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Divine Itinerary
Episode #335
May 12, 2013
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guest: Carole Nelson
(Carole) Well, you know, Jennifer has often referred to the brilliance of the Spirit, to the brilliance of God, and how many things and how many areas and countless things that He’s doing at the very same time. But all of these, these divine encounters were taking place, and going back to when the Lord first set up the trip, because I believe He did, when Don and I were planning this. His brother said to me recently, “My gosh, I cannot believe your agenda, your itinerary.” Well, I couldn’t believe it, and we couldn’t believe it either, but I believed that it was divine. For somehow it was all very divine. But while He was doing all that, for me He was; concerning this whole revelation that Martha has and is bringing out about Daniel and the two principles that Daniel followed, that she will tell about; for me He was also exposing some very deep things in me. He was touching my own appetites, my own love of the world in certain forms, my own individual specific love of the world, and places where I find great comfort, ah, that He has allowed to comfort me for a time, that He is touching and I am purposing to, to love nothing but Him. But He was also exposing control that I still am so easily, I have been or was easily drawn back into. And planning this trip I did a lot of research, uhmm, I looked at all the different places. But I really, this was the first real task God has given me since He took Don. Up until the trip I have been in a place of being rendered completely helpless and He has Shepherded me, He’s taken care of me, He has held me, He has proven Himself over and over to me. But in this trip I took control over the agenda and over the trip, the moving of the trip. And I quenched the Spirit through that. And He, even though He is restoring the trip, and even though He is showing me the positive things that He did and accomplished in the trip, at the same time He is preparing me for that day when He comes, when He comes back for all of us, for that last day. Because He is coming soon, and He is, He is tightening the grip. He’s making the path more narrow because He wants His Bride so badly, and He wants His Bride for His Son holy and without spot. And so for me it was a time of exposure of sin, it was a time of being called to a more holy walk in Him, to holiness, to His holiness, to receive His holiness. And uhm, so it was a trip of multiples, it was a trip of brilliance; it was a trip of many, many facets for me. And I’m just now beginning to see and take in what He did.
(M) I saw your God, Carole, come in with the most incredible love, dominion, mercy and power, and it has really leveled me to see how great and huge and determined His love is. John and I, I think, witnessed that. All that’s left for me, all these wonderful other things, but above it all I’ve been impacted by His love. It’s frightening. His love is frightening. Because He is so passionate and so determined. If you give Him a ‘yes’, as you have done, then He will take you to the place that pleases Him, and He will get you there. He gave me this scripture for Carole. Is it ok if I read it?
(Carole) Umhmm.
(M) This is from the book of Hosea. And of course we all are Gomer’s. I turned to this and I felt like it was for Carole, but it was also for me and for John. It’s in the New Living Translation. “I will make you My wife forever, showing you righteousness and justice, unfailing love and compassion. I will be faithful to you and make you Mine, and you will finally know Me as the Lord.” And then there goes enormous prosperity from that. And of course Hosea is the book about Israel’s unfaithfulness likened to an unfaithful wife, but He takes over, and that’s what He did with this trip. He took over and had His agenda. And it was the most incredible experience of His powerful, determined love.
(Carole) It was a trip of ah, for me it was a trip of joy. It was a trip, it was the cross. It was a trip of repentance. It was a trip… Martha said, ah, that I was the grave, and I am seeing, and she said after the grave, you have to go through the grave, but then there is resurrection. And I’m seeing the light anyway, and the resurrection. But in the course of it she had written some special things in an e-mail about how, wondering and asking John and I, how we came to know the Lord more. How did we see Him? What did we learn more about the Lord? Because Philippians 3:10 says, “to know the Lord and the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His sufferings, that we may be conformed even to His death.” That is the one purpose, and when I was sitting there pondering that, what I heard from Him was this in Song of Solomon 8:6 “Set me like a seal upon Your heart, like a seal upon Your arm; for love is as strong as death, jealousy is as hard and cruel as Sheol, the place of the dead. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a most vehement flame, the very flame of the Lord.” And I saw Him as Jealous; that Love is violent and strong, stronger than the grave. I saw Him as Jealous, pursued by such Love I don’t know or understand.
(J) That word ‘set’, I’m wondering if “set Your love” is not just about choice, because this trip for me was more about our choice and the fruit of our choice. Because we didn’t purpose, it wasn’t like we had a determined purpose to go be Christ in the nations or to evangelize the world, or to tell… It was nothing about that. It was like our inner choice was made evident and we were able to see the response of those God was touching from our inner choice, but it wasn’t….
