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with Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
(M) John, I’ve got something on the stream we’re in that’s so exciting to me because it’s answered a question I’ve had for years, and it’s all related to where we’ve been. So I’ll let you wait a minute on that because I want to answer a question someone wrote to me. She said, “I’ve resonated with your recent podcasts about control and free will.” She said, “Your teaching has confirmed to me that I really was following the Spirit as I began to have some backbone. I have only once heard anyone else speak on these issues of control and compliance.” And I think you’ve tried to tell me that that’s not out, that’s not being addressed. “My question to you is, where does this question of making your own choices fit in with scriptures teaching about submission to authority, especially about non-moral issues. I’m very interested to hear what you think.” That’s a real crucial question, and one that comes from this woman’s integrity, and her desire to be free, but to be subject at the same time. Like so many questions, the answer lies in the individual. There will be some who will take the issue of free choice, and because of their hearts condition, or wanting their own way, they will use the free choice to be rebellious.
(J) For license.
(M) Yes. And then others will be committed to the will of God, and He will walk them out by the Spirit, in free choice. The answer lies in the individual, and their heart relationship with the Lord. And I think He will take care of the issue of submission to authority. But I have learned, and this is, dear lady that wrote, this is strictly what I am learning, I wouldn’t really have opened it up, but I think her question is so vital in the light of what we’re talking about, don’t you John?
(J) Oh absolutely. The amazing thing is that during these podcasts we’ve had more response in what you’re doing, not only in the CD of the month, but the podcasts about The Trees. We’ve had more responses, and more people asking questions, and it’s pretty amazing. But it’s all individual isn’t it?
(M) Yeah, the answer is that God weighs it. But I have learned something, a little bit about submission, because there is still a great deal of tyranny that calls itself spiritual authority. For instance, there’s a passage that says wives submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. And I happened to run across a commentary where the writer said, that means that any authority over a woman or anyone, a pastor or anybody, must be in the Lord. And many times it is in the humanity. The source of the authority lies in human nature that wants to control. So the commentator’s point was that the authority isn’t legitimate unless it’s in the Lord. And that’s been coming to us from different sources too, which I won’t even take time to go into.
(J) Are you talking about church sanctioned tyranny?
(M) That too, yes John. Would you like to address that please?
(J) You know, the whole sanctioning of the abuse of males to women; and squelching a woman and not allowing her to speak, even if she is in the Spirit, squelching her, and basically sanctioning it because it says don’t let the woman speak, and be submitted to your husband. So the church is sanctioning the squelching of a woman to keep her mouth shut; and so it’s tyranny. It’s tyranny sanctioned by using the scriptures to be able to do it. And you’ve seen that, I mean, we’ve all seen it.
(M) Yes. And I think a woman can use tyranny; as a mother, I have, I did, as a mother. But the point is, is it in the Spirit. And the old saying is, I think it’s from Watchman Nee, says, the scripture separated from the Spirit is legalism; the Spirit separated from the scripture is license.
(J) Ok. Heresy.
(M) Or heresy, yeah. So the issue of this is strictly of the leading of the Spirit. I can’t lay down a guideline, because God will view it by the heart, not by the action. He will know whether your heart is in rebellion, or whether your heart is in submission to Him in that authority. But her question was so good I wanted to touch it lightly.
But now I’m going to change completely. This question of mine of the Lord began several years ago. There was a man in New York City, who shot his pregnant wife, and called 911, and she died. And he claimed someone shot her, and that he struggled and that she was killed, she was murdered. But his brother came forward within a week or so, and told that this husband had given the gun to his brother and told him to throw it in the East River. And so the man was arrested for the murder of his wife. And it had evoked such sympathy during that week. It was a horrible story, because the 911 could hear her dying. And he was claiming to care so much, but he had killed her. It’s incomprehensible how a man could do that and be that cold hearted. And I happened to run across an article on the man by a criminal psychiatrist, and he said the man was without a personality, but could perfectly imitate one, and that his whole world believed him to be one kind of person, when he was another. And the thing that he said about the man being without a personality perplexed me. I didn’t feel like we can be without a personality. But through some reading I’ve done recently, it’s all been straightened out for me by someone else’s brilliance. And what he said was that we tend to think we are our habits; I cook. I jog. But that is not personality, that’s habits. Then we think our identity lies in our roles. Well tell me about you? Well I’m a mother. I’m a teacher, or I run a train, or you know, we identify ourselves with what we do. But that’s still not personality. Or we might say, I could say I’m an artist, I could say, you’re a scientist, that’s still not personality.
