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Martha Kilpatrick with John Enslow
For a long time I have been impacted by Romans 8, and the word control. It’s an accurate word because I looked it up. “Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.” See, if you’re controlled by your lust for control, then you’ll not please God. But it goes on to say the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace. So the objective is the absolute control of the Spirit. But see, as you just said about your thoughts, we believe that we have the right to think, we just don’t need to do anything or say anything. We can just control ourselves not to do and say the wrong things and then we’re ok. Oh no, no, no. It’s a matter of not using the old nature, which will control you, to control; and to bring your thoughts, every thought captive to Christ, under the control of the Spirit. To bring everything in your body under the control of the Spirit. And the way that happens is by the cross. If you met God putting His finger on you this morning, it was the cross. The cross comes to say relinquish.
(J) Give it up!
(M) Give up this control, give up being God.
(J) Well you know, if you look at Gollum, the picture of who Gollum became, because of the control. No wonder he couldn’t please God. He was completely tormented, petting himself. And ah, it was grotesque. But he was grotesque because that’s the end of giving yourself over to control and the power of control; that you are literally controlled by Satan. I mean just the visual picture, that he was controlled, ah, what was his name? Smeagol. Smeagol became Gollum. He literally took on the persona of Gollum. And it’s frightening.
(M) He became another person entirely, a caricature, a hideous monster. And he had a different name.
(J) Do you remember what was the cause of that? You remember the first act, where he took the ring?
(M) No, I don’t.
(J) I watched it, and I’ve been watching it recently, and I’ve just trusted God that that’s what He was wanting me to do, and I watched it the other day. And I saw that he and his buddy were fishing, out in, and one of the fish took his buddy into the stream or river or whatever it was, and he saw the ring and then he got up on the shore and the very first thing that Gollum did was, he killed his friend, he killed his brother.
(M) So power and control means more to us in the sin nature than anything else.
(J) You said that, and I heard, while I was swimming and I had my waterproof I-pod, I heard you say that you choose. There are two choices. It was about the cross, and you said that you either choose the cross, or you choose death, and that is the choice. And probably it’s murder, not just death, but murder. You’ll either die on the cross, or you’ll murder someone else.
(M) Yes, I didn’t know that back whenever I said that. But the cross is accepting the loss of control, and the loss of having any power, it’s being vulnerable, it’s letting go. I remember I’ve taken three of our parents through their last days. And one of them, as I watched her, months and months and months, I realized that the skill in living, is learning to die. Because we are dying, we’re going towards. In terms of power and control, you do go towards having to let go. And the skill of dying is letting go; and that’s when the cross comes to your life, and something’s exposed, you can let it go to the grave, under the blood, whatever, whatever the issue is. But it’s letting go of power, and letting go of power over yourself, as much as.
(J) That’s the huge one.
(M) I think it is.
(J) I think that’s where you initially do it. You first let go of yourself, and then you can let go of others. But until you can let go of yourself, and controlling yourself, and putting yourself under a law.
(M) Yes, that’s why the law, the law is futile. In fact the law awakens sin and flesh.
(J) Which you would always say is, wherever there’s legalism there’s immorality, it’s the proof.
(M) Over and over and over, we’ve seen it, haven’t we. So the issue of control is coming right against Gods sovereignty. See, we don’t really believe we have to come under Gods absolute control, that we have to die to our control. We really don’t want it to be like that. I just want to read several scriptures. 1Chron.29:12 “Wealth and honor come from You. You are the ruler of all things. In Your hands are strength and power, to exalt, and to give strength to all.” It’s interesting, I was in Jer.17; I’ve just been parked in Jeremiah lately. And it’s a terrible time for Israel, because they’re coming down to the final judgment of God. And Jeremiah’s the one who sees it. So there’s great suffering because he is punished for seeing it and saying it, and he’s grieving because he knows it’s now, and he knows it’s now inevitable that Israel will be taken into captivity. And he says, “Oh, Lord, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge in the day of trouble. To You shall the nations come from the ends of the earth.” See, David called the Lord his strength, and Jeremiah calls the Lord his strength. When God brings you into a purpose larger than yourself, it is the greatest thing, to show you that you do not have the strength for it. When God brings you into the chastening of His judgment, and He must have done so with David and with Joseph and here with Jeremiah; their strength was only God. David called Him, my strength, he didn’t say, You give me, David, strength, he said, You are my strength; and Jeremiah said, You are my stronghold, my refuge. And then God replies, “Therefore behold, I will make them know (Israel), this once I will make them know, my power and my might; and they shall know that my name is the Lord.” He is God. And He will demonstrate, if you belong to Him He will demonstrate to you, number one that you have no strength. He has to be your power to live. He has to be your power to obey Him. He has to be your power to endure everything, to endure suffering, to endure the labors, to be able to do anything He has to be the strength. But it’s so that you will know Him, as the one who is Lord.
