Episode #339 – Green Eyed Monster

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The Green Eyed Monster
Episode #339

With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow

(M) John we have a very hot topic today. (Martha chuckles.)
(J) I would say yeah, today’s topic is rather hot.
(M) I just did a tape of the month that I was so thrilled about and so excited about. It was about discontent.
(J) And it was one of the most amazing messages I’ve heard on discontent, and really kind of racked me personally because of the fact that I’ve had to look back at my life and look at where I have been discontent, and where discontentment has really separated me from God. And so where…
(M) Say that again.
(J) Where discontentment has really separated me from God. I’ve looked and I’ve said Lord Jesus help me, because ah, you know I’ve been discontent in several areas of my life, and all it’s done is put me in opposition to God and His ways and His plans, and His gifts and His presence and everything, so.
(M) Well what’s astonishing about it, and I got the revelation while I was just riding in the car. I was thinking about Paul’s writing about coveting. Then I was so astonished to think about James who was the one who wrote about jealousy. And if you were the younger brother of Jesus, you would be so humanly susceptible to jealousy. And he’s the one that wrote about it, and he understood it so deeply. He understood it as jealousy was from below.
(J) He understood it as one who suffered from jealousy. (He laughs.)
(M) It had to be wouldn’t it?
(J) Yeah, absolutely.
(M) You can’t be an expert on what you haven’t done.
(J) Well the message is called “Season Of Our Discontent”. And it’s available at living Christian books dot com, ah on MP3 now, which is ah, wonderful; you know people can basically get that message immediately. So we’re real excited about that.
(M) Yeah that is something new. But it has evoked another topic, which I want to address next month, which is the remedy. Because James shows that what coveting and discontent goes to is jealousy, and what jealousy goes to is conflict, strife and murder. But the solution, he names the solution, James does. So I’m gonna go into that next month. I just want to do a podcast on jealousy, because it is a common human problem. We think we can deny it. One of the things James says, if you have bitter envy don’t lie about it; the tendency is to lie to yourself. And that is a severe warning not to lie. But being on that subject I’m thinking of how those who are religious are the most susceptible to envy, because they killed Jesus for envy, not because He was doctrinally wrong, or presumed to be the Son of God. They objected to that, but they killed Him for envy. He got attention, He got acclaim, He had gifts, and so He was ah, He was killed for jealousy. So it makes it the most satanic sin that there can be, because jealousy was how Satan fell from heaven and became the evil force, and brought many angels with him. Well I was thinking about you and I asked you the question, have you ever been jealous, because I don’t see jealousy in your life. I’ve seen a lot of jealousy of you, but I haven’t seen you be that jealous. And you told me just a time in your teenage years, but basically you haven’t suffered from that a lot, and you know John, I haven’t either. I don’t think I had enough confidence as a young person to be jealous. I think when your discontent goes to pride and anger, then that’s when you go to jealousy perhaps. But I did at one time in my life… And I’ll have to tell a little bit about the story because it leads up to my complete lifetime deliverance from jealousy. I was in a group of lovely women, Christian women, and I was just beginning to walk with the Lord in the Spirit, and I was so delighted in Him. There was one woman in this group that was exceptional. She was unbelievably beautiful and accomplished. And, but I noticed that it started out a little bit that whatever original ideas I had, she would take them and execute them as hers, immediately, before I could get it done. I in my antiquing saw these old, what they called chiffarobes, or wardrobes. I thought gee, I could paint that thing, put shelves in it and have a toy closet. And I thought that was a neat idea. Now, after that it spread; I don’t think it spread from me, because she executed the idea and introduced it as her own; that kind of thing. She would take my ideas. She would seek me out, question me ‘what are you up to?’ ‘What are you doing?’ And ah, and I would tell her. And it did not ever occur to me to discuss the Lord with her. Because she didn’t have, ah in her life there was not a relationship with God that I treasured. I mean I saw there be unbelievably cruel at times to people who were not so confident, needy people. And I didn’t have any desire to be real close to her. But anyway, I thought she was a fantastic woman and person. But as I began to grow in the Lord something changes in her toward me. And whenever I was around her I would leave feeling so discouraged and so dissatisfied, so discontent. It’d take me a couple of days, I’d get over it. But on this one occasion, it was like if I was reading the Bible she would say ‘oh I believe you have to read other authors’. If I was reading someone special, she would say ‘oh well I just read only the Bible’. She had this way of putting you down in public, no matter what I had to