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with Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
(M) Don’t you think, John, too, that a childhood fear can set you on a path where the fear is so familiar to you that you don’t even recognize it for its power over you nor its lies.
(J) Absolutely. I know in my life I’ve had fears that have so become a part of me and a part of my habitual living that I really have lost the consciousness of it as being fear. It’s just a reality.
(M) To you.
(J) To me.
(M) And what we saw is you don’t even ask God about it.
(J) No, not at all.
(M) Because it’s just something you’re supposed to live with.
(J) It’s been there forever. It’s been like, you know, you’re born in the jungle. You live in the jungle and you will die in the jungle. But then, when you’re brought into a city, you all of a sudden, you go, wow. The reality changes. But with this one particular area I was totally unaware that there was even a problem. I wish I could say that oh, I was “Johnny on the spot” on it, but it has been such a long standing issue that I really… I had no idea it was even a stronghold, a dwelling place of fear. It just was. It was about sleep and about my belief in sleep. And if I didn’t get enough sleep that I would feel bad the next day and not be able to perform the next day. And there’s a whole system behind that.
(M) It sounds simple when you say it, but it really wasn’t.
(J) There’s a whole system behind it and a reason why I felt the need, but then all of a sudden, you know, you said that an hour with the Lord can be as rejuvenating as eight hours of sleep. I thought about why do I even… You just confronted it. You confronted that issue and I thought, ok. I’m going to have to totally change my thinking in this because, I mean there’s literal, physical manifestations that manifest themselves if I don’t get enough sleep. You know, my stomach will do certain stuff, or I, you know, so it’s just… There’s a system behind it that is going to have to be taken down. You know, you were calling for a healing of memories and things like that and I’m opening myself up to that, to receive that. But I had no idea. I just had no clue that there was a system even there. I mean, you kind of went and said, “well, let’s look under this tablecloth,” and then I was like, oh my gosh. I’ve been stuffing stuff under there for years. So, you know, I just want all that stuff out from underneath there and dealt with because I don’t want to be… I want the freedom to be able to live life and live it however God says, whether it’s with two hours of sleep, whether it’s with eight hours of sleep, whether it’s with two hours here and three hours there, whether it’s with whatever. I want to have the ability and the freedom to allow Him to dictate. There was a law in me that said I must have this or I can’t function right. So I’m going to break the law.
(M) Well, I know that yours came from some deep childhood things. I think when I began to have nightwatches I told you that I had to get over that to count the hours and be afraid the next day I wouldn’t feel up to functioning. But the issue that is coming to me is that we are missionaries, John.
(J) Right.
(M) And missionaries… We travel. And we have to be able to eat and not be sick. We have to have the faith for that and not fear the food. And we don’t, really, we don’t. We’re careful, but we don’t fear the food we eat. And we have been sick in the past. Lately we really are not, but we’re missionaries and we have to have the faith for that kind of lifestyle, which means that… And we’ll be doing this soon. We’ll be making a trip to Europe with many hours in the airplane. You know, a change of time zones and so forth. And you have to come to the place where you’re not afraid of that upsetting you physically, and that you have the faith that this is where God is sending you and you have everything you need, and He will do everything. But the secret is in Phillipians 4 where Paul said, “I have learned to be content.” And part of the absence of fear is contentment. It’s what Thomas a Kempis was talking about. The person who knows how to suffer will enjoy the most peace. Well how to suffer is you trust the Lord’s provision for you even of sleep. You trust the Lord’s provision of food and water and those basic things… the mattress you have… And believing that you will be able to rest and sleep wherever you go, wherever you sleep. And it is, it takes a faith to believe that where He sends you, He will protect you. You cannot be afraid and be a missionary.
(J) Right.
(M) But Paul’s word was this and he was the ultimate missionary because he was a missionary in prison as well. Everywhere he was a missionary. Really, we all are. But the business of constant travel and sleep disturbance is very real in our lives.
(J) Yeah.
(M) And not only traveling abroad but just some of our normal travels. “I have learned,” in Phillipians 4, Paul wrote, “how to be content, satisfied to the point that I’m not disturbed or disquieted.” And I think that means afraid in whatever state I am. “I know how to be abased and live humbly and straightened circumstances and I know also how to enjoy plenty and live in abundance. I have learned in any and all circumstances the secret of facing every situation and whether well-fed or going hungry, having a sufficiency and enough to spare or going without and being in want.” And this is the secret. “I have strength for all things in Christ Who empowers me (I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him who infused inner strength to me. I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency.) And that is a place, not an ideal. But that is a real place that the Lord wants to bring us to. And in order to do that, in order for us to live life and to be prepared, really.. David had this. He could say, “My heart is steadfast. I’m not afraid of evil tidings.” That’s where God wants to bring us. Well, in order to give us that confidence, circumstances do not… They might initially unsettle us, but those circumstances don’t rule over us and make us afraid. He’s going to have to go back to the building stones and pull them out. You see, He didn’t give me that insight for you until now.
(J) Right. Sure.
(M) Somehow the Holy Spirit gave it to me to open that business of sleep up.
(J) Right.
