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The Greatness Of God
Episode #199
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guest: Julie
(J) Ok, so I’m not saying that God is female, I’m not advocating that or anything like that. I’m talking about an aspect of God that takes on the feminine characteristic, which is seen in the morphology and the syntax and the lemma of Jeremiah thirty-one, three, the second word in love. It is a feminine word that he uses in the Hebrew.
(M) And Sparks interprets it as…he says it’s an extra feature or factor, which is the Hebrew character that’s added to that word; it is in the feminine. We looked it up, and it is noun, feminine. And it means mother-love; I have loved thee with an ever-lasting mother-love. And I see that way, too; I see that nurture of God is present, and…
(J) Well, I see that you women have, you are nurturing, and you’re intuitive, and you’re nesting, ok? Where did you get those characteristics?
(M) Well, God created woman. And so woman came out of God, and man came out of God, and everything that is, came out of Who He is. I’ve just seen Him this week as so huge, so vast, and so all encompassing. We always want to define Him and, and reduce Him to the understandable. And I think after all these years what I see Him as is a mystery unfolding. I never think of God as female, I don’t think of Him that way. I’m just, just aware that He nurtures, He comforts, and in that interpretation I agree with Sparks.
(J) Ok, so then I think about Genesis one, and I think about Gen. 1:26, where it says, God says, “Let Us make man in our image, after Our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens, and the livestock all over the earth; and of every…” creepy thing, (John laughs) “creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God, He created them.” So I just, I’m amazed that ah, you know, we try to make distinctions about God, and we try to label Him, and we try to box Him in. God is not man. God is not, you know, He’s not a man; He’s God.
(M) He can’t be, He can’t be defined. He said, “I am not like you.” So He’s, He’s just vast, and all things that ‘are’, have come out from Him. But He is not definable by gender. And we, we never…
(J) But He does say, and this is what I told you the other day. I said, He says that He’s a Father, and He came as a Son.
(M) Yes.
(J) But He did that for us, so that we would have proper perspective in our small, finite minds; He did that for us. But I cannot say He is male only, no, He’s not male, He’s God.
(M) And I’m not, I’m not into the thing that ‘God is woman’, like that new age, or wherever, that’s ludicrous; God is God. He’s too big to be labeled by anybody.
(J) And thank God He is.
(M) (Martha laughs) we certainly need Him to be bigger than us. But I just mentioned the gall bladder of the dove, and I just assumed that that was common knowledge. I’ve heard from a number of preachers that the dove is a unique bird in its gentleness. It has a single eye, and it has no bitterness, no gall bladder. And that those, it’s a symbol of the nature of the Holy Spirit.
(J) When you say single eye, are you saying that they can only focus out of one eye at one time?
(M) That’s what I, that’s what I have been told. And it’s just a symbol that speaks of the Holy Spirit.
(J) And it also speaks of us that we are to be single-eyed, that we’re to have one focus, one vision. We’re not to be looking both ways, we’re to look at Him, and see Him. And it also calls us not to have any bitterness. It says do not, you know, harbor that bitterness.
(M) Yeah, a life in the Spirit, led of the Spirit, would be like that.
(J) That just makes me…If I’ll settle into that, that just makes me fall in love with the Spirit so much.
(M) And you know, John, we’ve been in situations where the leadership deliberately crushed the Spirit, and the Spirit withdrew. We’ve been in places where as the Holy Spirit was moving powerfully, and it was put to a stop, and the Holy Spirit withdraws.
(J) God only knows how many times I’ve done it.
(M) Oh, hush. (Martha laughs) ooo, ooo, ooo, I’m never able to ever put in words the part of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and how crucial, He is the provision full and complete, to bring to us everything.
(J) I wonder if you can’t really apprehend and grasp the Lover, the Father, if you don’t have the Spirit; I wonder if it’s a co-join. That you can go and think that you have the Father, you know, understanding of the Father-hood of God, or that you have the Lover relationship, but unless you’re willing to be that sensitive to the Spirit… But it’s almost like the other two aspects of God defend the mother-hood of God, and if you offend the Spirit of God, you don’t have the other two.
(M) Oh I think, I think you’re right. I’ve never heard it, heard it put that way. But yes, the Father… That’s why… You know how I can prove it to you; I got it! There’s one sin that’s unforgivable…
(J) Right.
(M) And that is to blaspheme the Holy Spirit.
