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Our Need to Love & the Role of Suffering
Episode #639
3-3-2019
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special Guest: Jacquelyn Nawrocki
This is the continuation of a series of podcasts started in Episode #637.
We have a need to be loved, and too often it’s all we can see. But there is a bigger need than being loved, and suffering is the path that can bring us to it.
Martha:
So we’ve come from the danger is failure to love Him, to the choice is to love Him, to the problem is the old man. The old man does not love God.
John:
Cannot!
Martha:
Cannot, incapable of – that’s why he had to be completely put in the grave.
Many years ago Jacquelyn and I were meeting a, hearing a man speak (Charles Carrin) that I love very much. And he said, “I would like to say to all of you there’s no past.” He wanted to speak over us, “No past!” And I went, “Jacquelyn, what does he mean?” She said, “No past!” (Laughter) Nothing! I said, “Really, is that possible?” Yeah. It’s been done. He accomplished it.
So then, of course, there’s… Number four is “The Cost” – Matthew 16:24. We, we’re using the Passion Bible so much lately. The footnotes are brilliant and very rich. I can’t say it’s my number one Bible but it seems where I end up. So it must, maybe it is. “Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If you truly want to follow Me, you should at once completely reject and disown your own life.’” At once! How can you beat that? Pretty clear. “And you must be willing to share my cross and experience it as your own, as you continually surrender to My ways.”
And I think I threw in the story of the Russian young man. That he was under Major Ian Thomas in England. And he was born again under that ministry and he was so wonderful and made such spiritual progress that the other young people wanted to know what his secret was. And he felt like it was too private, too precious and he wouldn’t tell it. And finally he decided that he would tell it. And he said, “The Lord came to me. He was so precious that I said to Him, ‘I will do whatever You say.’ And so I yielded and yielded and yielded until one day I realized I was not myself. Another took over my tongue, mind, and whole being and I was not myself it was Christ living in me.’”
So that, that’s the result.
Jacquelyn:
When Peter cut off the man’s ears, Jesus said, “Put away your sword. Do you really think I will avoid the suffering which my Father has assigned to Me?” I had never seen that before. And my take on it is there is a suffering assigned to me, to all of us, individually. We have a suffering assigned to us.
Martha:
I saw something recently about that everything in our lives – good, bad, ugly, wonderful – everything, every event, every phase, every person in our lives, everything is orchestrated by the most specific sovereign hand to bring us to become in the end what He wants us to be. I think I wrote in one of my booklets on Love is that we think we need love. We’re always obsessed with needing love. That’s our major motivation is to get love. But our real need is to love Him. And only then do we have the love that we need is when we love Him.
So the number five is “Love is the gift of God in Christ.” It’s a gift. It’s not innate in us. We, we sitting here in this room we know we don’t have love in our self, in our old man. Ephesians 6:23-24 (this is the Amplified): “Peace be to the brethren, and love joined with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One). Grace (God’s underserved favor) be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with undying and incorruptible [love].”
Love and faith come from God the Father in the Lord Jesus Christ. So it is a gift. Our destitution about loving is solved and we have to remember that it is a gift. It’s not something that’s expected of me. God doesn’t expect it of me. He expects me to say, to make the choice. “Yes, yes I want to love You. I don’t. I want to love You, Jesus. I want more love for You.” We choose that and God honors the choice and moves according to our choice.
So it’s…I remember the same Charles Carrin said, I asked him one day, “How do you increase faith?” He said, “Increase love. Love and faith go together in the scriptures.” And here it is, love joined with faith. When you have love, you have faith.
I had an experience recently with a meeting, a situation in a meeting that was complicated. And the Lord gave me one request – was love. He didn’t…He gave me that I could ask Him for love. Not wisdom, not solutions, not confrontation, not reasons—just love. It was very, very simple. So when the situation occurred and the meeting happened, there was only love there. And it, a love that could be felt, that could be seen, and known. And after it was all over, I went, “I’m changed. What has changed about this situation in me?” And the Lord said, “You sowed love. You reaped faith.” And now I had faith for the situation. I don’t need… It doesn’t need anything but faith until it’s poof, gone. And it has proven to be poof, gone and only love remains. So it’s an overwhelming lesson to me that I sowed love and I reaped faith.
Okay. Then this could be the change of our life, this one verse right here. Number six is “Faith in the Promise.”
At the moment I can’t remember his last name but Armin (Gesswein) was the mighty prayer warrior that launched Billy Graham’s campaign and it— The explanation for Billy Graham’s impact, which is miraculous, was the prayers of this man and how he trained others to pray. And one, someone said to him, “Armin, give me something about prayer.” He said, “Plead the promise.” Simple! You get the promise and you pray that. And this is the essence of the promise. 2 Peter 1:3-4 (this is in the Holman): “His divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. By these He has given us very great and precious promises, so that through them you may share in the divine nature, escaping the corruption that is in the world because of evil desires.”
