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with Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
(M) Well John, I have called you out this morning, and you don’t even know what the topic is, but I’m so excited because I’ve seen something so powerful. And I wrote about it in “Adoration”. Let me just read this little bit. It came from the verse that so impacted me when I was dwelling in this, about Mary of Bethany, where Jesus said, Mary has chosen. To me that was the explanation of the difference between her and Martha. She had chosen, and she had chosen Him. So this is a few of the things I wrote, “What you choose takes you over and compels you. Your resolve is so powerful that it forms its own highway and drives you toward its arrival. Once your choice is made, you do not steer, your choice steers you. You are today what you chose yesterday. Choice may seem unconscious, but it is never so. It is always deliberate. Decision leads us. Volition is the force, the power, and the drive God supports and calls the heavens to sustain. Free will is the gift distinguishing us from all creation. God gives that gift and will not rescind it. He offers utmost respect to our intention. This immense power of decision takes us over. You are today what you chose yesterday. You have lost today what was not willed yesterday. You have tomorrow, what you elect today.” So, I’m going to go back to guess what subject?
(J) The Trees?
(M) Yes, because the issue of The Trees is choice. That’s what gives us dignity as His creation; that is the core of our being is the will. I don’t want to do all of the talking now, so if you will…
(J) I’m going to try to catch up with you, and I’m seeing where you’re going, and then we’ll get in there, but I’m kind of listening and aiming.
(M) Ok, it’s not even breakfast time. It’s coffee time now. I’ll just have to go with my enthusiasm. But the issue of The Trees is choice; what will you eat? And what Satan did was he messed with Eve’s thinking. He diverted her thinking in the wrong direction so that the result was her choice. But he could not take her choice from her. She had the choice and he could not take it over, he could only influence her to make the wrong choice. But the basis of humanity and the creation of God in humanity, the core basis of His gift is choice. Even in Hebrews John, the born-again believer is given five warnings of choice. So even after you’re born-again, you can choose to reject the Light. You can choose to get off the elevator, as I call it, before you reach the end. So choice is maintained through all of the scriptures.
(J) So is that our continual tempt, is to follow the other voice, and it’s not a forcing upon us, but it’s a tempting us and trying to influence us in our choice.
(M) If we could understand the core of Satan’s agenda, that agenda is to influence our choice, or to so intimidate us that we don’t make our choices. That’s the bottom line of the capture of evil is, and the capture of one person over another. Control is always to take away your choice, or to make your choice for you, and insist that you do what I say. So evil is basically denying me the God-given dignity and right to my own choice, even if it’s wrong. I remember someone who so terribly oppressed me, and I anguished against her a lot. Later I came to anguish over the fact that I felt like she was on the way to hell. But I was set free the night God said to me, “I God have accepted her choice, who are you?” And I was anguishing against her continuing volition of the wrong choice, knowing it, deliberately choosing the wrong thing, choosing herself, and God had accepted it. That is His respect for our dignity, and we have to respect that in others. So when He took me there, there was no more suffering on my part, and no more violation on her part. I let her have her choice, as God had. And that’s very difficult to do when someone you love is headed straight for hell, or headed straight for disaster and you know it, but they don’t choose anything differently.
(J) So are we in Satan when we choose to take control? …
(M) John, you always go right to the bottom line, that’s right, that’s exactly it. If we want to control a person’s volition we are acting in the principle of Satan. The principle, get to the principle. The principle is, I will tell you what you should do, and you must do what I tell you to do.
(J) And make the choice, and then lead you down that path. And then you’re free of any responsibility, “oh, I didn’t make you do anything, I just told you and gave you some suggestions, and then if you do it, then that’s your;” you see what I’m saying?
(M) If I don’t have my full volition, the right to choose, I do not exist. You see the death of Eve came when she made the wrong choice, and death comes when you choose the tree of right and wrong, good and evil, where you know what’s right for everybody. Oh I want to make it so plain, that you die when you give up your volition, you die; and you kill the other person when you take from them their choices. And the defense of your choice is going to be a life-long thing John, because see? The choice God wants you to be free to make is for Him. Love does not control. Anywhere you’re controlled, anywhere someone tries to control you it is not love. When I try to control someone it is not love. So love sets you free. I didn’t love that person until I set her free to choose to live for herself; that is her choice. And I did not have my dignity or my life when I was anguishing over her wrong choice.
