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Strength, The Original Sin
Episode #215
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guest: Carole Nelson
(M) Well, just after this podcast we did on the Husband, the Lord gave a great anointing to recognize the demonic strongholds of strength, and how strength is the original sin. I will meet my own needs. It’s the pride of self-sufficiency. And those children… All of us go to it, but especially those children who were not cared for, or who were neglected or wronged very badly. Those go to strength. And when you pick up strength, it always has to be a demonic strength, because humanity has no strength. When Jesus says go back to being a child, He means a lot in that about strength. Let go of power and strength. And I’ve seen so much about dying to self is really relinquishing illegitimate strength and inordinate power, and control. Those are the things you have to relinquish if you’re ever going to become a child. So we’ve had just enormous revelation about how we pick up strength, and how it works. And one person said to me something so shocking, she said, “In my strength I competed with God.” And it took me a little while to see it, but it’s absolutely true. You compete with God to be God.
(J) Absolutely.
(M) Carole and John are agreeing. So it’s been an enormous deliverance in a number of places and people. A deliverance of believing that you had to be strong, and that you had to take care of yourself because no one would. It’s, it’s the vulnerability of a child that the Lord is striking very powerfully. And one morning I saw so clearly that this is an emergency, to relinquish strength to take care of yourself, because it will kill you.
(J) Hmhmm, hmhmm.
(M) It will turn and kill you. You will destroy yourself. I’ve called it… Jacob was broken on the beam of his own striving. Jacob represents the strength. He represents the whole process. The strength of taking care of, seizing your own blessing, making your own wealth happen; and he was thwarted by Laben every time in his marriages. In the end, when he wrestled with God it was the final breaking of his strength. And when his strength was broken he could go to God for his blessing, and he received it. He received it fully after that. So that’s a picture. We prevail with God, in wrestling with God. I couldn’t understand that scripture for a long time. How on earth could Jacob prevail? Oh we do, we do, because if you insist on doing it, God will, most of the time, let you until you wear yourself out in one way or another.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) Either through chastening, or the cross, or brokenness, or illness, or whatever. That strength God hates. He hates that strength of the flesh. The flesh has an enormous power and an enormous commitment to strength, and that thing has to be killed out so that we can be receivers of God’s protection. And this, this tremendous power that descended one morning on me was the realization that it’s an emergency to get rid of it, because we will have to live in the protection of God in the days to come.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) And we cannot do it if we have strength on our own.
(J) Right, right.
(M) Oh, you all know it and have experienced it, so jump in. You know what it is? One of the people I dealt with said, “I have been my own husband.” That’s really what it is, isn’t it?
(J) Oh, absolutely.
(M) I have been my own source, I have been the strength, I have been the one to get my own needs met. No, “Those who wait on the Lord shall mount up on wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” And though the young men fail badly, young men with the strength, and oh, it’s Isaiah 40, that’s where He took me about this issue of strength.
(J) That goes back to the John Donne, “divorce me from mine enemy.”
(M) Ohhh, yeah. I don’t even have the strength to stop having strength. (Everyone laughs)
(Carole) Oh, but that’s where the thirst comes in. That’s what I saw. I saw oh my-gosh, the strength that I go to is even thirst. And it is the lust and a thirst for strength. But He says come, and bring it to Me.
(M) This morning I have a question for someone I’m praying with. And the question of God is, what is your addiction? I don’t know, I don’t know what her addiction is. But addiction is the place of thirst, where you think you are meeting your own need.
(J) Hmm.