(M) And you could take it. You understood it in yourself. You could take it down and see it and then we could pray that God would go and permeate that place and transform your beliefs. But I know what you’re working on now is what you need to believe, because I see you ruminating on, changing those beliefs. And you said to me it’s going to be a huge transformation.
(J) Well, you know something? The funny thing is even our society, even what we’re taught, affirms my fear.
(M) Yes. The statistics, “They say.” “They say.” They used to say that we slept too much.
(J) Right.
(M) Now they say if you don’t get eight hours, you’re not on your game. Right.
(J) So, I’m having to change the whole thought process.
(M) Right.
(J) Associated with it.
(M) Well, you know all the media instills fear, and they keep you looking at the station by fear.
(J) Right. Fear sells right now. If it’s fear based, it gains the support of the sponsors and gains viewership. As long as we have some kind of thing, crisis…
(M) Crisis…Some kind of crisis…
(J) we’re ok, and we’ll watch.
(M) Yeah. So, fear is the way we most deeply control people. That’s how the Nazi’s controlled the Jewish masses. They gained the power to instill fear in them.
(J) Well, not only to the Jews, but also to the Germans and the coalition…
(M) Yes, and to the men who served in the Nazi army. You were kept there by fear. And there are many…
(J) Well, I mean, think about it. The Germans and the Polish and the Austrians, they were afraid that the Jews were going to take something from them. There was a spin that was put on..
(M) Right…
(J) That they’re going to take from you and then that they’re dirty and they’re going to disease you and your children and blah, blah, blah. And so it was a total, complete spin on fear against the Jews, towards the Jews, for the Jews, you know.
(M) Right. It really was. It was a lie.
(J) It was lie.
(M) A number of lies that were repeated over and over and over again to instill fear and to alienate. And we’ve got to be… It’s like Thomas a Kempis wrote. This is powerful. “An excitable person distorts things and easily believes the worst.”
(J) We know people like that.
(M) Yeah. So it’s an issue. In our podcast world and our living world the Lord will not let us off that subject because it must be almost a crisis in Christianity. The Lord doesn’t give the parable of the talents to unbelievers but to believers.
(J) Right.
(M) If you don’t have Christ, you don’t have a means, really, to resolve your fear. But in Him, He is intent on taking, getting every fear out of you, so that nothing, nothing can disturb you.
(J) Right.
(M) He wants… And I think really, John, in the end of it, it’s so that we will love Him and fear Him.
(J) I agree.
(M) And that’s the place of safety.
(J) And His whole addressing of my sleep issue is so that He can be Lord over that area. It’s an area that He’s not Lord in. There’s a fear and there is a faith in something other than Him in that area and He’s saying, “I want that.” And so, you know… You have to go where He’s going and that’s where He seems to be going right now.
(M) Yeah. Yeah. So, it’s exciting, really. It could make me afraid, how much He’s doing with fear. But It’s really exciting because it’s going to make you steadfast and, “the just shall live by faith.” That is a verse of my life that He has branded on my heart, and the learning of how the just live by faith is the process of that being the way to live… that everything is by faith. We go to Honduras by faith. We go everywhere by faith. We live this ministry by faith.
(J) Sure.
(M) By faith that we are doing His will and that He has revealed His will and that He is the Lord of it. And He certainly is. But in order to be the just, to live by faith, those fears have to be dissolved.
(J) Absolutely.
(M) It’s His work. It’s not mine to go look and pick and find, but they come.
(J) Yeah, they do.
(M) He sees to it that they surface. And we’re just got to be in prayer and His presence and allow Him to deal with those things as He searches our hearts to find them.
(J) He’s able and capable of doing it.
(M) Isn’t it amazing how deeply He knows us? Isn’t it amazing that He knows the timing in your life when you’re ready to give up tht fear? And He deals with it then.
(J) Right.
(M) Not ten years ago.
(J) No, because we would give Him a list. Ok, I want You first to start here and then I want You to deal with this and this and this… and He never goes by that.
(M) He just knows us so deeply. It’s so comforting, so reassuring how deeply He knows us and that He will orchestrate, if you really want to be a person with no fear… I remember that one of my mother figures said to me, “but you have to worry about your children. You’re supposed to. That’s godly.” No, we’re to be anxious for nothing.
(J) Well, you know, there’s a gentleman I heard recently speaking that said we don’t have to grave dig, meaning, you know, go look for the lint in our belly buttons. You know? We don’t have to do that. We have a Holy Spirit that is able to go and touch the areas in our life that needs to be dealt with at what time they need it to be dealt with. And if I don’t surrender to Him to have Him deal with what needs to be dealt with on a regular basis, I’m dead. I’m dead in the water.
(M) Yeah, exactly. And that fear will do that. Fear will drown you in the water…
(J) Absolutely.
(M) ..instead of taking you in the stream of His movement. So here again… But He is the great… Oh, He is so perfect in His pursuit of us. He is so thorough. He will deliver us from all our fears, by the Spirit. So I just pray, Father, in the Name of Jesus, that You will motivate through this little podcast, You will set us free from fear in Your Church, in Your people and Your sheep; that You will cause us to see You as the great Shepherd. What safety under the staff of the Shepherd. So, we ask You to bring light, anointing on this message. And Lord, do you want us to stay on fear? We will do it.
