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with Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guest Julie & Jeri Wadley
(M) If you demand of yourself, people will live up to your inner demand of yourself. So you don’t have to control them. I said in the last podcast, your greatest power is influence, it’s not control. John often talks to me about Samuel; as long as Samuel was alive, Israel was holy. He had that kind of influence on them. Our demand, our choices for ourselves exude the most powerful presence. So not only does God respond to our choices with consequences of either blessing or cursing; Moses said choose life or death, blessing or curse, that’s what is involved. If you choose death you’re under curse, if you choose to reject God, sorry, you have chosen death. But it also has the power of influence, which is what in our basic humanity we want to have. We want to have influence, and we do it out of the lack of integrity by controlling people, manipulating. We do it because we want to have influence, but the influence comes from my demand of myself. What’ve you got?
(Julie) Well really responding spontaneously, that is the beauty of what I see in your life. In some ways it’s harder to make the inner demand of yourself to face your God in total accountability, I mean it’s hard. One of the stories that you wanted me to share was that at one time God had showed me in a vision, as I was going through a kind of repentance in my life, God showed me that before I even had a body, somehow I knew. I knew the parents He’d chosen for me, I knew certain sufferings that were going to be in my life, and I said no. And the Lord showed me that because of that choice I developed a false personality because I went on a self-willed path that was not God, it was not Life, it was death. And as a consequence He showed me how throughout my life it had produced so much death. What I’ve seen in your life through the years is that you have continually made that inner demand of yourself to face your God in total responsibility, total accountability, and because you’ve chosen His will, in the most practical matters, day to day to day to day, you reflect Him. Your influence is that, that’s one of the things that I see ultimately, is your choice brings you into union with Christ. If you choose Life, it brings you into union with Christ, and naturally then you become the reflection of Him, which is the most powerful influence that can be on the earth. And that’s what I have seen in your life, is that you live by a very powerful choice of Him, in everything. And so your influence is that incredible reflection of Him. You bring Him into every situation because you have chosen for yourself, to follow Him.
(M) You know Julie, thank you for the encouragement.
(Julie) Ok, here’s a question for you. Is it, I mean in some ways what you’re talking about sounds difficult; and I remember one time a long time ago you wrote to me in a E-mail that you make a series of little choices, I can’t remember if you said to die or to surrender, and then one day ‘poof’ you’re gone. And that’s what I see. What I see in your life now is that, umm, I mean I see your struggles and I see your humanity, but it’s like for all these years of consistently making the choice for Life, now it’s as if there’s a force of Life that carries you.
(M) Well you wrote, if you habitually build a life of living in His will, that is your freedom from entanglements. Jesus was free because He had chosen the Father’s will only. His freedom was His death to self. You wrote that, it’s wonderful.
(Julie) So is it possible to come to a place where you’ve chosen enough times, is it possible to develop a habitual choice that leads to death to self?
(M) Oh, yeah, and you know what it begins with? And I was telling this young woman today; I was trying to tell her, for me, for me my story began with an absolute void of the love of God. And He showed me I didn’t love Him, and I said I don’t know how to; if that’s what You want I’m done for. And I chose in some small way, I said I don’t love You, I chose to love Him but I couldn’t, I didn’t have it. And He came into my life with such a powerful love that every choice I make is based on that love, every single one Julie. Without a phenomenal experience of His love, and your love for Him that He gives you, I’m not sure anything I’ve said can be done, because you only choose in behalf of your love. And He gave me a love for Him greater than a love for myself. He did it. I can take no credit because I began with a total deficit. I was in death and a void. I had a void of love for everything, for everybody, and it was devastating me. And I took that void to Him, and He came in my life with love. So I’m ending up at what should be the beginning in this series. As usual I find my way to the essence somehow, and it’s this, that you cannot choose to die except for love. You cannot choose against yourself unless you love something more than yourself. And God comes with that love in different ways. He did it for me directly between, in a relationship with Him. Sometimes He does it you know, in the Body, as Paul and Timothy I think. I think Timothy was fatherless, and I suspect, don’t know, that the love of God in Paul brought Timothy to the love of God himself; that it came through Paul. It didn’t come through a person for me, but you have to love something more than yourself in order to choose against yourself. So the basic problem is do I love Him? Do I have enough love for Him to choose death always, habitually and continually? And you know, if we don’t have it, all we do is ask. And I gave this young woman the last verse of John 7, where Jesus prayed, (a response in background.) yeah, John 17:26. Is that what you looked it up? Ok, Jesus prayed that the love the Father had for Jesus would be in us. And that prayer will be answered wherever we want it, but it’s the love of God, love for God, that enables you to choose against yourself. What you want, you said it, is Christ. That’s what you want that makes you choose all these other little things that He presents to you, it’s wanting Him.
(Julie) So the leaning of your entire personality on God is because you want God.
(M) See, I knew you could do it better than me. (Laughter) And it’s because you want God because you love Him.
(J) And you love Him because He first loved you and initiated your love for Him.
(M) Exactly. So that ‘s the source of every choice really…
(J) is God. God initiating it, God starting it, God bringing it through, God bringing it.
(M) And your choice of love. When He showed me I didn’t have it, in some negative way I chose it; and then He gave it. What?
(Julie) Well, and I’ve heard you say before that a big part of your ministry is to bring the love of God to people. And basically life or death for them comes on whether or not they will receive that love.
(M) Yeah, I’m a walking crisis. John calls it the wrecking ball. But when love comes and you reject love you have a really, really, you’ve really offended Him. And it’s a very, very serious thing. You come with truth, and you reject that, it’s ok, God will come back with the truth; but if He brings His love to you, and you reject that, that’s very serious. God’s reaction to that is strong. A question, any comment, any insight, any?
(Julie) This is Jeri Wadley.
(Jeri) For what we’ve heard this evening, it is so simple, but we make it so hard and so difficult. Your message is so simple; God’s message is so simple; but we take that and we manipulate it to where we can’t process it simply. It’s just difficult.
(J) Do we do that so that we don’t have to do it? (Laughter)
(M) What do you think? (Cricket chirping (C;)
(M) Jeri thank you, because my concern is I’m not making it simple enough. Because it is so simple, it’s about love, it’s about choice; it is so simple. And it’s only two choices. And so you encourage me because I kind of fret, am, I saying too much and making it too complicated. So you’ve answered it, it’s simple, and I want it to be because it is. So thank you.
(Julie) We have Miriam and Thomas with us from the Czech Republic, and Thomas had a statement that God revealed to him about choice.
(Thomas) That choice is the condition for relationship with Jesus.
(J)That’s good.
