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Living the Hidden Life
Episode #284
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
(M) We’ve had an encounter with the Lord I’ll say, an experience. At the end of working through it, John said, “This is about The Hidden Life.” This is the application of what the booklet is about. So I want to start the day; it was about a day. I want to start the day with the morning. I had been working on “The Inner Room” booklet that we want to get done before the conference because it goes perfectly with “The Hidden Life.” And I had rather been discouraged about where I went with it. So I woke up yesterday morning just in unusual despair. I felt like the Lord was gone, and I don’t ever feel like that. And I felt like I had so offended Him. I was just, just leveled. And I couldn’t seem to pull out of it. So, I thought, well this is warfare. Isn’t that what you always say when you have anything like that? And a friend of mine in Michigan, Lori Thomas, sent me a scripture, annd it’s Ex. 33:17. And my question to the Lord was, and I know this is going to be relevant eventually. It was 33:17. I had said, “Ok Lord, You’ve got to do this booklet, please, You have got to do it, I can’t do it.” So, “The Lord said to Moses, I will also do this thing of which you have spoken. For you have found favor in My sight and I have known you by name.” And so that just spoke volumes to me, that He was listening to me, that He was going to do the booklet that I was a little bit, very discouraged about; and that I was ok with Him. And so that sort of lifted my spirit. And then Julie sent me two wonderful scriptures, in Philippians, and Colossians. And so I began to think ok, what’s going on here? And the Lord said, Julie reminded me, she said, “Remember that the worst time of your life of weakness and paralysis is before, a conference.” And so I thought oh, that’s what it is. It’s like He goes ‘pheww!’ with His sword and levels me down to the ground so that I don’t participate in what is His. So then we were going to the “Bodies” exhibit, eight or nine of us. And the “Bodies” exhibit…You tell them about it, John.
(J) It’s an exhibit that’s actually a traveling, I didn’t realize where all it was. It’s in Las Vegas, a whole bunch of different places. But it’s basically people, human forms that they have, of deceased people, that they have taken their bodies and done different things with polymers and plastics and stuff like that. And so, they just display the different elements of the people. So, like the blood, basically they would put this polymer into the blood system, and then they would dissolve all the rest but the circulatory system. And all that would be left would be the circulatory system, and then they would, you know, show you all the veins, all the arteries and everything. Just how much is in the face, and how much is around the lips and the nose. It’s amazing just how much blood, and you understand why, you know, when you get hit in the nose or something like that, you bleed so profusely. It’s because there’s just so much vascular system right there. And so anyway, you know, they do all the muscles and the bones and everything like that. So, it’s very, very educational and interesting and real.
(M) And it just gives you such a sense of wonder at the creation of the Body and how… And I said at one point, as intricate as the Body is, how amazing we’re as healthy as we are. Looks like there’d be so much that could go wrong, because it’s every system is just… They even isolate the nerves of the Body.
(J) Hmm, hmhmm.
(M) And they’re educating you as you go along.
(J) Yeah.
(M) The purpose is to discover the wonder of the human body. So we were on our way to that, and the Lord told me to go back with Lori’s scripture and read what was before it. And so what’s before it is, Moses said, “If Your presence doesn’t go with us, do not lead us up there.” And one translation says, “I’m not going, if Your presence doesn’t go with me.” And then the Lord said, “I will be with you and My Presence will go with you.” And that’s what I had felt that morning, that His Presence wasn’t there. So we were in the car, and my granddaughter was there, and I was looking out the window, but not at the spring flowers. And you said, “What are you thinking?” And I said, “I’m thinking”, but I didn’t tell you how desperately I was thinking, I said, “I’m asking the Lord, I cannot bear to live without Your Presence.”
(J) I got it.
(M) (Martha laughs.) Did you?
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) And in my silence I was crying out, “I cannot bear to be without Your Presence. I cannot live that way. I’m begging You, don’t let me offend or lose Your Presence.” I was just desperate for His Presence. So we meet up with everybody and we go through the “Bodies” exhibit. And then we start milling around in a very worldly place. So I’ll let you tell about that.
(J) So we were in Atlantic Station, and I’d never been there before. And I was just completely discombobulated and kind of freaked out, because it felt so chaotic. There felt to be no rhyme or reason of how they laid it out. It was just chaos. And the people…It was just a trip! The people were… It was chaos. Everything from, really from the time we pulled into the area to try to get to a parking space, all the way to the point that we left it, I was just leveled, because I was going, this is so chaotic.
(M) It was total confusion, and hundreds and hundreds of people, and lots of strange things going on. (Martha laughs.) And here we are from our quiet mountain life, and…
(J) It certainly wasn’t.
(M) It wasn’t. It wasn’t. And later I thought when the boys watched “Star Wars” years ago, and they, “Mom, we’ve got, you’ve got to see “Star Wars”. Well I felt like I was in that far, (everyone laugh) you remember it too, don’t you? Where the eyes were on the end of horns or something, the strangest character you’ve ever seen. And so, that’s kind of what it felt like in retrospect. It was just as Carole would say in French, “bi-zarre”.
