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With Martha Kilpatrick and John Enslow
(M) John, we’ve just returned from maybe a secret squirrel mission. We’ve been in France for three weeks; before that we were in Ireland for a week. And the time in France, I didn’t ever write about it in the “Manna”, it was to be with Carole Nelson as she studied French. And we were on the French Riviera, which sounds very glamorous, but it was winter, cold, raining, and we didn’t do much. We just rested, and we had some wonderful times with the Lord. But something happened to me in France that was the trip. The trip wasn’t about France at all. We really didn’t see much of France. Carole and Don had been there earlier in the year, her husband, on their anniversary. They had been to this place called Eze Village, which is up above Monaco, over the Riviera, very high.
(J) The middle Cornish, or maybe it was the high Cornish, I don’t know which one it was.
(M) Well it was… You could see the whole Riviera spread out below you, and it was an awesome view. But it was a succulent garden, and it had impacted Carole. And at the time she saw it she said I wish Martha could see this. But it was not about the garden. There were sculptures in the garden of one particular artist, and they were all sculptures of women. And each figure had looked in a certain direction. Some of them looked at you, some of them didn’t. And they each had a meaning. And some of it was about God. I don’t know who the artist is spiritually, but God certainly spoke to me through it, as He did Carole back then. And this is what I wrote in my journal about it. “This is an artist’s work, a series of sculptures of women. His concept of woman is utterly fascinating. The figures are placed in different settings within the succulent garden. They look, and their gaze tells their identity. They either look away, up, out, or at you. And there’s one in particular that I liked that impacted me that God used. They’re all extremely serene; most of them are; and they’re living inside their own mystery with silent contemplative expressions. And this was probably most of them. In fact there are on most of them no expressions, so much are they into the Divine, the private consideration of their existence. And most of them have no hands. They do nothing, they simply are. They hold nothing; have nothing, but their own being. And they have no feet; there’s no feet showing. But they’re not rooted to the earth. One of them, one of the signs said, “Though the ground keeps me rooted, my mind is in the heavens”. But the Lord… There was one in particular; it was a figure that I hope you’ll show as we’re speaking. She was looking out over the entire vast panorama of the ocean and the Riviera, leaning back in sort of a contemplative pose, and her sign said, “Who has dreamt me, who has created me, to whom have I said yes?” And out of those words the Lord began to call me to a yes beyond anything I’ve ever seen. And we struggled for me to explain it, didn’t we John? But it has reverberated over into your life, and you’re now writing about it. I want you to share your writing. So I… there was such a powerful impact of the Spirit on me with this ‘yes’, and I said God, this is so huge, I cannot give it to You now. I’m big on surrender.
(J) Hmhum.
(M) So that’s, that’s my way of life. It’s not my message, it’s my way of life, is surrender.
(J) Right.
(M) But this was something extremely beyond surrender. And I couldn’t grasp it, and I couldn’t answer it. So I just said God, I cannot give You this ‘yes’. If You will help me get to the place where I can, if You will show me. Well I just woke up very simply the next morning and the Lord said the ‘yes’ is to Christ. So I could give that easy, but it was like a blank contract, I didn’t know what I had signed for.
(J) Hmhum. Really, that sounds very ‘well of course’, but it, it was a blank check saying God, here I go, wherever You want me to go, whatever You want me to do, I say ‘yes’. And, and the magnitude of the ‘yes’, was complete. We all can surrender, but the ‘yes’ that you made was a complete surrender, to the darkness, ah…
(M) Yeah, it was that. But it involved… It’s like I see it related to rejection, because this was the ultimate opposite of rejection. It was saying ‘yes’ to be, to be ‘me’. The figure said, “Who has dreamt me, who has created me, to whom have I said ‘yes’?” To Whom have I said yes? I will exist, and I will live the life You have given me. Now, that’s… that was the words, but that didn’t say it.
(J) Hmhum, hmhum.
(M) That was what I could get out, but that really didn’t express this ‘yes’. But I knew it was not only saying ‘yes’ to God, it was saying ‘yes’ to me; to my saying ‘yes’ to everything in my life; what I’m not, what I’ve failed at, what I’ve achieved, what I haven’t achieved, what I know, what I don’t know, where I’ve walked. It was an entire and complete ‘yes’, with no partition of rejecting anything out of it. And it sort of swallowed up everything in my life. It was like the Tree of Life had… it went to the Tree of Life and it had no partitions of right or wrong, good or evil, yes or no; it was all ‘yes’. ‘Yes’ to me. That was the most shocking thing. It was a ‘yes’ to anything He wanted; that’s a done deal. But this was a ‘yes’ to all. I think I tried to put it to you this way. The ‘yes’ is bigger… The ‘yes’ is about me, and it is about God, but it’s bigger than that. The ‘yes’ is to the Alpha to Omega. Yes to God, is God, is God. And ‘yes’ to, He created me, and He also dreamt me. But He also put me through experiences in life, some of which I didn’t like. I am parts of me I don’t like, and that was swallowed up, ‘poof’, gone. ‘Yes’, I will be who You made me to be, but also who You’ve run me into being through life’s suffering; who You’ve made, where I’ve come to, having lived my life. And it doesn’t… ok, it was a ‘yes’ that I could barely comprehend and barely explain; it was so deep. But it was ‘yes’, I am Yours; I don’t even belong to my suffering. I don’t belong to ‘myself’ in any form. Oh, you’re seeing me struggle now to tell it. It’s the most complete… to say this … ok…
(J) So it wasn’t a blank check to the future alone. It is a blank check to the future, but it wasn’t just a blank check to the future. It was a blank check to the past, to your present, to everything that included ‘you’.
