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Life’s Obstacle Course
Episode #312
December 2, 2012
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guest: Julie
(Julie) I see what you’re talking about, and what you did, and I see it so illustrated in this exchange between Paul and Timothy. Because Paul as someone older and wiser and wiser, even someone apostolic, he’s grounding Timothy. And I guess why this means so much to me is because before I came to you, I was one of the individual’s that needed to be warned, you know. It says they were “ambitious to be doctors of the Law, but they have no understanding of the words and terms they use, or the subjects about which they make such dogmatic assertions.” And they’re caught up in “vain arguments and purposeless talk”, and that’s so easy to do, and I see how much of Christianity is caught up in that. And you, you did for me what Paul did for Timothy here in pulling him down into the practical and saying love your life, and recognize that your life is the most perfectly designed obstacle course that will take you to God if you’ll let it be. If you will accept His administration and if you will submit to the divine training that will cause that leaning. I mean what you’re just describing even, that, that now you’re at a stage where if God doesn’t do it, if Christ doesn’t do it then it doesn’t get done. That’s how much you’re leaning. That’s what I see. You have submitted to the divine training to create that leaning. And you gave me the value of my own life to such a degree that I would get my head out of the cloud and look at the practical and, and you gave, you instilled, you planted a vision in me to love, to find Him, to find Him in the nitty-gritty of my own life and be willing to be in that training as my discovery of Him. Not to be looking for Him somewhere ‘out there’, but to realize He’s hidden right in the middle of my own home, and my own responsibilities, and that’s the divine training for me to submit to; and that’s what Paul was giving Timothy, something utterly practical and real and solid.
(M) You’re making cry Julie, because that’s, that is the discipleship. That’s, that is what’s taken me many years to learn, that God’s values, God’s values are to work. Paul worked with his own hands; he was a scholar, an intellect, a nobleman in Israel, and he came down to work with his hands.
(J) Hmm.
(M) And that’s what he instilled in others, and ah. It’s just, you just put it in such clear terms. I thank you.
(Julie) One of the reasons that I, I love, I love it, because when you first began to give me that as discipleship, it excluded no one. It meant that there was absolutely no one in the entire world that was excluded from God’s discipleship, because for each one of us, in our own lives, He’s designed it right in the middle of our life. I don’t have to go somewhere, I don’t have to learn something, I don’t have to attain to something ‘out there’ so to speak, He’s right, He’s ready, everything is ready right there in the middle of my own responsibilities to be trained by Him and to find Him and to discover Him. And another thing you told me, from the very beginning you told me that you cut a path through the jungle, and killed all the snakes, and that what your hope was that that meant that the people coming along behind you would have an easier time. And you told me from the beginning too, that if, you’d always emphasize the ‘if’, but you would say if there is a shortcut in this path to knowing God, it is authority and thanksgiving; and I believed you. And to me that’s illustrated with the Green Beret’s too, and when they hit a point on the obstacle course that they were afraid, or that if something did get flushed out of them, that thing itself was not a disqualifier, it was whether in that critical moment they would give themselves to authority. And that was critical because the authority understood what the real boundaries were, not them. And so I appreciate the illustration of that in those video’s, to see that, the way I see it with God, fear is not a disqualifier with us, even sin is not an automatic disqualifier for us, it’s what we do with it when we hit it.
(M) It’s whether you’ll surrender, and be led, either by your captain, or by the Holy Spirit, it’s, it’s all about surrender. To go where you cannot, you cannot believe you can go.
(Julie) Do you remember what I told you in the last couple of days when I was going through this and you were coaching me along, and I said at one point, I was just praying it out raw with the Lord, and I was like “Lord, I don’t know how to do what you’re asking me to do.” And He immediately flashed something of you before my eyes, and He said, “Yes you do, you’ve seen it in her, it’s one surrender at the time; that is how you live this life”, one surrender at the time.
(M) Which means one step at the time, one day at the time, one issue at the time.
(Julie) I’m so grateful sometimes I can’t even contain it, and I try desperately to express it. I’m so grateful for the seasoned warriors like you that the Lord has, because it puts a face to Him, it puts a shape to the path kind of. You’re constantly before me. It’s real to me when Paul, in Paul’s exchanges with his disciple’s, how he will say to them, “follow me as I follow Christ”, that’s real to me, because there are times when I wouldn’t know what to do if I hadn’t seen you do it. I wouldn’t know what that surrender would need to look like if I, if I hadn’t watched you make such a surrender before me. And I do think it, for the people who will hunger, and recognize, I see so many, we see people come in and out of this ministry who are just determined to figure out the path on their own, and they make it so much harder than it has to be. Because they will not be humble enough to come in under another. The Lord dealt with me, I don’t know if you’ll want to keep this on or not, but the Lord dealt with me early on, are you willing to be humble enough to come in under the covenant of another, to accept… He even said to me not long ago in a moment of repentance, “It’s all finished if you’ll be humble enough to accept it as the work of Another, and not your accomplishment.”
(J) Well I think that’s with everybody, because He’s done the finished work. He says, He determined on the cross “It is finished”, meaning it all is finished; I’ve done it all, it’s all complete. So you don’t have to, uhmm, work it out and struggle and strain, you have to enter into what He’s already done.
(Julie) We saw that illustrated so powerfully in those training videos, because those seasoned Green Beret’s would tell them what they needed to do. Sometimes they would tell them how to carry their weapon, how to, at critical points they would come in and offer the council. And we would watch some of them on the videos were just determined to figure it out on their own, or they didn’t listen, or they didn’t hear, and they eventually would fail.
(J) And thank God they would, because they would be dead if they were out in the field, and they were Beret’s, they would have themselves be killed as well as their comrades.
(M) You’re right Julie, some come in and make it so much harder. And, and I’ve seen one or two come by, come through, and they want a secret of how to do it, other than just step by step surrender. They want to figure it out, and they want to find the secret.
(J) They want a method.
(M) They want a method, there you go, they want a method. A method that doesn’t require work and nitty-gritty working it through, ringing it out, and finding God and listening to Him in the obstacle course that you come up against. So the refusal to be trained is extremely real to me. Because really, few there be that find it. That’s, that’s in my heart lately, is that the real essence of the Church and of the Bride, is going to be a remnant. Just as in the Green Beret’s you said it was reduced from 120 to 30, is that about? Twenty-five percent of those who would’ve been in it, and I think it was 200 wasn’t it, twenty-five percent, that’s a forth, one out of four.
(J) But that was one out of four that made it to train.
(M) That’s not, it’s even worse isn’t it. I believe every life is destined for greatness, whether the world sees it or not, that every, every born-again believer is destined for greatness and should attain a greatness before God, if nowhere else.
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(Applause)
Life’s Obstacle Course – Episode # 312 – Shulamite Podcast
