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with Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
with special guest Carole Nelson
(M) And I wanted to say Carole has committed herself to Body-life. And I was praying for someone recently and took a good little while, a couple of hours to hear this, but the Lord said there is only one problem in this person’s life, isolation. And Julie’s working on another booklet and she said I’ve got a new ‘Martha statement’. And I don’t even remember it, which means it’s probably the Lord. But what she said was, people go into religion to avoid repentance. But this is the scripture, Proverbs 18:1-2 in the Amplified. “He who willfully separates and estranges himself from God and man, seeks his own desire and pretext to break out against all wise and sound judgment. A self- confident fool has no delight in understanding but only in revealing his personal opinions and himself.” And the person I was praying for has come into Body-life and accountability and joy and freedom and love, and absolute exuberance about life. Out of the pit. Because to be as body-life is meant to be, not some organization, but a living organism where the Spirit is moving, and the spirit is equipping. And today the Body-life helped me enormously to be obedient to the Lord, and to throw off all my restraints and so forth, to follow Him where He’s taking me. And I needed the encouragement of the Body to be able to do that. So there’s no one who’s… You know, it’s not a hierarchy in body life really even though there’s structure and order, there’s not a hierarchy. The Holy Spirit moves to one and then another and then moves to the world. And so I appreciate you commending, and you know, appreciating the Lord in the Body. He said to me this morning before I ever met with everyone for prayer, “You will not make it in your life without this Body; without the larger Body of Christ and without this Body”. No one can make it. Isolation is the most dangerous, delusionary place to be. We can only… God tells things to the body that He….that you can’t hear. And if you do hear it you’re not confident enough until you hear it from the Body. And so it’s, it’s currently my joy to bring our listeners into Body-life, because not everyone has this, Carole. And I prayed for years before it became to happen, and then after it began to happen it’s been another fifteen or twenty years of it coming into a functioning, living organism. So if Body-life is worth prayer and … oh, waiting for and investing in and laying down your life for. It doesn’t happen, it’s too opposed. It just doesn’t happen without a lot of commitment when the Lord commits us, and a lot of suffering really. With Body-life goes a lot of suffering, and dying to self, as Carole said.
(J) Well that’s what I was thinking while you were speaking. I was thinking I have a number of people who call and say that they feel isolated, that they cannot find a Body; they cannot find a place of a home kind of rest. And I was going to say, how would you answer that person?
(M) Well I think, the only way I knew was being in an organized church, which doesn’t mean I negate that at all. But we came to see that… I think those churches that have gone to cell group ministries are finding real Body-life. But I prayed for eight years, God I want to see real church, before I die. I want to see church where You are really, really the functioning Head of the church. And I prayed and prayed and prayed that, and didn’t tell really anybody that I was praying that. And it began sort of spontaneously as the Bible study. And then it became a group of people and the Holy Spirit began to truly move among us. And so it evolved, but it was a matter of prayer the whole way through. And I’m still praying. There’s still scriptures in my Bible that I have put, ok Lord, this is what I’m asking for Body-life. One of them is that He would be the Shepherd. And another one is that a scripture somewhere that says the least of you will be like David; mighty and magnificent, and I’ve prayed that every time I run across that; and to be of one mind. I’ve prayed the scriptures about church. You don’t get this until you get it from heaven. So it has to come from the Lord building His own church. And so really we haven’t structured this as such; God’s put us together, He’s sealed us, He’s bonded us. And we’re a small group; we’re a very small group. There are people who’ve come and gone, to be perfectly truthful. Body-life is not what some people want, the accountability is not what they want. They want a place, we’ve had people come in who simply wanted us to give to them, and they didn’t want to be accountable. And they came in with schemes and lies and agendas. And the Lord has taken, taken some out. So it’s not as though it’s easy.
(J) So you would encourage the one who’s feeling isolated, you would say give your desires to the Lord and pray your desires for true Body-life.
