ve connected it to love, to this degree. We ever want to be God, to dictate to God. I remember when God first called me to ‘discipling’, I had someone He assigned me to and I’d say, if you tell me how to disciple you, then you are the master.
(J) You’re the one discipling.
(M) Yes, you’re the one discipling. And it doesn’t work that way. That’s the problem, that we don’t receive God as He comes. And John the Baptist came and God in him was fasting and living a restrained life, and they didn’t respond to John. Christ came eating with the tax collectors and drinking and having a good time apparently, and so they didn’t receive God in that form either. You and I don’t pretend to be something we’re not, we’re just very ordinary human beings with a mighty God. And so where we go and people think we’re going to be flying on the clouds. And sometimes our humanity is a struggle for them. And that’s too bad, I’m sorry. Jesus came fully human, He was fully God, but He did come fully human. It’s just that if you don’t receive God in the form that He comes, and He came in the body of those two men. John was one way, and they criticized that, Jesus was another way, and they criticized that and said He had a demon. The passage relates to how God comes within a human being into our lives. And the response that we give, is not to the human being, it’s a response to God, yes, or no.
(J) Is it a judgment against God? Is it a judgment that says I know better, and I would do it better, and I would do it more perfectly than You’re doing it?
(M) I think John it’s not even believing its God, and that’s the problem; and it’s not believing that God should do it differently, it’s not even knowing that it’s Him who is doing it. It’s easy to reject a person.
(J) So it’s equating it to some.
(M) Oh yeah, this is just your quirk, this is just you know, John’s (the Baptist) crazy, Jesus is demon possessed. That’s how they explain the form that God came in.
(J) They just box them in and threw them over there.
(M) Yes, and they did not respond, to receive John, so they could receive Jesus, so that they could enter His love that was about to be poured out on the world. So it is overwhelming, it’s frightening. Another thing about our God, He will come in a form that will force out your prejudice. Doesn’t He?
(J) Humhmmm.
(M) He will come to you in exactly the way that you would be prone not to respond.
(J) Yeah.
(M) And He has the right to test us, and He has the right to expose us, if we don’t know what we’re prejudiced about. So the remedy of fear is not confidence, the remedy to fear is not renouncing it necessarily. It’s building on a foundation of love.
(J) You’ve opened the scripture up; I’ve never seen it that way before. I’ve never seen it as a gateway.
(M) Well let me say it again then, 1 John4:18, “ There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment.” It’s so clear to me now, the person in fear, fears punishment because will not respond to love, and will not believe.
(J) That’s so clear, I mean it’s real clear. It makes a whole lot of sense. You are fearing and you are in guilt, genuine guilt, you have done wrong, you haven’t responded to the Living God.
(M) Well you know I have to confess, from the last podcast I was sort of pondering what we went through about fear. And the Lord began to show me an area of fear that was my unbelief in the power of His love. And it just had to do with my inadequacy for all that we have on our plate. And so it was a signal to me that that fear was unbelief in His love. And he exposed it and so I’ve been oh so very free these last few days. I just ask the Lord to do that same work of the Spirit in those who hear this, because it worked on me and I was the one who taught it.
(J) Sweet little birthday present from the Lord.
(M) Yes indeed, the best. To reassure me of His love.
