Our Determined Purpose and the Story of Job – Episode #608

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Our Determined Purpose and the Story of Job
Episode #608
7-29-2018

With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow

This is the continuation of a series of Podcasts started in Episode #605.
If it is your determined purpose to know God, even your suffering will serve that end, just like Job. Just to glimpse the Mystery of God takes a lifetime!

John:
I just…if we can have our determined purpose…don’t you just have to choose? Don’t you just have to make the choice?

Martha:
It’s a choice and you commit to the choice. That’s what determine means. Determine means “I’m going to do this.” It’s more than choice and it has to be more than choice. And really, if you have any incentive toward it at all, it’s the Holy Spirit, anyway, prompting you. So…and if you don’t have it, you can ask the Spirit. The invitation is open to every born again believer, every, everybody.

John:
So if it’s His life to perform, but you’re saying that there is more than just the choice.

Martha:
Yeah, it’s a commitment to the choice. It’s a passion. It’s a desire. It’s a yearning, a longing. What you are describing, John, is that you’re, you’re behind the Shepherd not in front of Him. You are following the Lamb and it is Jesus the Lamb that is manifesting in you.

I know what I was trying to remember. Years ago I said in my enthusiasm, “Oh, Lord, I just want to know You.” And He said, “Get out of My way and you will know Me through your own body.” And I learned, I learned to… Someone said the other day something very grateful and very complimentary and I said, “None of that was me. I’m not capable of it. It was not Martha.” And she said, “I know!” But it really, really wasn’t. I’m not capable of looking like Him at any point in time. But that’s what you’re… You’re letting the Shepherd reveal who He is to you by letting Him be in you (laughs). Did that make sense?

John:
Yeah, absolutely to me. Absolutely!

Martha:
And I can see it on your countenance. You’re, you are behind Him. You are watching for Him and waiting for Him. Actually you are not focused on me that much. You are focused on He, what He sees about me. You are looking through His eyes. That’s what it seems to me you’re doing.

John:
Well, ok. And here’s the dichotomy. I am looking at you. I am…it is a, it, I’m watching. But you’re right. I’m not, I’m not watching… John’s not watching.

Martha:
Humanly you’re not…

John:
I’m not humanly watching. Because I would, I would see something and then say, “Oh, well, let’s fix it.” But you are right. I am! I’m standing behind Him saying, “Where are we going?”

Martha:
Where are You going in my body? (laughs)

John:
Absolutely!

Martha:
It’s obvious because you’re not, you’re not really… You’re terribly involved but you’re really not involved. You’re a watchman and a watchman watches. But you’re not, you’re not entangled with it. It’s amazing. I’m, I’m getting to know Him by watching you watch me (laughs).

John:
But you know something? In that it’s not like my heart isn’t affected. It isn’t that I remain cold or distant.

Martha:
Oh yeah. That’s true.

John:
You know, you could take that into supper spiritual realm and then you could say, “Oh, ok, well I’m just going to blah blah blah blah.” No.

Martha:
That’s not it.

John:
I am affected.

Martha:
And you are suffering with me with Him.

John:
Yes! But I…Yes! That’s exactly it.

Martha:
I’m glad you put that because that’s crucial. You are involved. You are not NOT involved. He’s using…

John:
That’s the dichotomy.

Martha:
Right!

John:
That you are completely involved and you’re not the life.

Martha:
Um hmm, well said!

John:
My life is in the heavens but I am affected.

Martha:
Um hmm.

John:
There’s the paradox…what you…

Martha:
Paradox!

John:
Yeah, you always say the paradox that two things held that are…

Martha:
Truth is always two things.

John:
That appear to be opposites.

Martha:
Um hmm, and even contradictory.

John:
And contradictory.

Martha:
How can it be you and not you? How can it be Him and not you? It is! It’s a mystery. It’s how it works.

John:
So that’s how I would answer.

Martha:
Um hmm.

John:
She has to determine to know but she also has to get out of the way and let Him live. It, it…

Martha:
You have to participate in His sufferings in your own body. Oh, this is the revelation that I didn’t tell on the Tape of the Month!

John:
Well, hallelujah!

Martha:
In pursuit…I’ve been pursuing… (laughter) Oh this is, this is good!

John:
Easter eggs!

Martha:
Yeah! I’ve been pursuing the issue of knowing God. I’ve been going through the scriptures. Been reading some things by Sparks that are fantastic and just been brooding and brooding, and praying and praying over the knowledge of God. As I was waking up one morning last week, suddenly I understood the whole book of Job. I’d never understood it before. Now I’ve written about it, so I had an inkling. But I really didn’t comprehend the big story and I saw the big story, John. It began with God saying to Satan, “Have you seen Job, my perfect man? Go get him and stop here. You can only do this much.” Which tells us that God uses Satan in His, as His, in His purposes. Mystery! I find it perfectly acceptable. So Satan goes and wipes out his family. Very drastic picture of loss. His friends come and they accuse him of things that he’s not guilty of because God called him perfect. And they go on, lecture him endlessly and there are some jewels in their lecture that I’ve picked up and the Lord’s given me.

