Our Blindness Is Chosen But God Sets Us Free – Episode #551

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Our Blindness Is Chosen But God Sets Us Free
Episode #551
June 25, 2017

With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special Guest: Jennifer Wentzel and Carole Nelson

This is the continuation of a series of Podcasts started in Episode #549.
We are blind in rebellion, but that blindness is chosen. What a world-shattering JOY it is when we discover that our Lord desires to set us free!

(Martha) I had a situation recently where someone I don’t know very well brought a problem to me, and as I was listening to the Lord for her I had the perfect answer in my experience for her. It was like she was fed a feast and put it into practice immediately and the same result happened. There was a great breakthrough. But God orchestrated my life for her life many years ago and orchestrated her situation to need my particular story, which not everyone, that story not everyone has. And it was just such a perfect matching. And that’s what He sets up is authority. It’s a match, and that’s why we have to be sure we are in the place and under the authority He assigns, because that’s, as you say, John, that’s where the provision is. And Nee describes it beautifully, because he says the one in authority spares you having to go down the hard path if you’ll get in line.
(John) Back to being dead weight. Beyond dead weight you’re malignant. You’re detrimental. And we’ve seen someone who came and served in rebellion and literally everything they touched was tainted with rebellion and destruction. And it just, it literally made it so that… Well, it just hurt. It hurt us. Everything turned around and bit us, every single thing. And there was nothing that was not destructive. Even the best thing they did turned around and was detrimental.
(Martha) And costly and ongoing and unending destruction to fix. Like, it’s been like unscrambling an egg. So, rebellion is as witchcraft, and rebellion carries an evil with it. That is Satan’s intention to destroy, rob, kill and steal.
(Jennifer) And that malignancy, John, I think we… That blindness is chosen, and I want to make absolutely clear that this isn’t just, “Poor me, I couldn’t see.” Yes, I was blind. My mind was completely closed, because I was on the opposite end of it. And some Bible verses, they mean more than we think they mean, you know? God’s black and white approach, “He who is not with Me is against Me. He who does not gather scatters.” We look at that, and we look at that very much, I think we tend to look at that in terms of salvation, of who is born again and who isn’t born again. And that’s fine, that’s the macro of it, but the micro is that there is a chasm between you and the world. And that blindness is chosen, because the blindness is a result of saying, “No, God. I will not honor You as God. I will not submit to You as God. I will not fear You as God. NO!” And the blindness is the result of that choice, that very singular, that very specific choice. And I made that choice, and I made that choice in the fullness of my understanding at that time for what that meant. I was raising my fist against the heavens and screaming in open rebellion. I was never under the impression I was not in rebellion against God. I was in rebellion against God. I was in rebellion against my parents. I was in rebellion against the government. I was in rebellion against anybody who had a big “A” on them that meant authority. And I believed in my pride that that was a safe way to go. I believed that that was going to be the best way to keep me from abuse. So, I became the abuser, and I did it to save myself. I said I’m going to save myself, but you don’t save yourself unless you’re going to join the side of the abusers. That’s how it works. So, you’re not just saving yourself, you’re picking up a knife and stabbing children on the schoolyard. That’s what you’re doing. That’s how you’re keeping yourself safe. You’re killing everyone around you. You become a murderer. And that’s what I did. And John’s absolutely right that it’s malignant. And the blindness is chosen, but, you know, I look at it and there is such pride behind that that howl of indignation that says, “I can’t do anything to please You. What is it going to take? What is it going to take for you to be satisfied with me?” It’s Cain. God will never be satisfied with someone in rebellion. And the truth is someone in rebellion is really of no use to the wider world either. You’re just not. You’re not sufficient for the neighborhood. You’re not sufficient for the home. You’re not sufficient for the state, for the city, any level. Someone who is in total rebellion is going to add exactly zero in a positive way to the people around them. And that’s… You know, our pride won’t let us, our pride says, “No, that can’t possibly be right. I’m a special snowflake. I’m wonderful. It is everyone else. The problem is everyone else.” And I’ve been there too, and I’ve said, “If they don’t love me, then something’s wrong with them, because I’m awesome.” Now, at 3 o’clock in the morning, you know, the truth comes out and you’re like, “I’m not awesome and they’re quite right to hate me, but I can’t do anything about it.” Right? Because you can’t apart from God. But I just want to be absolutely clear that blindness is chosen, and that malignance is real, and, you know, and all of that was because I didn’t want to accept that what I was offering wasn’t good enough.