(M) (Martha laughs) Ok, here’s the scripture in Isaiah 40, “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth does not become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable. He gives strength to the weary, and to him who lacks might He increases power.” He’ll give you the strength to live if you have no strength to live. But if you try to make up strength to live, you’re on your own. You cannot receive; you’re too full of yourself. “Though youths grow weary and tired”, that’s where strength is in youth. That will collapse. “And though vigorous young men stumble badly, yet to those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary.” That’s where strength comes from; it comes out of weakness. Hebrews, the list of the faith, they were made strong through weakness. And Paul’s testimony is, “I glory, boast in my weakness, infirmity,” everything, because persecutions, “because when I am weak then He is strong.” And His power is shown greatest in weakness. It’s that saying by Chambers, the greatest gift spiritually is destitution; until we are there Christ is powerless. Imagine, that when we have strength we’re on our own. I watched it in a situation this week. Someone used a strength and broke themselves, and the Lord said, “Back up”; you could have arranged it easily, it was all there; there was no need to use strength. But if that’s what they want, let them have it. And He’s done it with me, of course. That’s how I know what it’s like. So the whole John 4 has exploded. Thank you, bless you, Fabiola, in Bogota, Columbia. She brought us a great blessing in her revelation. And God wanted it to go out, wherever it goes on the podcast. That the profound understanding… And putting all the pieces together it’s like He’s made this huge picture that culminates in that poor woman, in her hunger and thirst. And how she was completely filled to overflowing, she couldn’t stand it, she ran to the village. And she was even satisfied that He told her everything about her, that He knew everything about her. It wasn’t good particularly. (Martha laughs)
(J) No, it wasn’t flattering at all.
(M) But she was rejoicing in that.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) So it’s just a wonderful, wonderful beginning of the year, that we can just relax and let Him be Husband in all His enormous covenant. That’s the New Covenant. He is the covenant. It’s covenant that is pictured as Husband. And I wonder, I don’t know the answer to this, but I wonder if we don’t need to know Him as Husband before we will ever know Him as Bridegroom at the marriage supper of the Lamb.
(Carole) I don’t know if this is the time, but I’m one of the ones that was blessed to receive Martha’s anointing this past week, because I’ve been dealing with strength as a stronghold in my life. And one of the things as I was just before the Lord over it, that just broke me even further, was that I saw and really experienced to some degree, that the whole reason for me to deal with the strength, the whole reason He, He desires to deal with the strength is because that’s how much He wants to be intimate with me. And that my strength was the very stronghold and, and shield; I was encased in my own prison that kept Him, keeps Him outside. And, and when I saw that coming down, I saw His love, I felt His love, I felt His nearness and His closeness, and to whatever measure, uhmm, His intimacy.
(M) So is that really what we’re hungry and thirsty for?
(Carole) Oh. It’s what He’s hungry and thirsty for, (Carole laughs with emotion) I think. It’s what He is hungry and thirsty for. (Carole is weeping)
(M) We are quite stunned by that. Thank you.
(Carole) It puts His chastening, His rod, His, His violence even, at demolishing our strongholds in a whole ‘nother view, and a whole ‘nother reality, that He comes after us because He loves us and wants to be intimate with us like He does.
(M) He’s the ultimate pursuer, which is also the role of the Husband, to pursue. And we don’t let Him pursue. I’m, my failing is to so pursue Him that I keep Him from, I keep myself from His pursuit. I know that one. (Martha laughs quietly)
(Carole) It doesn’t stop Him. (Everyone laughs)
(M) You know, what I’ve seen is that children who aren’t cared for, either basically, or nurtured, or comforted, or attended to, these are the most hungry, and the most, sometimes the most addictive. And I think, I think I’ve seen that God allows this enormous need not to be met in the childhood, because it carves a great big cavern of need that He wants to fill with His love. And He wants to fill that cavern with His love that we might give His love to the world. I just, I’m thinking there’s so much that’s happened in the last ten days, so much that He has done and revealed of His love. And the stories can’t be told, but I hope they will be told in heaven, because it’s… There are abused children, which we are having now, enormous generations of abused children unleashed on society. And they are the selfish, tyrannical, rebellious generations that wreck such havoc, and we are to be, we are, in our hunger and thirst and brokenness, He is to fill us with His love. It’s the only hope. I’m really seeing that. I don’t even know how to say it, but His love in us must be expressed, undying, unequivocally, His love for these rebels. They’re just really sick rebels. Their only hope is for someone to bear the love of Christ that will endure, die for them, stand and stand and stand for their freedom. In the midst of all this there’s been enormous breakthroughs for a number of people who are just desperately trying to be safe, and full, and who are like the woman at the well. So I thank Him. May He somehow convey this message clearly, where we cannot.
