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Our Choice to Be Something or Nothing
Episode #650
5/19/2019
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special Guest: Joan Wentzel and Jennifer Wentzel
This is the continuation of a series of podcasts started in Episode #648.
We have the choice to strive to be something or to let go and be nothing. And only one opens the door to God’s Everything! So why do we struggle so hard?
Joan:
The awesome thing is it, it gives us permission to tell the truth that we already know which is in our hearts: we can’t do and we can’t be and we don’t know how. That’s the exciting thing! And I think the wonderful thing is, too, it also gives us choice; choice to believe the truth which we already know or to decide “No, I am going to push through, I am going to be somebody, I’m going to make it happen.” And I’ve been a push-through person most of my life and it has ended disastrously every single time.
So I’m so excited to know that it’s okay to tell the truth about me and the truth about me is I’m nothing.
Martha:
You just gave me a glimpse, Joan, how free it would be to live with a group of people who we have no expectations of each other. We are free of expectations which, expectations are paralyzing, curing, and crushing. I know them when they are on me because I feel I must respond and be what I’m expected to be or do or whatever, make or create. But how wonderful to be in a group where everybody admits we’re nothing and only God, God moves and we don’t need anything else but what God does and how God moves.
I’ll give you a funny story of how this began. Dear, dear precious disciple of mine wrote me and said, “Can I call you?” And I said, “Well, sure, but there’s nothing here except this nothing.” And she wrote back, “Well, I must need nothing then so I’m calling.” And that’s kind of where it sprang forth and I was saying, “I am nothing.” And then boom came the, the wave of the Spirit; the wind of the Spirit blew through.
John:
You know, this wind of the Spirit hit me early and I had… You’ve told, told about it. I don’t remember where you’ve told about it. But you talked about my white-hot tears coming out of my eyes, saying, “I just wanted to be a part.” And really what was being address is my being nothing; my willingness to be nothing and my unwillingness to be nothing and the cost of it. It was high. I mean it… I had a drive to be something. I had a burn to be something, because if I wasn’t something, then I was worthless. And…
Martha:
That’s why it was a crisis.
John:
It was a crisis.
Martha:
And I remember exactly where we were.
John:
I remember…I can…
Martha:
On the road!
John:
I can tell you the exact spot on that road.
Martha:
And I don’t remember what preceded it but I said to you, “John, you will not be part of it. It will be all Jesus.” And you were just…
John:
I was, I was ticked off!
Martha:
Angry?
John:
Angry (laughs)! Yeah, I was, I was burning.
Martha:
But you know still I’m learning it. And that was many years ago, twenty something years ago.
John:
Yeah but…
Martha:
And I knew it then and I’m still learning that how true that is.
John:
This is, this is been a, a long-standing lesson. It’s not like it just popped up out of nowhere. God has been pushing this, this lesson upon all of us forever. I think it’s, I think it’s a universal lesson. God wants to be everything and we are nothing. He’s continually trying to convince us of this. And that it’s not a punishment. It’s not a statement of your worthlessness. It’s not a statement of your… Yeah, it’s not rejection. That’s perfect. It’s not rejection. If anything it’s quite the opposite. It’s complete acceptance. It’s complete receiving. It’s complete— God wants to be complete and He wants to complete in us and with us and around us and through us and, and we just want, we want to be something.
Martha:
Complete! That is the word. He wants to be what I’m not. He wants to give what I can’t. And I am complete in Him only in so far as I let Him be my completion and He becomes in me what I can, I cannot love.
Somebody was telling me the other day about the love I’ve had and I said, “You’ve got to understand, that’s not me. I know the difference between me and Jesus. That was Him.” And He comes to do as Joan said earlier, He does what He asked me to do. When she quoted you, John. He does what His… He’s only asking permission to be allowed to do what I can’t do. Something like that, you said.
Joan:
I remember from John’s blog yesterday, I thought this is just so perfect and John will get the exact sentence but it was, “When God calls us to do something,” and I’ve always thought, oh, I always get panicky because I think, “Oh, God, I know I can’t do it!” But He’s not asking me to do it. He’s asking permission for Him to be that in me. And there’s the freedom. And it’s just so exciting.