say, she was better. And it began to kind of irritate me. But after one time with here I left this, we had a group of lovely young mothers and we would get together once every two weeks and share recipe’s and it was just a sweet little group. But increasingly I realized that meeting would disturb me in my spirit. And at this one meeting I realized it was her. And when I left that meeting I was so jealous I felt like everything in my life was inferior, unacceptable. And I got in my car, it was Christmas and I drove to, I had to do some shopping at Sears. And I sat in my car and wept, and I said, “God, this woman makes me separate from You. She makes me unhappy with what You have given me, and I will not, I will not go there. Help me; I can’t bear to think that she has something better than me and that I wish I was like her. I can’t bear that because it destroys my whole relationship with You. It destroys my appreciation and gratitude for the gifts You’ve given me. Everything I have is so wonderful. I can’t bear it.” I was desperate and I cried and cried and cried out to Him, “Please, help me get rid of this jealousy. I’m not ever going to meet with those women again if this is what I go to.” So I had an experience right in the Sears store. And it was chaotic and busy at Christmas, and I got in line. And the young woman who was the clerk was infinitely kind and patient. And I looked at here, and she was very pretty, and the Lord just exploded that and He said, “ What you want in life is that kind of demeanor, and that’s what I’m going to form in you. And there’s nothing for you to be jealous of because I’m going to do things in you that you want to be.” And it was such an encounter with Him as just God; it was not just His vision of me, that something that completely dispelled out of me. And my daughter had told me at one point, she was twelve years old, she said, “Mom you don’t get it, she’s jealous of you.” And I went, “How could she be jealous of me? She’s so much beyond me, so has everything beyond me, how could she be jealous?” “You just don’t get it.” And I said no, I really don’t. I couldn’t think that was the case. After forty years, now I understand it was the case. It was only jealousy. And jealousy leads to murder, and she wanted to murder my joy, my, ah, intactness maybe, I don’t know, but she had the effect on me of killing my spirit. And I simply withdrew, and just, I wasn’t going to go there and be affected. But God set me so free John that it was like a deliverance of something dark. And I’ve never, since that time I’ve never been jealous except with the jealousy of the Lord. It doesn’t mean I’m, it was just He liberated me because I wanted to be liberated from it. And I think in part it was just the cross too; He, He let me see what could be and He killed it by the cross somehow, I don’t know. But anyway I’ve always since that time been free of jealousy. But all my life jealousy has hounded me.
(J) Ok, so this is where I’m seeing. I know the story and I’ve heard the story, I don’t believe I’ve ever met her.
(M) Yeah.
(J) Ok so I’ve heard this story several times and never met this person or anything like that. But I’m wondering right now, I’m thinking her life was a lie. Because she didn’t gain her personhood from herself, from God and from character development and from… Because she went and she grabbed and she grasped and acquired and…
(M) And she decimated people.
(J) She was a lie. She was a lie. What does the scripture say?
(M) That “If you have bitter jealousy, envy and contention, rivalry and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not pride yourselves on it and be in defiance of and false to the truth.” That’s the Amplified. The other is simpler. It says, “Do not lie to yourself.”
(J) Ok, so I’m wondering if the lie isn’t… She was a harbinger of other people. She literally took things from other people to amass to herself ‘a greatness’. She became a persona, and wasn’t a person. And she was a caricature of a person. Because she went and took and, talk about contentment, she was discontent with everything so she literally went out and harvested out of this world what she would like to become the grand dame, ok, and the head person, alright. So if you do that, you are a lie, because nothing is real.
(M) Nothing is yours. I stumbled upon other people who experienced this at her hand too. There was no end to what she wanted. She would cultivate you to take what you had and then drop you. And she was known for that. What God was showing me in the Sears store was the values of character, and the beauty of character, the beauty of kindness and humility. And she was tragic and ended tragically.
(J) But those… Character is developed inside, in you, with God.
(M) Yes, absolutely. And there’s no telling. This woman was potentially great. There’s no telling what she could have been if she had given everything to God and let Him form her. There’s no telling this woman’s potential that she lost by being ambitious. But anyway, never-the-less, I really believe, after forty years of dealing with different forms of jealousy, and situations that I really didn’t even realize were about jealousy, that Satan goes after… He knows who’s chosen and who’s anointing and who’s going to be, somehow, he goes after to destroy us through people who are jealous. That’s a spirit John. That’s a principality.

Green Eyed Monster – Episode #339 – Shulamite Podcast