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With Martha Kilpatrick and John Enslow
(J) To me this is amazing because it’s just another aspect of rejection and how rejection is so detrimental to everyone around you. It literally is a time bomb waiting to go off.
(M) It’s devouring the many as Hebrews says. And you know if you tell God who to be then you’re God.
(J) Absolutely.
(M) So you don’t have a relationship with something ‘other’ than you. He is ‘other’, He is different, He is beyond. And, but so many times, and I’ve never known this, John, because somehow He caught me young. But if you have a relationship with your idea of God, as you were saying, you’re not with God at all. That’s astounding; that’s grievous. But it’s…now… I was thinking of the scriptures as you were saying this, because He says, “He who has an ear, let him hear.”
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) Well we have an ear.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) But the question is will you hear? And I was working with someone this week and I said to her, because I didn’t hear from her the Voice of God. We have to live by His
Voice. If you don’t hear His Voice, you don’t live. What was the one failure of Israel that caused them to go into captivity? She may have thought it was a ‘trick’ question, so she said well tell me. And I said, one thing; it wasn’t idolatry, it wasn’t rebellion, it was that they didn’t hear His Voice. Idolatry was the result of not hearing His Voice. The rebellion was the result. But the bottom line, the core of God’s relationship with us is ‘speaking’.
(J) And I think that’s why He led the Hebrews through the wilderness with the banner ‘I Am Who I Am’. That’s because…
(M) I’m not who you say I am.
(J) Let Me speak for Myself!
(M) Oh, that’s powerful. Ok, I’ll read what… This is what, some of John’s words when he was really moving in anointing this morning. “If I think God rejects me when I go to Him”, he was saying, “My thoughts dictate who God is.” And he said, “People are so involved with what they think. Unless I let you have your voice, I’m really not in relationship with you.” Ok, “You’re hearing what your mother said, or what your father said or whoever said, or what you say. There’s no way to have any relationship unless you allow the person to speak for themselves.” That’s what you said and I wrote down.
(J) It’s amazing.
(M) It’s all about listening.
(J) Well I had an authority figure in my life who would always say you are always half-doing your job, basically. And Jennifer in the office said you’re anything but half-doing your job. You are full on; everything you do is full on. And I’ve carried that label with me forever, and it’s not true. Because as a child I wasn’t on board with something, and there was no passion behind it, doesn’t mean my whole entire life is half-done. And so, I’ve always struggled with half-done, half-baked so to speak. But it’s not true.
(M) No, it’s not true. You’re two hundred percent, if anything. And you probably were as a child. You were… you know behind it was really the desire to cause you to lessen your passion.
(J) Hmmm. I’ve never seen that.
(M) Yeah. It was to… You were, have always been a person who moves on passion. And you’re passionate about this ministry so just… You have no end of performance, enthusiasm, and really excellence of performance. Nothing of you has ever been half-done in this ministry for fifteen years. And, but it was to, it was, the motive behind it, I think, was really to kill you. All rejection is to kill you, who you are.
(J) They weren’t hearing my voice. They were listening to whatever they were listening to, I don’t know. My dad one day… We were at a, a picnic, and it was at a spring. And I was real young, but I sat there the entire day with a cup and a string trying to catch a fish that I… there were several of them, and they were like, who cares, they were like guppies but they were real pretty. So I was dangling that cup and that string there all day. My father came behind me. He would… he would… he didn’t even tell me he was there, but at the end of the day he said, I cannot believe you did that all day. I mean literally, I sat there; I was going to catch one of those fish. I gave my entire energy to catching one of those. I never did catch one of those stupid fish. But my father was amazed. He said, “wow!” It was kind of like…I’ve never seen this person; you know what I mean? And so I was… But that’s how I do whatever I’m passionate about. I’ll expend myself. And so ah…
(M) Well that criticism you took to your relationship with God and assumed He was always displeased with your performance, right? Is that what you did?
(J) I think I’ve taken a lot more. I think I took this whole suitcase and said ok here, I’d like You to put these clothes on and I’d like You to say these words because this is who I really believe You are. And He’s like, “No, I’m not putting on ‘your clothes’, and I’m not saying what you’re going to say.” And ah…
(M) I will be Who I will be.
(J) I Am Who I Am. Oh, ok. But He’s finally got that through my thick skull. I Am Who I Am, I will tell you what I’m going to say about you, and I will tell you Who I Am. I go oh, ok.