(M) Yes, exactly. It was a ‘yes’ to me. It was not merely a ‘yes’ to God, it was ‘yes’, I will be me. But it was still bigger than that. (John laughs) It was a ‘yes’ to the… Now this sounds strange, but it was a ‘yes’ to the entire humanity, the history of humanity, a universal ‘yes’; God is God, and I say ‘yes’ to Him in all of this. And I have, I have no more… I have no more ‘no’ to God.
(J) Ok.
(M) It’s not a question of yes I will do this, yes I will go there; it’s ‘yes’ I will ‘be’.
(J) Ok. So it’s not only the ‘yes’ to your future, ‘yes’ to your present, ‘yes’ to your past, everything that includes you; it’s not only that, but it was everything! Literally from before Adam to after Adam, it’s ‘yes’ to it all.
(M) Infinite; it was an infinite ‘yes’. And it’s also different… I can try to put it this way John. I’ve always said ok Lord… The Lord says I want you to become a writer; oh, (Martha sighs) ok, I will become a writer. It was about His dominion as God. It was jumping on the ship, jumping out of the boat into the water. It was leaping into my life! Leaping into Him with… And He gave me this word, it’s volunteering, instead of being drafted.
(J) Hmmm.
(M) I’m saying, “Here, oooh, send me, let me do it, let me live this life, let me live this out, let me take on this person and this person that has been so difficult. I’m here.” And He gave me this prayer, “Let the stillness of Your great dominion possess me, Lord”. And I saw that only in the greatest humility can you really say ‘yes’. All those weeks, all those days in France were a preparation for that one visit to that garden. And that’s God’s strange ways. I had to say ‘yes’, I didn’t have a tourist trip to France. I had to say ‘yes’ to everything. My agenda was swallowed up in His agenda. He was…He was capturing me to something bigger, bigger… than me, bigger than mankind. ‘Yes’, He’s God. And it’s about existence; it’s about saying ‘yes’ to exist. It’s about saying oh well, I was born, ok I’m here, and ok I’ve got this set of circumstances and ok… No, it’s about ha! Here I am!
(J) Well that’s the thing that impacted me when you said it. You gave that scripture. You cited that and said that you can’t just say ok. You have to say ‘here I am, send me’.
(M) I volunteer.
(J) I volunteer. And that’s what impacted me about it, because I can say ‘yes’ all day long, but when I’m saying, “I will go, send me, please, choose me.” It’s just different; it’s totally different.
(M) I think it’s the difference between being a servant and a partner. We’re co-laborer’s with Christ. It’s Song of Solomon where she says ‘let us go into the villages and see if the gardens are in bloom’. It’s your invitation to Him. But what I came to was the most profound ‘yes’ to ‘me’, but I had to not have the same ‘yes’ to ‘me’ He does. There were two aspects of it. There were multiple aspects of it really. There was my ‘yes’ to Him, and there was my ‘yes’ to me. But there was also seeing His ‘yes’ to me that you grasped immediately. And I think you had read E. Stanley Jones book “The Divine Yes”.
(J) Hmhum.
(M) And it was from 2 Corinthians.
(J) Its E. Stanley Jones book about the scripture, 2 Cor. 1:19 in the Amplified. It talks about, “For the Son of God was not yes, and no, but in Him it is always the Divine yes.” And it just really… When I read that book it really impacted me. I didn’t even read the entire book; I just read a couple of chapters…if. And I just was really impacted by the magnitude of what the ‘Divine Yes’ meant. And so He has been preparing me for this word that you were given on Eze, since then. And I, I’m just real excited about it.
(M) Well I think I came to see that His ‘yes’ is so big, His absolute ‘yes’ to us of acceptance swallows up every difficulty. His ‘yes’ is so huge; His ‘yes’ is to give us everything we need, everything He has. And this says Christ is ‘yes’, and not ‘yes’, and not yes and no, and not no. And it seemed like that ‘yes’ swallowed up, not just my life, but all of the little and big areas of my resistance to my life; my resistance to ‘me’. And it was like the ‘yes’ enveloped me. He captured me with His ‘yes’. It wasn’t just… I heard it as a calling to me, but when I got into it, it was a like being enveloped in the cocoon of His ‘yes’. And because He has such a ‘yes’ to me… I think I could… I’m trying to get it out as I’m recording it, so bear with me. But it seems like “Who has created me, who has dreamt me, to whom have I said yes?” It was as if in saying what feeble ‘yes’ I could to Him opened up His, as the scripture says, ‘Divine Yes’ to all of me; to my ‘story’ is His ‘yes.’ My whole being is inside His ‘yes’. And so I’m able because of His ‘yes’ to me, to say ‘yes’ to the universe, to Who God is. He’s God of all of history, all of mankind, all of creation, all of the universe, all of everything, infinite. And that great ‘yes’ has swallowed every ‘no.’
