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GetAlongWithGod.com
Episode #309
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guests: Julie and Jennifer Wentzel
(J) Well, today we’re all sitting around and we wanted to do a podcast for a second announcement. There’s a two-part announcement. We announced the last time ReadMK, and now we have another announcement that we’re really looking forward to, and this has been being developed for months as well. It actually started out as our web developers said to me, “What is your demographic?” And so I started to think about the demographic we’re really looking for, what we’re aiming for in each of the sites, and the App, and now as ReadMK. What is the age bracket? What is the group that we’re looking for? And all our web developers are young. And I said, well, it’s for everybody. And he said, “Well, can I tell you something?” And I said yeah. And he said, “The ReadMK site is not really particularly geared towards this current, coming up generation.” And I kind of name it from like 20 to 35. He said that that age bracket really kind of is more geared towards blogs and short, quick and to the point messages. And when you have a several, you know, page long article, it can sometimes bog down the younger mind. And I get it, because I have a hard time reading masses, personally. So if you give me something short, and you give me something visual with it, I really can connect with it usually. And if it’s something audio, then it’s even better. So we have developed a site called GetAlongWithGod.com, and I was really praying abut the name, and God just kind of said it needed to be almost like a statement, and it needed to be funny in a way, and challenging in the same things. So I was thinking about what that could be and then all of a sudden I felt like the Lord said it was GetAlongWithGod.com. We checked the name, and there it was, and it was available. And so we’re really excited about it. It is a blog geared towards that age bracket, but it is not isolated to that age bracket. I believe that anyone that has been following us through Shulamite.com, any of the booklets or the books, or the Podcast, or the messages, or anything like that, I feel like it’s going to fall right in line. What it is is that each of us in the Shualmite body are inputting and developing and expounding on what the Lord has said. So originally Julie picked it up and she said, “Yeahhhh, let’s do it!” And then all of a sudden she realized that it was this huge big work, and she had no idea. And I was thinking, “Yeahhhhh! I will support Julie in her doing it, yeahhhh!” And then all of sudden, ah, she kind of looked at me and was overwhelmed by the entire thing. And then the Lord impressed on Julie the magnitude of what it was. And then all of a sudden her entire countenance kind of fell because she thought, oh my goodness, this is major. Well, my cheering self cheered her on, but then when I got involved in it, all of a sudden I started, I got the name. I got the look. I got how it was gonna function. I got the how we were gonna break it down into the five topics, where we were gonna go. It was ‘Live The Moment’, ‘Letting Go’, ‘Living Loved’, ‘Enjoying Him’, and ‘Being Real’. All of a sudden I came up with these things were really how to ‘Get Along With God’. So the ‘Live The Moment’ is releasing the past and the future and living in the now. The ‘Letting Go’ is letting God be God. ‘Living Loved’ is receiving love from God. ‘Enjoying Him’ is seeing every facet of Him everywhere, and ‘Being real’ is facing truth.
(Julie) Well, as you were talking John, I remembered a scripture that the Lord gave us a number of years ago that Martha said was kind of our calling. Psalm 79:13, and it says, “Then we your people, the sheep of your pasture will give You thanks forever. We will show forth and publish your praise from generation to generation.” And I think as we began working on just different avenues lately that we’ve been looking into, in terms of this message that we feel called to, we began to realize that it wasn’t enough always to just take an excerpt from here or a quote from there, that it needed to be contextualized. And it just seemed like, without our planning it, we never saw how big this thing was gonna be, by any means; none of us did. But we began to see the validity of speaking from the standpoint of a disciple. And how the writings and the revelation that He’s given through Martha, how it’s affected our individual lives, and what it means to us on a day to day-to-day basis. And that is the heart of what ‘GetAlongWithGod,’ what the blogs are about. That’s what the blogs are coming out of; they’re coming out of how we’re processing and living, and how we get along with God. I used to love how… One of Martha’s sayings that I love is that “God’s hard to get a long with because He won’t share His chair.” And when you first came to me and you told me that name for the site,
‘GetAlongWithGod,’ that’s immediately what I remembered, is that statement. And it’s always made me laugh, but it’s true. It’s a funny kind of truth that and until you get that straight, that He’s not going to share His chair, you have a hard road.
