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Remembering Christ’s Foundation
Episode #174
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guests: Jennifer and Julie
(M) Jennifer, you kind of among us represent a generation that has named the futility and the death that’s in the church. And I know you hesitate to bring your voice in, but you speak for a lot of people in your generation that have seen the emptiness and meaninglessness. You’ve said the word, it’s meaningless. Share with us what you have experienced and what you understand.
(Jennifer) Ok. With this revelation of the Blood, as it was exploding, and I don’t remember which prayer time it was during, but Martha and Carole were talking about some of these wonderful old hymns, “Nothing But The Blood Of Jesus”, And I remember that it struck me that I’ve heard these hymns, I’ve sung these hymns. I grew up in the church. I went to church, and went to ‘Sunday School’, and sang in the choir and played in the orchestra. I wasn’t just, you know, an Easter, Christmas, Christian, so to speak. We were there every week. And the words had become meaningless. The entire doctrine was just that, it was just doctrine. It was rote, it was something that you memorized and repeated back like a little Mina bird. It didn’t have life, and it hasn’t for some time, for me, in many ways. And the revelation of the Blood, I was thinking that in the same way that it was frustrating and somewhat disheartening for me to realize that I had been hearing these things for years, years, and yet wasn’t hearing them really. They weren’t real for me. There was no life there. They weren’t exploding in me. They didn’t affect my daily life in any way, shape, or form, it was just something else ‘to hear’, ‘to say’. And I thought how disheartening that must be for people that never left the church in the way that I left it early on, precisely because there was nothing there for me. I felt it was futile. Ah, it wasn’t doing anything. But I think part of that is His Life has to animate these words. And that’s the best way I can describe revelation for me. I can read a verse eight times over, and I can’t say when it’s going to suddenly explode in my heart first, and then to have an understanding that He gives me. Because it’s His time, not mine. And I have felt very constrained in many ways from, yes, from lending my voice as Martha said. But also because I think He has made very clear to me in showing me different things in my life, that without His Life animating, His will animating these words, the Gospel, testimony, the Blood, not only is there no life in it to affect someone, but really there’s death in the sense that there were several people in the course of my life who came to me, and I’m sure with the best human intentions possible. And I can’t say that it wasn’t God’s will for them to speak to me, I don’t know. What I know is that there was nothing there, in those times of confrontation, or sharing, if you will, until a certain point where there was life. And that was, you know, in this sense God brought me in through Shulamite Ministries, and Martha’s teachings, and meeting with Martha. But the result of not ‘His voice animating’ these, what they were is doctrines, theology, the words without His Spirit, His Life, behind those. The end result was kind of a bitter bewilderment. And just well, that means nothing to me, there’s no ‘there’, there. And I just want to encourage anyone who might be listening to these podcasts on the Blood, and who are thinking, well, I know about that, I’ve known about that from the beginning, ‘hello’. Why are you going back to something so basic and acting like it’s, you know, the next coming of sliced bread? I would ask Him for the revelation, for His Life to flow through that if it hasn’t for you, because it is so crucial, and it’s so vital. And it’s not about not understanding, it’s not about not knowing. There’s Life or there’s not, is what it is. I don’t know how else to explain it.
