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The Order Of The Work
Episode #243
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guest: Jennifer Wentzel
(Jennifer) The beauty of Him coming into the mundane, and the drudgery, is that that’s what makes it real, the relationship with Him real, because anyone can get dollied up for a ball. We can all get dressed up and fixed up and, most of us anyway, can hold it together for an hour or two, you know, and be likeable at least. (Jennifer laughs.) You know, put your best side forward so to speak, and not step in it too badly. But that’s not real, you know, and we know it’s not real. So when, when we don’t have the intimacy, the trust, the interest frankly, just knowing that the God of the universe is interested in me sweeping my floor, in me washing my dishes. You know what I mean? Because if He’s there, that means He’s my Companion in that, like He’s in my life with me; my real life where I’m no so pretty, where I’m wearing nasty clothes, where I don’t smell so great because I’ve been working all day. Do you know what I mean? Where I’m real; my real life. That’s, that’s the love story. Not the getting dressed up and going to church once a week. That’s, that can be so discouraging and disheartening without you even realizing it, because you think, well I was pretty then, and I held it together for the, the preacher’s sermon, and I took the good notes, and I smiled at people and I said the right things and I was kind. But that’s not the day-in day-out, and that’s not who we are; and needing Him, ok, (Jennifer laughs) in the sometimes squalor of my life.
(M) Uhmhmm.
(Jennifer) And for Him to be not only completely unbothered by it, but to embrace me and lift me up in it, I mean that’s, that’s the stuff I dreamed of.
(M) Awwwh, wow.
(Jennifer) That Someone loves you for you, in your true self? And says…
(M) He comes alive.
(Jennifer) …I have a dream of you.
(M) Uhmhmm.
(Jennifer) And it’s beyond this, and this is nothing to My dream of you.
(M) You started out with the beauty of the Lord, and what happens when He comes in the work. And, and this is not, let me go back and say, this fresh realization of the Rest has not come easy for me, because I have so much work to do in my home. And I have been so frustrated, and I have been unable to do it to the degree I have wanted to. He has simply stopped me in my tracks. He has so removed my law of work that there are catastrophe’s, you know, I’ve got so much physical work to do, and fifty years of accumulation to get rid of. And the other day I just kept praying and praying and He kept saying no, no, you will not have a law of keeping house. And I love housekeeping, I love, I love my life as a female. And I’ve always enjoyed it and done it with great joy. But these, this last year when I’ve been so healthy, He has put a stop to the law I’ve had of I want to keep my house a certain way. I’ve not been a perfectionist; my house is very lived in, but never the less. So one day He gave it, I knew I had the grace to go do the garage. And it was, it’s beautiful. The beauty of the Lord came in. And I’ve only done a fourth of it, but it’s all done in this exquisite beauty and order. And all the ideas of it, and all the practicality of it He has given to me. And I want to go in the garage and sit, because, (Jennifer laughs, and Martha joins in) because I see it now. And I knew some months ago that I needed to start there. And it’s just, He keeps giving me the ideas and the energy to do it, so it’s not work. And I can do it in the heat of the day because it’s cool there, and I can play music and do the work slowly, and there’s no hurry, there’s not frenzy, there’s no, there’s no labor. There’s no exertion, there’s just the energy, the quiet energy of the Lord. And the ideas of the Lord, that’s what’s so wonderful. It’s somethig else to have the energy to do it, but to have the ideas of the Lord, to have the order. He is a God of such… One of the most beautiful things in the Lord to me is His order. And when I know I’m in Him, His order just descends on everything. And, but His order sometimes is in the middle of chaos, and that’s what I find difficult to take and to reconcile. I want to live in His order regardless of what is around. But the beauty of His order is the beauty of the Lord. David said, “I want to do one thing, to dwell in the presence of the Lord, to behold the beauty of the Lord.” And that is practical. That’s, that’s amazingly practical. So thank you for bringing the… The labor of the Lord is both an expression and an accomplishment of His beauty. And it’s a place to know Him, a place to see Him in operation inside your own body. Oh! It’s so exciting! And I’m going to tell you the first time I began to learn the rest was in 1985, and this is 2011, and I have been learning it ever since. And will be learning how deep and complete the rest we’ve been given, is. And I just, Oh! Bless the Lord to bring it to us. But He’s had to severely hinder me to get me there. He’s cornered me, pressured me, brought me to failure, to get me there. Because I have, I have said, “I fear I’ll not enter the rest.” I do have that fear. And, and I’ve prayed fervently, take me to the rest. And the rest is of faith, everything is faith. I have something to do. I’m to have the faith that He will do it. He will actually perform it in my hands.
(Jennifer) Ok, what just fascinated me is that you’re talking about the rest, but it’s not… whenever I heard the rest of the Lord, I always thought passive.
(M) Inert.
(Jennifer) Yes. And what you’re talking about, experiencing the Lord, is about as kinetic as you could possible get. In the sense of you know, body, soul, spirit, the Lord is there, and He’s completely in it, so the rest of the Lord, the experience of Him, the coming to know Him, the unveiling of Him, the revealing of Him, and your heart being opened more and more every single time? That is not inert, that is not passive.
(M) Not at all, yeah.
(Jennifer) It is an explosion! And yet He calls it rest, which is just to me, I’m laughing because I don’t know anything. I want to say that right now. The beauty of the Lord, I have always tended to separate out the mundane and the rest of that, and try and keep Him away from that, because I thought it was gross and dirty and shameful and I can’t keep this together, and I require this, and Lord don’t look right now my hair’s all messed up. You know what I mean? (Martha laughs.) Like, seriously! But it was that kind of, it’s kind of ridiculous, but it was that sort of thing that I don’t know what the Lord’s beauty is, and He has to show me and say here’s what I find beautiful. And you don’t know Me; you think you know Me, you know nothing about Me.
(M) We think He’s ethereal, He’s only spiritual.
(Jennifer) Yes!
(M) And the discovery that God is practical is a wonderful discovery. And this is, this is what Paul prayed, “That the eyes of your heart may be in enlightened, so you may know the hope of His calling, the riches of glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.” And see that power is the power that comes from rest. I rest, He works. And because He works in the divine life, it’s life that works, not the… the only work the human can do is a work of death.
(J) Hmmm.
(M) That’s what we can produce and that’s what we do, and it kills us. That kind of work kills us and diminishes our joy. It’s a drudgery, human labor is a complete drudgery, but the work of the Lord is a power, not an inertia. It’s the power to live your life and your responsibilities in the most practical realm. That’s what He taught me in the kitchen years ago. I am… You cannot do one thing apart from Me, and I am to perform what you have to do, actually perform it, practically. That’s what we don’t know as the gospel. It’s unknown, and that is the, that’s the glory of knowing Him.
