Being Touched with His Sovereignty – Episode #768

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Being Touched with His Sovereignty
Episode #768
8/22/2021

With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
With special guest Joan Wentzel and Jacquelyn Nawrocki

This the continuation of a series of podcasts started in Episode #767
If I don’t believe God is sovereign, I cannot receive my life. And if I don’t receive my life, I cannot have intimacy with God.

Jacquelyn:
If I don’t believe God is sovereign, I cannot receive my life. And if I don’t receive my life, I cannot have intimacy with God.

John wrote in The Sovereign Touch:

“We live in torment when we don’t believe that God is sovereign. We are vulnerable to the world’s chaos and we are, quite frankly, not safe. Talk about scaring sheep! It is frightening when we are left hanging in the wind and our peace is destroyed. But thanking God in all things proclaims His Lordship to your world. It is a choice to trust Him, because He is trustworthy. Rather than saving self and losing your life, giving thanks abandons self to find your life.”

Martha:
Jacquelyn, that is beautiful. Thank you. Wow!

Jacquelyn:
If I don’t believe God is sovereign, I cannot love my fellow man; I cannot love myself if I don’t believe God is sovereign. I keep saying it is the foundation, our very foundation. I cannot be content; I cannot be at peace if I don’t believe God is sovereign.

Joan:
What I’ve seen in my own journey is without sovereignty nothing can be received; nothing can be resolved in my life personally because sovereignty brings me to every single issue and resolves every problem. And if God is not sovereign, there are no answers to my crises in life; there are simply no answers because God is the answer in every situation; how He chooses to come, what He chooses to do is the answer. But apart from sovereignty I will have no answers for my life; I will have no resolution and I will be looking. We all believe we are looking for love and I believe that’s true. But apart from sovereignty you can’t receive the love because sovereignty resolves our suspicions about God; resolves all of our trust issues. You can’t possibly love someone you don’t trust and you won’t want to receive His love because you don’t believe it’s good. So, you won’t want His love. You will want some other thing which we all chase after things in life.

But sovereignty to me has just become the most wonderful thing because it addresses the crucial issue of authority that we all struggle with and shows us what a loving authority we’ve been given; kind, gracious, merciful. And so I thank God the whole issue of sovereignty and Martha’s book All and Only and John’s The Sovereign Touch.

Jacquelyn:
John talks about contentment in his book. He says:

“There is no greater contentment than to know you are safe in the hands of an All-powerful God. You may not have understanding in the moment of crisis, but there is hope when you know your destiny is intact. You have joy and peace knowing Jesus rules over all, even the evil man.”

Martha:
I want to read just a few of these titles that John has given that are intriguing. If you read the chapter titles it will promise the answer to a lot of things that we all have.

Surrender to My Story

My story Needs a Yes

Doesn’t it? A yes for me and I can’t give it without sovereignty. How intriguing.

But I Was a CHILD!

That’s what we say. I can laugh at some of these. They aren’t really funny.

A Living Narrative

Going Rigid in Trauma

Why are we laughing? Because we know that…

Life Has Hurt You

The Witness of God’s Perfection

A Life Defined by Knowing God

God’s Amazing Hand of Providence

My Enemies Only Devour My Flesh

Portrait of a Life

What Lurks Behind Our Resistance

And he takes on some pretty heavy stuff such as:

What If Your Authority Is Corrupt.

So, you have to read the book to find out the answer.

Judgment and the Heavenly Man

I don’t remember that one. I need to go back.

What About Free Will

God is in Control: The World Unshaken

I used to say something but I wasn’t sure it was true: Everything is perfect or God would change it.  That’s a big tough pill to swallow.

Jacquelyn:
We are called to so share His suffering so that we can be continually be transformed into His likeness even into His death in the hopes that while still living we may attain to the resurrection of the dead.

Without knowing His sovereignty, we cannot so share His sufferings.

John writes:

“The secret of suffering is only revealed to those who take the first step and thank God for it.

You cannot thank God for your suffering if you don’t know He’s sovereign; if you don’t know He’s in absolute control of your life and your destiny.”

