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Episode #239
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guest: Julie
(M) In some ways, this one, this process has been completely unique though for me. There was a nothing-ness and an inability to do it that was completely total. I could not even sit down at the computer and try, because I knew I didn’t have it.
(J) You’ve lived out the message in the booklet.
(Julie) But I see also, it would seem to me, and I don’t know if I’m a very good judge of this or not, but it seems like there is a sharpness and clarity and definition of Christ in it, as the opposite of that. You know what I’m saying? I mean, I rejoice in this booklet uniquely because I feel like you’re bringing into focus… I don’t even have strong enough words to say it, you’re bring into such sharp focus Who Jesus Christ is, and Who the Holy Spirit is, in a time when there has never been more confusion, or so it would seem. So it seems so relevant. It’s not that it’s just about prayer, it’s that you’re bringing back into focus the Person of God in truth. And I just think that’s vital.
(M) Well, some weeks ago I gave a manuscript to that point to Jennifer Wentzel in the office and asked her to read through it. And when she came back, she said some very beautiful things; I’ll read it to, to, in the next podcast. But she said you have taken… Prayer for me was always a work, she said, you have made it about a Person, the Person of Christ. And she said you’ve made it into a dance.
(J) Hmmm.
(M) And it so captured for me, it just, it captured for me by that word something I had not realized. But that was even before the real dance for me began, and that was in the process of being stripped of the, the laws of ‘I must write because I promised to write’.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) That was one thing He was destroying, ‘no, you mustn’t’. Every promise is, if the Lord willing I shall do this or that. And I felt completely free from the pressure from anyone, but the pressure I put on myself was very legalistic, ‘I’ve got to do this’, and here I am in my garden again! And so… (Martha laughs.) But He was stripping that, and stripping other things; and I realized that the law is a barrier to God, whatever law we have keeps us from receiving Him, keeps us quenching the Spirit by using the law that we think God would want. And that was a major part of being able to come… What He has poured through me in the last several days is incredible to me. It’s quite beyond me. You say it’s my life, but I say to you, it fills me with wonder because what Julie read literally came flowing through me onto the page, with no change; I didn’t say that, the Lord did. And that’s a very bold and audacious claim, but there is no, there is no other explanation for it, and I know it well. He gave me the words I’ve been waiting for, for months, and praying and praying, and meditating and meditating. I would come to a problem… Because this booklet is nothing like the original tape about which it is named. I don’t even know how to explain that. I couldn’t possible publish it as the tape from the eighties; I couldn’t do it; in integrity I could not release it, because I knew that I had only the very beginnings, and now I had to some extent, the endings. And I couldn’t not give what He had placed in me now; after years of living and years of failing, and years of praying, and years of finding out how He views prayer, and what it is, what it really is. So, I just, I really believe that His stripping me, exposing the laws I put on myself, and in my heart, on others, that was a very crucial part of being able to receive the unction of the Spirit for this, for this to just come through me. I wrote from three this morning till eleven thirty, straight, without really any breaks. And it was just completely flowing like a river.
(J) Hmm.
(M) And I’ve experienced that before in writing; that’s what I wait for, that’s what I want. That means it’s from Him. There’s no striving, there’s no effort to put it in words, it comes. And there was some very practical work that had to be done that was difficult. It had to be rearranged in the right order, and that was very hard work, but it was still, the Lord was even doing the practical part and the poetic part and the dance. And it, and what Jennifer saw in the manuscript was that it was a romance. She said you’ve taken me to not a ritual or a work of prayer, but you’ve taken me to a great adventure of romance. And so, I’m very excited, and when I really felt in my spirit it was finished, I cried and cried, and announced it to John; so we’re going to put it in e-book form, and we’re going to put it in booklet form. And so, it’s, I hope it will, I really hope it will go far. And I hope it, Julie says it’s very clear. And that’s what I wanted, I wanted to be very clear. So the Lord alone did that, and I’m, I’m just exuberant about it. The booklet is based on Luke eleven where Jesus teaches the disciples the Lord’s prayer, and then He goes into a parable about prayer. And this, I was so impacted by Luke. Luke was the one that spoke the most about Jesus’ prayer. He made note of it, and on so many occasions he’s the only one that says when Jesus was filled with the Spirit, He was praying at the moment that the Spirit came. No other account shares that. So I was very grateful for Luke, and sort of got to know him in a funny way, that he was so interested in the prayer of Jesus. He’s the only one that records this parable that I used for the booklet. But this is, let me just read this part. It’s about where Jesus says ask, seek and knock. “Asking is the beginning of prayer, what I need, what I want of God. What I want to tell Him. What I want Him to hear. Asking is needing the Ear of God. Seeking is to understand, listening to the Spirit to identify the problem, the solution and God’s promise. It’s what I need to hear. Seeking is wanting the Voice of God. Knocking is the great vigorous desire of the Holy Spirit as He takes over our intercession. He is the power of insistence. He is the holy boldness beyond human longing. Knocking is experiencing the presence of God.” And for me, knocking on the door is getting into, oh you could say the heavenly, the heavenly place, the throne room of God, but it is demanding to be inside in the presence of God. And ah, those were some of the things He gave me. What I’m experiencing, and I’ve put it in this as I have asked the Lord to pull out of me, to find what it is He wants to say, and then one of the things that I realized is that when you surrender to the Spirit, to walk and live in the Spirit, prayer is an underground river. Our wells appear, come from, underground rivers.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) My well is a very powerful river underground, and there’s a river behind the house, so we are, I’m aware of that underground river always available, and the Holy Spirit lives in us in prayer like that underground river. And what I’m seeing in my life is that a thought to the Lord is a prayer, and He answers it; it’s so beyond this rote of ask and decide, and you know, tell God what to do. It’s breathing. If you surrender to the Spirit and allow the cross to take you out of the way and get you out of the way, then the Holy Spirit does take over, and, and He… it’s the most natural flow. Prayer is so instinctive and unconscious; and it’s not, it isn’t this labor that we all make it, I’ve got to pray, oh dear, I’m not praying. But it’s such inner-communion, and it’s almost of a nature that you aren’t even aware, you aren’t involved in and you aren’t aware of; the Holy Spirit is so moving in His own direction and you just naturally, you almost think it’s your thought, it’s, you’re so one with Him. And we really are; all of us who are born again are literally one with Christ in the Holy Spirit. We are melded if we will let, let that happen, and not get in the way. So it’s time to put it up on the web site, isn’t it, announce it; coming really soon; really, really this time, coming soon. (Martha laughs.)
