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The Spirit and The Word
Episode #497
June 12, 2016
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
This is the continuation of a series of Podcasts started in Episode #495.
(Martha) Now you are interested in the Word without the Spirit.
(John) Yeah. I’m writing a blog right now about being so involved with the words in the Bible that you’re not involved with the Person that the Bible is written about.
(Martha) And by.
(John) And by, yeah. And so, I think that that’s a tragedy that you would be so steeped in the Word that you didn’t experience the Word, that you didn’t have the Spirit of God bringing that Word out and making it a living experience in your life.
(Martha) I’ve got a scripture. Jesus said, “You search for Me in the Scriptures, for in them you think you find Me, but you will not come to Me and have life.” That’s what you’re talking about.
(John) That’s precisely it. And, I mean, I know many people who literally believe because they study the Word and they’re in the Word all the time that they have the life. And I’m like, “No, you have the Word. You have the words, but you don’t have the life. You have the words…
(Martha) The information.
(John) Yeah, you have the information about the Man, about God, but you don’t have God, because it has to go beyond the words in the Book. And it’s truth. I believe it’s absolutely the infallible Word of God. It’s the truth, but unless those words come into my life and I experience them in my life as His life… If I don’t do that, then they have no point. They’re just, they’re literally all that they’re doing is inflating my brain and my thoughts.
(Martha) “Knowledge puffeth up.”
(John) And if I have the knowledge of God, but I don’t have the experience of that knowledge and of God going out into life, it’s a tragedy. I’m missing it, and it’s death, absolutely. So, I love, I mean I love the Word. I love how the Word is like a kaleidoscope, where you can look into it, and it’s ever changing, and it’s the same exact scripture. The same exact verse can mean something tomorrow, be different than it does today for my life. But I have to come through the Word. That’s my plumb line, but I have to come through the Word…
(Martha) To the Person.
(John) To the Person. And if I don’t come through the Person, then it’s death. It literally is legalism and it literally is I’ve stopped in a black and white world. And that’s tragic. If that’s as far as I go is the pages of this Book, and I’m not experiencing it with the Spirit, then I’m dead. And so, I’m not elevating experience over the Word, because I think that my experience has to be based on the Word. If it’s not, then that’s weird. You know, I can go off in fancy and believe all kinds of stuff, but if I allow the Word to be my plumb line, and then I experience the life of Christ; He left the Spirit of God, He left the Spirit of Christ here that I would experience the life of Christ. And He is the Word made flesh. Christ was the Word made flesh. And so, you know, I can’t wait to finish writing this and release it. But I do know that it will hair lip the legalists, you know, because if your whole relationship is with the words on the page and not the life of the Person that the Bible is written about, I think that that’s a tragedy.
(Martha) John, you saw always so big, and this is how you weigh things. It’s relationship. In all your writing it’s back to relationship with Him, and that’s what… When your relationship is with black words on the white page, it’s not with a living Person.
(John) You’re in prison to this Book. You literally could be in prison to the Word, which is a tragedy, because the Word was love letter written to us to show us who we were following, who He was, who He has always been. Who? Who, Who, Who? Who is the Person that we’re following? Who is this God, this three Person God, this amazing God that we’re following? It’s revelatory. It’s invitational. It’s exciting. It’s a love letter. But if I literally sit there, and I focus on the words and the pages and think that because I comb over them and know exactly every infliction and syntax and tense and all… Just because I know that doesn’t mean I know a hill of beans about the actual Person. You have to look at this Book as a description of our God. This is who He is. This is how He interacts with us. This is who He wants to be. This is what He wants to do in our lives. This is who He wants to… We have to take it out of this Book and get it into the world. And you can only do that with the Spirit. But, you know, it’s an imprisonment, and I make the point in the post, ok, what happens if I’m in prison without the words. What happens if I have no Bible and I’m locked in… Does that mean that I’m isolated from God? Well, no, absolutely not. I have the Spirit of the living God living inside of me. He is the living Word inside of me. And what’s the one Scripture about…?
(Martha) Oh, “You have this anointing in you, you need no one to teach you.” Is that it?
(John) That Scripture…
(Martha) The anointing of knowing God is in you. So, when you read the Scripture, and you’ve said it many times. When you read the Scripture your spirit resonates with the Spirit, and Word is yours, living, living stone. We are living stones. He’s a living stone. The Scriptures… Oh, this verse in 1st Peter said, “The living and enduring Word of God.” The Word of God is living when the Spirit is in. It’s such a science when it’s without the Spirit.
(John) And that’s a tragedy, and that’s the tragedy I’m seeing is that just because I have the intellectual mapping out of the Scriptures doesn’t mean I know the Person that they’re written about. And that’s an imprisoning.
(Martha) So, I know and have had many experiences with the Lord where He struck me, and where He enlightened me, and where His ecstasy came, but I can tell you that many experiences put you on the floor. They don’t exalt you to want to go out and tell it. When I had to tell about the experiences of the Lamb, it’s crushing to me to tell it. I die to tell it, because the real experiences of God are so powerful that they put you on the floor. But what you and Jennifer write about is getting to know Him. That’s all your, that’s all you write about is getting to know Him, and the experience you have of getting to know Him. We are to have experiences. We are to have great and marvelous feelings, terrible feelings of repentance and terrible times of anguish. That’s normal to experience Him and all the gamut. I think David did. The Psalms are written out of experience, so I want, I pray fervently for the ones in Shulamite to experience Him.
(John) Well, David had the jubilation and the ecstasy of the worship and of the interaction with this amazing, living God as well as the revelation and the repentance of seeing who he was in comparison to this glorious God, and how far he fell short and how his choices were so in error. And so, you have both the experiences happening.
(Martha) Umhmm. And David experiences in his Psalms, and who knows? It could have been written over a period of a month, one Psalm. But he goes into, expresses his anguish, and then he comes to the fulfillment and that’s only with a Person. You can’t deal with life with black words and information. You have to deal with God in your heart and spirit, and then you experience Him as He answers you. And then you are satisfied. So, I’m a great proponent for experiencing God. We’re supposed to.
