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The Shining Beauty of Becoming Nothing
Episode #661
8/04/2019
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special Guest: Jennifer Wentzel
This is the continuation of a series of podcasts started in Episode #659.
It’s the depth of God’s love that orchestrates the situations and circumstances that bring us down to nothing, a place of complete dependence on the Father.
Martha:
Verse 10 in the Amplified Paul says, “Even if I am nothing, a nobody.” So he’s, he so experienced… He’s the one that said, “Joy unequaled!” But you know it, it… God is not only testing us but He’s trying to get us to the place where we can receive the outpouring of all the spiritual blessings that Jesus earned for us. He’s moving us as dumb sheep because we don’t know where we’re going. I didn’t know where I was going except it was just miserable getting there. I didn’t know the meaning until toward the end of it. He didn’t reveal it to me because I asked Him many, many times. And He didn’t tell it to me clearly until the end; that the end was simply to make me nothing. I could do nothing, change nothing. I couldn’t even accept nothing. I could do nothing about nothing. And I lived that booklet, which I’m sure everyone knows.
But I want to put it in a form that we can accept it and be well pleased by the Spirit. And you see it’s the life of Christ alone that could do that, John, that could be, could be pleased in it. And in the middle of some of the worst of it, I wrote the book Altogether Forgiven. And He just lifted me.
And in one and… I think I had two conferences where I was in that state where I was so weak that I had to be helped to the chair and I would open my mouth and my, my weak voice that I had for long is gone.
And… But, only when I came to the end of it did He began to show me that we have to be made dependent or we can’t receive. We won’t receive. We, if we are the slightest bit able, we will use it in the flesh.
I would say to the Lord, “Lord, if You give me any strength, I’ll go running with it. So I want Your life to run with it.” And I did ask Him to, “Whatever You are doing finish it so that I’ve got the lesson.” But it’s all about just equipping you to be bliss, blessed, and in bliss. It’s, it’s bringing you to the place. It’s not cruel. It’s, it’s precious. It’s loving. If He finds someone who will be reduced, He pours out so much support around that one. He gave me such incredible love and support and encouragement and then at times when like writing that big, massive book on forgiveness I would… I had the energy to write eight hours a day many days. And that was impossible to me at that time.
But Jennifer said something this morning that is so wonderful. The other thing He taught me in this time is that there’s only one issue in life and I’ve said it but I see it like never before. The only centrality and the only issue and the only prayer is for the will of God. Jennifer said the will of God is order. What I wanted was order. I wanted work. But the will of God is order. And whatever And that’s what I, that’s what He was teaching me. “Only My will. You don’t have to worry about anything else. You don’t have to seek anything else. Just My will and, and in this moment.”
There’s a little book that we years ago found in a bookstore in Atlanta. John reached out and pulled it out and it’s Sacrament of the Present Moment by Jean-Pierre de Caussade
John:
Jean-Pierre De Caussade.
Martha:
Jean-Pierre De Caussade. And that book is one of the most amazing things for me that has ever been written, because it’s about living with God in this moment only. And I have soaked in that book, page after page. I have soaked in it and prayed about it. And I believe that’s the rest He’s bringing me into is that when you are nothing and you know you have Someone who is, will do everything for you and already has got it waiting for you, you just aren’t able to receive the marvel of all His outpouring. “Eye has not seen nor ear heard neither has entered the heart of man all the things that God has prepared for those who love Him. But they are revealed to us by the Spirit.”
But we have to be made able to receive without it corrupting our, our soul. And that’s good! It’s, it’s far less suffering than to leave Him. Turning against Him over it, being bitter with Him is a living nightmare. I’ve watched it and I’ve seen it. And the fight when you’re going down into nothing is the fight to remain open to Him and to say, “I trust You. I don’t know what’s going on here but I trust You. And I will open my heart to You. I love, I will love You through this. I will not let this defeat my, my walk.” And that exercise of the will is about all you can do. But it’s the only thing you need to do because His will is the only concern for me. And, and it’s easier to live just living for His will as He moves moment by moment. That is such an easy way to live.