(Martha) That is vivid to compare it to Cain. I just want to tell you, Jennifer, somewhere is the Amplified New Testament it’s called willful blindness.
(John) And I wasn’t using you as an example when I was saying what I was saying. It wasn’t you. So…
(Jennifer) But it could very well have been.
(John) It could… Ok, that’s fine, but it wasn’t.
(Jennifer) Are you saying I wasn’t malignant? John, come on now. If I’m ok with saying… That’s my testimony, and right now there are cats fighting outside and it’s getting really loud, which is appropriate. No, that’s my testimony. I don’t run from that. That is part of what brought me to my knees, John. When you look at people around you bleeding, you know? Unless you’re a complete, depraved psychopath, that’s a horror. That’s a day of reckoning that I don’t want for anyone else, but if that’s what it takes to bring them to the Lord like it took for me, ok. That’s my story. It’s not an accusation. You’re not accusing me. It’s just the truth.
(Martha) You said something commenting a while ago, Carole, that if an army was not of one mind they couldn’t go to war.
(Carole) Oh, oh. I was just thinking at some point that, you know, can you imagine being at war and nobody is under authority? It would be total and complete chaos and…
(Martha) And defeat.
(Carole) And defeat. Yeah, and it would be absolute defeat. But, Jen, I wanted to comment because you said, you were talking about the blindness. Martha mentioned a little while ago Proverbs 30:11. “There is a class of people who curse their fathers and do not bless their mothers. There is a class of people who are pure in their own eyes and yet are not washed from their own filth. There is a class of people, oh how lofty are their eyes and their raised eyelids. There’s a class of people whose teeth are as swords and whose fangs as knives to devour the poor from the earth and the needy from among men.” It goes down to say, “The eye that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother, the ravens of the valley will pick it out their eyes and the young vultures will devour it.” And my story is simply the reason that the process that the Lord had to take me through, my rebellion came from my rebellion toward my father. It was rebellion to God in essence; in reality it was rebellion, but that is who I rebelled on this earth to. And until I dealt with that rebellion to my earthly father, I could not, would not submit, truly submit from the heart to my heavenly Father. And so, He went to great lengths to bring me to the place to see that I was blind, that the vultures had plucked out my eyes and I was blind, because I was in rebellion to my earthly father. And it’s a wondrous story to me, part of my history to have had the Lord bring me to such forgiveness of my heavenly Father that brought me into relationship I’d never had with my heavenly Father. (Carole meant earthly father here) And even in the last two weeks the Lord has revealed something even further concerning my earthly father that has set me further free to a more intimate relationship with Him and a relationship of more surrender and more obedience to Him. And so, what you said, Martha, that Proverbs 30, many times our rebellion and our inability – not just our inability – our choices not to obey originate with someone in our lives, most likely our parents that needs to be dealt with. It’s got to be dealt with before we will come to that true submission, heart submission to the Lord and to His will.
(John) Here’s the hopeful part. God is up to the task. He can get His man, and He does have a huge bowed chest, and He can make us bow. And He knows what circumstances and what situations need to transpire for us to bow and break really. And He’s very kind in doing it. He’s precious while being vicious and somewhat forceful and aggressive. It’s so loving. And, you know, when you’re going through it, it doesn’t feel real loving, but, you know, it’s painted with His love. Every bit of it just, you realize that it is His love. And when I’ve had Him confront me and sometimes violently, now I can sense it and see it and say, “Oh, wow, this is so much love.” It feels loving now. And maybe that’s because of the vow. I don’t know, but it feels loving even the aggression.
(Martha) No chastening feels pleasant, but it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness. So, that’s, the military is a picture of the toughness it takes to make you into a military Christian. It’s a picture of how – and I was laughing about you have to tie your shoelace left one over right one? When you were talking I was thinking about that again.
(Jennifer) Really?
(Martha) Doesn’t it make you want to put the right lace over the left one?
(John) But the amazing thing is, is those Sergeants are saving your life. They’re literally saving your life. Their investment into you will eventually do that.
(Martha) He said by the end of his tour, his contract tour of whatever, how many years, three or four more years, he said, “They will have invested over a million dollars in me.” Invested. And he saw it as an investment in him.

Our Blindness Is Chosen But God Sets Us Free – Episode #551 – Shulamite Podcast

We are blind in rebellion, but that blindness is chosen. We are not victims in our blindness, because we chose it. What a world-shattering JOY it is when we discover that our Lord desires to open our eyes and set us free. He can and He will and He does!