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Unifocus
Episode #280
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guest: Carole Nelson
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(J) Well, you just completed the CD of the Month, and I was really amazed at it, that the message that you gave was just real powerful and revealed Christ, which I was real excited about. And one of the things that I saw at the very end of it is that we as a humankind, we are so uni-focused and uni-directional in our view of things. We really can’t see outside of ourself anything, really. It has to directly impact us as a person before we’ll give attention to it. And God knowing that, and how He created us, He has just been masterful to set it up. And I could even go further. He didn’t just allow our selfish nature and our self-consumption and our single focus on ‘us’. He didn’t just allow that and say well, you know, since you’re like this I’m going to, you know, do A, B, and C. He made us like that because He wanted to fulfill something in us. And what He wanted to do is, He wanted the intimacy with us, the garden intimacy with us even grander than the garden intimacy, where He would express Himself through us, and from us, and that we would actually see and get the knowledge of God as it came forth from us. Because someone can be preaching on a stage, Who He is. That’s great. My head knowledge is expanded by someone telling me about Him. But He wants so much further beyond head knowledge. He wants experiential knowledge, so what He does is He says, let Me come and live in your body and bring forth My Self out of your body. And not only will I impact you, and allow you to see in your body Who I Am, but those around you that are being affected by you, and by Me, they will also see Me. And so it’s like you’re a little, a little mini-explosion of heaven coming forth, where Christ reveals Himself in a grand way, and He shows you the bigness and the grandeur of God, but it’s in you. And it’s such an intimate way of doing it that He doesn’t want to just display Himself before you. That season is over; when Jesus came He displayed Himself before you and He said, this is Who I Am, this is Who I Am, this is Who I Am, and then He says, ‘awhhh’, but if I leave, how much greater it will be because I’ll be inside of you to reveal that. That, to me, is so much grander. ‘I can do it, I can display anything before you, but if I say, ‘awhhh’, but if I leave I can come in to you, and I can reveal Myself through you’. That, that is the greatness of God. That is the greatness of God, that my wretched form, my dust, can reveal the greatness and the grandeur of God; that’s, oh, that’s high, that’s huge. And so I’m real excited to see that He not only allowed my unifocus, and your unifocus, and your unifocus, and your unifocus, He allowed all of our unifocus because He wanted to be the focus of coming through us. And so, I don’t know how, what else to say about it, but it’s… Do what? (Martha speaks in background.) Oh yeah, yeah, hmhmm. And so He’s basically giving you the charge, if you’ll save your life, if you hold it and, and you will not allow Me to come through, there’s a dearth of your knowledge of God. You will have just head knowledge, you won’t have experiential knowledge. You won’t have the grandness and the expansiveness of God. And Don was saying how if you refuse to give, then you’re unable to receive. And in that I see you have to give up of your life. You have to not save your life. You have to give your life up and die, and then, and not save it, and then in that process He gives you the life that He’s looking to give you. And you’re able to receive Him inside of you, and able to give Him more. So it’s like exponentially it comes out of you further and further and further. So what do you say about that?
(M) Well you, I’ve said this a number of times, that years ago I said, “Oh Lord, I just want to know You. I want to see You.” And He said, “If you’ll get out of my way and let Me live through your body you will experience Me inside of you, not ‘out there’” And it’s all about Roman’s twelve:one, letting Him have your body. And one of the things I mention on the tape is that I consider the New Testament worship is simply that. “I beseech you brethren, by the mercies of Christ, that you present your body a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service of worship.” And to worship, the ultimate worship is to let yourself be the vessel, and let Him be the Life that you cannot be. And I was thinking as you were talking, John, how God works so graciously to rid us of self, but it’s always a choice. The choice is will you lose your life, or will you save it? That’s the choice in every situation. If you lose your self, that ‘self-self’ that you talked about, then you become the vessel of Himself. But if you save your life you’ll lose your life. You’ll lose your self and your destiny and your life and your eternity.
(J) I’ve heard it; I’ve heard the calling of Christ in you the hope of glory, the exchanged life, I’ve heard that calling and He’s wooed me towards it; and I’ve heard it for a long time. But (John speaks with deep emotion) right this minute I feel kind of like the woman at the well where He gave her the complete plan of the new worship. He said, no, let Me, let Me tell you, you’re not just going to worship Me in some temple. ‘Ppkuooo!’ He’ exploded (Martha: yes He did.) the entire thing, and I feel like oh my, you know I’ve heard things, and I’ve seen things, but all of a sudden now He’s like saying, oh let Me just take it beyond that. ‘Ppkuooo!’ Let Me explode it out. And I go, oh, ok, ok. You really do want to express Yourself in me, using my limitations and my weakness, using it. Then, then there you go with Paul, “I glory in my weakness.” I glory in those things because if I won’t be that weak person, and I save myself, and I bolster myself up, then I’ll never be allowed to bring forth the expanse of the Kingdom. And ah…
(M) It’s funny John, you have lost your self in a thousand ways. You’ve lost ‘your way’ to follow His way, and we see Christ in you all the time. And I think the more you lose yourself the less you really are aware of who you are. You’re somehow not conscious of the might and majesty of Christ in you. So you are, you always speak very humbly as a learner. But Carole especially has seen Christ in you this past year, so… I’m, I’m grateful where you’ve been willing to lose your life, because I have seen Him clearly in you. I learned about Him as a Shepherd, what He’s like as a Shepherd by what you learned as you submitted to Him to be a shepherd. And some of that’s on a tape of the month too. That’s what we’ve seen in this Body, that there, and Paul warns about this, that there are people that come in to take, that don’t contribute, so they don’t really receive the majesty or the provision of the Lord. They don’t receive the Life of the Lord. So if you give yourself, you receive Him. If you save yourself, you lose Him. It’s that stark and that much of a choice.
(J) Well it’s kind of like if you’re going to be a ‘void’ and a ‘vacuum’ of Him, filled with you, that all you can do is suck like a ‘vacuum’. You ‘sluuuuh’, suck everything in you, into that black hole of death. But if you will be void of you, where you’re letting yourself in the grave and dying to yourself, then you’re filled with light, so I’m, that’s, that’s exciting to me.
(M) I want Carole to share what she shared in my group.
(Carole) For me, John, in this past year, as I really meditated and thought about that, that I am seeing the expression of Jesus Christ in and through the individual members of our Body. I thought about John in his photography, in his art, in his writings, in his shepherd heart that he has for each of us in taking care of us, in his keen ability to see details and the needs of the Body and to fulfill those needs, are all incredible expressions of the Son of His Love in John. And none of those, none of those many faceted areas are separate, they’re all, they’re all one, varied, but they’re all the one new creation filled with the Son of God in expressing Himself through John.
(J) And, and the thing that blows me away is that it’s not like my focus has been external in myself. My focus has been… He’s, He’s really superseded my internal focus in that, and come through and brought different things to the Body. And you know there’s multiple examples that I could give of things that He led me individually, inside of me to, but that they were not for just me, that they were for all of us. And…it was to express Himself outward.