(M) Yeah. Begin with prayer. And don’t despise the day of small beginnings. And I’ve often said, I’m not sure if I’ve ever said it on the podcast, but I’ve often said that once Body-life began to be evident, what I didn’t understand was the suffering had just begun. Because what He’s after in a Body is not necessarily numbers, what He’s after is purity, transparency, reality, holiness. He’s after our being dead to self as Carole mentioned a while ago. And those things are…you have to endure with the Body, you can’t, you aren’t allowed, if God bonds you together you simply aren’t allowed to exit when you like; when it gets fiery and when its hard. You’re only allowed if you… He’s really the Head. Then He decides who’s a member of His Body in this vicinity, you know. And He creates what Spark’s calls ‘intrinsic values’, meaning basic, natural values of what’s important. But it is so miraculously possible to be of the same mind, that’s what amazes me. I can talk about the suffering, but what is the most phenomenal thing, that I, was beyond my wildest dreams, about Body-life, is that orchestrates each person into their position and reveals to each one their place. So that when you come together for His purpose in this little group, everybody is, everybody has to… everybody is amazingly prepared, schooled, taught, and disciplined by the Lord Himself. And we have someone coming in right now, who’s going to join us. And she’s been so amazingly; her family’s been so amazingly prepared by no small miracles to fit right in. I mean she’s going to step in as ‘new’ and ‘old’, because God has… Oh, here’s what it is; I got it! The stones are chiseled away from the temple sight.
(J) Absolutely.
(M) And when they’re brought in, they fit together; that’s it. And she’s been chiseled, and I’ve been with her for some years now. But she’s going to step right in. And the other morning in our Body-life quiet time, not quiet time but our prayer time, we were ministering to her and she wasn’t here, but she was completely known and here. And there was the most exuberant joy and victory that we got for her (Martha laughs) because she was here. And it’s like, you can’t call people into this Body-life, He has to call them. They can’t choose to come into a certain area group; you can’t necessarily say ok, I’m coming. It’s a calling. It’s the Lord building His church. And it’s, it’s so phenomenal on the other end. I’m sorry that I emphasized the suffering, because the delight is that when you have a need the help’s there. If it’s practical, if it’s spiritual, if it’s for prayer, the Body is intact and ready to go, a unit that is ready to function. And… But it takes a great deal of… once, to pray it in, then when it’s prayed in you are given to it. God commits you. And I’ve said to a new believer, God has given me to you; please accept it. Please receive. So there’s a commitment that He puts in place; you know it, you both know it. Carole has been committed to us and we’ve been committed to her. And you’ve been given to this ministry John, and you’re committed. And the, it is, I probably, we probably don’t even realize how wonderful it is. We probably don’t even comprehend yet how bad it could be and isn’t.
(J) Hmhumm.
(M) And how it functions by the Spirit, and that the Lord is jealous that the Holy Spirit is to run it. And so really it’s a Body-life that’s so organic, that like Carole wasn’t here the morning we got the word ‘rejection’. But she was the beneficiary of it. The other person wasn’t here when we had a meeting about her and set her free and she wasn’t even at the meeting. I mean it’s just so organic that it’s across…it’s not a physical organization. It’s nothing ‘we’ can sustain or support or orchestrate or run or touch; we cannot even touch it. So it’s, it’s worth everything. It’s really worth everything. And I believe that the smallest, weakest one of us will be a magnificent ‘David.’ I believe He will answer everything that He has put in His Word as the promise for this, this group. That makes someone hungry for it I’ll be pleased.
(Rewind)
(Carole) John, I forgot to say the most important thing. When Martha said how are you different, how are you changed? And she said you said that there was a burden lifted, and there was. But when I got home I realized that what was changed was, I believed! I just believed. I had faith, and I even had joy; which was very foreign for me. So that is the result of what He did through this discipline. And you know I also had… I thought about this, I also was filled with love, I was filled with love for the Lord, but I was filled with love for my Body who loved me enough to want me to know His love and be all that He created me to be. So that’s it.
(J) So would you consider that ‘the fruit’ of your repentance?
(Carole) Oh wow. Yeah, I would, I sure would.
(J) So it’s the fruit of His chastisement or work in your life, and then the fruit of your repentance.
(Carole) Yes, yes, and it’s the fruit of Him even giving me that, that repentance, it really is.
(J) That’s awesome.
