The Death of Being Nothing – Episode #676

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The Death of Being Nothing
Episode #676
11/17/2019

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

This is the continuation of a series of podcasts started in Episode #675.
What does it mean to take up your cross daily? Death. You will die to any and all obstacles to being God’s child. You’ll discover what it is to be nothing.

Jennifer:
When you were telling me this, what popped in my head was the verse in Revelation about how they overcame. They overcame by the blood, and the word of their testimony, and that they loved not their life unto death. And that’s when I made the connection, because of what I’m in right now; what a death waiting is! And how that lined up so perfectly with the three requirements for overcoming that He, that is listed in Revelation, and that is, this is kind of an explosion out from that.

We think we know what that means, to love not your life unto death. I’ve always thought of that in terms of martyrdom. I’ve always thought of that maybe in death to self, but this is a very practical picture of what that is. And waiting on God every day for Him to move – that is, “Take up your cross daily.” That is, I mean when you said that it just kind of exploded as a picture for me of what it is to be an overcomer. And as you said, He did it! But you were willing to die in the waiting. That was, that was the obedience. The waiting was the death to you, a death to answers, a death to, to healing when you wanted to be healed, a death to answered prayer on your timetable. Waiting on God is a death to me and what I want and how I want it and when I want it and why I want it.

Martha:
Oh, absolutely, Jennifer. That’s, that’s wonderful.

But it’s… To wait is to surrender on a level that’s almost no other, other level. It’s one thing to surrender to His instructions. But it’s one other thing to wait for nothing and nothing comes. And it goes on and on and on.

John:
Here’s my side of the waiting. So I had to wait, invest, serve with no power at all. I had no power. I had no power to make you want to live. I had no power to do anything. All I had the power to do is to serve. And I gave. It was a death. I just gave! I just said, “I’m investing in this. I believe in this.” I, I did, I did have the, the, the faith. But there was, there was moments in this whole situation I would look at their face and I’d say, “Oh, this is really bad. This is really bad.” So I would know without anything being stated how bad it was and I just continued to, to invest and continued to serve. And… But that service was a death! I was dying in that service because I had no power.

Martha:
And it had no fruit. It didn’t appear to have any. Is that right?

John:
It, it has had fruit. It’s had major fruit. God…

Martha:
I mean at the time.

John:
…God did it. But at the time, I couldn’t, I couldn’t focus on fruit. I couldn’t focus on the, the, the harvest. I was literally just sowing and sowing and just sowing. And it didn’t matter. And so, you know, it’s not any grand nobility. I just, I just died to it!

Martha:
Well, you had to die to your whole life, John. It was an interruption…

John:
It was totally, yeah.

Martha:
of your life. A complete interruption! Your day began with my food and supplements.

John:
It, it did.

Martha:
And your counter was full of some thirty bottles.

John:
Yep, it was.

Martha:
At least three times a day. It was ridiculous!

John:
Yep. And, and that was, you know…

Martha:
That was your life.

John:
That was my life. I literally knew I got up, I had to do those things. I had a schedule. I put myself on a routine to serve you and, and I literally, you know… That’s just my personality. If something gets put in there, it’s going to happen, you know. And, and, but, but there was no effort. It was just… I wasn’t striving. I was just dying. I just died. I just daily died with it and, and…

Martha:
I never felt though that you were ever hopeless.

John:
No.

Martha:
You, you did have faith and you had a whole lot of prayer that I know nothing about, I’m sure.

John:
Right.

Martha:
And so did everyone. And, of course, for months and months people brought us food, wonderful food.

John:
Yeah.

Martha:
So it was a, a body experience, a community…

John:
Sure enough.