(J) You really went into that in the CD messages, with the Israel messages. You went into the roles with Rosemary. You talked about the roles and you expressed how we could lose ‘our-self’ by becoming a role rather than a person.
(M) But I didn’t understand personality. I understood that the roles were not you. The Amplified identifies faith in numbers of places this way: the leaning of the entire personality on God in absolute trust and confidence in His power, wisdom and goodness; the leaning of the personality. Well I don’t know whether this relates to that, but we’ve been talking about choice John, we’ve been talking about it among ourselves, we’ve been involved in the Lord calling us to make our choices and seeing where we don’t, so this is really coming out of life;
(J) Absolutely.
(M) …the life of Christ and the wind of the Spirit. You have a saying currently, whatever it is, it will only last 24 hours. And that means that the wind is forever changing. Right now we’re looking out the window at the wind blowing the snow almost horizontally. But it’s caused me to consider the wind, and how it changes so constantly. And I’ve said back to you that it’s really only twelve hours that everything will change. But that’s very telling right there, because personality, and I think I said on the CD that you have to choose your values; but what I’ve learned is that personality is the choice of your values. That’s what personality is, so you form your personality. You can’t form your temperament, but you form your personality by your choices. Life happens to you, or revelation comes to you and you are presented by God with a choice, every day. Things change, people change, events change, you go places and meet change, and behind all of that it’s the sovereignty of God evoking a choice. And I’ve tried to say clearly that God does not make our choices, but He sets it up so we can see what they are. And He also sets it up if we’re making the wrong ones. He’s always evoking a response. And that response to Him requires that you change; and you can only change if you’re choosing the right values.
(J) So tie this back into that Hebrew scripture.
(M) You do ask very good questions on the air. I think I can tie it back to that, because the values that you choose in response to God, that’s what the real choice is, the real choice of life is what God is asking you, and your response. And you’re either saying yes or no.
(J) Well if you believe that it’s your role that you’re leaning on, or if you believe that it’s your habits that you’re leaning on, that’s a totally different thing than your personality. (M) Right, because God responds… it’s just what I said in answer to the dear lady that wrote. I said it’s a question of the heart, and the answer to her question will be according to whether you’re surrendered to the Spirit or not. I can take these messages and I can say I have a right to my choice, and I can use the privilege of choice to be rebellious, and many, many Christians do. So see, the choice I give back to God. He will call for something in your life, either you hear His voice, or life challenges you, and you make a choice. Am I going to obey God? Many years ago I expected a woman to have a certain level of integrity as she was dealing with me in a conference, and she failed to fulfill what was promised. And I was just indignant with her. And the Lord said to me, I have taught you that standard, but I have not taught her yet, so you cannot impose your values on her. But the development of character is the development of values; what is most important to me? What do I want most? What will I choose to live for? That’s personality. And what this writer said is that personality is ubiquitous. And we looked up that word and it means that personality permeates everything; what you choose as your values affects your work, your habits, your roles, and your creativity. For instance, my choice to accept the calling to be a writer made many things I had to choose to let die. It made many other choices that I had to let go of, and still do. So it affected my whole life, it affected my family and it affected my hours of the day. That’s what it means; your personality that you are shifting and changing if you are healthy; you’re changing and developing your destiny really.
(J) One of the examples of that is, didn’t He tell you that you couldn’t have a free-reign of TV, that you would have to shut that down, not totally, but you would have to curtail that to minimal amount; because the amount of thinking that you would have to be doing, and the amount of dealing in your heart that you would have to be doing was going to based on… Your writing was going to be based on the fact that you had to think.
(M) I had to think, I had to do the work; a tremendous amount of thinking and living and responding before I could even begin to write. So you’re right. Your personality determines what happens in your relationships.
