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Simple Receiving
Episode #232
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guest: Carole Nelson
(M) We just did a podcast on receiving, and I ended up with saying, He empties us so that we will receive. And John came out one morning to the car and said, have you read the comment to the last podcast? And I said, yeah. So let me read it to you to make sure you understand. It’s from “D, in Michigan”.
(J) And it’s from the podcast is number 229, which was entitled “A Long Journey”.
(M) And she wrote, or he wrote, “As a follower of Jesus for many years, I kept hearing about, quote, unquote, “just receive”. I didn’t get it. In my self-sufficiency I would try to receive, and didn’t. Recently in a small group meeting, we were sent out to find a place to hear the Lord. I went to my car, and the sun was shinning so warm and wonderfully after a cold winter. I closed my eyes and turned my face into the sun, and basked in its warmth, and realized I was receiving. That’s all to it, no more struggling to receive.” And John said; tell what you said.
(J) What did I say?
(M) You said, is it that simple?
(J) Oh. And I just, I just said, that’s it. That’s exactly as simple as it is, that you just turn your face to the Son, and the Son shines on you.
(M) I was just in this morning, going through verses that said, “Let Your face shine upon us”, “Restore us, O God, and let Your face shine upon us”.
(J) Just receive.
(M) Just turn.
(J) Just turn and look and to receive.
(M) Hmhmm.
(J) So it’s a, it’s an amazing, I mean it’s amazing that she got that, and it’s wonderful because you know, we will make even receiving; we make everything into a work. And we make everything into an effort. And that is quite outside our realm just to literally just turn the face.
(M) And we make it a work, because we believe it is difficult. We believe it is out there beyond us. We believe we’ve got to ‘get there’. And I, I did say that it’s a long journey. But what I meant was, it’s a long journey to under…, to get to the place to be willing to receive. But the provision is instant, and that’s what she got, and gave us so lovely a comment. So thank you “D.” So in the end it’s easy.
(J) Well of course it would be, because we’re so inept. And He’s purposely made us that way. That is His design, is to make us weak and inept, so that we are completely dependent and leaning on Him. If He made us strong, resilient, you know, we’d do like, what’s that, Ladria? What’s her name from the “Lord of the Rings” We would. You know, the queen that gets the ring and she becomes…
(M) A monster.
(J) A monster, yeah she just you know, ‘and I will rule the world’, you know. And we would become that. We would just become drunk on our own power to… And I think we do become drunk on our own power, just to do it, you know, ‘I am God!’ You know, and God says, no, I’ve made you weak and stupid and inept, and foolish.
(M) I have a scripture for that. It’s so exciting; let me think where it is. My birthday was Sunday, and so Psalm eight has always been my Psalm. Well it says, and I didn’t get it. All these years I read it on the eighth. “Out of the mouths of babes and infants You have established strength because of Your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.” Now that is a total contradiction, paradox, and irony. We, we actually are infants. We just don’t accept that. In our pride we think we’re independent. But it’s out of the mouth of babes and infants He has established strength. How is that established? By receiving. “Because of Your foes”, His foes, “to still the enemy and the avenger.” And Jesus quoted that when He cleared out the temple. And then the blind and the lame… I can’t remember where the reference is; let me see if I can find it here. “He cleared out the temple, and then the blind and the lame came to be healed. And the Pharisee’s rose up, I’ve got to find the scripture. It’s Matthew 21:16. It’s fascinating; I’ve never put these two together. And it’s where He said My house shall be called a house of prayer. “And the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple and He healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things He did”…
(J) Uhmm.
(M) Uhuh. “And the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the Son of David! They were indignant.” Everybody’s being healed, and the children are praising Him, they’re indignant? (Martha laughs) “And they said to Him, do You hear what these are saying? And Jesus said to them, yes; have you never heard, out of the mouths of babes and nursing infants You have prepared praise.” See a nursing infant is a dependent child. “And leaving them, He went out to the city, to Bethany and lodged there.” Have you never…? That was His answer, have you never heard that He has prepared praise out of the mouth of babes and infants. And that’s, that is who we are. We just have to return to being that, and then we can receive the strength that is divine.
(J) There’s another thing that we have to receive, we have to receive the reality that ‘we are a babe’, and we are dependent. It’s not that we have to ‘get there’, we have to arrive at it, no, we are.
(M) We are, we have to come down to it.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) You’re right, yeah, it’s not… the long journey is to realize that, not to attain it.
(J) No, we, we are, by design we are weak. And we’re just, we’re so, the façade that we built in our pride, is such a wall against Him. If we’ll just be really who we are, just a weak person that we really are, then we’ll connect with God and be everything that He is. But as long as we are building our façades and our false walls, and our Hollywood stage set of strength and sufficiency, and everything, we just… It’s just death, it’s pain. And ah, hmm.
(M) Well “D.” has given us the simple answer, “turn and look at the Son. “
(J) It’s amazing. I mean it really, really struck me.
(M) That comment was so powerful, because it came from someone willing to be unable, even to receive, and then God sneaked up on her and showed her how simple, or him, and showed how simple it is. And we got it from this person.
(J) Right.
(M) So we wanted to pass it on, so wonderful.
(Carole) I was watching one of the episodes of “Larkrise to Candleford” recently, and there was only one, one little dialog that jumped off the screen and I knew it was the Lord. And it was, “We’re all children trying to be adults.” And the reality is, John what you’re saying is, we really are children. We are children, if we would just be children, instead of trying to be adults. Remember what Wendy said to Peter, in “Peter Pan”? She looked at him, she said, “Peter, you’ve become a pirate.” She turned to him because he had been, he was engaged in the world, he was trying to make this living, he had no time for his children. And Wendy who had lived through the ecstasy of that, of childhood, and still was in her childhood at ninety years old, or whatever she was. And she looked at Peter, and she said, “Peter, you’ve become a pirate”.
(J) And that’s exactly who the Pharisee’s are, they’re pirates.
(M) They’re pirates.
(J) They were lording over the Lord’s house, and they were pirates.
(Carole) And killing the children.
(M) Whoaooo.
(J) Scorning them for the praise and, and the revelation that was coming out of their mouth about the Son of God.
(M) So, the religious will always scorn the children. And when we are childlike is when we are scorned.
(Carole) And try to capture. Try to capture the children and make them one of themselves. Remember Peter’s son was there, and he… they captured the little boy and put him on the ship, and all of a sudden he had on the whole pirates outfit and looked like Captain Hook? Here this little child, and he had captured the child to make him a pirate, and rob him of his childhood.
(M) And yes Father, “I praise You that You have hidden these things, the revelation, from the (John interjects, “wise and”) wise and intelligent, and prove it, and reveal them to babes and infants; for such was Your good pleasure.” Only the, only the childlike one can receive the revelation. I used to think, ok, “except you become a child, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” And now you say, I’ve become that, but what He was saying is, only the child enters. So go back down. And it says ‘return’, go back to what you were, a dependent joyful being. Oh, (Martha laughs), I don’t know whether I’ll let you keep this on here or not, but the day after my birthday, not that I’m celebrating it all that much. But all of a sudden I went, ahh! I am so old, it’s so wonderful, because my youth’s going to be renewed as the eagles. And I just, all by myself in my little office, I just clapped my hands and said oh it’s so wonderful I’m so old. (Martha laughs) And that’s kind of opposite how we usually feel.
(J) Well I think ‘adult’ is a four letter word.
(They all laugh)
(M) A curse word?
(J) Absolutely. It is a cursed word; think about it.
(M) Yeah, it’s independence, it is cursed.