(Julie) This is another excerpt from the booklet. You write, “God works to produce need, and we fight to produce sufficiency, but hunger is the normal, healthy state of us all, because we don’t know our helplessness in all things. We do not understand that need is our true state of existence.” And later you say, “Once you accept emptiness, then you will pray, as the man who needed bread in the parable, you will seek, you will ask, and you will find the secret.” And I just want to encourage… I just feel like this is going to be such an answer for people who are very thirsty to know, to know the lord deeply in prayer, to know what prayer really is. It brought me back, at one of the points today that I just couldn’t go on, I was just caught up in such gratitude to the Lord, and worship. It took me back to something of how I fell in love with Him years ago in “Adoration”, that even though at that time in my life I was uhmm, about as high as you could go in the realm that I was in, something in me so deeply was so thirsty and so hungry and so desiring and really desperately desiring the confirmation that there was more. I sensed that there was so much more, and yet I had nothing; I didn’t know where to go. And I feel like this is going to… I hope, maybe that’s just my hope, but I hope it will be that for people who are out there that might hear this, or come across it, who are just so desperately thirsty to know the truth, and what the real knowing of Christ can be in prayer. So I’m, and I see that this is how you live. One reason that I appreciate you so much is you live what you teach. And I think that we… I always had been taught, or had picked up, or for whatever reason had thought that prayer was that I had to come up with a thought, and then I would know what to pray, right? And I watch you, either sometimes work to let go of your thoughts of the situation or of the need, and sometimes you just exist in the nothingness that you have no thoughts or ideas about the situation, and I just think that’s so key, because you do then come into the explosion of His thoughts. It does come. And then whatever situation it was that you might have been, that might have presented itself for prayer, becomes an entire adventure of Him, and discovery of Him, and it goes so far beyond whatever the initial need might have appeared to be. So it just takes prayer out to vast, vast realms, beyond anything I’ve ever heard anywhere else, and certainly not just a dull work.
(M) Well, I’ll tell you the truth. I think sometimes that it would be fascinating to know what Jesus would say about ‘this situation’. Because some situations it’s so obvious, you know, you think you know what it is, and it’s always the most fascinating thing, because He views everything… His thoughts are not our thoughts. And the Father conveys His view of it if you wait. And it’s absolutely mind-blowing, because it will not be at all what humanly, how humanly we assess anything. So it’s worth, it’s worth the wait. It’s worth being still, because He does make it, He makes every situation into a great adventure, a marvel of getting to hear Him, getting to hear His views about it.
(Julie) And it’s worth being stupid and nothing. I mean that’s what I’ve learned from watching you. If you ever, ever get a glimpse of the vastness and amazingly interest… I don’t even know the words, interestingness of His thoughts; you just will discard yours in a second, because they’re just nothing.
(M) You don’t even bother to go there. You don’t even bother to think your thoughts. You don’t bother to think your opinions, you just go. And I won’t say that I do that perfectly by any means, but I know that’s the way It’s just to, just to get excited. What, how do You see it is? And what are You going to say Lord?
(J) Ok, so this is, this is my prayer for this booklet, is that “everyone in distress, or in debt, or discontented,” will be gathered to Him.
(M) And where is that? And what is that from?
(J) This is what the Amplified says in 1 Samuel 22:2, speaking of David. David called; all David’s men were men that were in distress, they were in debt, and they were discontented. And He gathered those men, and they became a mighty army. And they were very loyal, and they were wonderful. And I think that there are many people out there that are in distress, and that are in debt, and that are discontented with prayer, and I’m begging God to call those people to Himself, through this booklet, that He would show Himself mighty as the King, and reveal His glory and His purpose in prayer, and His thoughts on prayer, and His secret to answered prayer.
(M) Hmhmm.
(Julie) I think that this booklet certainly captures that for people who are thirsty. And like John said, in distress, and discontent and wondering, going through the, the whatever…
(M) Christian motions?
(Julie) Yeah, the Christian motions, going through the motions, and all that we call Christianity. Because I think there are people… John and I both have a testimony where we came out of being hungry and searching as far as we knew, only to find really nothing of what I was looking for.
(J) Hmhmm.
(Julie) And to the point that almost come to a real crisis of is this whole thing a big hoax? Does He really exist at all? Or is it all just a big show and we’re all just really kind of lying to each other.
(J) Hmhmm.
(Julie) And, and this brings, I don’t know, it just brings such a powerful affirmation that yes, He really is there, and He is everything you’ve hoped Him to be and more, way more.
