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Word From The Sponsor
Episode #147
with Martha Kilpatrick and John Enslow
Special Guests (Shulamite Body members)
(John gives conference information)
When faced with turmoil on all fronts, there is a power available to the Body of Christ. The church must rise in fullness to manifest the presence of Christ in this crucial hour. We at Shulamite ministries want to invite you to join us for the sequel to our May conference. In “The Coming One” conference Martha gave a message of hope and preparation for times of trouble and crisis. Martha’s current burden is specific to the authority of the transcendent church, the Body of Christ, not limited by time or location. So come fellowship with us in Atlanta, Georgia, October 23rd through the 25th, and partake of Christ’s heart to make His Bride ready.
(M) Good morning everybody. We’re doing something different here than we’ve ever done in a podcast. We’re in the middle of our morning, early morning prayer time, and it has been so wonderful that ah, I just wanted John to get the equipment and let’s gather round. I want to say how very well I am. I’ve been praying all along for, not just healing, but resurrection, and it has really hit me. For the past three, what?
(J) Well I just want to say that this is a podcast that’s being, like kind of , a word from the sponsor kind of podcast, because we’re breaking into the middle of podcasts that are going on. So if you hear that Martha says that she’s not doing well, it’s not that she is not doing well, it’s just that that part came before this part. So this is just kind of like a little commercial for the word from the sponsor. And ah, so we’re going to break this in between.
(M) Well this is going to be two weeks before the conference. And we’ve had this peculiar knowledge that this, even this illness has been about the conference. There’s no way to begin to tell all that we’ve been through as a Body.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) But this Body has literally stood and wept and prayed and served, and I really feel like I am just well. And the energy that has hit me, and the revelation for the conference… every morning He just pours out on me till I could just fly. So there’s death works in us, and this morning as we met together I suddenly saw how this small group, that during this time we have all been so stripped of ‘self’ in the most phenomenal ways and dealings with the Lord that are, you know, private, but we’ve sort of as a Body gone through this catharsis. And I think it turned one night when I was at the worst, and I realized that the spirit of death was on me, and ah, that it was not a life threatening sickness or even life threatening pain, but that the spirit of death wanted to take me out. And so I just renounced it and chose life. And though it didn’t manifest for several days, if not… ten days or so, life has so emerged.
(J) I can attest to the fact that you are by far better, and ah, actually great. I mean, you know, there’s, ah, some little restrictions, but really, you are really great.
(M) I just want to say that this breakthrough is spiritually significant. It’s a spiritual breakthrough for us as a small group. I was trying to describe it this morning to the prayer group, and Julie read from Austin Sparks, something she got yesterday that exactly expresses what I was trying to say to you all. That this is a victory of overcoming that we have gone into together. And even individually and in your own lives, you’ve had things to overcome as well. But all of the… it’s like John is currently saying to me… I’ll struggle over the booklets, and he’ll say, well you don’t worry about… the booklet has you. Well the conference has me, and the Holy Spirit has me about the conference, and He is taking me through things, and everyone through things that are preparing us for the anointing on this conference. So I want Julie to read that section of Austin Sparks that he so understood, because he had a small core group that spoke to the world.
(Julie) This is from Sparks, “Discipline Unto Prayer”, and he writes, “God alone knows what spiritual energy is released to the ends of the earth when even a simple group of saints meet for prayer. And not only meet for prayer, but win through in prayer. The conflict may seem to relate to some purely local situation or personal need, but if those who are so beset rise up in the Name of the Lord, claiming the fullness of His victory, the local and personal victory will become the occasion for the release of spiritual forces in a wide spread way.”
(J) What book is that?
(Julie) It’s called “Prayer” by Austin Sparks, and it’s actually a collection of three books, and this is from the first book.
(J) Yeah, we sell that on the website, yeah.
(M) That’s the book we’ve been in, really for weeks, all of us. And, did you want to read another part of it?
(Julie) Sparks says, “This will help us to appreciate an important fact, namely that our personal difficulties and trials, our local corporate experiences of spiritual conflict, have a vital relationship with far bigger activities of God than we can imagine.” And then he quotes two scriptures in prayer from Acts. “But prayer was made earnestly of the church”, and the next chapter begins, “And the Word of God grew and was multiplied.” “These two things are very closely connected.”
(M) And if you will Julie, you understand what he says before that about the pressure on the church, from the famine and…Just tell that in your own words as you were telling us.
