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with Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
(M) Well good-morning in Mexico John. We’re sitting here by a window looking out over Mexico City, which I will not describe at the moment. But beyond it are beautiful mountains and we’ve seen gorgeous sunset and sunrise. But guess what; the Lord has followed us to Mexico.
(J) This is good, this is good; to come to Mexico without the Lord would not be a good thing.
(M) No, but He’s brought His topic with Him. And the topic is the altar and control. So wouldn’t you know.
(J) We’re back to control.
(M) Yesterday I was with the Lord some hours, and I just soared. And He brought be back to my mandate which is to love Him. And through the song by Ramey Hughes, I loved it where she said the angels envied, I think it was not Mary of Bethany, but Mary Magdalene that she was singing about; that the angels were pierced with envy, and what they would give for one moment that she had to be “just a kiss on Jesus feet”. And that just wrecked me, and took me up into the Lord’s presence. Then I wrote this, so now I’m full of joy, and placed in my place, which will ever be, can only be, the one place where I exist, by being displaced from the world, from everyone, especially me. So that was wonderful, that was my calling, just to be a kiss on Jesus feet, and to love Him in Mexico. And Jean back home wrote this, even before I sent out the Manna. She said, “I felt such a burning of the passion of the Lord for each of you; (you and me) as you worship Him in that place, He is coming, His glory is coming. The answer for Mexico is Him; and as you love Him there He is coming to where He is loved.” And that was just amazing to me.
(J) It’s incredible.
(M) But you know John, in a couple of hours I was slammed to the mat, with a body slam; is that what you call it?
(J) Yeah.
(M) And we went to lunch early in the afternoon and you looked at me and said, what’s wrong? And you could say it was a satanic attack, I mean that’s the typical way, go away Satan. But every event, everything of life is multi-layered. And everything gives you a choice of who to deal with. Job dealt with God. He didn’t deal with Satan, because behind it was the permission of God. So it was God I was dealing with. You know, I was hit with something very troubling and I couldn’t rise above it after all my victory in the morning. So I went back to the promises of God to my personal life, and I soaked. But in the final stage of it, I just surrendered and said, God, You do with me whatever You want; even if You take me home, You do whatever You like. And I began to have peace. But I tell you, it is the most frightening thing in human experience to know that you have nothing, you can do nothing, you can be nothing, you can be nothing, you can solve nothing, you can change nothing, and most of all, you cannot control God.
(J) I had an experience on the way here on the plane. It was a little rough at one point. I was just sitting there and I said, Lord there’s absolutely nothing I can do, if You would have this plane crash, there would be nothing I could do. And so I just relinquished my life, I said ok, here, it’s Yours. This is Yours, and there’s nothing I can do to control this situation; and if I sit here and clutch it what good is it. The second I said, I give it to You, I give You my life, You can do with it as You will, the plane stopped being rough.
(M) And vibrating.
(J) And vibrating. And it didn’t do it for the rest of the trip. I said, now that’s really strange God. I said is it because I relinquished it that You did that? I was just having a, I didn’t even tell you this, but I was sitting there, was it because I relinquished it that You stilled the air, or what?
(M) Did He answer?
(J) I really didn’t get an answer. You know how Mary had the dealing with Jesus at twelve and it says “she kept those things in her heart” from then on; well it was kind of like that, hmm, was it because I relinquished or what? That for me was an object lesson of that, because there was absolutely. When I have my feet on the ground, sometimes I think I have control; but when I don’t have my feet on the ground and I’m in the air, there is a place where you say, I can do nothing, I can’t do anything with this plane, I cannot do anything with the air currents, I cannot do anything with anything. If this plane goes down it goes down. You know, I would hate for it to ever do it. But you know, it’s God’s pleasure, whatever Your pleasure is today. So anyway, how does that relate?
(M) Oh, it relates, I went through something similar; because it was not a little turbulence, it was an unusual amount.
(J) And you were in a different place in the plane. I was in a place in the plane that you could hear something going really weird underneath. I’ve never heard that sound ever in a plane. And I don’t know what it was, but it was really a very strange sound.
(M) I was sitting up front, and you were sitting in the back. But when it started, I had the same sort of dealing, I just said, well there’s nothing I can do, absolutely nothing, and if You take us home so be it. There’s no point in being anxious.
(J) There really wasn’t, and I was thinking, what’s the headline going to be, plane crashes in Mexico City with, oh.
(M) Two Americans aboard. (J) And I hoped that it’d never say ‘screaming all the way down, noooo’.
(M) If they find the voice box, and there we would be with our big faith. But I just went back to my reading, and I did say well Lord, You deal with it. And it didn’t stop immediately so I guess He was waiting for you.
(J) Thank you, I appreciate that.
(M) But it did stop and I said, oh, You stopped it and I thank You. But that is the most vulnerable place humanly you can be, and I think that’s what I realized, I just gave it all to God.
(J) I guess if we could live like we were on a plane all the time, because really we are.
