Podcast: Download (47.5KB)
Subscribe: RSS
with Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
(J) I feel like I wrestle with myself more than I wrestle with Christ. But it feels like I’m wrestling with Christ, but I think I’m wrestling more with myself.
(M) Good. Wrestling is trying to conquer it and fix it, and trying to change.
(J) Yeah, yeah, but I mean you know, Jacob got in the weeds and wrestled with the angel all night and said bless me.
(M) Well I think in another sense you are wrestling with God. It’s just not direct. You’re wrestling with yourself, but it is in the end. Jacob thought he was wrestling with man, then he thought it was an angel, then it’s God. So the man you’re wrestling with is you, but behind it and beyond it and ultimately over it, the struggle is with God, because He wants to live in majesty and splendor in your earthen vessel that is still human.
(J) Well, I know for a fact; this I do know, that He loves that. That He loves when we will wrestle out our humanity and His divinity out in the same vessel. I know He… that struggle excites Him.
(M) Yes. It’s on the reality of what is the dilemma. The dilemma is this human and divine, and the dichotomy, the paradox of that. So it is wrestling with the reality. If you didn’t wrestle against your licentious sin nature, then it wouldn’t be exciting to Him. If you turned religious and wouldn’t be human, that would not be exciting to Him. But because you’re wrestling it out, as Jacob did, his whole life was a wrestling it out; he may not have known it. He took care of himself. That’s the point. He saved himself. He took what God had given; he stole what God had already given; which is who we are. Jacob is the picture of the human sin nature, and God’s conquering of it. And He conquered it by letting him be under someone who was more deceitful than himself, Laben. But the whole wrestling… God said I will go with you and I’ll bring you back, which is amazing; and He did. I will go with you, no condemnation; God had no condemnation.
(J) No, because I don’t think that He condemns the struggle. I don’t think He condemns the wrestling. I don’t. I just… I will never believe it. I will never believe it, because in some way it is union and the love affair.
(M) Yes.
(J) It is. That is the dance. To do the dance between the human and the divine, to have the wrestling out with God; it is an elegant dance, but it doesn’t look very elegant. I think, I mean you know, I believe that it… You know, I’m not talking about a waltz or anything like that, but I just think that in the heavens I would love to see what it is, if the angels really do rejoice with the human that will grapple with their humanity and with God.
(M) Grapple, that’s what Jacob did. And no, I don’t think God does condemn that. What He condemns is the religious or the licentious. But to bring the two together is the miracle of the incarnation. And I’m going to take a risk soon, and I’ll go ahead and do it here. But I’ve pondered and pondered the anti-Christ spirit, anyone that denies that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. I’ve always known there was something I couldn’t get about that. What it means is not just to deny that Christ came. It means to deny that He came in the flesh, that God came into humanity and lived; and that God, in the born-again believer, comes into humanity again, and Christ is in a human form. It just happens to be you.
(J) Ok, well that was just, that just exploded my head so, ok.
(M) (Martha laughs) So I’m beginning to believe that to deny the humanity of Christ, is anti-Christ. I don’t know if that’s right, but I’m seeing it and I can’t un-see it, that it is so crucial. It is that crucial to understand the union of God with His own humanity.
(J) Ok, would the demons say ‘son of God’?
(M) I don’t know, Ill have to look it up.
(J) Look it up real quick. It’s Matthew, Matthew. Look in the ah… when He meets the demoniac.
(M) Here it is, “Son of God”.
(J) Very interesting; he says “Son of God”.
(M) “The demons cried out.” “When He came to the Gadarenes, two men who were demon possessed met Him as they were coming out of the tombs. They were so extremely violent that no one could pass by that way. And they cried out saying, what business do we have with each other Son of God?” See to know He was God is one thing, but to know that He was God in union with humanity, that He became human… That is what the enemy would want us to deny; and we do it religiously. We do it. It is so essential, and I’ve struggled so to express it, but it is so essential to relate to Christ as human. He is the High Priest who has known everything we’ve known, yet without sin. And when you know that He is, He was human, you have an intimacy with Him in the struggle to be human. Do you understand?
(J) Well He has so tied Himself to this earth and to us.
(M) Exactly, exactly! That’s it! God created us. There’s a created self, and a sin nature. And that created self God wants to restore. He’s going to have His way. He made humanity to, for companionship, and for the expression of Himself. So that He as the Father who is love could have a place to pour out His Fatherhood and His love, His enormous generosity, His enormous giving.
(J) Aren’t you glad that we’re on this side of the cross with that?
(M) Oh, yeah.
(J) Really. Even though He was totally involved with, with humanity, but it was totally different prior to the cross.