Martha:
I always have to go back to one of my favorite writers-Pierre de Caussade. It’s an interesting story that book. John and I were in Atlanta to see the play about the mystics that had such an impact on John. We went to a bookstore, a regular, normal book store. John looks up at this particular shelf and pulls a book out; a small book. The name of it is The Sacrament of the Present Moment; sacrament means holy. So, he pulls it out and he begins to read it and then I get to read it.

When the ministry began, we ordered a big box of that book and I’m always talking about it because actually that book out of all of our books vanished. We have no idea what happened to it but it vanished. But now John has reordered and we have a nice stack of The Sacrament of the Present Moment. There are two different titles but I will stick with The Sacrament of the Present Moment. It means that this moment is your life and literally God’s sovereignty. The other title is Joy of Full Surrender.

Actually, I don’t think it ever says the word sovereign; in essence that’s what it’s about. This book teaches you to follow the obedience of the Lord to every moment that comes into your life and that means it’s sovereign. If it comes, it’s God and it’s God’s Will.

So, the real surrender is to everything He sends our way. I’ve lived with Him long enough that I could give you a long list of what He brought my way that was sovereign and most of it but not all of it I’ve come to understand the purpose and the meaning and the blessing and the reward of what he sends in His sovereignty.

Joan:
And I just realized as Martha was talking only through sovereignty can you be grateful. We all have our murmurings in our life, we all have things we don’t care for but the truth is once you get to sovereignty then you can be grateful. I think apart from sovereignty you can’t be. It’s not possible…

Martha:
Amen, Joan.

Jacquelyn:

John writes:

“What about those things that have wounded me deeply? The things I see as negatives and cruel, which have fundamentally affected my life? The wounds on my soul that have left lasting effects? Should I thank God for these? Is this what He requires?”

Be thankful, whatever the circumstances may be. If you follow this advice, you will be working out the will of God expressed to you in Jesus Christ.
I Thessalonians 5:18 PHILLIPS

He writes:

“What I have learned, often in the most painful ways, is that God actually does work all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. This includes the hurtful things and painful situations that have marked me. Again, God is totally sovereign, or not sovereign at all.”

Martha:
John often says and it’s the truth sovereignty isn’t a subject that Christians even want to know; they don’t want to face the dilemma that John faced in his book and in his life; it was a dilemma that we all live and must resolve because it’s crucial both in our relationship with God, to our impact on other people, and the issue of what we produce and say and speak in our life.

So, the biggest issue that John faced in this book is the political scene and how to deal with that as God’s sovereignty and it’s brilliant.

One thing I have found is the amazing, shocking, complete and tender care of our sovereign God. I’ve been so amazed in the last few years frankly as a widow and as having some health problems that He works our life like puzzle that we don’t have the picture of and the pieces go in and we don’t know the meaning of it. This happens and you are lead there in another dimension and another place. It makes for a fascinating journey if we would accept it as a discovery of who God the Father really is and Christ the Shepherd.

And as Joan and John and Jacquelyn have all agreed that sovereignty solves everything because you can learn to accept life by accepting Him in what He has allowed to come.

And I will go back to the back of de Caussade. His whole writing is about accepting and surrendering to whatever comes into your life as from God. It’s doesn’t throw around the word sovereign but it’s all about sovereignty. Sovereignty is accepting and believing in faith that God is in control and that it will be to my good and my blessing ultimately. And things that seems like a catastrophe sometimes are turned into a glory.

And my little book of All and Only is the story of different characters in the Bible; Joseph, David, Saul. And it’s about their experience of the sovereignty of God.

So, it’s an ongoing message of Shulamite Ministries and I believe it’s our major message is that He is both sovereign and good.

I guess the one thing that has sold more than any other is The Great Lie which is really about His sovereignty and goodness. And that has gone a lot of places.

So, we celebrate. We are still celebrating John’s new book and many, many copies have gone out; hundreds now, into the hundreds; cases and cases are being sent out. Isn’t that exciting? The church is going to know sovereignty because of you John and know it more logically. Even in your book it becomes reasonable; sovereignty is not only the right thing but it’s reasonable.

Being Touched with His Sovereignty – Episode #768 – Shulamite Podcast

Sovereignty isn’t a subject that Christians even want to know; they don’t want to face the dilemma that John faced in The Sovereign Touch.