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The Wonderful Mystery
Episode #175
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
(J) Well, if I could sing like Julie Andrews, I would sing the hills are alive with the sound of music. But I cannot sing, and so I will not violate the ears of our listener’s. But we’re sitting here on a beautiful spring day. It is one of our first for this winter and it’s just absolutely beautiful; there’s not a cloud in the sky and it’s a nice little breeze. And so we’re enjoying that, and we decided we’re going to do a podcast today about the mystery of God. And by the way since the last podcast we were able to acquire Punjana tea. And I have contacted the Thompson family in Ireland and asked them where could I get it here in the States. And they said we can’t get the exact tea, but it’s very similar, and so there’s a company here in the U.S. that is now selling it. And so we ordered a whole mess of Punjana tea.
(M) And they told you that it will soon be in the American supermarkets, so…
(J) So this podcast is brought to you by Punjana tea. (Martha laughs)
(M) Well, I did a tape of the month, I think it was January, the very first one, that talked about God in a box. Is that right? And how much we confine Him and define Him, and lose Him by that… I think that’s what I spoke about but… I think one of the great problems of this day, John, and it’s Laodicea , is that we will not accept the mystery that ‘we don’t know’. We will know the future, when He has said don’t consider tomorrow, deal with today, this moment. And the reality is there’s no yesterday, no tomorrow either.
(J) Right, right.
(M) But having… I think there is the lust to know, the dependence in the Laodicean age, the last age, is the dependence on knowing. And that’s back to the beginning of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge which is death. And you know this is going to be a radical statement. Let me see if you… I think you will agree though, that knowledge of the truth apart from the Spirit is death.
(J) Absolutely. Hmhmm.
(M) How do you see that?
(J) Ok, an example of that for me would be; I had a friend who, a childhood friend, who became a Christian, but… And she would say ‘the Lord, the Lord, the Lord,’ whatever it was, ‘the Lord’. And every time she would say the word Lord, it… something inside me cringed. And I didn’t understand why, but I realized that her definition of the Lord, and my definition of the Lord, were just different at the time. I’ve not been around her for awhile so I don’t know where she is now, but I just think that it was different. And so you just said that Satan quoted scripture, but without the Spirit it’s profane. And that’s exactly what her saying ‘Lord’ meant to me somehow; it was profane to me. And it was just something I, wasn’t conscious of anything, it was just I kind of recoiled off of it.
(M) You were young in the Lord and you might not have known to discern what it was, but in essence it was not reality. He was not Lord; you call Me Lord, Lord; why call Me Lord, Lord, and do not do the things I say? Well, I think what I want to say is that we… the danger of this age is the ‘knowledge’ that will blind us and strip us naked and leave us in delusion. See, we have… We’ve been talking about the Blood, and I think next we’re going to talk about the flesh. But first I want to talk… Before we go to that I want to talk about reality in God, and the reality is that we can never, ever, ever know Him. We can know Him better corporately where everyone is operating in their gifts, and their anointing. There’s some… many times when we meet for prayer there’s just such a, a symphony going on of this one and that one contributing. But the vastness of God, in an individual life can’t be comprehended. It’s like, John, we want to know His purpose, we want to know His goal, we want to know the vision, but you know the Amplified says, “For want of a vision, the people perish”. It’s a redemptive vision of God. What we need is a vision of God. And I… frankly in this day and age I’m suspect of any vision that isn’t revealing Christ in His transcendence and His victory.
(J) Hmhmm. We usually think of, well I don’t know… I have thought of that a vision, catch a vision, or you’d perish, is that you had a vision of ‘what to do’ or ‘how to act’ or a project, or something you know. That’s always what the vision is, oh yes, we’re going here, there’s our vision and we can move forward. No, if that’s your vision it’s just a, you know, a corporation, and it’ll leave you at the end, if not before, it’ll leave you wanting. But if your vision is for Him, if your vision is His centrality, then that’s a never-ending vision. It’s an expansive vision. It expands and expands and expands and expands, because you’ll never ever see all of Him. It’s a developing, a further seeing.
(M) Umhmm.