(M) Well you know its pretty serious John because I was reading this morning the scripture in, I think it was Jeremiah nine, and it says, “In their deception they refuse to know Me.” See He is knowable; He is so very knowable. But He’s not knowable if you make Him something else. As you said earlier, He’s not in that conversation; He’s not in that relationship that you have with yourself. But ‘in their deception they refuse to know Him’. It is willful to not know God, or to not hear Him. I’ve told the story of the man who was in dire straights and I hadn’t talked to him in a few weeks, and I said what is the Lord saying? He said, nothing really. I said that is not possible; it’s absolutely not possible. He is speaking. He’s a speaking God because that is the convey…. Christ is His Word, His living Word, the expression of His nature and His voice and His everything. And He is communicating. That is so clear in Scripture. And in our own life if we will listen to Him as He is, He will speak endlessly, marvelously. And it’s just a terrific grief to me that that He is vilified this way; and that people miss Him. And you say it’s simply because of unforgiveness?
(J) I, I think that’s why it’s simple. I mean, you know.
(M) It’s got to be. Bitterness, and that assumes His rejection, instead of forgiving and finding Him…we live in the rejection and make Him enter it. And I remember the scripture that says, “You think I’m like you.”
(J) I don’t want a God who’s like me.
(M) (Laughter) What horror!
(J) There’s enough of me going around here. I just, I need Him, and I want Him to have His Voice, and so I’m really excited about this. I don’t want the transference of past relationships, past failures, past opinions. I want Him to be current with me, and I want, I was begging Him. Ok, this is what I was begging Him the other day. I said I have got to hear You, for You. I want, I want in every situation in my life, every situation, if I have somebody sitting there screaming and persecuting me, in front of me, I want to hear Him, not that person. What is He saying about this situation? I mean I’m coveting hearing Him in all of it.
(M) I have somehow been brooding on this passage in John 10 for a good while now. I keep hearing this ‘hearing’ issue. Ah, “My sheep know My voice”. “The sheep hear His voice”, meaning the Shepherd’s, “He calls His own sheep by name.” That means He talks to you by your identity. He listens to you by your nature, and your hearts issues, “and leads them out”. “When He puts forth all His own”, meaning sheep, “He goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow Him because they know His voice. A stranger they simply will not follow, but will flee from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” Well, that’s been on my heart so deeply. A stranger they will not hear. That has to follow hearing His Voice and being familiar with His Voice. We’ve told this story before that when you were the shepherd of our sheep, they knew your voice. But they did not know my voice; they never learned my voice, because I wasn’t with them like you were. But it’s true, the sheep knew your voice, and they would come to you without fear.
(J) Umhmm.
(M) And they were always skittish with me because I wasn’t down there with them. But, so I was a stranger and they didn’t know my voice, they wouldn’t follow me. Well how is it that you follow Him? Only by His Voice. And it’s so elementary to the Christian life. It’s so… it’s the foundation. It’s not that you hear necessarily in words. This morning I got the impression you knew He was speaking; you knew what He was speaking within you.
(J) Of me? Oh.
(M) What He was speaking. That’s my impression of what you said. You knew what He was saying.
(J) Oh, yeah.
(M) And you went ahhhh.
(J) Umhmm.
(M) If you hear Him, you know Him anywhere He comes. And you also said it’s so much about your thinking, that the enemy comes, and that means the stranger speaking. That’s what I’ve been thinking about. It means the stranger is talking all the time… the stranger.
(J) Whether the stranger is me or the enemy, something’s talking.
(M) And I think that’s the value. Lately I’ve been realizing that the value of memorization is that you are getting those words, you’re hearing those words. And in memorizing the words as a work, ultimately you hear His Voice, and His revelation of that which you’re memorizing. So to me memorization, though I’m struggling with it right now, I’m not doing well. Even what I’m memorizing I can’t seem to get. But I’m going to commit it to prayer because I believe it’s crucial. Because every… Joshua was told if you meditate on His commands day and night, whatever you do you’ll prosper. And that means… That is because you’re thinking will absorb the true God, and your hearing will be of the scriptures rather than the stranger. And I, I’ve been saying oh God please, please help me not to listen to the stranger, because I know how. I know how to listen to the rejection and the criticism, and I know how to take that in and eat it, to my shame. And I’ve just been praying Lord please, please so make your Voice my absolute that I will not listen to the stranger. So this week, someone said something to me, and it was really very wonderful. But it so disturbed my spirit. And ultimately I said, I cannot hear that; I will not hear that, it’s deceptive. And so the strangers voice disturbed me.
(J) Well, the strangers voice disturbed the sheep down there.
(M) Uhuh.
(J) When they heard it they got little skittish.
(M) Umhmm, that’s true. A little confused.
(J) Umhmm.
(M) And while they would come as a unit to you, if I tried to speak to them they would get in chaos. They would lose their head sheep and they would kind of scramble. So the Body together cannot allow a stranger’s voice either.
