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The Priestly Prayer Life: Experiencing Revival
Episode #482
February 28, 2016
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
This is the continuation of a series of Podcasts started in Episode #481.
(Martha) There’s a verse I have read a number of times, but I saw it as if for the first time, and I want to share it. So, the essence of a Christian’s life is prayer, and if you give yourself to prayer, then you touch the Priesthood, and you access the Priesthood, and the Priest can manifest through you. So, it’s Jesus’ prayer that made Him function as a Priest, and it was His sacrifice that gave Him that position eternally. But this is the verse. It’s in Mark 6:56. Now we know one episode where the woman touched the hem of His robe and was healed. Well, this one says, “Whenever He entered villages or cities or country sides, they were laying sick in the marketplaces and imploring Him, begging Him, that they might just touch the fringe of His cloak. And as many as touched it were healed.” “Were being healed” in one translation, “as many as touched the fringe of His garment were whole.” And all of a sudden I saw the fringe of the garment meant it was His prayer shawl. So they touched the prayer of Jesus. And He is ever interceding as the Priest, still the Priest. And we are called to go to the Priest with our prayers. We’re told in Hebrews, “Come boldly before the throne of grace and find help in time of need.” But that struck me so, that what they touched was the essence of His communion with God in prayer, His prayer to do the will of God, His pouring out of Himself so that God might be everything in Him. And it was so powerful to me, because sometimes I will say, “Lord Jesus, show us what You are praying.” And many times He has even in our meetings to know what He’s praying. I remember I did that, and He was praying for the Bride, for the spotlessness and the purity of the Bride. His great passion is the Bride. So, in this day and age, and I’ll read somebody, another generation, and they’ll say the same thing. But in this generation prayer is not the power that we seek.
(J) UmUm.
(Martha) It’s headlights and hoopla and worldliness and persuasion and…
(J) Showmanship.
(Martha) Ah, that’s the word. That’s the word, showmanship and not simple prayer. So, we’re missing the power of God, the power of God is in prayer. And the one thing the enemy opposes more than anything else is our prayer. You have to so pray to pray. You have to pray to have the unction of prayer. You have to beg for the Spirit to pray, because it’s the Spirit who prays when that gets things answered. It’s the connection there and the surrender there.
(J) I’m sitting here listening and just kind of taking this in, and how the bottom line of what I’m seeing is that, what you’re saying is that the Priesthood, accessing the Priesthood is accessing the life of Christ, the Person and the life of Christ.
(Martha) Umhmm.
(J) That that is what the Priesthood is. Right?
(Martha) Oh, John, you said it better than me. Keep on.
(J) No, I mean that’s, I mean I’m just listening to you. So, to access the Priesthood is to access His life. They are one and the same.
(Martha) Yes.
(J) And that makes it so simple; again, simple, non-convoluted, just real easy, simple. If you want the life of Christ, it’s in the Priesthood, and the Priesthood is the life of Christ.
(Martha) And if you let Christ be your life and let Him function on every level in every situation, letting Him be Himself, you will hit the Priesthood, and it will take you over. And you might not even know. I didn’t know that’s what it was in the beginning at all. I didn’t know it had that name. I didn’t need to, but just in dependence and desperation I learned how to, I learned how before I understood that it was Jesus, Himself, who lived that way. That shows you that anybody can do this. It’s not a matter of maturity. It’s a matter of surrender.
(J) Not only can anybody, everybody is supposed to. This isn’t like an option. This isn’t like, you know, “oh, you know, I have the ministry of, you know, blah, blah, blah. I have the ministry of a priest. I have the ministry of a prophet,” well, no. The Priesthood is the life of Christ, which is our responsibility to surrender to, to submit to, to access…
(Martha) And when we do, we will live like He lived, that we have no initiative on our own.
(J) But the amazing thing is that it’s not optional. That is the requirement. He wanted a nation of priests. He literally wanted a nation of His life being offered and brought forth.
(Martha) And you know, John, when Malachi was written, the end of the Old Testament, the end of the story of the Old Testament, the proof that man cannot do it, the fault was very much laid on the priests. The priests were to teach the people what was holy. The priest was to present the standard of righteousness. And the priest was also to separate the holy from the profane for the people. And the priests were not doing that. In Malachi the priests were not doing that. And so, in the end… The church is often blamed for the state of the world and the United States and the state of the church, minimum, but it is the failure to be priests that’s going to be found in the end that we did not seek God to rule us, so that He could rule through us; to correct us, so that we could be those who can correct others. That’s a very awesome, frightening thing that the great revival that I’m praying for and asking others to pray for is going to have to take place with people who are priests, believers who will be priests, who will see what God wants to do. The great movement in the campuses of the United States is from young people who are listening and praying. It’s not from preaching. Preaching is going on, but it’s a massive movement of prayer, and I want to see that massive… I want us to be swept up in that massive movement of prayer, because that is the priest’s only hope of contributing, bringing the Kingdom down to earth according to God’s will.
(J) And it’s our only hope as a nation.
(Martha) It’s the only hope for this generation and the next if there is one. It’s the only… For me it’s the last great revival before His return, so that millions will not go into hell, and millions will instead be saved. So, the passion is, my passion is not that I can pray, I know how to pray, but my passion is, “God, give me prayer and intercession for that.” And He is faithful to do that. The Holy Spirit is the Pray-er. He knows the will of God, and He can, in us, the Holy Spirit the one who can pray with groans that can’t be uttered, beyond us.
