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with Martha Kilpatrick and John Enslow
(J) So we’re at “The Coming One” conference, and we’re in front of a hundred and twenty people doing this interview.
(M) Someone came up, and we had some round table discussions, and there was a person at each table to report what insights and, and brilliances, as the Irish say, brilliant, at the table. And one person said something in passing I think, but it’s what we’re about. She said, “If it is not practical, it is not real”, and that’s what we’re going to talk about. And I’m going to read something I wrote that’s on the website; it’s called “Just A Carpenter”. I hope I can do it without breaking up. “Imagine the Son of God with all His intelligence and wisdom, being confined to making cradles and coffins, day after day. Imagine! A ‘blue collar’ worker, a laborer working with His holy hands! We know Him as Master, Miracle worker, Savior and Resurrected Lord. And yet the greater span of Jesus’ life was spent carving and finishing common wood for ordinary purposes. He loved to call Himself “Son of Man”. Even about His coming, I’ve noticed He calls Himself the Son of Man. “Fully entering not only the body of mankind, but the menial life and universal condition of humanity’s daily labor. And that lowly work was preparation for ministry, crucial initiation. The hub of life is common chores; true for everyone. Tedium, routine, thankless work, endless repetition; pride would shun it, only humility will take hold of it. This common life, same as any person, made Jesus touchable, knowable.” And I want to add compassionate, to all of us. “Full of grace and truth” is how John described beholding Him. Grace and truth, reality were realized in Jesus Christ.” Truth in both these verses in Greek is alethea meaning, “reality lying at the base of an appearance.” Isn’t that wonderful? “Reality, Jesus was full of reality, common work, ‘the every day’ makes you aware of real existence, authentic living. Pride cannot breathe in reality, only humility flourishes there. Work makes for humility, and the humble work. The proud only work for an audience or the self-flattery of superiority.” And I’ll let you finish it on the website, but that’s what we’re about in our little area, is we’re just ordinary people with an extraordinary God. Can you remember what you said the other morning when we were talking about this? (The group laughs)
(J) It is practical.
(M) See how I am when I can’t think of it. (Martha laughs)
(J) So for, for a number of years I have prayed for Martha, as well as myself, that we would really enter into knowing Jesus at the sink; knowing Him in the common things. Ah…
(M) Let’s tell about the water barrel.
(J) Ok.
(M) See, what I’ve been telling you is that Jesus is going to meet your needs. In the Kingdom all your needs at met. Now this is a very common little duty that we were about. We had to ah… we had this big huge water barrel, and the faucet on it was broken. It was to feed the chickens. And to fix the faucet, I hope I can explain it. One person had to hold the spigot, and another had to get his arm down in to put a gasket? Is that what you call it? Around the whatever… the…
(J) It was impossible.
(M) And the… to get to it, it was just ‘that much longer’ than your arm. (Laughter) And so you just strained and strained, and tried to get your whole shoulder in this little hole to be able to fix the faucet. And there was nobody to do it but me, and I said John, you’ve got the poorest worker here. And he said all you have to do is hold the spigot while I reach in. And he struggled and he struggled with it. And he said the last time I did this eight years ago it took me four hours to do. So I was standing there praying, what can we do Lord? And He told me what to do. I said John, let me have the gasket, and you hold the spigot. And he really didn’t believe that I could do it. (Laughter)
(J) Look at my arm, and look at her arm.
(M) What the Lord said to me was, stand up on the riser, the wood riser, then you’ll have more leverage and you can go down into the thing. So the first time I tried it I got it on there. And I didn’t tell John what the Lord told me to do, I just got up on the platform and did it and said it’s in. He said it is not. (Laughter) I said yes it is. How did you do that? So that’s how practical the Lord is. He is so ‘there’ for every little thing. So the chickens had water. And we’ll have eggs sometime soon.
(J) So I’ve just prayed. I’ve just said, you know, I want…I want You, Spirit of God, to move and go in her in the practical, because I know how practical our life is. It’s just very practical. Ahmm, and so I’ve, I’ve…
(M) But see what he’s observed is that I tend to hate the practical because I have to leave the spiritual; that’s what I think. Or that’s what I have thought. And that’s why he had to pray that for me.