(J) And it’s like, you can think that you have that Lover, but you don’t, and you won’t if you’re offending the Spirit. (Martha and John laugh)
(M) Because the Holy Spirit is there to reveal Christ, to exalt Christ, and to bring Christ. Oh you’re so right, I’ve never thought about it like that. And I’ve always wondered why is it the sin against the Holy Spirit that is unforgivable. You would think it would be against the Son. No, it’s the Holy Spirit.
(J) And that’s why He has such a tender heart to the women. When He came here He had such a tender heart to women though the whole culture put down women, made them second-class; He always had a heart and boy, think about how He responded to the Canaanite woman.
(M) Umhmm.
(J) Ok, He was… And how He responded to Mary, and how He responded to, to ah… You know something? He was an advocate for woman far beyond the culture and the time. You know, we have a respect now, sometimes over done, but we have a respect for the woman. But He has such a tenderness to the heart of a mother, and a heart of a woman. And you know, we men, ok, have used the Bible to beat you all; really, we validated our own abuse with the Word. And I wonder how much grieving the Holy Spirit that does. I wonder how much anger comes against that; you use My Word to beat some, my mother-heart? You’re going to use My Word? And I can’t imagine Him being ‘cool’ with that, and ok with that. And ah, but the mother-heart of God, I’m telling you, you can’t, you can’t offend it because it’s so tender, and you can’t…. And that’s why He’s very soft with you all. Even my mother, not knowing Him, in a closet when I’m in my wildest, weirdest, craziest time, self-destructive to the max; here I go, she sits in a closet and says, “Please, go touch him, just touch Him.” She didn’t know Him, but she knew Him enough, and He heard that, that mother-heart and said, “Yes”. She wasn’t even saved.
(M) But she heard Him, didn’t she, if I remember the story? He said to her it’s going to be all right.
(J) I believe you’re right.
(M) And He answered her prayer.
(J) Absolutely.
(M) And here you are.
(J) And here I am.
(M) More than all right. (Martha laughs)
(J) But He hears that mother-heart. And He hears the mother-heart in the Spirit, and it’s tender, it is so tender.
(M) Jesus was radical for the time.
(J) Absolutely.
(M) And that’s one reason I never worry about it if a door’s closed to me because I’m a woman, it’s not my problem.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) And God has opened plenty of doors for me, being a woman speaker, and sort of a leader, He’s opened plenty of doors I never, I never… It’s not my business if I’m rejected because I’m a woman or, if I am I don’t even know it.
(J) And I’m amazed at how much the door is open to you. And I know that it’s open because you’re willing to carry a tenderness, which I’ve seen over and over and. You have a tenderness even in the face of pharisaical hatred. You have a tenderness and you’re hurtable and woundable, and I know that the power of God that comes through you, and the doors that are open to you because of your willingness to carry that. And then I think about how He responds to His own heart, and how, and vulnerable. And then I go right back to your telling your teenagers that. It’s just a complete picture for me, and it’s really precious.
(M) Well thank you for remembering John, I’ve sort of forgotten that.
(J) I never have. I really haven’t. And I know that I really want to have more of a dealing with the Spirit. And I know that, you know, I don’t know if I’ve ever really told this, but that was the very first book I ever read, was actually Benny Hinn’s book, “Good Morning Holy Spirit”. And it was because it just struck me, the sensitivity to the Spirit. So it just, that tenderness, and that… I know I haven’t had that, the awareness and the sensitivity to stop and to hear the tenderness.
(M) I think what you’re discovering in your writing, which is a whole other story of journaling, you are discovering the Holy Spirit in your childhood.
(J) Ok, now you just connected that, and I didn’t know that. But you’re exactly right, because what I described in the conference was a hovering. Like He hovered over the void…
(M) Uhuh. And He wrapped His arms around you like Carole demonstrated.
(J) Absolutely, absolutely.
(Julie) I’m just remembering the video that you showed in the conference about the mother and the little child. And the study that they were doing, that, of how frantic the little child got when, when the mother’s face in a sense was withdrawn, when she didn’t respond. I don’t know, it just seems like since then that video and what came out in the conference, you… I don’t know, I don’t really know how to talk about, but you can talk about ‘that look’, you know, that look of a mother, and how crucial that is to the formation of our identity. And it’s just given me a new permission to, to be childlike in wanting to look in… wanting to see how the Lord looks at me, and realizing that I need that. And even from the Holy Spirit, and from life, and from however it comes, just realizing the… I don’t know, it’s just given a validation to the fact I have such a hunger to ‘look’. I’ve always been afraid to see how He looks at me, but now I have a new hunger and recognition from the conference that that’s really crucial.
