Podcast: Download (8.7MB)
Subscribe: RSS
God Is God
Episode #161
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guests Jennifer, Julie and Carole
(M) John, I just didn’t have this scripture; I had it in my mind, but I didn’t have it for the conference, but it really expressed what we saw. It’s…really my whole life is 2 Cor. 4. And in the Amplified vs.7, it says, “We possess this precious treasure, the divine Light of the Gospel, in frail, human vessels of earth, that the grandeur and exceeding greatness of the power may be shown to be from God and not from ourselves. We are hedged in, pressed on every side, troubled and oppressed in every way, but not cramped or crushed; we suffer embarrassments and are perplexed and unable to find a way out, but not driven to despair.” And then he goes on to say, “We who live are constantly experiencing”, this is living it, “being handed over to death for Jesus sake, that the resurrection life of Jesus also may be evidenced through our flesh which is liable to death. Thus death is actively at work in us, but it is in order that our life may be actively at work in you.” The mystery of that I don’t understand, the experience of it I live. And that’s what I lived in this conference, the frail, the obviously frail, weak vessel, so that the grandeur was all of Him; and I know it was all of Him. And I believe the people knew it too, who were there, because there was a power present in my frailness that I suspect may be the greatest I’ve ever known. And then there’s so much more that we have to share, in the afterglow of the conference. Isaiah 45:24, “They will say of Me”, God, “only in the Lord are righteousness and strength.”
(J) Well, the enemies’ only real power is to call our attention to what’s in the grave and what’s dead.
(M) Hmhmm.
(J) I mean that’s, that’s the only real power, is wait, wait, wait, don’t be up there, focus on this! Focus on this! And that’s why there’s just that assault of accusation saying ‘oh you’re so ‘yucky’, and ‘look at that slime on you’, and it’s involvement.
(M) Or else ‘you’re so wonderful’; whichever ‘gets you’.
(J) Well we obviously now know which one ‘gets me’. But yeah, it’s exactly it, whatever can be on you, whatever can be on that old man. So there’s the power, that’s, that is the enemies’ power, focus, gaze. That’s, that’s why I believe that your whole… that gazing message has come out of your life, and out of your messages about focus and about gaze, is because really, that’s the pivot point. Where are you going to gaze? Are you going to gaze at this old man? Are you going to gaze at your issues and your circumstance and your ability to perform and your, your grandiosity? Or are you going to look at Him? And then that goes to you with saying it’s the focus on the temporal or the focus on the eternal.
(Jennifer) Which reality do you accept as the reality? So in other words you have two visions. You have the old man’s vision which is vested, entangled in this world and says ‘this is all there is, so make the most of it; and guard it and protect it’. And then you have the vision of the new creation which says ‘it’s all Him’, which is what Martha calls us to, really. I mean, like she said, she’s Deborah; she’s called ‘to call’. And which one do you accept. Which one do you believe, really, you know. And if you’re shown both visions, ah, I think that’s the battle, the battle to say ‘whose realm do you acknowledge’.
(J) Who do you enthrone?
(Julie) And the thing, the question I ever hear coming, coming from Martha’s life is, ‘is God, God’. It just always goes back to that, ‘is God, God’; is He God of my suffering, is He God of calamity? I need Him to be God of calamity. I may not like Him as God of calamity, but I need Him as the God of calamity because that means He is behind all and so He has the power also to sum everything up.
(M) And only on the ground of being totally God, and only God, could He declare that “all things work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.” And the verse that I started with in Ephesians, I started the conference with this verse in Ephesians. It’s Eph. 1:11, “Who works out everything in agreement with the counsel and design of His own will.” That is the statement ‘He is God’, behind everything. And, “so that”, the result of that, “we who first hoped in Christ, who have put our confidence in Him have been destined and appointed to live for the praise of His glory!” So at the end of all our sufferings, we are to be ‘the praise of His glory’. But that’s also why we are called to give thanks to Him in everything; because it is to say ‘You’re God’, and You’re doing something good, You’re doing something that will bless me. It’s the most difficult leap of faith to say ‘thank You’, for the calamity. But even if you don’t believe it’s from God, ultimately initiated by Him, you’re praise and thanksgiving is declaring to yourself that you will trust Him. Does that make sense? It’s… And I say to people, the only thing you can do right now is thank God. It leaps over the earth and the situation, it leaps over to the end of the matter, which will be ‘all things working together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose’. Hallelujah.
(Carole) I got a couple things this morning when I got up. And I was going over the chapter in Matthew 22, when I came to, “For m any are called, invited and summoned, but few are chosen.” I knew that was Martha’s prayer was for ‘the few’, and the few were there, and there was true Body life in the Spirit, and the blood flowing through all of us. And then I said,” well where are You?” And for me it was in Heb. 3, and it is the admonishment to faith, and to believe; and, and the warning to not harden our hearts, but to enter into His rest. And I believe He took us into that rest at the conference, and the Shalom, which is ‘the authority over all chaos’. (Background comment clarifying quote.) “Displacing the authority that creates chaos”, yeah.
(M) So, wonderful, wonderful conclusion, Carole. So we all say to the listener’s Shalom.
(All) Shalom, Shalom.