(J) So I usually try to keep a bead on God and on you, Martha. And I usually say, you know, ‘where we at’, ‘what’s going on’, and I just kind of keep a bead. And I was walking around and I said, ‘this is aimless, and I hate this’, and all these people, I’m going… I kept on looking at these, I felt like, twenty-inch high-heels in fuchsia colors, I’m going, oh my gosh, this place is…(John’s laughing).
(M) And loud, oh my goodness, it was so loud.
(J) It was like the clowns came in to the circus. It was like, (John’s laughing) good grief, there’s everybody’s on stilts, they’re, they’re wearing, It was just… It was bizarre. So I try to keep a bead on God, and I was going, “Where are You? I thought You were coming to the “Bodies” exhibit with us; I thought You were going to say something. You’ve not been there; You’ve not been anywhere.” So, I’m really, I’m getting a little disturbed. And the further we went along with it, I couldn’t get a read on you, and I couldn’t get a read on Him. And I’m going, this is, this is really starting to disturb me.
(M) OK, you kept saying, “What are we here for? What did we do this for? Why are we here?” You thought there was absolutely no purpose for it.
(J) I didn’t see a purpose in anything, how they laid the place out, what the people were doing there, I didn’t see a purpose.
(M) You didn’t see God’s purpose either and you kept asking me, “Now, whey did we come? What was in our thinking? (Martha laughs.) We need this time desperately, a whole day for the conference, all kinds of things, what were we doing here?” You stayed disturbed through the night and until this morning.
(J) Well, I actually had a dream, a very disturbing dream, chaotic. It was a ‘nutso’ dream. I was trying to get this part for my car and I had left you to meet with someone in a restaurant, and I had to get back to you, but I had to get this part for my car. And these people were crazy. And I’d be talking to one person, and all of a sudden another conversation would come with this other person, and then it was just… It felt very much like what we went through, you know?
(M) I think I called you this morning and he said, “What? What was that about?” And I said, “John, it was to put our feet in the world.” And you may remember the story of the United Nations, where John kept saying, “I need to get your feet in the United Nations,” and I went, “why?” I didn’t understand it. We were in New York, and you saw to it that we got in the United Nations, and we went, we walked all through it. We went in the Ambassador’s restaurant. We got in there somehow. We went into their meeting rooms. We just walked over the whole thing, and I never could figure out why. And, but you were certain that that’s where my feet were to be. And later that was when the collapse, the moral, let me see, it was the financial dealing of Kofi Annon. There was a big scandal, and the whole thing was exposed. And it was, “Where your feet go I will take possession.” You knew that, I didn’t, I just walked. I don’t think I even prayed really. I just walked. Well, it was that, God showed me. He wanted the feet of eight people who are His children, to walk that place. So, but I didn’t know that at the time.
(J) Yeah, I would have loved to know that. If He had said ‘this is the purpose’, I would have been like, I’m on with it. If I could, if I could have heard anything, “This is what I’m doing,” I could have been totally at peace with all the chaos, with all the, you know, craziness.
(M) But I was experiencing Him.
(J) You were.
(M) And as we walked around, I really wanted to leave you all and just walk around, because Christ was loving all those people. He wasn’t asking anything. He wasn’t condemning anything. He wasn’t wooing anybody. He wasn’t… He just was there to love. And there were just certain ones that I would watch and watch that He was loving. So I was kind of in a place with Him. And then we ah…That’s really all. Just His Presence was there, and He was looking through my eyes at these people, and He was feeling what He felt. And then we went to lunch, and Jennifer’s sister was there, and I kept looking at her because she was so beautiful to the Lord. And her husband is a man precious to us that we’ve had a lot of… We’ve had him, talked about him on our podcast in New York City, and he was sitting right across from me. And we were talking about different things, nothing. And suddenly I looked at him and I felt the Lord’s passion for that man. And he has, he’s Jewish, and very precious and very open to us. But I felt God’s love for him and it was almost unbearable.
(J) Yeah, and that’s when I saw you, and I saw, I got the bead on you, and I went, “Ok, there’s life, ok.”
(M) Because I had to turn away from you because I would have burst out crying. And I turned away, and you saw the tears, and ah… So it was His love wanted to be there. And we loved each other to pieces. We were just hugging and kissing all over the place. And that’s…You didn’t know what was going on with me, and no one did really. And I didn’t really, but He had given me His Presence again. And I think He orchestrated the whole thing, number one, to give me the deficit of His Presence so I would remember and know what that feels like; and make me cry out for His Presence so He could give His Presence. The whole thing was so sovereign. And it wasn’t just my feet, it was nine pairs of feet, holy feet, walking there, taking the place for Christ and bringing His Presence, just His Presence, in a place that was ungodly to the end. At one point I was shocked at what I was looking at, three ladies, and I was just… And my granddaughter says, “Mimi, don’t stare.” (Everyone laughs.) I said “Oh, Celeste, I forgot my mother’s training, (Martha laughs) but I can’t help it.”
