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The Fully Engaged Heart (Part 2)
Episode #189
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guest: Carole Nelson
(M) But the issue of the heart, unrestrained…. And you see the men who were supposed to be men of God and Job’s friends, their hearts were not engaged with God about Job. Their minds were engaged and they ended up in judging and assessing rather than listening. And they stand for such a contrast for me, between a personal relationship with God, and a relationship with the truth. Big difference. And you can’t be in a relationship with God unless you are fully engaged in your heart. Unless your heart is ready to be splayed, ripped, torn, healed, pierced, broken, blessed, full, your heart has to be engaged. And the barriers to the heart being that engaged is what, you don’t know this, but one of the things I’m going to speak about in the conference… And it’s going to come in the form of the sower and the seed and the stony ground. To me, every bitterness, every offense, every ambition, is a stone that you stumble over, and it stands in your way of a wide open, oh, passion for the Lord. We think that the right kind of religion or faith is a real decent conservative thing. Controlled, you said controlled; (Martha laughs) yeah, get control of yourself, don’t be so radical. Don’t be so wild. And that isn’t what pleases the Lord. It’s like, I’ve said before this, Jesus said, you’re Peter, and on this pebble I’m going to build My church. And the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And, and it’s so telling to me in that, from what you’ve gotten, that in that passion for the Lord there really is no defeat, because Job was crushed and broken and sick and in pain and suffering, and no comfort from his friends, but his passion was alive. In spite of all that his passion was alive, and it was alive to defend his personal intimate relationship with God. And in the end he was vindicated unbelievably, and blessed seven times over. Because God… You got it, that God took that man of his passion, and not only did He deal with him rather publicly, He demonstrated to those friends who came, what pleased God. And it wasn’t this decent knowledge of literal truth, this box of principles. It was a living… I don’t think we know how passionate God is. I don’t think we ‘get it’. We see His wrath of the Old Testament; we don’t see His passion to give His very Son. We don’t see His passion for us being in that picture. So His very nature is extravagant, lavish, full, full of all, we can say, emotion. Emotion’s sort of a human word, not a God word, but He has that, He demonstrates it in the scriptures over and over again. And He demonstrates it in your personal walk, because sometimes He’ll speak with sternness, and sometimes with melting kindness, and sometimes with strong correction. But He is passionate about us, and He wants us to be passionate about Him. So I’m just… I love what He brought to you, and that you were willing to give to us. It was wonderful.
(Carole) Well ah, because the Lord prayed for Peter, what He prayed had to come forth, and it did. And what came forth was faith, and Peter turned and he strengthened his brethren.
(M) And you said to me because Peter would just… throw out his desire, I will die with You, you said because of that Jesus could do what He did with him.
(Carole) I’ve never seen that.
(M) Say it in your words.
(Carole) Well I’ve just, I’ve just never seen that. I’ve always, I’ve always looked at Peter… Except because of your teaching, ok. But in me, I have always looked at Peter like ‘that poor guy’; you know I’m just like him. (Martha laughs) And ah, I just can’t seem to help myself, and neither could poor Peter. And I saw it in a totally different way. And it’s like the Holy Spirit comes in and He does this thing, and it’s the transformation of the mind, and there’s a ‘chi-chink’ that takes place. And that’s what happened. It’s like I went from ‘in spite of’, which focuses on sin and failure, to ‘because of’, which focuses on the Lord. And He just changed… I just, I just want, I just want so, and I believe that it is, to go into me as a seed that will bring forth the fruit of God’s word and the fruit that leads to righteousness. And ah, whatever, I want to see Him, and that’s it.
(M) Somebody this week was listening again to the old series called “The Heart Of The Matter”, is that it? And that series is about this, that if your heart is not open and engaged, you are dead. And the one thing I remember from it, I don’t remember all of it the Lord gave me at the time. But I remember that they have learned to predict a heart attack by EKG, or other tests, that if it is a static line, then death is coming. And if we don’t feel all we feel, and be and say all we are, recklessly almost, abandonedly, we die spiritually. Our heart for the Lord dies. And that’s what came back to me about it, because it’s not just our humanity is that way, it’s that if we will not be human we will die spiritually and physically. If we will not let our heart be… what is the book? “Wild At Heart”, by Eldrige, wonderful book. And that, even that title is enough. We have to be alive; we have to be alive in our heart to have a physically healthy heart.
(Carole) Well, I’m just seeing over, especially over a very ah, a personal experience, which I don’t need to go into, over the last couple of weeks, that when you are really fully engaged, and I was, toward the wrong thing, but I was fully engaged, there will be sin. But because there is the solution for the sin, that is not the importance, He is turning our passion to Him. Because He is so jealous for that passion to be His, and to, be His, be His.
(M) And I think the reward of it is to know His passion for you. That’s what we don’t know. We can see it for each other, but to see His enormous passion for the Bride, and for me, that’s, that’s a phenomenal experience.
(Carole) And Peter must have had… Peter’s response, because of the end of the story, was that he knew that; he knew God’s passion for him. So did Job. Can you imagine? He was, he was completely restored two-fold? Three-fold? What was it?
(M) Seven-fold.
(Carole) Seven-fold, whatever, it was a great restoration.
(M) Well, I kind of wanted to say, in your revelation that it’s not something that you were just learning. This is the culmination and the gift to you from the Lord of what you passed through this week.
(Carole) Hmmmm. Ohhhhh.
(M) This is His pleasure to reveal this to you because you were passionate one little, one direction, and the Lord said no, you’re giving your passion to something other than Me. You’re even giving My passion… your passion for Me, to something, not terribly wrong. That may be more than you want told, but this is a reward. This is a reward. It’s the evidence that you’ve come through. It’s the fruit of your repentance, and the fruit of His work in you, that you see this. It’s very personal. I see it as very personal.
(Carole) Ah, Martha said something this week at prayer, and I think she said it to someone, but ah, she said, “You give God everything, but you don’t give God anything.” And what I saw in Peter was, he not only gave God everything, he got… he gave God anything. When he said in his passion, I will follow You, and I will lay down my life for You. That was very, very specific. And he did, he did both, he followed Him and he did lay down his life for Him in the end.
(M) Well I just shared with him that the Lord gave me that statement, and it has rung my bell too. (Martha laughs) That you will give Me everything that you want to give Me, but you will not give Me anything I want to take or do, anything. And I was telling the group our motto will be ‘anything for Christ’. And I’m going to share that at the conference too.
The Fully Engaged Heart (Part 2) – Episode #189 – Shulamite Podcast