And the thing that I couldn’t but admire about Job was he never would admit that his relationship with God was…it was about that. It couldn’t be about that because he knew he was faithful to God. He knew he was obedient and though he sounded like a proud man he was simply defending what he knew. He defended his relationship with God as valid, whole, and intact and it was despite…did he have four friends? Eliphaz and Gobbledygoop?

John:
It was, yeah, the three…uh huh. (laughter)

Martha:
And they all spoke endless lectures of him that goes on for chapters. And then, then Job questions God, which we, we can do.

John:
Gobbledygoop? His friend Gobbledygoop. He was the worst. Yeah, Gobbledygoop was the worst. (laughter)

Martha:
So…then he begins to talk to God and ask Him, “Why? What have I done?” And it’s what you do when you, when you lose. You say, “What have I done?”

John:
Um hmm.

Martha:
“I don’t know of anything I’ve done!” And he talks to him and then God answers and God says, “Were you there when the deer gives birth?” Or “Were you there when the earth was formed?” And He gives Job His own lecture.

John:
Um hmm.

Martha:
But Job says, “I tremble! I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear but now I see you and I know You.” The whole thing was to bring him to the knowledge of God, John. He was a man who pleased God and in order to get him to need God, Job to need Him, He had to reduce him. I don’t understand that entirely, why that’s necessary. I would think there would be an easier way but there never is. Job the perfect man had to be crushed and wounded by God so that he could see Him.

We can’t really see Him. Do you know I really believe we’re all supposed to see Him perhaps not in visual form in this life but we have the privilege, it’s ours, to see Him. I can say I’ve seen Him as who He is. Not remotely enough; a speck of a quarter of a piece of sand. It’s all I know. But we are supposed to see Him and God wanted Job to know Him as He was and so He had him questioned about the identity of God and his relationship.

John:
Um hmm.

Martha:
He put him through that grilling, that tedious grilling.

John:
Jesus!

Martha:
But it was for the glory of God before those friends because in the end He said, “You go and get some cows and sacrifice them before Me with your friend…

John:
Gobbledygoop?

Martha:
Yeah! (laughter) And then he will pray for you and you will be healed. He put, He vindicated Job by putting him in a position over his friends and by requiring that they need him to get to God. That was the end of it. God…Job came to know God. That was God’s intention of all the suffering. It’s His intention for every suffering, just like you’re saying, that we are supposed to know Him through suffering. And we just demonstrated it in our, your life and my life where you inserting my, me and my infirmity and my time of wilderness where I can’t cook. I really can’t do much and so it’s all being done for me, by you and others. And we just demonstrated that’s it’s all to know God. And hopefully…we are all like, we’re all like that. If you were of a lowly mind when you hear Billy Graham has Parkinson’s, you would say as Job’s friends, “Well, there must be something wrong with him or God would never do that to Billy Graham.” Well, God did and Billy Graham is, I am sure, a favorite of God if there is favorites. And Billy Graham understood perfectly why: so he would know God as his everything.

John:
And it was proved by how he responded to it. It wasn’t…

Martha:
Right, John!

John:
…with sour grapes, it wasn’t…

Martha:
It wasn’t with bitterness and resistance!

John:
…with bitterness and resistance. No!

Martha:
It was acceptance.

John:
He knew!

Martha:
Because he…his determined purpose was to know God, no matter what the cost. That proved to be his determined purpose, didn’t it?

John:
Um hmm, absolutely!

Martha:
I’ll never stop talking about him.

John:
It’s amazing because of what it stated. There’s a deep message, deeper than the salvation messages he gave at the crusades. There’s a deep message behind that. There’s a richness behind a man that is so surrendered to God and His sovereignty and His sovereign hand and His will and His ways. The ways of God are scary.

Martha:
Um hmm.

John:
And he was surrendered to it because he, the…

Martha:
Because he knew God!

John:
That was probably his deepest message.

Martha:
Oh, wow! Yes, it reveals the man.

John:
It does reveal the man.

Martha:
I’ve been given two 3-inch thick books about Billy Graham. One of them is a biography and the other is about the pure prophet and I can’t wait to get in it, to get to know him. And it’s probably going to be very simple. His life was reduced to great simplicity even though it was a complex life. I believe his, his way of functioning is very simple. It’s very easy. When you eliminate all the religious stuff and the, and the law of I shoulds and I can’t and I woulds and I, I shall. All the complexities we lay on it by our self-focus. But when it’s just Jesus, it’s very simple.

Our Determined Purpose and the Story of Job – Episode #608 – Shulamite Podcast

If you make it your determined purpose to know God, all of your suffering will serve that purpose. As illustrated in a beautiful revelation of Job and his great suffering, it takes a lifetime just to glimpse a small part of the great Mystery of God!