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The Purpose of Waiting on God
Episode #675
11/10/2019
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special Guest: Jennifer Wentzel and Linda Massengale
“My soul waits only upon God for from Him comes my salvation.” Waiting on God serves a mighty purpose, though perhaps not what we expected that it would!
Martha:
Wish everybody listening in could see the fall day that we’re sitting in the midst of, the leaves turning and the sunshine. It’s just been a gorgeous fall day.
And we have guests here today with us. And one time we had a guest for our podcast – and we just sit around the living room and do this – and he said, “I thought y’all were in a sound booth! And that you had a sound booth in your office and that you were…” And I said, “No, it’s just us here sitting in chairs around the room.” And that’s beautiful and perfect.
So this little flock is here. So we have a nice crowd today for the podcast. We have guests Linda and Keith Massengale from Virginia visiting us and that’s been such a joy; Mr. John and his tons of equipment; and Jennifer, leaving her editing John’s new manuscript, doing a beautiful job; and Dave, her father and our neighbor; and, let’s see. Who are you, Joan, Joanie? Joanie is my— There’s no name for Joanie because of who she is and how she serves the Lord; and Miss Jacquelyn is here with us. So we hope that everybody will speak up but they probably won’t.
Okay. I think some pieces came together for me today, and this is going to be kind of a testimony. I was thinking about my long illness, which I’m tired of talking about, maybe you’re tired of hearing about! I’m learning today what I learned and didn’t know that I learned. I learned that… So many weeks passed by and so many months passed by! I just said, “Lord, I’ve got to know something of Your purpose for this. It just seems to be such a waste. A waste of time and energy and I don’t have the energy to do anything and, but if I could just lay hold of Your purpose.”
Because I remembered that Victor Frankel was in Auschwitz and Bucharest, both. And after the war… He was a, a medical student as a Jew and he was arrested and put in the concentration camps. And he, he wanted to learn. He because a psychologist and psychiatrist but he said, “While I was there, I wanted to learn why suddenly people would die. And we would see it on their face. They were ready, they wanted to die, and they would die.” And he said, “I knew there was something that made people able to live, able to endure and make it through.” And he studied it and studied it and he came to understand that people who believed there was a purpose to their suffering survived and found the purpose. He was one of them! In his prison, he visualized himself speaking to an audience of many, many people and teaching them what he learned – and that happened. That’s, that’s the purpose God put in his heart.
So I just said, “Lord…” I wasn’t thinking of Victor Frankel. I’m only thinking of him now. But I’ve, I’ve used that book many times and given it to people because it’s an enormous principal that you have to have a purpose or you have to believe there is one. You don’t even have to know what the purpose is. You simply have to believe there is one. And on that alone, you can endure.
We also heard Breńe Brown who speaks a lot on YouTube and she studied people who had survived terrible catastrophes, horrible life events, deaths, and, and so on. And she interviewed them extensively, these people that seemed to survive. And she found that there was one dynamic true to all of them. That they wanted to live. And because they wanted to live they were whole-hearted people. And she spoke about how some people give their whole heart into whatever they’re living and they don’t withhold anything. And she found that those people survived and prospered.
And I remember seeing a, an interview of Holocaust victims who survived. And they asked this woman, “Why did you survive? How could you possibly survive such a thing? And how could you go home and begin families and live and have a home and all of that and how, how could you do that? How could you make that transition?” And they said, “Because we wanted to live. We wanted to live. We loved life and we wanted to keep living.”
So it really, really matters because in my illness it was not terribly dangerous but it really kind of was! Wouldn’t you say? One of my doctors said to me, “Martha, you could have died!” And I knew, knew that, but what I… The reason I knew that was because I was so tempted to give up. I felt badly for so long and there was no break, no, no opening of any healing yet, and I had to fight that constant bombardment, I’m sure from the enemy – “Just give up!” And I knew if I did, that I would die. And it was a battle I had to fight alone. It wasn’t… I had lots of prayer but I had to fight that fight – “I want to live!” – alone.
And… But I begged Him for some time to, “Just give me something, okay? Just something!” And what He gave me was waiting on God. “I want you to wait for Me.” And in waiting… I got this booklet from our office, Waiting on God. I started to show everybody but there’s only you here. Waiting on God by Andrew Murray, it’s an incredible, enormously incredible book. He takes all the scriptures on waiting for God and, and teaches on them.
“My soul waits only upon God for from Him comes my salvation.”
So, waiting for your salvation to appear, that’s a part of the waiting.
And then Psalm 25, he says, “Thou art the God of my salvation. In Thee do I wait all the day.”
So waiting all the day for God! Many, Many wonderful rich things and, and I drank that little book and I waited and that, that was my only agenda was to wait. Everything else pretty much had to be done for me. And eventually there was a great, great deal of healing. And I think I’ve been months, much better and everybody encourages me that I, I look like I’m healthier and better.
So… Oh, but only now… I waited so long, but I waited for something that I didn’t know I was waiting for. And it came to me. Linda and I had a conversation and it all began, the pieces all began to come together.
Several weeks ago the Lord said to me, “You’ve, you overcame five things in your illness: Believing, receiving, trust, loving, and belonging.” And what that meant was I had to fight to continue to love God with all my heart, soul, and mind. I had to… But I did it all by waiting. And what He showed me was that when I looked… I didn’t know those subjects until it was all over. I didn’t know what it, what was happening in me, through me. I didn’t know anything of that. But those five things were the overcoming issues and I didn’t even have the names of them when I was waiting. Is that clear? They just appeared ten days ago.