(J) We really don’t have any strength to live this life do we.
(M) Not one speck.
(J) But we all feel like we do, and we’ll pick it up as quickly as we possibly can. But we really can’t live it. We really are incapable of doing it, aren’t we?
(M) Every bit of it. And that’s the arrogance in our nature that says yes, I can do it.
(J) I remember one of your grandchildren was, they were just very young, three or four, “no, no, no, I’ll cook my own breakfast”, I’ll do my own thing, remember?
(M) Yes.
(J) Its like it’s in us, so in us, no, no, no, I’ll do it, I want my independence, I want to be able to do this. Well you can’t even reach the stove, how are you going to scramble yourself some eggs?
(M) Right, it was really ludicrous.
(J) And it’s exactly the picture. It’s, so, we have no power to do any of this.
(M) If we would just believe what the scripture says, that God lifts up one and puts down another, that everyone in authority is someone God has established in authority. But His whole agenda, John, is that we would know His name, that He is the Lord. So now, I have to translate all of this into the manuscript in just a few words, or I’ll be writing sixteen volumes called Cain and Able, and convey it. So I really ask for prayer to be able to, if this has meaning to you, to be able to put it into words that can be simple and down to the bone.
(J) This manuscript is so piercing, and it really does take you to task, really hard core take you to task and cause you to look, which all of your books do. It causes you to look inside yourself to see exactly how you are taking up that Cain power, and realizing that you’re not exempt from doing it.
(M) Yeah. No one is, no one is. I’ve always said, many of us will stand before God guilty of literal murder, that we didn’t know, and now I’ve begun to say oh God, don’t let it be me. Please heal everybody. My control has been, here are two forms of control, outright tyranny, or I subdue myself, silence my being to control the other person. And sometimes I run after the rich young ruler. I remember asking someone, in tears, profoundly weeping, and I said, you will not understand this, but please forgive me for my effort. I want to go back to the verse in Roman’s, verse 4 in the Amplified, “So that the righteous and just requirement of the law might be fully met in us who live and move, not in the ways of the flesh, but in the ways of the Spirit; our lives governed, not by the standards and according to the dictates of the flesh, but controlled by the Holy Spirit.” And see the cross is the relinquishment of control. Ok. “Those who are according to the Spirit and controlled by the desires of the Spirit, set their minds on, and seek those things which gratify the Holy Spirit. The mind of the flesh, which is sense and reason, without the Holy Spirit is death.”
(J) Deciding yourself, what is right and what is wrong, what is up, what is down.
(M) Having so many opinions is really control. Involvement in what isn’t your calling, or isn’t you situation, or isn’t your business.
(J) Say that again.
(M) I don’t want to. I just say that out of much correction and chastening of the Lord.
(J) Well, I’ll say it again. Opinion, to have opinion is control. I need to say it instead of hear it a little.
(M) So the goal is to be controlled by the Spirit. For that to happen, you have to die, your old nature. You cannot simply change, and be controlled by the Spirit. You have to know why you had to die. You had to die in your old nature, because that old nature thinks its God, and tries to be God, and lusts for the place of God. That’s the nature of the old nature. I think that’s enough for me to say.
