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The Work Is Union
Episode #251
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guests: Julie and Carole Nelson
(M) I read someone make the statement the other day. “The mark of the person who loves Him is that he ever says, I don’t have enough love for Him.” I’ve learned that people who make this grand proclamation of their undying love, don’t know themselves yet; and they haven’t been tried to find out who you love and whose love you love. But the whole thing is like Jennifer said about the booklet on prayer; it’s a dance. And Don said it’s relationship. The whole thing is about the love affair. But the love affair has been so desecrated to make it some sensual thing, some ethereal; either sensual or ethereal. That’s where people go today with the love affair. It’s not that at all. The love affair is, it’s in the ditch, in the work. It’s in the tedium of life. It’s in the stretch. It’s in the race. It’s in the travel that Don does all over the place. It’s in the nitty-gritty really, that the love affair really flourishes, because that’s where He is. That’s where He was when He was on this earth, and that’s where He is now. He came to an earthy life. It couldn’t have been more earthy, born in a stable and was a carpenter in an obscure village. His life couldn’t have been more down on the mundane than it is.
(Julie) And, and that’s the thing that I think is missing, that I passionately love. You mentioned in the CD of the month that there are times where we work really, really hard to avoid the work, and to pose as if we’re doing the work, when we’re not doing the work. And we expend a ridiculous amount of energy that way. And my, part of my discipleship with you has been coming down to the place of admitting I know nothing about anything. You know? I had, it’s like I had to start back there, because I was even in a church situation where I pretended to have a lot of things, and pretended to be doing a lot of things, and I wasn’t. And, and it was a matter of starting over and, and realizing I knew nothing about nothing, I could do nothing. But I guess I just cherish Him so much in… It’s like if you’ll quit doing that, and get into the real work, and face your failure, and face your inadequacy, and face your vulnerability, and all of that, then you do need Him in such an authentic way, and it is a love affair.
(M) Julie has had a peculiar, uncommon integrity, in her spiritual walk. And she has made a progress that is uncommon. And I’ve said to the Lord a number of times, Lord, what is it in Julie? I’ve always seen that as integrity, but in the light of a lot of other situations I’ve said, “Lord, tell me what, how can I define what it is that Julie has done.” Well this is the words He gave me, “Julie does her work.” And I’m going… I went into that to some degree on the podcast too. But the work is, the essential work before anything else, is to seek the Lord. And the purpose of seeking the Lord is to find out what His will is. And then when you find out what His will is, you have the next work of bowing your will to that Will. And Julie does her homework. She does her own work. She has worked every single confrontation of life, every challenge, every question. She does the work. She has the basic responsibility of that work. And I make the point in the CD that Adam and Eve didn’t ask God. Why? Because they knew the answer. They didn’t do the work of seeking God about the fruit of the forbidden tree. They didn’t go and ask Him anything. They just ate. Why? Because they wanted to. They would not deny themselves and go. They knew the answer. They already had the answer. They were forbidden, period. And I believe we know. I believe we know. And we don’t seek… We don’t do that initial, primary, essential work of seeking the Lord about everything, because we don’t want to have to do the work of bowing our will. We don’t want… We think that, that we’re not accountable if we don’t find out what God’s will is. I’ve said to a number of people… I said to a man who was dying, “What is God saying to you, what is His will?” And he said, “I really don’t know.” And I said, “That’s not possible. You’re just not hearing. God is not telling, not, not telling you. You’re not hearing.”
(J) You don’t want to know.
(M) You don’t want to know.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) Yeah. So that’s the difference between spiritual success and spiritual failure. If you do the work to ask the questions, to seek the Lord’s mind and His will, and then the second work is to bow your will to that will, and that means denying yourself. Anybody, anybody in the Christian, in his own Christian calling, can succeed to greatness. Anybody can. The difference is whether we will deny ourselves and accept the ‘no’. So, that’s the work.
(Carole) When I was listening to the podcast, and Don and I were enjoying also the pictures John, oh, they were so good. At the top where there’s little quotes, most of them from Martha, uhm, this was the quote on Monday; John said that it’s different on everybody’s page when they’re, when they’re watching, looking at it. But mine was, “The walk that dwells in union with the Spirit is more instinctive than deliberate.” Martha said that in May 10th of 2006. And that just jumped out at me, because as I’ve listened to the podcast this morning, I just keep hearing, seeing that word, union. Even when we were talking about the love affair in Song of Solomon, we tend as Christians to see, I am the female, and He is the male, and I do my thing and He does His thing. But it’s, it’s union. And uhm, He makes the two into one. And that is His desire I think. It just jumped off the page at me that, that it really is Christ in me the hope of glory, because it’s union. It’s not me doing my thing. It’s the participant. I am participating,. He is, we are participating together, that just blows my mind, with the Holy Spirit. I am, I am just yielding to Him. And I thought of an equation. I don’t even know if this is right. I have to think about it later. But I went back to uhm, to the words that Martha has… It took two or three years to get these words, and really live them out, and still living them out. But it was ‘let’, and ‘yes’, equals faith equals union. And I saw it in terms of a, almost an equation.
(M) I think most of us have heard us say it, don’t trust that intuitive thing. We second guess after we’ve done it; like I did about the work, the labor in the garden. And it was more intuitive than I knew. And the thing He said to me about, when He began to answer me about it, He said, “Trust Me, I am doing something. Trust Me with what you did.” That’s saying trust Me with the intuitiveness. And we start, the place we begin is, ok, condemnation of me. And, oh dear, I did it again. And I think I’m trying to, I think He’s trying to blow that lid, that pathway up for me so I don’t go there. And He’s trying to establish there’s only one pathway, and that is to seek Him for the interpretation of everything. And He’s fully able to correct me and condemn me Himself; I don’t need to take that job over; it is taken. (Martha laughs.) But that, even that initial condemnation needs to just be a question, is this true of me? Did I do that? But the essence of it, as Carole says, is when you, when you are in union, and we are, we just don’t believe and we don’t live it. When we are in union and surrender, that intuitive movement, we can trust Him with.