Now if we could memorize that one verse and get it into us in terms of faith! Everything has been given already. I don’t have to achieve, acquire, earn, manufacture, work for anything. I only have to receive. And what do we receive? Everything required for life and godliness. All that God wants of us it comes through the knowledge of Him. That’s why Jesus said when they asked Him what is the work that we do. He said, “The work of God is this – to believe in the Father and the Son whom He has sent.” That’s the work, to believe. We don’t have to do. We don’t have to perform. We don’t have to get. We don’t have to achieve. We don’t have to grow. We only have to know Him and when we know Him, we have life, eternal life.
But oh my goodness! This is, this is the solution to whatever we, whatever problem we have is that He has given us everything required. Do you see it’s past tense?
John:
Has given.
Martha:
Has given! It’s all waiting. It’s, I remember the time I realized that everything is already given. I don’t have to get it from God. I don’t have to reach Him and wring it out and find it and try to access it or make it. It’s all been given. It’s laying there; the untold riches of Christ. And all we have to do is receive like a little child.
I realized in my illness… Pardon, it’s momentous to me (laughing). I’m sure it’s… But in that illness what I found was that God will go after everything in you till He’s got you down to the child. And He won’t hesitate to wreck, ravage, give you pain, give you suffering to get you to the child so that you are capable of receiving the riches that He has given.
John:
Infuriate you! He will infuriate you. Absolutely!
Martha:
Frustrate, defeat,
John:
Yeah!
Martha:
But He’s, what He’s doing He’s hitting at that adult old man and old woman. He’s hitting at that. That’s the cross. That’s why we have to give up our life and why we have to accept His cross in the, whichever the number it was, the third one, is so that we can become receivers. We have it all. The only process is being reduced to need it and then seeing by revelation that you have it. It’s just perfect, if we’ll be a little child. And He reduced me and He has done it over and over for fifty years now that I’ve walked with Him.
Jacquelyn:
So that’s what suffering does; it reduces us to the child so that we can receive Him and all that He has.
Martha:
That’s the cross. My suffering was the cross. And an answer to my prayer, “Lord, please get me where I need to be.” “Okay.” Whap!
Jacquelyn:
It makes it all worthwhile.
Martha:
It has a marvelous end. Yeah!
Our Need to Love & the Role of Suffering – Episode #639 – Shulamite Podcast
We have a need to be loved, and too often it’s all we can see. But there is a bigger need than being loved, and suffering is the path that can bring us to it. It is one of the deeper purposes of suffering, if we are willing to receive it and be reduced by it.
No past?! What am I going to do with all the shame and regrets that keep cropping up, just when I think I’m beyond all that? And attributing “my lot in life” to Father’s displeasure for the kind of mother / daughter / wife I was in the “past.” What am I going to do with all these secret beliefs? After renouncing them, I will praise and thank Father for the Cross of Christ. He has cast my sins in the depth of the sea . . . as far as the east is from the west AND remembers them no more. (That is something to get excited about!!)
“No past.” So glad you mentioned that; such good news. And, as was stated, He will make me who He intends me to be when I allow Him to reduce me to a little child (something to that effect). Not expecting this to be easy; this flesh does not like fire. I need my desire to receive His riches as a little child to be greater and, really, only He can give me even that desire. “I will wait in expectation for You.” (Ps. 5:3b)
There have been glimpses before – now and then – about the truth of this ‘non-existent past’ but seems like when things get cloudy with illness, death, struggles, depression – it’s a very convenient (though useless, I admit) excuse for a victim mentality.
Martha, 2 Peter 1:3-4 is going to be my voice, my vision and my victory.
Thank you all for the blessing . . . may it return to each of you many times over.
Love
I have been pondering the words “emptied Himself so that …” (Phil 2:7) …..
and how those words apply to my walk, my journey, my daily moments ….
and I wonder if those words might be the key to becoming “childlike” …..?
and how exactly does one empty themself? truly …..
Oh this is a great question. For sure becoming a child and entering dependence is a part. I am going to have to think on this one. Love you much Andrea, thank you for the question!
Dearest Andrea, Beautiful question by a faithful follower of the Lamb.
Suddenly I saw the answer - right there in the scripture.
but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant
(not just a servant, but a permanent slave, having no will of his own)
The Lord puts us in trying situations to form His own nature of a servant-slave until we have no will of our own. Only His will! Then it doesn’t matter that we are empty of self because we are filled with His presence and the surprise of joy in dying to serve.
There is so much more, I want to write about it – maybe in Message of the Month or the blog.
God Bless you, Andrea, for awakening us to such a crucial question.