Episode #350 – Let Go and Let Be

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Let Go and Let Be
24 August 2013
Episode #350

With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow

(M) The thing God is giving me this morning is, we have the choice, I’ve preached it forever, to reject the outlandish love of God once we bump our head into it and it comes to seek us and put His arms around us and capture us. So my heart broke for the Lord this morning, but I think what He said to me was, you have to let Me be in you One Who lets them go, and lets it be. They have the choice. And ah, I think Jesus is different. I think we, we put Him on our human level and we think that His heart is broken and I’m sure it is when He is rejected. But I believe that His surrender and His, I don’t know how to say it, His godliness, the nature of God, because He gives us the free will and we choose to say no, He lets us go. He looked at the rich young ruler, loved him, and let him go. He didn’t cease loving him. That story is a picture of those who reject Jesus over and over again. One man said I want to go and I want to stay with my father until he dies, and I want to bury my father first. And Jesus said, “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head. The foxes have holes, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” And what He meant was, it will cost you to follow Me; it will cost. And we, if we won’t pay the price because we want everything for ourselves, or we are afraid to even come into the realm of love, for whatever reason, then we have rejected Him and we lose our life. That is a choice to lose your life; to not lose your life, to save your life is a choice to lose it. To lose your life is a choice to save it. So Don lost his life, we watched him go through it for many years he didn’t, he lost a lot of things to come to the love of God. And in the end, before he went home, we saw him completely as a child. It wasn’t public, it was very private, but he was a delightful child before the Lord, spontaneous and brilliant. Carole lost her life. And some have taken years to, to make that transaction and the price is high.
(J) Jen’s lost her life.
(M) Oh yes, in so many ways; and now she’s found it. She’s found it, she’s become a writer, she’s creative, she speaks to a generation that I’m not in, she is, people respond to her from every generation. I know a man who’s told me he cries every time he reads Jennifer and he’s 70 years old. And so she has become… She’s found her life.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) And that’s the story of her work with her parents. When I said to her, ok Jennifer, the blog is good, but what has your life changed? And that’s when she said, “I love my life.” And she did not, it’s clear; she’s told that before. But yes, Jennifer’s lost her life. And, and so she’s found it.
(J) Well the amazing thing is that ah, you know, ok so she does love her life, but she lost her life and now she loves her life. The, the ironic thing is, is that He gives you a love for life when you will lose your life.
(M) She called me one day, not too long ago and she said, “Martha, I have something, is this wrong? I love the world.” I said, “Jennifer, what do you love, what do you love about the world?” She said, “I drive my car and I love the trees and the grass.” And I said, “That’s, that is God in you. That’s not the love of the world, that’s the love of His earth, His creation. There’s a big difference, love of the world is loving the values of the world, money, fame, ah, adoration, all that, all that constitutes the world system that is Satan’s.” I said, “No, no, you, your love is of the earth because of Christ in you.”
(J) Because He created it.
(M) Yeah, it’s a picture of Him. And her delight is in things she never delighted in before.
(J) Like it says, where does it say in, in Roman’s, that all creation speaks?
(M) Hmhmm, He is evident in creation. He has made Himself evident in creation. So I want to tell that story. I want to tell those unsaid stories. Ah, it’s possible to know the love of God. We made it seem like the love of God is the entire solution, no, Pauline got it, it’s our response to the love of God that, that brings the thing full circle. And so that you have, you love Him enough to lose everything for Him. If you receive His love, then you love enough to lose your life for Him. If you grab His love, which some have done, and use it to say, I can say someone took that love to self and used it with license that God approves of everything I do.
(J) Hm.
(M) And I’m, I’m ok, and God loves me more than others. And see, ‘ha-ha’ God loves me. The result of that was absolute disaster. And sometimes those who say, I don’t know how anybody could leave the love of God are the very ones who do.
(J) Really?
(M) Hmhm. Because if you think you stand, you will fall. So what is it you find, John, when you lose your life? Wonder what you have found? That surprised you.
(J) Well I found what I truly love. I found what I truly enjoy. I found what I truly uhm, take pleasure in, you know, being a shepherd was, wasn’t a job, it became something that I realized oh wow, this is what I was created to do and I really love this. And ah, you know, growing vegetables and you know, stuff like that, I was like wow, I really like this.
(M) So you found John. That’s what you found is the real John. You, you… John is a city guy that lived in Orlando and he loved to come to the mountains and he always wanted to live in Sherwood Forest. Well, he lives in the middle of a forest, concealed from the world.
(J) So He gave me, He put desires inside of me and hopes an dreams inside of me, and then he, when I lost my life He then He showed me what they were, and then gave them to me.
(M) (Martha chuckles.) And then, but you never dreamed you were a writer.
(J) No, I wrote, but I wrote to get down concepts so that I wouldn’t lose them. But, but I didn’t, not like I’m doing now.
(M) And we told the story when you were a little boy and you got all kind of, you got frequent flyer cards and you never flew, but now you manage and you’ve got credit cards which you’ve been, and you know check, checking accounts and so forth. So now you have it all; you planted the seeds of you. But in order to come to you, you had to lose you, and that’s the paradox.
(J) Hm.
(M) So now you’ve traveled, we can’t even remember all of the places we’ve traveled, and we have more to come. So thank you, thank you for dancing to the flute and crying over the dirge, as Pauline said. She really hit it, she hit what happened when we respond to the love of God.
(J) Hmhm.
(M) Kisses to you Pauline. (Martha chuckles.)

Let Go and Let Be – Episode #350 – Shulamite Podcast