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Do You Talk about the Word, or LIVE It?
Episode #673
10/27/2019
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
This is the continuation of a series of podcasts started in Episode #672.
Do we talk and argue and debate about the Word of God in endless circles to avoid experiencing the reality of that Word in our practical, daily lives?
Martha:
See, it’s absolute. It is absolute. If you’re going to follow Him, you’re going to have to give everything up.
I’m seeing in my life… I’ve been through an experience where I felt like the Lord showed me it was in the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings. And that’s where you come to die with Him and live with Him in His sufferings. And so I could rejoice in it. That suits my ambition to be with Him forever and ever.
But that is an… What you’ve just read is the stark reality that we aren’t hearing that much in this age.
John:
Um hmm.
Martha:
It’s something that has to be faced. What are you living for? What are you dying for? And there’s… It’s absolutely unequivocal that if you save your life, you will lose it. And I’ve, I’ve talked with people who said, “I saved my life and now I’ve lost it.” Meaning either health or situations or opportunities. It’s very serious and it will give us the fear of God that will enable us to make the right choices.
John:
Because no one— None of us want to lose our destiny. I mean, you know, that, that would be stupid.
Martha:
Um hmm. Is there anymore to your writing?
John:
Oh yeah, there’s a, there’s a whole mess there. But that just struck me about the death and the swallowing. Jonah being swallowed in the whale and how that references the death that we all face. We all have to die and, and be subsumed into Another’s life.
Martha:
It’s interesting that the warning of Paul to Timothy was to avoid controversy and conversations and arguments and theories and so forth, to stay away from that.
John:
Well, we’ve finding that a lot in the political realm. Everybody has, has their opinion and everybody wants to debate their opinion and everybody wants to crucify anybody who doesn’t have their opinion.
Martha:
Yes! And see it’s talk, talk, talk that will always obscure the reality, whether I’m in Him or I’m His enemy.
John:
Do you think the talk is a smoke screen so that we don’t have to deal with the actual issue?
Martha:
I do! And I think it’s, he says it spreads like gangrene. And then he names two men who were doing it! And he’s saying, he’s warning them not to get into controversy. I remember Bill Gothard saying to argue scripture is an indication of an immoral problem. We hide behind our dogma and won’t die to the realities.
John:
It makes us look like we’re passionate and alive while we’re actually dead.
Martha:
Um hmm. Let me just read a little about that. After he says this, “This trustworthy statement: If you would die with Him, you’ll live. If you endure, you will reign. If you deny Him, He will deny you. He’s, He cannot be faithless to Himself.” I always thought that meant He cannot stop being faithful to me. No! It doesn’t mean that. In other words, if you deny Him, He’s still faithful to you. No! That’s not what it means.
John:
Mhm, mhm, mhm.
Martha:
It means…
John:
That’s what I always thought it meant, too.
Martha:
…He cannot deny His own being and character and place and Sonship. And then he goes on to say, (Paul writing to Timothy):
“Remind them of these things, that I’ve just said, and charge them before God not to quarrel about words which do no good but only ruin the hearers. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed rightly handling the word of truth but avoid irreverent babble.”
John:
Mhm, mhm, mhm.
Martha:
So it’s, oh, it’s so rich to just put your face in the hard sayings of the Scripture and to love those hard sayings into a redemptive-ness through them.
John:
Um hmm.
Martha:
We want to, we slide past, I do it, we slide past a lot of hard words in the NT and we need to stop and look. One of the things that has so impacted me is in Psalm 119, the passion, I think it’s written by Aleph or a group of writers, but there is a tremendous passion: “I long for Your word. I long for Your precepts…” which I’m interpreting meaning His will. But there is a passion in Psalm 119 for the truth and for the word of God that is incredible. And it’s, it’s that very thing that will keep us where we should be: passion for the will of God and passion for the fear of God. Because a lot about the fear of God in Psalm 119 as well. But the angels of the Lord surround those who fear Him.
John:
Um hmm.
Martha:
And many, many other things. I talk about this about every six months (laughs)!
So the issue here about these, this trustworthy saying is the Word. How you interpret the word. Whether you’re talking about God or actually seeing the truth of the Word. “Study and be eager to do your upmost.” Study, meaning study the Word. “A workman who has no cause to be ashamed correctly (now this is repeating it in the Amplified) analyzing and accurately dividing [rightly handling and skillfully teaching] the Word of Truth.” But empty talk is talking about the word without understanding the Word or facing it.
John:
Or experiencing the Life in it.
Martha:
This is… Yes! Exactly. Well said! I’m also a little bit on… I’m watching a series and one of the lectures was about the danger of GMO foods and how it’s, it’s going to destroy the world. I know that non-GMO foods are the foods to eat that are not genetically altered. But I didn’t know the process of the destruction of the world through GMO seeds. It’s goes into insects and bees and birds, everything, altering the genetic code. And I realized the Lord’s got to come soon! It’s an indication. That danger is an unimaginable danger, that we wouldn’t have thought possible thirty years ago. But I realized that that’s an End Time indicator. He’s got to come soon because we need a new earth and a new heaven. So there’s so many signs here and there that His return is imminent. Of all times to be sober and careful, it’s now.
John:
Um hmm. Um hmm!
Do You Talk about the Word, or LIVE It? – Episode #673 – Shulamite Podcast
Do we talk and argue and debate about the Word of God in endless circles to avoid experiencing the reality of that Word in our practical, daily lives? That would explain much of the impotence of modern Christendom, but it’s a dangerous way to live!
Dearest Helen, Always your are utterly transparent and that radical honesty brings the Light to you. Your confessions are Light. THANK YOU bless you for your life of repentance. Mother Basilea has written a book about the JOY OF repentance. That seems to be impossible that such grief would turn into joy.
Those who live repentance as you do, understand and welcome the light.
LoveLove
martha
May I never get over this, “it’s so rich to just put your face in the hard sayings of the Scripture and to love those hard sayings into a redemptive-ness through them.” Such a picture! Isn’t who we are written across our face, seen, known? To put my face into that word, and to love those hard sayings into redemptive-ness through them…oh Jesus, yes. “But empty talk is talking about the word without understanding the Word or facing it.” And John put it, “or experiencing the Life in it.”
These podcasts are a call for sober living, where I’ve been careless. They put the fear of God in me. In prayer recently I said, “I will not hide behind Your Word.” It made me realize how I’ve used the Word to hide behind, pretending to be where I’m not, acting as if I’ve surrendered, obeyed. I saw how I hide behind His Word…to dress me up, to parade as something I’m not; that’s talking it, not living in the Reality of His Word, His Life. I haven’t wanted to know my own heart. I’ve been willing to put it in terms of sin, to repent. But to live open-hearted? All Yours-hearted? This takes ‘the skill of learning to die’ daily, in my ordinary life. This IS good-bye to me…to be His.
saturated….drenched….worshiping GOD!
I am in “agreement to be dead and as worthless as self is”!