Jennifer:
I don’t know why but this is what was triggered by you talking about that, Martha, and it seems like I’m, I’m moving away from that but I’m not. It’s what Paul said when he was talking about boasting in his infirmities. He, he qualified it. The things that, that make him weak and infirm in the eyes of my opponent. In other word he was qualifying that it wasn’t God who said this is what makes you weak and infirm. His opponent viewed these things as in infirmities and weakness.
Martha:
And, Jennifer, when you read that this morning, I have so felt that; that my weakness was despicable to some people who believe in strength. That’s okay! That’s a suffering, too, that you have to go through.
Jennifer:
Yes, it is! It is an accusation that hits you. It’s an accusation against your relationship with God. It’s an accusation against His faithfulness to you. It basically is, it is the attack because it attacks the foundation of your relationship with Him and His goodness.
Martha:
Exactly! And it, it, it attacks my credibility.
Jennifer:
“If you were really…”
Martha:
I’m a test!
Jennifer:
Yes! “If you were really who you, you, you…”
Martha:
You say you are!
Jennifer:
“…you report to be…”
Martha:
Um hmm.
Jennifer:
“…you would not have this suffering, would you not?”
Martha:
Um hmm.
Jennifer:
It’s a Job’s friend argument.
Martha:
Yes!
Jennifer:
It’s nothing new! It’s so old!
Martha:
Right. And I, I saw at one point and it was a comfort to me when I didn’t really know about the weakness, that was His agenda and goal, that He encouraged me that the reward of Job for going through that was to see God. He saw Him.
Jennifer:
Well, and I think that to see God is to be given the ability to see with eternal eyes. To see the world… It never leaves me. It’s a reminder to me because my flesh is literally foreign to God in every single way, foreign as at enmity with Him, but when He says, “My ways are not your ways, My thoughts are not your thoughts”, okay, so this is the difference between the flesh and the divine; between the mortal and the infinite, the eternal, okay. Derek Prince gave a definition of carnal Christianity that was both terrifying and insanely simple. He said carnal Christianity is a mind that is not set on the eternal.
Martha:
Wow!
Jennifer:
Ok! And so I read that and I was like, “Oh no! I don’t even know how often I think of eternity!” Because that’s immediately where I went, was this idea that you’d be sitting around going, “Hmm, Jesus forever,” or something, right? The eternal mind. Uh uh. I have since, you know, because it has bothered me, I’ve gone to the Lord with it again and again. He’s brought me to… And He’s brought me revelation on that.
But in what Paul is talking about? In him saying, “In the eyes of my opponent’ and him clarifying that this was how his opponent, in other words the opponent of Christ. Because Paul said quite clearly, “I’m bragging because it’s Christ not me.” That was Paul’s entire… Paul had a message. It was “Christ in me the hope of glory.” That’s it! That was, that was Paul, that, he was the gospel. Pure. “In the eyes of my opponent.” In other words, not the eternal view, not the divine, not what is forever.
So God does not view weakness, such as we define it, as we do. In fact, for Him I would bet it’s almost the opposite of, “Look at this little sheep shine. Look at how there’s nothing obscuring the power of My Son, the love of My Son, the life of My Son.” This is, this is heaven rejoicing, perhaps, at a light that is shining so brightly and without obstacle out into darkness; His Son having His feet on the ground unobstructed. That, Martha, that is, I think… I am begging Him, because humanly I look at it the same way you do, John. I say, “Oh, God, please not that! Please not that.” Because I still, I still view it so short term.
The Shining Beauty of Becoming Nothing – Episode #661 – Shulamite Ministries
It’s the depth of God’s love that orchestrates the situations and circumstances that bring us down to nothing, a place of complete dependence on the Father. What hidden beauty and reward awaits the Nothing there at the end of himself and the beginning of LIFE!
Job! Yes, Job.
“That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9
“And the Lord restored…Indeed the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before.” Job 42:10
Such a beautiful testimony He has made of your life – just as He did with his “servant Job.”
❤️