(M) I think we were like Abraham, we ‘went out not knowing where we were going’, the way we’re going. And we, we’ve discovered somewhat through the trip, mostly since we’ve come home, where we went, and it was, it was shocking. It’s shocking. Do you have anymore?
(J) Well, I just, the whole, the choice, making evident your choice. I’ve said that, I don’t know where I’ve said it but I know I’ve said it that He will, it is His grace to make evident our choices so that we know what our choices are and that we can face them because we’re accountable for them. So it’s kindness, and it’s His grace to say, “This is what you’re choosing, I want to make sure you know.” And it’s like we’ve made choices in our life and then they were made evident outside and then we were able to see those choices and people were able to interact with the choices that we’ve made in secret.
(M) Yeah, that’s the issue. I’m telling you all about Daniel. The question after we got home, and it was wonderful and a very stretching trip physically and spiritually I think. When we came back the Lord reminded me… There were things I was dealing with, struggling with, and the Lord reminded me that every experience is for the purpose of knowing Him. There’s no other reason for anything He does. There’s no other reason for where He sends me. He reminded me at least three times in that trip of three weeks, “You are here to love Me. You are here to be a Mary of Bethany to Me. That is the agenda. Don’t make it anything else.” I mean He wasn’t quite that stern but I took it that powerfully. He kept me on the track even when I’d get off the track. But when it was all over there was only one question, not what happened, not who was affected, not what we did and didn’t do, none of that. It wasn’t even … The only thing was what did you learn of Me? And I can’t tell you how impacted I am by His love. I am changed by what I saw of His love, how He will spare no expense. He will spare nobody. He will spare nothing to conquer us with His love if we’ve given in any ‘yes’ at all. And I’m stunned by it. I’m stunned by the power, and as you said, Carole, the violence of His love. It is so, it is so amazing. He gave us such joyful, wonderful times. I can’t tell you how many near accidents we had in the car, because it was a madness.
(Carole) But you saw what you gave us in Psalm 16, we didn’t lose anything.
(M) Oh yeah, one of the promises is ‘You guarded what is mine.’ We had, you know, we had extremely important things like Euros and passports and coats in the cold, and He protected everything. Well, one experience with our dear hysterical friend; we were on the train coming from a charming little town and she happened to show up there, and the train broke down. And it’s hard to explain, Italy’s far more rural than I thought; it’s farm, vineyards and farmland. So we were in this ‘no-where’ town station and the train broke down. And so the engineer and conductor were rather frantic, because there we were; and there were only about five people left on the train at most, maybe less. And so we had an hour with our friend, for her to tell us her woes. And, but, the looming thing in the back was if we are broken down in this little town. There’s no taxi. There’s no other train. This was the last train from Cinque Terres, so this was… We could’ve been in a… I thought, there’s no hotel here for the railroads to put us up. Do they care? Do they do that? And here we sit while they’re banging with a, what was it, John, a wrench?
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) They just had a wrench, and they were coming…
(J) And large hoses with big huge couplings on the end of them.
(M) And we could hear them banging, and then, and finally the Lord said, “Maybe if you prayed, Martha, it would help.” So I prayed, and within two minutes the train ‘chug-chugged’ and started up. But then it broke down again and it got dark and it was almost nine o’clock. So you know, it was really, could have been a very difficult situation because we were not, not remotely in any walking distance from our hotel up on the top of a mountain. So, but the Lord had us confined with our little friend, and Carole had great love for her and mercy, and I had a strong, uhm-uhmm, uhm-uhmm. And I was embarrassed at that, and Carole was embarrassed at her love, and then John…
(Carole) They were carrying on this conversation that goes right over her head. Because he’s saying, as she is bemoaning all of these… I mean she’s gone to Europe by herself ,and she got lost constantly, and she would go on and on, and John just very matter of fact says, “I need to get off your world”, or “I want to get off your world”. She never, she never heard it. He said “I want off your world….” (John speaks in background.) And then we get to Barga, and we’re all standing up talking, ok, and the train has stopped and been stopped for a couple of minutes. And I happened to look over and it says Barga, and I said, “It’s Barga!” (Carole’s laughing.) “We’ve gotta get off this train,” which we did, but everything was divine.