(J) This is the complete human dilemma of dealing with other people.
(M) Exactly John, we’re supposed to pray, but not control.
(J) Well how many people do I run across that I go, oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, don’t go that way!
(M) Thank you for seeing it as big as it is. It is getting down to the simplicity of the core of our being.
(J) And choosing ‘Sources’.
(M) Yes, the issue of The Tree is choice. And that’s why the trees still stand; we have a choice over everything. The choice is life or death, but we still have that choice. Well, and the thing about it is when I released that person to her choice,I had my own choice back. When I sought to control her, not even by words, but by anguish and striving with her, and sometimes opposing her and trying to get her to understand. But inside of me it was control. It wasn’t suggestion. It was she had to go the way of God. I mean she had to. It was my choice. But in asserting control over her choice, I lost mine.
(J) And you lost God too, didn’t you, in that situation?
(M) In that situation, yes, it took a long time to connect with God, and I had to cry out, and cry out, over that situation. You’ve got to tell me, You’ve got to help me. And it took a lot of crying out to override that I wanted God more than I wanted my choice, to be her choice. When you control somebody you lose yourself too, because you take God’s place and He will not have it. Your life is to be in a certain position with God, and you get out of that position to play God and you lose God. And you have to play out the whole story until you get back to knowing you need God. But I didn’t know with her that my dilemma was control. I thought my dilemma was that she wouldn’t hear me tell her the right thing to do. But I’ve seen this morning that the core of our existence is our will. You see we can’t even have our spirit intact. We can’t live by our spirit in the Holy Spirit, unless we have that choice. So the whole of your life revolves around and issues out of what you choose. We’re always making choices. Someone said the other day about an indecisive situation, oh but he did choose; he chose not to choose, and choose right. What about then John, the next thing, when someone comes in to take your choice? I really can look back on my many years of life, my decades, and know that God sent person after person to me, because my tendency, even though I know how to control, my basic tendency is to give up my volition to someone who’s will is stronger than mine. That’s been my path. Sometimes He’s sent people into my life, in different ways, to so push me and intimidate me to make my choice for me. And I remember saying to one person I discipled for several years, wait a minute, there are two people here. You’ve made the choice for us both and I have not entered into it yet. I will let you know what my choice is. That is something you have to fight for. If you are a controlling person, you have to give up control. If you are an acquiescent person you have to fight for your volition. I remember someone I was discipling many years ago, and the Lord began to tell me, she is not going to choose, and you’re investing energy that is futile, and I want you to go where there’s fruit so there’s going to come a time when you leave her. And I began to tell her, I told her for a year, you know you’re not making the choices, you’re not following God, you’re not hearing me, and I know I’m going to have to leave you at some point. I loved her dearly. Well at the end of a year I did leave her; I cut off the relationship and I said to her, you must understand that I accept your choice. And I said, you will not process it that way. You will process it as rejection, but it is acceptance, because I cannot live with the repercussions of your choice. I will not spend my energy. It’s not God’s will anymore; I accept your choices and I am gone. And she really didn’t believe me because I had loved her so dearly. But after about a year she realized; she was very bitter with me. But see, there are times when you have to let a person go because they’re going down a path you’re not going to go. And the scripture says, make no mistake bad morals corrupt good manners. You can’t continue to fellowship with someone who has chosen the tree of death, or death will take you over. Everybody can choose to go to hell. I remember an Episcopal priest saying that in the beginning of my walk, “God loves you enough to let you go to hell if that’s what you want.” And I couldn’t quite fathom that statement. He understood something very profound, that it is love, to let you have your choice. And if you choose to go to hell, God will let you. If you choose to live this life in hell, God will let you. So if you come to a place in a relationship or a situation of friendship, a marriage, a discipleship situation, where you aren’t permitted your choices, you will die there, because you only exist if you maintain complete possession of your choices. I remember many years ago when Jimmy Carter was running for president and he was in an Atlanta hotel. My husband knew him in the senate, Georgia’s senate. But there were a group of women there that were having dinner, and I said, let’s go over to the hotel and see the presidential campaigning; we might never see that again. And so we all said yes, yes, but one person stepped back; she said, just a moment, and I watched her process her own decision about it. She wasn’t going to follow the crowd. In a moment she said yes, I will do that.
(J) But the choice was hers; she owned it.
(M) It’s indelible in my memory, yes. She was not going to be ramroded with the crowd into that.