(M) Yes, any control is an illusion.
(J) That’s right.
(M) But it was only this morning that I realized what the whole experience was about. The first thing I did was read Matt. 5, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. And I thought, well there it is Lord, I have been reduced to being poor in spirit, I have nothing; I have no word about Mexico, I have no anointing, and He said, go back in your journal. So I just scrolled back in my journal and hit a note from Rosemary who has had tremendous anointing for this trip. Rosemary in Honduras understands a great deal more about what Julie’s going through than I ever will. She has had a revelation about the first visit, that God establishes what He wants in the first visit. So she had the answer. She wrote this to me several mornings ago. “Psalm 26 I was in this morning, and in the Amplified verses 6 and 7 made me think of you. “I will wash my hands in innocence, and go about your altar oh Lord; that I may make the voice of thanksgiving heard, and may tell of all your wondrous works.” It would appear being at the altar is preparation for being the voice of thanksgiving and telling of Him.” Well, when she wrote this, I thought, oh that’s wonderful; but this morning I understood that it was the Lord. It was the Lord, if I’d listened it would have been the Lord telling me what was coming. Remember I talked about Abraham last time?
(J) Yeah, definitely.
(M) That he lived the life of the altar. And the altar is something you come to understand in it’s whole. God doesn’t take you to put your Isaac down that He hasn’t prepared you for a life of the altar. So Abraham knew that it was worship, knew that it was resurrection. I want to read The New Living translation. I looked back to see, and this is a translation, not a paraphrase like the old New Living Bibles. This is The New Living translation, and a real scholarly friend said this is an excellent version.
(J) It’s my favorite right now. I’m so interested in it right now, because it so communicates to me right where I’m at.
(M) I did some research, and these translators used enormous material that even some of the current translators and translations did not use. So the list of what they used as a basis is incredible. I don’t find that it’s perfect, but when the Spirit wants to use it, it’s perfect. So in The New Living it says, “ I wash my hands to declare my innocence”. You know that was the way I got to the altar yesterday; I want to learn the life of the altar. It was first to see my sin, that I could be troubled, that I could be afraid and disturbed. And I saw, sort of as an observer, that I shut down when I was body-slammed. I shut down to God and to the Spirit. Then I saw in very minute ways, just at lunch, I saw that I wasn’t moving in the Spirit. So I had to go to repentance before God He had put His finger on a place, not of trouble, but of sin. (J) Was it sin because it was a place of control or what was the sin?
(M) The sin was anxiety; I knew I had no control, and that was what gave me the anxiety. And He says “Be anxious for nothing, but in all things give thanks and make your requests known to God”. And I didn’t do that immediately, I went to God, but I didn’t rejoice in the Lord. My sin was the anxiety. The information, the situation was such that I knew I had no control. But “I wash my hands to declare my innocence, and I come to your altar oh Lord”. I think you come to the altar either by His calling or by repentance. “Singing a song of thanksgiving and telling of all your wonders.” In the place where you consecrate, give up, that’s what it is, you give up ownership, which is a form of control, there is the place of His wonders. It was for Abraham.
(J) Ok, I’ve been reading Louie Giglio book, “I Am Not, But I Know I Am”. So I’ve been reading that, and also “Practicing The Presence”. Well out of Giglio book, I wrote this down on the plane, this is what I was dealing with in the back right there. “Sabbath is a state of mind and attitude of heart. Sabbath happens anywhere and everywhere we let go of the controls, and lay the cares of our lives at His feet.” And I know that during this visit to Mexico, you’re going to be doing the CD of the month on Sabbath; and I just thought you know, Abraham, he lived in the Sabbath Rest, because he did let go of his cares, on the altar, and he did let go of his control and he laid Isaac at His feet. That was a place of his control, but he laid that at His feet. So Giglio really hit it in that statement, which I thought was really wonderful. And then Brother Lawrence walked through this world un-entangled, and there’s where the control is. So often I’m entangled in things; but he walked through and he wasn’t even entangled with his own sin. When he sinned he said, well God You’ve got to hold me tighter.
(M) Oh, that’s wonderful.
(J) So anyway, Abraham lived in a Sabbath Rest, and he lived on the Altar.
(M) The altar is a place of joy, freedom. Let me see if David wrote Ps. 26? Yes, David wrote 26. And Rosemary’s point was, you go to the altar first, you go to be washed, then you go to the altar, then you sing and tell of His wonders. And that sequence is exactly how God does it; every time I go out, He uses creative means, He uses different things, but He will level me one way or the other. So it’s not so much that I think I have control anymore, it’s that I fear being so nothing and having, you know, having to do something and say something.
(J) Ok, so that’s your affirmative response, but is the ultimate goal of that whole dealing, is it always to lead you into Sabbath Rest? Is that the whole goal?
(M) Always I think; and the Sabbath Rest is I think, letting Christ be all, that’s it; He is the Sabbath, He is Lord of the Sabbath.