You know what else, John? I want to somewhere, somehow perhaps in writing, perhaps in a book, perhaps in somewhere, I want to teach people to pray like this. I want to teach prayer. As you say, it is so simple.
(J) Is that where you’re going for the Message of the Month of March?
(Martha) Well, it’s going to be Melchizedek I think, and about the priesthood. And perhaps that’s where it will begin, but I really want to convey – I won’t say the importance of prayer. That’s putting it mildly. But as you have said, that is not optional, it’s what we are called to, and we’re accountable to. And I’m certainly no expert on it, and I’m not, I can’t say I’m faithful. I can only say I pray to pray, and He is faithful to pray. It’s interesting that it’s not only in Mark 6 that they implored Him, “Please let me touch the hem of Your robe.” They had to ask for that. They had to want it. And the healing of that, their healing was in His prayers. And the woman with the issue of blood, she is mentioned twice, and after she touched, after she was healed by the fringe of His garment – that’s very clear even in the basic translations like New American, NIV; the fringe of the garment. There were others then after her implored to touch the fringe of His garment. Because she did it there were others who realized that was the place of healing to touch His prayers, and the power that He gained through prayer. He had to gain power through prayer, just as we have to. He had to gain the will of God and the plan of the next day.
(J) I wonder if the Jewish version of that, that calls it the tallit and the tzitzits; I wonder if, it would be interesting to look at.
(Martha) It says the fringe is the border of the garment with the Jews in general and particularly our Lord wore in obedience to the Mosaic law. Numbers 15 (let me see what this says) they should make for themselves tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations that they shall put on the tassel of each corner a cord of blue, and it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord, so as to do them and not follow after your own heart and your own eyes, after which you played the harlot, so that you may remember to do all My commandments. The blue represents the sky, heaven, I’m sure. Wearing such ribbons of blue on the borders was meant to remind them of the commandments. And for Christians the figure in the New Testament is putting on of Christ, the divine One. Matthew 9:20..
(J) Is that it?
(Martha) Umhmm, and Luke 8:44.
(J) Well, I just looked it up in the Orthodox Jewish Bible. It is the ztitzits. It’s the tassels that was required in Numbers, was it?
(Martha) Umhmm.
(J) And they would put the tassels and the knots in the corners of the garment that they would wear to remind them of the Mosaic law.
(Martha) And the commandments, and the color was blue, heaven.
(J) And it had a blue thread in it.
(Martha) This says, this commentary says blue ribbon. And the New Testament is that the putting on of Christ. The figure in the New Testament is the putting on of Christ. Romans 13. Let me see what that says.
(J) The undergarment was the shadow of the reality of putting on Christ.
(Martha) Ohhhhh, ohhh yeah. The symbol. Romans 13:14 “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.” So, that’s kinda, that’s what I did. I put on Christ, and got rid of Martha. And He was willing to be. And I can’t, I tried to describe it in the podcast last time, but there was rest in that. If we could just let Christ be Himself and have free reign with us, that’s the rest. If we could believe He would do that… And I’m just excited that this is being presented as available, not optional, necessary for every believer to be in the Priesthood. That means He does it all. In my situation He did it all. He was the comfort, not me. He was the Word of the Scripture, not me. He was the Listener, not me. He was the, in a couple of situations, He was the Counselor in me.
(J) You accessed His life.
(Martha) Yes.
(J) That was, and you put on His life. That was accessing the Priesthood.
(Martha) Umhmm, yeah. And there was rest in it for me, extremely peaceful quiet. And it’s tied to a number of things. One of them is the wilderness, how God prepares us to be the priests by cleansing and by reducing us to dependence. So the ultimate end of the wilderness is the priesthood.
(J) Well, I invite you to download or purchase the Message of the Month for March and hear the remainder of this, and really hear about the Priesthood in an amazing way. This is…
(Martha) This is just touching it. This is only touching it lightly.
(J) And so, I’m looking forward to hearing what you’re going to say. I’ll be taping that probably in the next week. And then, we’ll have it available the first week of March. So, I’m looking forward to that. So, I invite you to get that and enjoy that with us.
(Martha) So, Lord, we commit it to You, and with just, with tears we thank you for such a privilege, for such a ministry to this world of letting you be the Priest. Thank you for such a high calling. We don’t, we can’t do it, and we don’t deserve it. Yet, You’ve done it. You’ve done it all, so take this message and do with it as You will for the glory of Jesus, our great High Priest. Amen.
Yes, prayer IS truely paramount! And how much it is, is far beyond our comprehension!
The words you say like: it’s a requirement, not an option, to surrender, no iniciative of our own, bring me to the conclusion that prayer is in fact the act of being in a relationship with Christ. Praying is relationship. I give in, He takes over. Isn’t THIS christianity?!
Therefore the dessert! It must come first before we can enter Jesus’ priesthood! It’s where our heart is changed! Then we finally exercise our will to surrender and receive Him…
Like the sick woman. She knew her need and chose to reach out and touch Him who was One with God and there she was healed and entered Rest!
I feel like I’ve only repeated everything you just said! But I’m amazed at the veiw!!!!!
Teach us to pray Lord! Take us into true intimacy with God!
Amen. May He raise this message for His Son’s preeminence.
My heart is so full right now for many reasons that I don’t believe any comment I can make will be sufficient.
One note however, “I want to somewhere, somehow perhaps in writing, perhaps in a book, perhaps somewhere, I want to teach people to pray like this. I want to teach prayer.”
Where do I sign up!?
Yes, touching the “garment” of private prayer (surrender) is just… no words.