So what I saw was that when you don’t have, when you don’t know where you’re going or where it’s going to end or how you’re going to get there, you wait. But it seems like that is a world of nothingness. It seems like there’s nothing happening. It’s called a wilderness in the Bible. And there’s a whole lot in there about it. And I knew that I was in a wilderness. And I, in that wilderness, the only assignment I had was just to wait.
But what the Lord showed me was that I, I didn’t overcome those five things. Because there’s a verse that says, “He will perform in you what He wants of you.” And it, one of the scripture that I read very often is “He is doing work within you” and it’s to do wonderful things.
Waiting seems like you’re doing nothing. But what, what was happening, what was really happening was that… Okay, we’ve just found the verse. Linda found it for me and it’s Philippians 2:13 in the AMPC.
Linda:
[Not in your own strength] for it is God Who is all the while effectually at work in you [energizing and creating in you the power and desire], both to will and to work for His good pleasure and satisfaction and delight.
Martha:
Oh, that gave me chills! That is exactly what happened. He was effectually at work and I was there strung out, nothing—doing nothing, being nothing, knowing nothing. But He was effectually at work within me all the time.
John:
The crazy thing is the, the following scripture 14 says, “Do all things without grumbling or fault finding or complaining against God,” which is, which is the temptation. In the situation where you’re waiting, you’re being continually tempted to complain, to fault find against God, and to grumble against Him and it says, “In questioning and doubling among yourselves.” That was the temptation. When we were going through it and we were getting you better, it, it was an investment. We were investing in your life and in His life in you. And the, the temptation was, was always, are you gonna grumble? Are you gonna complain? Are you gonna find fault? Are you gonna blame God? Because it was, it was endless. It felt endless.
Martha:
It was endless because it didn’t seem… Nothing helped!
John:
Nothing helped.
Martha:
And the, the natural doctors, they would say, “What is, what’s going on?” “I’m so weak I can’t move!”
John:
Uh huh.
Martha:
So they would try this and that. Always I wasn’t sick but I was so weak…
John:
Right.
Martha:
…that I couldn’t exist.
John:
Right.
Martha:
Never did I ever dream God was mightily at work within me.
John:
Um hmm.
Martha:
And see my big, big… I want to be an overcomer so bad in Revelation and He taught me what it is to be an overcomer. You let God do it!
John:
Right.
Martha:
That’s all!
John:
He’s the overcomer.
Martha:
He’s the overcomer inside my body.
John:
Um hmm.
Martha:
And I didn’t even know He was at work. There was no evidence. He was very kind and, and… Oh, and He just gave me the enormous help through all of you. And if anybody would complain, it would been y’all! But… And I know this. I’ve known this… Do you have something, Jennifer?
Okay. It was these five things He overcame: Believing. I had to believe what He was, what was in His word, I had to believe it. And when we started proclaiming, I had to proclaim what wasn’t true. “I am well. I am healthy.”
And now I wake up every morning and I say the same thing and it’s evident. But it was evident… It was true of me then I just didn’t believe. But I had to make myself say it and believe it and it really did turn my health to proclaim it. But when I proclaimed and then I believed it. So it’s proclaim, receive, believe, belong. I had to, I had to keep saying, “I belong to You. I’m Yours! I’m Your lamb, I’m Your dumb sheep, I’m, I belong to You. I do not belong to the enemy. I do not belong to anybody but You, Lord.” And somehow that was crucial, the belonging. That’s one of my strongest messages about belonging. So I had to believe I belonged.
Then I had to purpose all, every day, “I will love You through this. I will, I will love in this place and I love You and I’m purposing to love You.” So it was trust. Just blind trust. “I’m trusting! I don’t know what You’re doing. I’m sure this has something in it somewhere but I have to trust You. I’m trusting it.” That’s different from believing. It’s not knowing. It’s blind! It’s just there.
Well, He was working in me to do those things, those five things. And when it was over, He said, “This is what you overcame.” But I didn’t! That’s what’s so wonderful! He was doing that. He just simply told me what— All I did was let Him. That’s all! I let Him do it. And struggled to believe and chose and, and rebuked the enemy.
But really it was, it was between God and me. The enemy was simply, if he was there at all, he was simply a pawn in God’s sovereign hand. So he was not a figure I was terribly concerned with except for the fact that I was tempted to give up. That was the only place that was difficult because I, I, I was tempted at times to just to say, “Oh, take me home!”
The Purpose of Waiting on God – Episode #675 – Shulamite Podcast
“My soul waits only upon God for from Him comes my salvation.” In the midst of illness or crisis or messy situation or spiritual wilderness of any kind, wait on God. Waiting on God serves a mighty purpose, though perhaps not what we expected that it would!
In a wilderness, waiting…not passive. You described the open heart: believing, receiving, trust, loving, belonging. “So the one whose heart is open let him listen carefully to what the Spirit is now saying.”
Jesus took ALL my, our separation to Himself in that terrible cry, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” And so we’re Given, brought into the Truth and Reality of those last verses of Ro. 8:31-39. “Who shall ever separate us from Christ’s love?” What a cry from an open heart!
HE mines deep bringing out what is HIS. The Rejoicing Victor lives within, and takes us into this….i don’t have words for it….knowing Him.
Dear Douglas, You always hear deeply and you make revelation ever more clear. I just sent you a note before I saw this.
much love and joy in you and Nancy
What a testament to our God! “For in Him we live and move and exist . . .” As you’ve made clear, that’s true even when living, moving, existing is hardly visible. The waiting is “in Him”, waiting for Him, with Him. Thank you for this podcast.
Thank you so much for this timely message. It is such an encouragement and breath of positivity and hope that I needed today. God is good and all things that pass through His hands are good. Lord, do whatever work you have to do in me or in others through any trial, and help us to wait on the Lord in patience, peace, joy and quiet confidence in the wisdom and goodness of the Lord.