(J) I think the very reason it’s basic is why it needs to be gone over. I mean, basic, what does that mean? That means it’s the essence, you know? And so if…I’m not going to go off on the new doctrine, ‘the basics’ is what has the Life, because that’s the basics. I mean it’s the essence. So…
(Julie) I’ll share this and then you can do whatever you want to… It is a matter of if you have it, or if you don’t have it, you know, the reality even of that basic. The thing… I keep getting this picture. You know, I didn’t grow up in the church, but by the time I first met the Lord in Martha, I had been in leadership in churches for awhile, and had participated in a lot of things where we frequently used the name of the Blood. And I just shudder at that now, because I realize how much I didn’t appreciate… there wasn’t anything living about it. It was a magic word; it was a hocus-pocus kind of thing. And it was just a shameful use of Christ. And there was a certain zeal… I keep getting this picture this morning as Martha is sharing so passionately, that there was a sense in which you came into my life and with kind of like in the zeal… I mean the zeal, not the manner, but in the zeal of the Lord with a whip of cords. And one of the first kind of things you did was to essentially challenge me ‘to get all the ‘crap’ out of your life that’s not God, that you’re calling God’. And the scripture that you challenged me with was where the Lord said, “There will be many that will come to Me and say, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your Name, did we not cast out demons.” And you said to me you stand to be one of those that He’ll look out and say, go away, I never knew you. And even in this recent experience, it’s a matter of knowing Him in the Blood. And that’s just an entirely different thing. And before, it was, like Jen said, it was dead doctrine, it was a magic word, it was… But there wasn’t a Person in the middle of it at all. So, so, it has been a real process. My journey has been a real process of having to be born again, having to start over like a child and learn the basics. And… Because the fact is, I didn’t know them before. And the evidence was, I didn’t have the Life. I could quote the words, but I didn’t have the Life. It wasn’t exploding in my heart. It wasn’t… I wasn’t meeting any One in it. So…
(J) I think the reason you have to focus on the basics is because that’s the very place that the enemy wants to cause you to forget, or cause you to lose sight of. I mean, that’s why they’re so vital, is because you know, you would say, oh, I’m, I’m beyond that, I’m beyond that. Well that, you know that’s what Satan’s own attempt to cause you to lose sight of that, and lose a grasp on that, so that you don’t have that ‘essence’ in your life anymore, and then you lose your power, His power, His Life.
(M) It’s still, and always will be, a shocking, startling statement of Jesus, “If you do not drink My Blood, and eat My Flesh, you have no part with Me.” That is incredible, that is, that makes it very foundational, if not central. That conscious partaking of Him is to be where we access Him. And if we don’t do that we do not have Him. That’s, that’s a line in the sand that He drew, and many left Him at that point. So…
(Jennifer) It’s as vital as blood pumping through our system, and oxygen filling our lungs. That is the essence and food to power all of these things. Without those, this just in, we die. And I don’t think you were ever supposed to move beyond that, as it were. I think… It seems like what Paul did after his discipling and training, and relationship building with his Lord, when he went off, he was imparting these basics to everyone. Ok? So clearly he had to keep a hold of them to be able to impart them. You can’t leave them, or you don’t have them to give people. And here’s another thing I will say, because I had a phone call, and it was a heart breaking phone call from someone. And I’m not… Regardless… But basically there was great confusion that had been sown in her, and bewilderment. And I’m very well versed in that confusion and bewilderment. So I would just say this. The Lord had kind of stopped me on that, and said, “Was there ever a time when you did not know it was Me? That it was Life.” Anytime, anytime I’ve been corrected, anytime I’ve been disciplined, anytime I’ve joyously figured something out. No. It’s always been absolutely clear. His voice is unmistakable. And I say, even when I hell-bound, hating God openly, and proudly, I knew when it was His voice in whoever I met. And even if my response to that was ‘ooo’ I really hate you, hate, hate, hate, hate, I knew Who I was saying that to. There is no confusion about His Life, and His Life being imparted to somebody. So my rule of thumb is if the end result of an encounter with someone, or whatever, is confusion or bewilderment, that’s a good check to me. And the Lord has said, ‘That’s not Me, I don’t do that to you. I either make you scream bloody hot, or super icy cold that says absolutely not, I won’t.’ It’s, it’s… He is not… There’s no lukewarm response to Him. He’s Life. And I just want to encourage because I… this is not the first phone call, and you know He… We’re made to know. I, I just, I feel certain of that, and my only job is to hold onto that. I feel like that’s what He showed me about believing. I hold on to that, I say no to all the ‘other’ voices that would say, but really? Are you sure? I don’t know. No! My job is to believe; to hold onto that with both hands, and He makes sure of everything else, because that’s me holding onto my gaze of Him.
(M) Ok, we’re going to take communion now, and ah, talk to you later.