(M) As John implied, we got on board with this, and it turned out to be a fast train; we went ooouuu, here we go. And so, I wasn’t onboard at all, and Julie would send me some things that she wanted to post, and I just had no incentive for it whatsoever. And one day she just casually said, “There are people out there that want to be discipled, and they don’t have the opportunity to live next to you. And I want them to learn from your disciples what it is like to be discipled by you.” And my heart leaped, because my heart is for discipling. God called me to that, and then He gave me the passion for it. So then I jumped on the train, and anyway, I’ve sat down on the train and I’m letting the train carry me to it’s destination. And so I’ve gotten real excited about it.
(Jennifer) GetAlongWithGod.com is an idea that was largely birthed out of leadings from Julie and John and working with the young funny web guys who’ve been working on ReadMK.com. And I think what I found fascinating about the idea and what lit a fire, if there’s any lit about it, was the lengths that God will go to, leaving the 99 to go after the one sheep. And there is so much that’s out there on-line, and it’s multi-media, and it’s quick and fast and non-stop. And frankly, (Jennifer laughs) I don’t like any of that personally, that’s very counter to me. But I have younger siblings, I now have nephews. Julie’s kids are very precious to me; Carole’s grandchildren. There are a lot of really lost, young people out there bombarded by all sorts of stuff. And it seemed to me that the Lord would pull them out of the noise and confusion and send them to a quiet place, (she chuckles) but how would you even do that? So this idea of the lengths that He would go to, that He would go into the chaos, that He would give us a passion for something like a blog, with podcasts, with twitter, with these elements that are not necessarily natural to us and to where we are. And for Him to be completely over it and delighted to do it, that was both fascinating and comforting to me; that there is no such thing as a generation that is beyond His reach, that somehow kids today are so much worse, or so much less able to be reached, to be connected with. I don’t believe that at all. And that’s partly because of the fire that was lit in both John and Julie, in His passion to publish His praise from generation to generation. And the blogs themselves, I think are going to be a lot of fun, not unlike what we do in the podcast in terms of talking about where He is in our lives, what we’re each working through, which at the end of it isn’t about us, it’s about what we get of Him at the end of it; that’s all it ever is, is how we get to Him, how we see Him, where He shows us His face, Himself, His heart, His love. And that part I am excited about because this is a chance to be really honest, and I say this to myself, to be really brave in a way that I’m not brave, and that I can’t do it unless He gives me that bravery to be as honest as He wants me to be. But I do know that for myself, when I was looking, and I imagine it’s for this generation too, I’m not interested in trappings and packages; in fact I find it annoying. I want the meat. I want the substance. I want to know that there’s a ‘there’ there. And that’s essentially what I believe we’ll be doing is bringing from our hearts, talking about what happened on Tuesday, on Thursday, sort of thing. That, that is something that I have a passion for, is to share how unexpected and surprising and hopeful my walk with Him has been because of the myriad ways that He reveals Himself to me, makes Himself known to me, and shows me that I am known and loved. And that I am excited about sharing, because that’s the only thing I have worth sharing.
(J) And it’s not like you’re just saying what happened on Tuesday, what happened on Thursday, like a lot of times you’ll see in Facebook; I went to the market and I caught a cold; ok, great, that’s so wonderful. This is about where God touched down and met you in ground zero, and then speaking about it. It’s the revealing of God, and then how you grappled with it, how you, how you built the relationship with God from that point on. And the, it’s practical, but completely spiritual. I think it’s gonna be very fresh; I think it’s gonna be real exciting, because it’s not typical of what you find. You find some kind of painting of a mental picture that you mentally ascend to, ‘oh, if I could be there’, no. This is gonna be about literally ground zero, where we’re touching God, and God is touching us, how we’re responding and how He is wooing us, and how He is drawing us, and what it looks like to have a relationship with God that you actually do get along with Him.
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(Children shouting) Yeahhhhhhh!