(J) And I mean have you’ve seen that people have taken that vision and seen it as a crusade or something?
(M) Yes, oh yes, and I have too, I always thought it, was taught it in early years. And then one day I discovered the Amplified, and I realized how true that is, that the most valid vision is to see Christ, and to see His transcendent place, His majesty now, on the Throne. But let me go back to Laodicea. “We are rich, and increased of goods and have need of nothing.” And above everything in this day we focus on ‘education is the answer’. And it never has been.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) Never has been. Jennifer was telling me yesterday. She’s our ‘news monitor’.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) She keeps up with world affairs, and tells us. And she said the Germans had snubbed Greece when Greece requested a loan. And she said the irony is the, the… What the Germans said was, “Get up early and stay up late. Work, and then we’ll help you out.” And she said the irony is when German’s were still barbaric, Greece had developed democracy and were civilized. So, the valuable knowledge the scripture says is the knowledge of God. But I feel like I’m not getting where I want to be, so I’ll just make it personal. I have said on the Manna that I have been sick. It’s not life threatening, and I have been sick for some months now. It’s not life threatening, but it’s miserable, and it’s been extreme suffering. And it came ironically as we as a group were hearing our calling to manifest Christ and break yokes and bring, you know… I think it was Isaiah 58, the fast that is called for is to break yokes. And then one of the promises is “your healing will spring forth speedily.” Isaiah 58 is a favorite of mine and it’s sort of like cause and effect. You do this, and God will do that. But strangely on the heels of that I became sick. And I don’t want to talk about the sickness, it’s irrelevant, because I’m coming to the end of it, and God’s promised me a vital energetic older life, so… But it has been a great mystery. And I have said, you know, what is my sin, and somewhat I feel like it’s sort of a Job experience more than a sickness. And so, I got into it, and I have been amazed at Oswald Chambers understanding of Job’s friends, and Job’s dilemma. Job’s dilemma was that he knew God. He knew he had served Him and he couldn’t understand the suffering. I haven’t really been there as such, but I have wanted to know what He would be willing to tell me. But most of the time I have lived in the misery of it, and pain, and just waited. But I wanted to share some things that I never quite understood, even though I wrote about it in “All And Only”, I wrote about Job. I didn’t write about his friends because I never really understood what they did wrong, because they said the right things.
(J) Umhmm.
(M) It’s the very thing we were just talking about, John. They said marvelous things about God, but it was coming from their own pride and superiority to Job. Because he was suffering they all assumed there was a sin. And Oswald says that, “The Lord made Job’s soul a battleground with Satan.” Now that’s a mystery. And I think it’s… I think it’s real. I think that does happen. We can say ok, it’s demonic; and you can’t get it to leave on that ground, because God has a purpose. Now, I believe… let me say I believe in, that healing is in the atonement. I believe in health in Christ. I believe that if He’s dwelling in your body and He’s Lord that you have complete health. Now what does that do with this situation? I don’t know. I know that God is in control, and He is going somewhere. I don’t know where.
(J) Well, I thought it was very interesting what Jennifer said the other day as well. She said that Job’s friends not only were in a place of superiority and pride, but they were also in a place of fear. Because if God was that powerful that He could do that, that He could make your soul a place of a battle place and sustain you, but take you to the brink of death and destruction, then that made you way too vulnerable to God. And so, it was like saying, well this has got to be something wrong with you, because if it is something wrong with you, then I can just avoid doing that. (Martha laughs quietly) But if you unfortunately aren’t doing anything incorrect, and there’s not something ‘wrong’, then that means I’m that vulnerable to God, and God could do this ‘to me’.
(M) Umhmm. And if you really go along with God, you have less and less explanations of Him. And… (Martha laughs)
(J) And less control. I mean I don’t think we ever have control of God, but we certainly do think… We think, you know, when we first become Christians we think that oh, you know, Jesus and I are ‘buddies’, we’re just pals, it’s just great. (Martha is laughing) And then we realize my ‘pal’s’ not playing right and He’s not being the way He’s supposed to be. And He doesn’t play well with others like He’s supposed to. And you want to ‘tell the teacher’, but He does what He wants to do.
