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My Shepherd Is The Lord
Episode #182
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guest: Julie
(M) I see the Psalm 23 in ways I’ve not comprehended it before because I wasn’t as owned as I am today. (Martha laughs) But when “The Lord is my Shepherd to feed, guide, and shield me, I shall not lack. He makes me lie down in fresh, tender green pastures; He leads me beside the still and restful waters. He refreshes and restores my life, my self; He leads me in paths of righteousness, uprightness and right standing with Him, not for my earning it, but for His name’s sake. Yes, though I walk through the deep, sunless valley of the shadow of death, I will fear or dread no evil, for You are with me; Your rod to protect and Your staff to guide, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me; You anoint my head with oil. Goodness and mercy, and unfailing love shall follow all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord, and His presence shall be my dwelling place.” He will get me there. He will do it in spite of me, He will do it for me, and He will provide everything for my safety in the presence of evil. I’ve told this story before, but it’s basic in my life. Years ago the Lord gave me… I went to a Catholic funeral actually, is where it began, and they sang over and over “my Shepherd is the Lord, I have everything I need”. And that was… that’s implied there, but it isn’t said that way. My Shepherd is the Lord, I have everything I need. And that would not leave me, and the Lord began to call me to the practical application of that, that all of my needs belong to Him. And the Lord… I forget, He told one of us, that the need was sacred. Was it you Julie? (Someone speaks in background.) Oh, it was Kelly Rumfeld. Oh, Kelly said, the Lord told him… He said the one thing I’ve gotten from your tapes and writings is that we are to live in need. That’s amazing that he heard that. And he said one morning he started a direction and the Lord said no, your need is holy, your need is sacred to Me. And I think someone here said I’ve always believed my need was shameful. (Martha laughs gently.) But my need belongs to Him, and that’s the sheep position. The sheep position is need of everything from the Shepherd, their life and death, their health. And this illness lies in the hand of the Shepherd. And that’s why He says I am the good Shepherd. But the Lord called me to live that way, that all my needs belonged to Him; they didn’t belong to any human being. They didn’t belong to any group, they didn’t belong to any ‘thing’ on this earth, they didn’t belong to the worldly things. My need was His. And if I had a perceived need, I had to take it to Him, and if He supplied it, then I would know it was a legitimate need. If He did not supply it, then I was to know I didn’t need it. So now I lived in a sufficiency, a complete sufficiency; and I was amazed how He would meet my needs, even the need for comfort from people, the need for everything, He met it. And I would know secretly that that was His provision. And He had me there rather stringently, imprisoned me to that one verse. Not only does He give everything, I have it! I have everything I need. And if times are going to be severe in the future, if the financial condition of this country is going to ruin, if that is so, my Shepherd is the Lord. Under all the circumstances that will come, I have everything I need. And once I lived, to help one of my children, I lived in a little attic room for three weeks. The Lord told me I would live out of the trunk of my car. And I didn’t know… It was very temporary, but I was astonished that I had everything I needed. And I loved it. I loved the simplicity of it. I loved the severity of it. I loved the freedom from material things that I lived in. I loved the simple work. I loved the place He had me in, and I saw that, I saw that you could live… It was a comfort to me to know that I could be in privation, however temporary, and have enormous contentment, because I had everything I needed. The issue of Laodicea is ‘I have need of nothing’. God’s will is a prison where you go where you don’t want to go, and you do what you don’t want to do. And His will is His mastery. I think the word that’s coming to me is, ‘mastered by the Master’. And even this morning, I didn’t want anything but to bask in His presence, and He said to me, over and over, “Feed My lambs, feed My lambs”. And frankly, I wasn’t up to it.
(Julie) I don’t know how to say this but I’ve heard you say several times in the stories of the experiences of your life, that the people who don’t come into the belonging, don’t come into the ownership, are the ones who wouldn’t ultimately open their hearts to love. And it just strikes me that the grace to be in that kind of ownership is love. And Ruth loved Naomi, and so she was willing, gladly, to be owned and to belong. And that there’s something to that, that it’s not an intellectual decision. We can’t… Because I’ve tried that, it doesn’t work, you know. I’ve tried the intellectual ‘I want to belong to God’, or whatever, and it doesn’t work that way. But it’s more about opening your heart to love.
(M) Oh I’m so grateful, Julie, thank you, because I thought about that earlier and I didn’t go there. You’re captured by love, and if you will be loved, and if you will love, when He, when He intervenes in any life He does so by love. And if you’ll be captured fully, and owned, like a child, loving like a child, with abandon, and even looking foolish. If you are captured by love, the world will call you a fool. If you follow where His love is, where His love has called you, you will be imprisoned into the strangest possible ways by His love. The disciples were. The words on the page don’t convey … the Spirit has to reveal that.
(Julie) The scripture that you started with sometime ago, 1John 4:6, about talking about how, this is how we know who is,who belongs to God, we belong to God and how we know. The verses right after that, verses 7 and 8 say, “Beloved let us love one another, for love springs from God, and he who loves his fellow men is begotten, and born of God, and is coming progressively to know and understand God.” And then verse 8 says, “He who does not love, has not become acquainted with God.” So I just see that… And you’ve said this in many, many, many different stories, that if we do not open our hearts to love, we will not enter the ‘belonging’. So it’s just a different path, it’s not intellectual, it’s not a decision, it’s not something we rationalize or choose on that level. It’s more… There’s some element of a heart response first, to the love.
(M) Jesus said, “How will I describe this generation, you’re like children in the streets. I played the flute for you, and you didn’t dance. I played the dirge for you, and you didn’t mourn.” He wants the most primal childlike response to His intervention when He comes to choose you. He breaks in to life, He has to, He breaks in somehow. Wherever He chooses, He breaks in. And He wants an abandoned, vulnerable, and I’ll even say, wild response to that love, a reckless response to His coming and to His love. If you are captured by anything else it will be death. It’s only by His love that you will allow yourself to be captured. Daniel worshipped three times a day. He was captured by love, and he loved because he was captured by love. The prison is… you’ll only stay there for love. You’ll only go there… that’s what happened to Peter, Peter fell in love with Jesus, madly, wildly, jump out of a boat and come to Him. And on this rock I will build My church. And He transformed my view of Peter into, not a bumbling, foolish man, but Peter was a child that responded utterly from His heart, abandoned himself to love Jesus. And ultimately wrote those two books. He loved Him enough to suffer for Him, as he wanted to, wrote it, wrote the quintessential document on suffering, and brought it down to the most practical level of family and church relationships. But he was a man in love. So was John. John was the disciple of love, and he was given the great revelation of the end days, and mostly of Christ. It was the revelation of Christ, enthroned and majestic. So, you belong, you’re right Julie, thank you. He comes for you with love, and if you’ll be mastered by that love then you’ll enter His choice of you to belong. It’s why many are called, few are chosen.