(J) I wasn’t going to say that. (Laughter) So, she goes, when she’s with the Lord, it’s intense, it’s wonderful. But then sometimes she’ll get frustrated to have to leave that quiet time… I’m sorry.
(M) Yeah. Yeah I do.
(J) Get frustrated to have to go do the… She doesn’t want to leave it. And so, I just said I want her to find You at that sink. I want her to find You out digging in the ground. I want her to find… (Martha speaks in background.) Absolutely. And ah, and I want that. I want to take Him, and when I’m doing something I want to know Him in that thing. It’s, I don’t know how I’ll get through this, so. It just, it wrecks me.
(M) Ohhh, does it? Why?
(Background comments) (Laughter)
(M) See, John’s life… My life can be ethereal a little bit. All these wonderful people that you see, they make it possible for me to have a lot of time with the Lord. And there are some things they can’t do for me, and shouldn’t. But John’s life is filled with the practical. It’s filled with the details. He maintains how many computers in our, in our world; he’s always having to do the practical. And when you hear about… you’ve heard about our farmland and how he had to do that too. So his life is inundated with the practical.
(J) So what touches me so much and it wrecks me… I’m sorry, but if you heard the pod-cast you’ve heard me cry before so it’s no big deal. Ahm… It just touches me that He wants, that from heaven, that He wants to touch, touch earth through me, in that particular thing. Whether it’s feeding chickens or paying the bills, ordering paper, it doesn’t matter; He wants to do it through me, and He can’t do it in any other situation unless He has my body to be able to do it. And so I just… It touches me so much that heaven can come through that practical thing. And then He’s also showed me that if He is able to do that practically, if He can move through me practically, then it’s eternal, no matter what it is. That means ordering paper can be an eternal deal, because He’s doing it. Because everything He does is eternal; and so it just touches me. I fight, I fought the practical, I don’t like the ‘mishy-gosh’ of everything. I’m like going ‘uhhhhgh’. But then I realized, well, it’s a totally different perspective if I invite You into this. I say come on, let’s go order the paper, let’s go birth the sheep, let’s go feed the chickens, let’s go anything, clean the litter box. It’s just…life is dirty, and He was a Man who was willing to touch just the commonest thing. And for Him to be so humble, to come down and touch commonness, and leave that glory to come and touch commonness, and then to continue to do it through me… It blows my mind. Before I came to Shulamite ministries some almost fourteen, fifteen years ago, I would have deep experience of worship. I would just go worship, ah, had wonderful time in worship. It was a lot music centered. And the Lord backed off of that for me personally. I’m not anything bad about it. I’m just saying, for me, He backed off of that. It wasn’t ‘there’. So I could, you know, I could sit there and listen to music, but His Presence wasn’t there. So I thought there was something wrong. I said what is wrong with me, are You mad at me, or what is wrong? And then all of a sudden I started sensing and feeling Him when I’d go in the grocery store. He was in the grocery store all the time. I’d be going through the aisle and I’d go ‘oh my-gosh’, I’d just start crying in the grocery store walking down. Wow. (Laughter) And I would, when I’d start crying I’d always go, ok, I’ve got to go down an aisle that there’s no people, you know. If I don’t even need this food, I’m going down that aisle. But that’s where He would touch me. And it was like, I want to do this in you, and I though, it’s so, it’s so difficult. It’s a hard, hard thing to do, to let Him do ‘that’ in me. But the King of Glory wants to do ‘that’ in me. And some people say ‘oh my-gosh’, that sounds so profane, why wouldn’t, you know. Well no, I mean, I’m that dependent. I struggle with it a lot. I really don’t want to be that dependent, it’s ah, frustrating, you know? But He moves in those practicalities and if you haven’t experience Him in your cleaning the toilets, in your common life, making the bed, folding clothes; if you haven’t experienced Him in that, I ask you to invite Him to do that in you and see how He will manifest Himself to you and how He will express Himself to you. It, it sounds strange. Does it sound strange to you all? It sounds strange to me.