(Julie) Ok, Sparks is referring to a section in Acts chapter 11 and 12, and he was talking… he connects several events that I had never seen connected before. He talks about how there was a terrible famine in Jerusalem, and Paul and Barnabas came to Jerusalem to bring an offering that the other churches had made to those in Jerusalem that were suffering. And at the same time Herod the King began to persecute the church, and that was when he put Peter in prison. And Sparks connects all those events and talks about how God used all the pressure of those individual circumstances to cause the church to cry out in prayer. And the result of that comes in the next chapter, that “the Word of God grew and multiplied”, and Sparks explains how out of that gathering for all these different reasons Paul and Barnabas were sent forth into the next wave of taking the testimony of Christ out into the nations.
(M) And so there were times when I was ill that I felt so tenuous about the conference. I thought, ‘oh God, I just, I just hope I can do it’. If, if I’m, if You don’t do something, I will not be able to have a conference.’ But what has come, hit me with such power is the absolute passion to speak to ah, just to bring a vision of what we can be in this end time. And it was rather prophetic when I talked about transcendence as the title to the conference. And I realized many times, oh, my goodness, we have to transcend this particular difficulty, and each person’s individual difficulty. We have to come through. And we’ve so come through as a Body. And so, I was looking up this morning at the word transcendent: to climb across, to rise above or go beyond the limits of. And that’s what I want us as believers to do. That’s what I want this conference to create a vision for the transcendence, not of just the individual, but of two, just two. Two is church. And so, it can be reduced to two. It can be reduced as it is to us because we are remote. It’s eight, sometimes less. (The word transcendent:) to rise above or go beyond the limits of, to triumph over the negative or restrictive aspects of; to out-strip or out-do in some attribute, quality or power; to rise above, extend notably beyond ordinary limits. That’s a fantastic… that’s, that’s the word transcendent. And that’s what the church can do. And, and we, you know, as believers can experience that. It takes a pressing. It takes a prayer commitment. But once you have the vision of transcendence, which I pray and ask for prayer that I can convey, and we can convey as a group, then if you have the vision you have it. That’s all it takes, is just be able to see the possibility. As I said, the keynote statement I think from the last conference, though I didn’t emphasize it, was, ‘we are not here for survival, our goal is not survival; our goal is fullness’. And that is the transcendent, transcendent word. And one of the things that we’ve been on this morning is… and we’re going to deal with it in the conference too, is the issue of God’s chastening. And what we don’t understand is the…that His chastening is love, it’s… We were reading in… Oh, and I recommend this. We have begun to read aloud together the book of Revelation, and in the Amplified it implies that, “read aloud to the assembly”. And we’re just taking small parts and reading it together. But Laodicea it says, “Whom I tenderly love, I rebuke, reprove and discipline”. And that’s sort of been… all of us have been under this reproof and discipline of his tender love, but it doesn’t feel like tender love. And yesterday… Carole I want to get you to share something you shared earlier… but, yesterday I was speaking to someone very troubled and broken and discouraged, and when we got past accepting and dealing with her particular chastening and failure, then we prayed. And she prayed. And when she began to pray spontaneously she said, “I just want someone to love me” (Martha speaks it with emotion), and it was sort of the bottom line. And I had shared with her that it was the love of the Lord that was disciplining her. But when she talked to Him, not to me, what came out of her was, “I just, I just want someone to love me.” And love me enough…What we want is someone to love me enough to ravage what won’t receive His love. And that’s what discipline is. It’s coming to ravage what will not receive love. Do you remember what you said Carole? You, you were speaking of this passage.
(Carole) Well Martha had already taken us to the scripture this morning and, and when we read it, it just kind of stunned me, because I’ve never seen that scripture in Rev . 3:19 in the Amplified Bible like I saw it this morning. “Those whom I dearly and tenderly love, I will tell their faults and convict and convince and reprove and chasten, I discipline and instruct them. So be enthusiastic and earnest and burning with zeal and repent, changing your mind and attitude.” And I just, I just saw that all of that was the way to His love. That the very thing that I sell my soul for… love, is found right here, by the opening of my heart to Him, to let Him come in and love me tenderly, and tell me my faults, and convict me and lead me to repentance.
(M) Ok, Julie you said something brilliant earlier about love.
(Julie) That all my ideas of love are what keep me from love.
(M) See we really don’t see that discipline is the interest and the passion of the Lord’s love. We think it’s, “oh You hate me, don’t You God.”
(J) We think it’s rejection, and it’s just, it’s passion to allow us to receive His love.
(M) Umhmm.