Martha:
Ok, you found this before we started, Joan, and handed it to me. 1 Corinthians 2:2 in the upgraded Amplified. Paul here… You got to know who this is that’s saying this. Paul, that knew everything ultimately about the Christian life and told us everything Christ wanted us to know. He said, “I have made the decision to know nothing except Christ and Him crucified.” And because he chose to know nothing – this great man of education, qualification let it all go. It’s in Philippians 3. “I lost it all for the express purpose of getting to know Christ.” You see? He did, he gave up everything he knew in order to know Christ. And he knew, he knew Christ like… He was the one chosen to write the New Testament. So he knew… What he knew came to a man who knew nothing. He didn’t build on anything. The Epistles he wrote do not build on his prior knowledge. They, they build on a vacuum that he created so that he would know only Jesus and Him crucified. That, that I didn’t know, Joan, when you read it.
Joan:
Here’s the quote from John’s blog. The title is As Easy as a Yes.
“God asks us many things. He comes to us and gives us many choices. When He says, ‘I want you to do so and so,’ it’s not a conscripting of me to go to work; it is an asking of me for the permission to BE that in me. I have the choice.”
And that’s what… The scripture Martha read, Paul made the choice. He determined to know nothing and it brings us back to choice. There’s always a choice. And the choice here to me, the real choice is telling the truth about yourself to yourself and receiving the truth that God has already said. We don’t have to be something. Can just receive our nothingness. But it’s a choice. I can say yes to that or I can say a big fat no which I have spent most of my life in the big fat no. Well, I can say it’s been disastrous! So this is great freedom.
Martha:
Well this is just a small, little booklet. It’s only ten pages letter size. It will be twenty pages in this little booklet. So by the time you hear this it will be hopefully published and in hand and available.
John:
I just talked to the printer actually during this podcast. I had to leave and I just talked to the printer and I was stating… This guy’s a believer and he’s wonderful. We love working with him and dealing with him. And I said, “This, this whole booklet size that we’re going to do it in and everything like that is really going to fulfill a niche for you because sometimes you’ll write a blog, sometimes you’ll write an actual booklet, and this is kind of the in-between. This is, this is…” And I said, you know, “Lane, this is, this is the perfect fit for us because literally I know that, you know, if we can get this, the price right and everything like that, I know that I can, I can have something written one day, formatted within the next two or three days, and then off to you and you could have that thing turned right back around.” We could get these things printed. And, you know, I, I want your stuff in print. I do! It’s not that I don’t. I really, really, really want your stuff in print. And this gives an access and an easy access to deep truths and, and be able to do it in such a quick turn-a-round, it’s amazing. And then it’s totally, I mean, cheap, inexpensive. It’s amazing, you know? It’s how we were able to do this.
Martha:
And, too, this was an unspoken dream of mine to have a little booklets and there it appeared and Jennifer said, “This is, this is…” Hands me the Watchman Nee book and says, “It’s going to be this size. Throw in your pocket and take it with you.” And…
John:
I’m wondering, I’m wondering if this whole season of life is not the, for you especially, is the immediate, the completion, the simple completion, finished…
Martha:
Simple, done, give it out.
John:
That was your car. That’s been your garden. It’s not that it’s cost-less. It costs something. But it’s, right now it’s God’s doing it for you. And I’m wondering if that isn’t the season that we’re in right now that literally God’s doing things for you.
Martha:
Oh, you are reminding me what I wanted to share earlier.
John:
Well, there you go!
Martha:
There it is! I’ve always wanted to know what the Promised Land was. I’ve always wanted… Okay, only two got into the Promised Land. The rest, the millions died in the wilderness. “So what is this place, Lord? What is it?” It’s the place where there’s houses you do not build and vineyards you do not plant.
And we have a precious couple who are coming to join us and the word the wife and I got, both of us got was “There will be houses you didn’t build, vineyards you didn’t plant; it will all be done.” And that’s exactly what has happened to them. They have walked into something immaculate, exquisite, marvelous, rich, unbelievable and that’s, that’s what the Promised Land is. It’s the labor of becoming and doing is over and God gets to be fully the one who protects you, fights for you, does everything for you, and all the difficulty of life is accomplished for you. That’s what the Promised Land is. But to get there you have to die. You have to die to being somebody and something. And if you want that, God will see to it that you get it. And teach it to you over and over again when like a sheep you forget it.
So I can… I have no apology anymore for being nothing. I don’t have to apologize to God or to you or to myself. I am just nothing. Expect nothing of me. Mrs. Nothing is at home, thank you (laughing)! If you want nothing, come. But the… It is really nothing but God, and won’t that be fabulous.
Jennifer:
Mrs. Nothing will see you now!
Our Choice to Be Something or Nothing – Episode #650 – Shulamite Podcast
We have the choice to strive to be something or to let go and be nothing. And only one opens the door to God’s Everything! The Promised Land waits only for us to believe and receive, which a “something” won’t do. So why do we struggle against being nothing?
