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with Martha Kilpatrick and John Enslow
(M) The thing that we don’t know about God, John, is… Karl Barth said it in a way that was stunning to me. He said, “The Kingdom is an actual assault on the world.” Jesus assaulted the Pharisees; He assaulted the moneychangers; that kind of aggression from God, we don’t…we don’t comprehend that He is willing to do that. You said He brought a sword. He came… Jesus said I didn’t come to bring peace but a sword. That is a weapon of violence. And I’ve walked in this long enough to know that it is violent, because that’s what it takes against such fortressed mind-set.
(J) But He wouldn’t do it to a child, would He?
(M) (Martha chuckles) You answer.
(J) I just think that Satan doesn’t give us the, the ah…because we’re children doesn’t say, oh, ok, I’m going to give them a pass. Satan’s full on.
(M) Hmhum.
(J) So is God. And though He responds and gives us choices in our mind-set and our ability to think and reason, and… It’s still… it’s still the exact same choices, even as a child.
(M) Well, I remember reading long ago, years ago, someone addressing, I’ll say evil people. And what this… I think it was actually a Christian psychologist wrote this. He said we don’t know why one child will turn out this way, and another, another way. But later in studies they found out why…choice. It’s simply choice. How you respond is the choice of your inner-being and your heart, and it’s the choice of how you will respond and how you will think about it, and what you will believe about it. And so now they know that bad children come out of good homes, and good children come out of bad homes. And it seems to boil down to individual, total responsibility of choice, which is astonishing. And this is what Jesus is saying in Matt. 15. It is your response, is what comes out of you, not what goes into you. And your response comes out of the capacity in the human nature to go to Satan; same capacity that was there in Eden. It’s just, it’s just the choice is bowing to Satan. And the worst of choices is to call that ‘god’. It takes you into the realm of rebellion and darkness. And that… Jesus bombardment and fierce attack of the Pharisees, calling them snakes and viper’s, white-washed tombs full of dead men’s bones. He was not condemning as such, He was attacking those terrible walls that the Pharisees built with their own righteousness, the delusion from darkness that they are superior, so that… And it was… What I’m trying to say, I don’t know whether this fits with what you’re saying, that God does assault those walls. And how we even respond to His assault… His assault wants to be in kindness and love, and if we won’t respond to that, then He will come with violence. And I’ve said somewhere in my writings, I would think, I would call You cruel if I didn’t know Who You were; because He will bombard, almost in a sense ruthlessly, to save our life.
(J) Well, if I would put a word towards God in how I was dealing with Him, I would say ‘resistant’. And I’d say why is He resistant? And this morning He showed me exactly why He’s resistant. So I went to a god thinking God was resistant. Truth or not, whatever… Oh, it’s just freaky, because I’m seeing why. Ok, God resists the proud, and God said ‘God resists me because of my pride, until I would be humbled’. I would not be humbled. I chose to be proud, fashioning god into my own image, and then He came to me exactly as I fashioned that god, proud and resistant. It says in Psalm 18:26, I don’t remember which version. I think it was the Contemporary English Version. I looked up all the versions and it was like… “With all who are sincere, You are sincere, but You treat the unfaithful as their deeds determine. With the pure, You are pure; with the perverse You are a wrestler.”
(M) Ah, ha. The King James says, “With the froward, Thou art froward; with the stubborn Thou art stubborn.”
(J) Well, I thought that was very interesting; ‘a wrestler’. And He has been a wrestler in my life.
(M) Well, there it is in Jacob and the angel. That really was God.
(J) Absolutely. And so He says, “I will resist the proud and give grace to the humble”. So I’m… I saw all that, and I’m like oh my gosh, You were, You were resistant, You were exactly who I thought You were. Because You were resisting my pride. And then you said a couple things this morning that triggered some stuff about parents, about life circumstances, childhood issues, blah, blah, blah. And I thought that thankfulness, gratefulness, surrender and bowing are the only way you can handle your childhood issues, or you will be proud, and you will have a God who resists you, and you will go to the god that is not God, who is the God. It’s not how He… It’s like you draw a contract and you say this is who I want, and He says ok, that’s Who I’ll be. You want to be proud? You choose to be proud? Then I’m going to be resistant toward you. I’m saying He’s resistant to that pride. To the humble, if you’re broken hearted, He will rush in! But if you’re resistant, you say, I will not have that mother, that father, that life circumstance, that this, that… It doesn’t even matter what it was. Unfortunately, and I don’t like this, but it doesn’t matter what the abuse was. And that seems really harsh, because there’s a ton of abuse, and it’s horrible.
(M) Hmhmm.
(J) My abuse is nothing, nothing, in comparison. But I’m, I’m given a directive and so is everybody; gratitude, gratefulness, thankfulness, bowing and surrender.
(M) I think there’s anther one to add to your list, John. It is an aspect of humility, but it is, it is ‘knowing you’re nothing’. I don’t know if I want to put this on the tape, but what I’m seeing from what you’re saying is in my growing up I came to believe I was inferior, just nothing. And while that… God has had to work with that terribly in me, and it caused me to take a lot of things that probably I shouldn’t have, that was closer to the truth than pride. And that may have been my saving grace that came. My response was to believe I was inferior, to believe I was nothing, and that what I got was what I deserved. And though that’s rather ‘sick’ humility, it…maybe that was my, why I went to the Real God; because He came to get me, even in my teenage years. And because I was nothing, and never thought I was anything, my choice was easy, I didn’t go to pride.
(J) And I thought I was nothing as well, but I didn’t respond like you did, believing I deserved nothing or was nothing. I knew I was nothing, but I deserved… I believed I deserved more and better.
