Podcast: Download (47.5KB)
Subscribe: RSS
with Martha Kilpatrick and John Enslow
(M) What I think I wanted to get to is that the church has no mentality for the judgment of God. The judgment of God is real. “He being often reproved, that hardenth his neck, shall be cut off, and that without remedy.” In today’s April third of Oswald, is awesome, because he addresses this. Who have created such a Santa Claus god in this generation that we have no mentality to see the judgment of God, or to receive it and bow. When all else fails, in His love and kindness He brings a judgment that you cannot escape. Nee wrote about it in a booklet called “The Judgment Of God”. It’s a wonderful, wonderful book; every believer should read that book. Ok. April third of Oswald Chambers in “Utmost For His Highest”. He says, “What is it that blinds you to the peace of God in your day.” It says, “In your day the things that make for peace, if you had known, but now they’re hidden from your eyes.” You miss the day of His visitation. “More than once God has brought me face to face with a strange god in my life, and I knew that I should have given it up, but I didn’t do it. I got through the crisis by the skin of my teeth, only to find myself still under the control of that strange god. I am blind to the very things that make for my peace. It is a shocking thing that we can be in the exact place where the Spirit should be getting His completely unhindered way with us, and we only make matters worse increasing our blame in God’s eyes.” Then He comes to “These words imply responsibility for our own faults. “ God holds us accountable for what we refuse to see or are unable to see because of our sin. And now they are hidden from your eyes because you never completely yielded your nature to Him. Oh, the deep unending sadness for what might have been! God never again opens the doors that have been closed. He opens other doors, but He reminds us that there are doors which we shut—doors which had no need to be shut.” In seventy AD the temple that the Pharisees took over was burned. The whole city was destroyed. And it’s clear from Jesus’ prophecy and from the scriptures, that that was the judgment of God on the generation that crucified Him. They had 35 years from Jesus death to repent. He gives such a long space to repent and to see, but if you don’t, the judgment of God falls, and that’s where we are in this country right now. And this is what I wrote this morning. “Judgment is God’s final drastic dealing of love, to break the terrible independence that are the bars of our prison, behind which we believe we’re safe from Him. We will not surrender to the Liberator. The Pharisees believed so in their ability to save and hide. But they’re hidden only to themselves. The prison is called darkness, and only the brokenness of surrender will bring you out of a self-made prison; surrender to authority and surrender of the mind. That’s what the work you did, John. You began 15 years ago to surrender to authority, to surrender in your mind, to think a different way. And I asked you to describe it this morning, and you did, very well. You said, I had to go back again and again, to bow. And despite that propensity of thought that you’d built in your lifetime, you went against it with a work. And I think that work was surrender, and the surrender of your mind to another way of viewing.
(J) I said I threw myself back in the ring, and you said sorry, get in there, and just get myself back in the ring. Because everything wanted to leave, everything wanted to come out; but it was just like no, go. Get back in there.
(M) Because you saw when God came for you, that there was no-where else to go. And you knew that in order to stay in the realm of ‘God’s will’, you had to fight yourself. That was the work you did, to work against the old life. Why’d you do it? Why did you do such work?
(J) Why am I doing such work?
(M) Yeah, ok, that’ll do.
(J) There’s no choice.
(M) You know that’s what I always hear from people who have made a choice. I don’t hear that from people who don’t work to choose, I hear it from people who have chosen. I hear it from Carole, who chose the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ; ‘there is no choice’. What do you mean by there is no choice? Because there is a choice, and you made the choice. Explain.
(J) (Laughter) The fiery eyes come! Ummmmm….! Ah, there just isn’t a choice. I mean you know, that…
(M) Do you mean everything else is death, and you now know it?
(J) Yeah.
(M) All right. There’s no choice for Life, except this one, to be in His will.
(J) He’s hemmed me in.
(M) What?
(J) He has hemmed me in.
(M) Oh, ok, He has hemmed you in.
(J) And I have no choice. My choices have led to me having no choice.
(M) Ah, I’ll take that one, that’s it. Say it again.
(J) My choices have led to me not having a choice.
(M) You’ve given your choice so utterly to God, that you can no longer choose.
(J) Oh, and we can go anywhere. I mean I could go off anywhere, and choose against Him. But I’m just saying, more and more, I am being hemmed in so that I, I, my choice is…
(M) Ok, but your choice was to be hemmed in.
(J) Oh, I can go there, yeah.
(M) That’s the difference. The Pharisees that remain the Pharisees never say I have no choice. But those who choose and respond to God with a yes, always will say to me, I have no choice. It’s very interesting to me.
(J) I’m glad I answered correctly. (John laughs)
(M) The only breaking out of the prison of pride is complete responsibility before the totality of God’s sovereignty. That’s what was in my journal this morning. Would you agree?
(J) Hmhumm.
(M) You see, you resolved it by God’s sovereignty over your childhood and your story; that’s what you’ve been saying. God was sovereign.
(J) And sovereignty… I’ve never seen sovereignty as authoring. I’ve always seen sovereignty as allowing.
(M) Ahhh. Big difference.
(J) Big difference.
(M) Yes.
(J) Oh I’ve seen He was sovereign, He allowed all this to happen so that He could get you. No, He authored all this so He could get you. There’s a big difference. And I don’t minimize the struggle that, that that statement makes for some people. And I… It’s a horrible statement.
(M) Hmhmm.
(J) And what do people always shake their fist at God, how could You do this to the children? Well, He does. He authors things.
(M) And unless we accept the mystery of His sovereignty without an explanation of His sovereignty, we cannot make that transition. And to accept His sovereignty over all, you have to come to accept His sovereignty for your personal story. But the sovereignty of God isn’t a story of Job. The greatest suffering recorded probably is Job. Even Joseph didn’t have such catastrophe to his loved ones, his wife and children. But Job, the story of Job shows that Satan cannot even touch your body apart from God’s sovereign allowance. And that Job never dealt with Satan. But that, that whole story is a huge mystery and at the same time a profound explanation of Who God is, and who Satan is. I read the other day, and I’ll have to go back and get it, I can’t remember the author or the subject. But what he said was, this person believed there were no second causes. That it was only God. And that was their success spiritually in life. There were no second causes.
John Enlow:
Living with anticipation of how Christ is to reveal Himself in the coming days. Martha has an urgent message of hope and preparation for times of trouble and crisis. These times and the times that are coming are to be trying, but the Lord has an intention, and a joy, in revealing His holy purpose. We wish to invite you to “The Coming One”, our upcoming conference held in Atlanta, Georgia, May 29th through the 31st.