(M) And we must understand that, John. That is essential right there. Jesus said, ‘the Holy Spirit has been with you, now He will be in you’, big difference. Your Counselor is within. And the Holy Spirit and Christ is in you, the hope of glory; and that is the mystery. The mystery is the union of God with humanity. And it’s so wonderful because God cannot be bested. He cannot be thwarted. He cannot be stopped. He has solved Eden, the loss of His creation to Satan. He solved it. And we really don’t believe it’s been utterly, totally, ultimately, perfectly solved, because He has taken our sinful nature and He laid it on Himself, and we died. That sin-nature in me died with Him.
(J) Well John Eldredge has written those books, “Wild At Heart” and everything, to free a man to be a man. But this message for me is not just freeing my manhood to be able to be a man; it’s freeing my humanity to be human. I need to be human, and ah… Do you see what I’m saying?
(M) Yes, yes I do. And that’s what I’m trying to convey, however poorly. I’m trying to build on that humanity of Christ, which is missing. And if it’s missing, it’s going to be religious, fruitless religion. There has to be the union of the divine and the human, in Christ, in me, in you, in every born-again believer. And when He says ‘be a child’, this is what He means. You’re not to stop being human; He’s not going to remove the basic human nature. And I have implied that, John. I have poorly stated it at times, and poorly understood it. But He wants us to be natural, dependent, and that’s what we fight so hard. That’s the struggle… To take care of ourselves, to build defenses, to be sufficient; and I am never, never sufficient. I cannot bear… I have a wonderful life and I cannot bear it. I have many sufferings, but I have a wonderful life compared to so many. Yet any life that God assigns to you, you cannot bear, you cannot manage you cannot live. And the delight of God is to be everything to us so that we’re just madly in love with Him because of His faithfulness. And only in dependence do you really love Him. You love who takes care of you. That’s who we are. We’re basic and base. We’re primal in our very being. All this other stuff is adult arrogance. But when He is absolutely sufficient every moment, you’re just wild about Him. You just can’t contain how wonderful He is or you can’t express how wonderful He is. But you only find it in your human destitution. And pride won’t let you go, won’t let us go to that bottom, bottoming out of human need, living there. It’s very difficult to live there. It’s very difficult to get there, to that dependence. And then when you get there it is not comfortable, because you don’t have control of anything. You don’t have anything in yourself that can do it. You are just nothing. And learning to live there in joy and faith is the, is the crisis. It’s just that progression until you just look for Him every moment. (Martha speaks this next section out of depths of feeling.) And you live by every word that proceeds out of His mouth. That’s how you, you exist only by His voice, and His presence, His giving of Himself. You live by that. You have no other source, in humanity, in people, or in yourself, you have no source but the Voice. He must continually give you His mind, or you can’t bear this life. It’s, it’s ah…. That’s where you meet His complete sufficiency for anything you live through. For any simple thing… Just sitting in an airplane, being able to endure a long delay, that’s nothing really. Being able to… to do His will. You have to have His constant presence and voice. And I wake up every morning hungry for the Word. I don’t wake up full. I wake up hungry, just as you do, hungry for breakfast. And I’m hungry again, over and over through the day for the Word. He not only wants to express Himself through you, He wants to reveal Himself to you. And He can only be revealed in His splendor, and His generosity, His complete perfectness, through your need. And your need is found only in your basic humanity, your primal childlike ‘self’, that you really are. See, a child is spontaneous, a child just ‘is’. And He wants to return us to that. “Except you go back and become as a little child, you will never enter the Kingdom,” never. (Martha is weeping as she continues.) And it’s only in this union of the divine and the human, that we’re willing to be, that we experience the Kingdom. The Kingdom is not open to this adult self. It’s not open to the ethereal divine saint. It’s not open. It’s not open to the human license, the human ‘mess’; it’s only open to the human in need of the Divine for every breath. And when we’re willing in humility to be that, or in humiliation, which is how He gets you there. When you’re willing to be there we experience the Kingdom, and we bring the Kingdom, without knowing it, without trying, just by His presence, His Lordship. That, John, is His Lordship in reality, the human letting the divine be enough, and having no contribution to it except to enjoy it. That is the Christian life. And anything short is not. It is when He is really King. That’s when He is really King, when He really does rule in glory and outpouring. That is the Kingdom. It’s such a splendid plan. It’s so perfect. God has what He wanted. He originally wanted it this way. It is so that those who will live in their humanity are fully illumined in light with a single eye, not an eye on yourself anymore. You’re through with yourself! But an eye that sees Him; I have prayed for that for years, give me a single eye. But that’s what it takes, to have a single eye. It is to have no sufficiency, no power, no strength no, no control. And when you are there, you’re illumined in every part, and you don’t see it. You don’t feel it, but you do enjoy it. That’s the destiny of the believer, to come to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth, because it is Him alone. My participation is merely to receive everything, to be myself, and to receive everything. And when you can contribute nothing except to be a child, then you can receive, and that is The Kingdom, the secret into the Kingdom. It’s too wonderful to imagine. I thank You. I thank You. I will thank You forever. I will thank You and praise You forever.