Martha:
…of Christ experience. And I stood by wishing to be well for your sakes and that didn’t help either. That wasn’t…

John:
But see…

Martha:
The Lord wasn’t to…

John:
God had something in, in need in, in us, each of us. He had a need in each of us to be in our position at that particular. He had a need to serve in the way I served. HE had a need. He had a, a passion and a need to do it. He had a passion and a need to for, for Joan to bring food, for Jennifer to bring food. He wanted to fulfill Himself through serving through us. And, yes, it was focused on you.

Martha:
You are telling me that Jesus did it in you.

John:
Well, there’s no question! I’m telling you I didn’t have the energy for that.

Martha:
That’s what you’re telling me.

John:
It was endless.

Martha:
It was all Jesus…

John:
It, it, it was because…

Martha:
…in everybody.

John:
Yeah, absolutely.

Martha:
Oh, what fun!

John:
But He wanted to fulfill something. He… You, you… I thought about this today. You thought when, when you did the… I spilt… Last night I spilt some turmeric tea and, and I thought about the turmeric mayonnaise and how He joyed in cleaning it up. It was the joy of His heart to do that for the Father. He wanted to clean it up, okay? So I realized that, yes, this, this, too, it was His joy to do that through me, in me, to be the energy and the life force.

Martha:
And I… That freed me…

John:
Uh huh.

Martha:
…from guilt for being where I was, because you always…

John:
And there was no obligation.

Martha:
There was no…

John:
You didn’t…

Martha:
And you never conveyed, none of you ever conveyed, “Can she please get up and do something?” No, I never… I was free to be where I was because of y’all. Wow!

Jennifer:
That was a death of the whole body, I think. Because we couldn’t, we couldn’t say one way or another what was happening, we couldn’t say one way or another why it was happening. We, we had to die to knowing anything, too, you know? We… I wanted so, so badly, I was like, “Please, just tell me what to pray that will get results.”

Jennifer:
Yeah! It was a desperation and there was, there was no part of what He was doing that was going to be touched by me and what I wanted, what, what Jennifer wanted – not for Martha, not for this body, not for the ministry, not for John. It didn’t… That was not going to happen. So in that sense the Body, we had to wait for you to wait for Him to move.

John:
Yep.

Joan:
And I feel like for all of us it was a death and it was also living a message that Martha actually wrote during this time and it was on being nothing. And we actually each in our own way God orchestrated us to live the message of nothing because humanly there was nothing we could do.

John:
Nothing!

Joan:
Nothing! It didn’t matter what we did. God was in charge of the whole thing and it was His. He orchestrated it, He set it up so perfectly to where we each had a part in the whole thing but in the reality, humanly there was nothing we could do. In our humanity we want to fix, we want to change, we want to move God either with prayer or, you know, if we could wail on the floor and God would move, we’d do it. But He had a purpose in the fact of teaching us all that we could literally do nothing and then Martha came out with a wonderful revelation and the booklet of Being the Unequaled Joy of Being Nothing. The Joy Unequaled of Being Nothing. I never get it straight! But anyway. That, that marvelous book. But really, I think we all lived it in that because we died to thinking we could do anything.

Martha:
I have such a, a sense of resurrection, such a confidence in something in our group, that we will be resurrected to something we’re never been before. That’s coming! There is no resurrection without death. There has… For everything that God wants to achieve, we have to pass through the death to get there. And we have! We’ve died. We’ve died!

We’ve never quite had a, had this conversation, all of us together from our different parts of it. But I witnessed in you, Joan and Dave and Jacquelyn and Jennifer, oh my goodness, and certainly John, the joy of Jesus. That was what was so amazing. You had joy. It was… If it was ever a problem, you never manifested it. The joy you had to do it all, tedious, unending. It was unending, months and months. And you were always ready to do anything else that you could do and that I have no idea the prayer that went up, too, for me.

The Death of Being Nothing – Episode #676 – Shulamite Podcast

What does it mean to take up your cross daily? Death. You will die to any and all obstacles to being God’s child. You’ll discover what it is to be nothing. And in that dying, you will begin to truly LIVE – perhaps for the first time in your entire life!