Episode #358 – Beauty of the Lord in Ugly Places

Podcast: Download (2.0MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Beauty of the Lord in Ugly Places
19 October 2013
Episode #358

With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guests: Jennifer Wentzel and Carole Nelson

(M) When you do ‘good’ you don’t need the blood. The absence of the blood of Christ is ‘I don’t need the blood. I can do it, and I can be it. All I have to do is dress the right way and be clean and orderly,’ and I’m sorry, “Where there’s no ox, the stall is clean.”
(J) We’ve got a lot of…
(M) We have a lot of stalls. (Martha and John laugh.)
(J) With oxes.
(M) Yeah, you’re right. (Laughter) Sometimes I live in a stall.
(Jennifer) We’re one big barn.
(J) Yeah we are one big barn.
(M) So I have, and in studying interior design, that whole arena that you’re describing is part of the study of brilliance and simplicity and it’s in museums, and it’s taught, and etc. etc.
(Jennifer) That then becomes a tragedy. Because I do believe they were given a gift, and that’s what they did with it, and so it’s dead. They were not willing for the rugged road; they were not willing for the times when the beauty is not self-evident. And so they’re gone, and all they have are museums. And maybe that’s why I cried and didn’t know about it. Maybe it wasn’t just the beauty. Maybe it was ‘look what could’ve been’, and instead now is, you know, nothing.
(Carole) The scripture that comes to me is “Unless the Lord builds a house, those who work, work in vain.” And, and I know personally I had nothing to do with this, nothing. He built a house I knew nothing of, and I walked in and I’m enjoying it. And there is a doing that only God can do.
(M) That’s right, Carole! The Promised Land is a house you didn’t build, vineyards you didn’t plant. Ah, we walked into a farm that was a house we didn’t build, and a land we never dreamed of, and it’s a paradise. But it’s vineyards, and the rest is God’s gifts, and they are gifts of beauty always. I was asked many years ago. I was asked to speak in a church in Rome on prayer, and it was a whole weekend.
(J) I was thinking she was speaking about Italy.
(Carole) I did too. I thought she was speaking about Italy.
(M) Oh, Rome, Georgia. (Martha laughs.)
(J) She was at the Vatican, speaking to the Pope. (Everyone laughs.)
(M) Not quite. Anyway, I spoke one morning, and I think it was five or six people with me. Jacqueline and I, I do know were there. And they saw this woman in the ladies’ rest room who was acting very peculiar. And so then I spoke, and all of a sudden in the middle of what I was speaking… I was speaking on surrender to the Lord.
(J) It was sovereignty, weren’t you?
(M) Hmhmm, think so, sovereignty and surrender. And she let out this blood-curdling scream in the middle of it. It’s on the tape somewhere, just chilling, and went out of the room. And the church people, I think, subdued her physically and called for an ambulance, because she was bezerk, cursing terrible, terrible cursing. And my people got over and prayed and I just, I stayed there in a state of shock. And so, it was quite an event in that church. And that evening the pastor said to the congregation a little bit about it, and he said, “Now we don’t treat people this way,” implying that I had mistreated her. And I was devastated, absolutely devastated. And we were staying in a home at that time, and I just crawled in bed and, and the people had to hold me. I was just, I felt responsible for it, and I felt his blame of me for it. And the Lord said, “Come and go for a walk with Me.” So I put on, at that time I had a mink coat, too lavish for words. It was a jacket. And He said, “Put on your mink coat and go walk with Me. (Everyone laughs.) So I went for a walk down the street, and He said, “Turn in here, to this road.” And it was a pretty street with gardens and so forth, and the Lord said, “You fell in love with Me for My beauty, and I want you to know that I have instilled beauty in you all your life. You love beauty, you were born loving beauty.” And I had no idea what relevance that had to the scene I had just experienced because it was very ugly. The ambulance came and carried the woman off to the confinement in a hospital. And I had no clue why He was discussing that with me, but He really as much as said to me, “Your ministry is beauty because that’s what I put in you. And it is My beauty I want you to express.” No one has ever told me, Jennifer, that they understood that about… And I didn’t even know until you told me that I present Him in beauty because that’s my calling, and I wanted to, but I didn’t know if I could. So there was something very calming about that, very reassuring, but it didn’t seem to have any relevance to it. Well as I was walking along in my mink coat, here comes the pastor, and he says, “Get in the car.” And again he kind of is puzzled by what happened, and he let me know that… He said we could have had a lot of people, like Rosalyn Rinker, and God told us to have you; like, ‘why?’ And I just sat there and listened, and so, we went on with the conference. And by the time we left, and I had been, he had been with me when I ministered personally to some of the women for inner healing. And he in essence said, “I see why God brought you, and I’m grateful.” And, but that’s the… I did not know that about myself, about His calling, about my purpose until He told me that. And then the end of the story is, that woman was… My group prayed over her deliverance and rebuked Satan over her, and she counts that as the day her life completely changed, and she became the most hungry Christian in that church. So it was, you know, now I would know to praise the Lord in spite of it. I couldn’t do that at that time. It was my initiation. (Martha is laughing.) So, but, so that is who He gave me to be, and what He gave me to… And it is… It’s amazing, Jennifer, what you said. This ministry is an assault on that kind of minimizing God’s goodness and His outlandish grace. He’s showered everything on us. He pours it out on us. And even at this time of my life, I’m really seeing that there’s so much more, not, not materially, but there’s so much more spiritually that any block we have to Him has got to come down. Any, any limitation that we all have on what we will receive, what we will let Him do, or what we even think He will do. And so this whole conversation is fitting in with that because my challenge pretty soon is going to be, if the Lord will give me words for it, giving up any limitation we have to Him on any ground, to what He will do, what we can hear, what we can be; mostly what we can be in Him.
(J) From having His beauty be expressed through us, the limitations to His beauty. When I prevent His beauty from His life from coming through, when I say, “Oh no, I’m not that person, or I’m not capable of, or I’m not, I’m not, I’m not. Focus, focus on me, me, me.” When I do that I prevent His beauty from coming forth, and He does desire my beauty.
(M) And the scripture we have as our mandate says we are to manifest Him. And Carole, your house manifests Him because you ever give Him the credit for giving it to you. And He is, He desires our beauty. He desires in the most practical ways to bestow His beauty visibly, and He does it sometimes materially. He does it in the countenance. He does it in the riches of His spiritual gifts, but He, He gives us the most incredible outpouring. And wouldn’t you hate to end up in heaven and have missed it? I don’t want to miss it. But I’m seeing limitations in me. He’s always attacking my limitations of what I will receive. That’s it. It’s what I will receive. And I think our function as a Body is to help each other receive, because we’re such small little beings, and if we consider how small we are we will not receive.
(J) His bigness.
(M) His bigness, His magnificence, His light, His glory, and I hope He will be beginning… He’s attacking me. I love the word assault. He’s assaulting my limitations right now. And with a revelation of Him, that’s how He’s assaulting in a sense, a stunning… He is… And I’m thinking too, as you’re talking these things, and as Carole’s sharing… Carole learned to know Him. And eternal life is to know the only true God and Jesus Christ Whom thou hast sent. That is eternal life, to know Him. And we can only know Him by receiving whatever it is He wants to give. At the moment He’s giving me something material, and I want Him to condemn me about, but He’s pouring it out on me and I’m just like a little girl, happy, happy, enjoying it if I let myself. And I want Him to stop me and condemn me, and He won’t do it. He’s laughing. And that’s one of His assaults on me to receive, maybe materially what we need to do this ministry. Does that make any sense? He’s assaulting my block to receiving and especially receiving for me. His ‘yes’ is a huge ‘YES.’ His ‘yes’ is that scripture is in First Corinthians, “In Christ Jesus, it’s not yes and no. All the promises are yes in Christ, and we utter our ‘amen’ to that.” But my ‘amen’ is, ok, I’ll receive the ‘yes’. And He’s, He’s getting to my ‘amen’ to His great spiritual outpouring. Really, that’s what I really want. But He’s also reducing me to a child in new ways so that… Only the child can receive, so He’s attacking my adult asceticism, which He loathes, amazingly; and He’s doing it in visible ways so that I’ll get it in spiritual ways.

Beauty of the Lord in Ugly Places – Episode #358 – Shulamite Podcast