Episode #372 – Peace Replaces Fear

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Peace Replaces Fear
January 25, 2014
Episode #372

With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guest: Jennifer Wentzel

(M) Well one thing He’s doing for me, I mentioned it before, and it’s still ongoing. He wants me to walk away from anything that is ‘to do’, He wants me to walk away from any obligation, any work, anything is He calls me to do His will. His will has got to take precedence for me, over the work. And that’s becoming a freedom. Because I’ll say Lord, I’m so bogged down, and He said, “Go play at your work; that’s what children do.” And it’s very difficult for me to do that work when it comes to my practical work, house, garden, that’s very difficult. I want it to be done and then I can go do the writing; no, He’s saying you give yourself to My will, and there you’ll find the grace and the joy, even though it’s leaving things that are undone. So just a peculiar priority He’s asking of me. “But the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want”, includes all that that you’re saying. I shall not want for the ability to do what He’s given me to do in Him. Even that is covered by “I shall not want”, until I think of it as food and clothing, but it’s the whole, the whole thing. Thank you so much, John, for sharing that. And I hope, I hope we can just remember to lift you up, you and Jennifer in prayer.
(Jennifer) Well John said that I called him out on that, and I don’t, I don’t know about that specifically, but I just had a picture of ah, one of the beauties is that, ah, His, His foundation, His plowing, His being faithful to bringing us to the fearlessness that He requires. For years being at that office, I spiraled out on a regular basis, on a regular basis. And that was one of the things that John had to invest in me over, and had to bleed for me, because I don’t spiral out in a neat, tidy package. I spiral out with, like a porcupine, and everybody around me ends up with quills all over their faces. And for years, that was something that the Lord in John was, was firm, but patient, and I had chance after chance and that was at a time when there wasn’t even really that, that great a load of responsibility on me relatively, I mean it just wasn’t. And I couldn’t handle even that. And he spent those years plowing and dealing with me and dealing with me and dealing with me, and it was, it was fear, it was, uhmm, frustration because I had a little ‘to do’ list, and if it got off by even the smallest amount, my whole day was ruined! And I hated everything and everyone! And I was miserable. The truth is, I, ah, you know fast approached the point where I hated my day. I hated what I did. And it had nothing to do with what I did, it had everything to do with the fact that nothing really went my way; I couldn’t stay on top of anything. And so basically my days were an exercise in futility; that’s how I viewed them. Uhm, and He kept after and kept after, and it took years. And I don’t know exactly when, uhm, but I can tell you that my being at a place of surrendering my day, and I still make out my ‘to do’ list, and say these are the things that I need to get done, and then I say well, it’s Your ministry, I’m Your worker, it’s Your time, and ok. And that took years. It took years of humiliation on my part; pain inflicted on people around me, ah, misery, sheer misery about my job. And now, when I do have a fairly large load of responsibility and a ‘to do’ list a mile long, I am at peace that is not me, it is not my peace, it is peace that He won in me. It is His hard won victory over Jennifer. (She laughs.) Years, uhm, and I am not able to go back. I can’t. I, I, I even tried yesterday, because I saw that John was undone, and I thought, what’s wrong with you that you cannot, frankly, that you can, I, I felt like I wasn’t being empathetic, that I lacked empathy, uhm, for John, because I just, I couldn’t seem to get there. I love John, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t go there, and I thought well you are just one hard little missy. And, but, He, He is keeping me where I can’t, because Jennifer, she loves to go where other people go and you know, get in there with them and, and ‘tit for tat’, and ‘wheeeee’, let’s spiral out; and He won’t do it. And it reminded me of a verse a little before, a proclamation that we have made, uhm, often, since watching that Derek Prince thing, about “No weapon formed against you shall prosper”. And if you go before that, where God is promising what He will do, ah, in Is. 54:10. He said, “Though the mountains move and the hills shake, My love will not be removed from you, and My covenant of peace will not be shaken, says your compassionate Lord.” And then you go down to fourteen, and it says, “And you will be established on a foundation of righteousness.” I put on, He did that, that’s not my foundation, He wrought out for years that foundation in that part of my life. “You will be far from oppression, you will certainly not be afraid, you will be far from terror, it will certainly not come near you.” That’s Him, that’s all Him, and I’m, I’m sitting here and I’m listening to John, and I’m thinking ok, there are so many times when I am a whirling dervish of ‘whatever’, about ‘whatever’, and John is just this pillar, just planted, ah, immoveable toward it, and, and, ah, is such a constant encouragement to me to come back, to extend the invitation to God and to leave me and wherever I am. And I don’t know that the years of plowing might not have been literally for these days, John, for this time right now, when both of us are completely snowed, and it could be the two of us ‘feeding’ off each other, and instead He invested and did the work to make sure that I am not a hindrance that this time. That this is, that’s what He does, that’s how intricate He is, and it’s amazing to me; it’s amazing to me that I can now look back and say, ‘that wasn’t for me’, that was for His purposes, that was for His ministry, for Him; entirely for Him, it’s His victory, He holds it, I can’t do anything, I can’t go where He doesn’t let me go. And that, that picture, that, that scene, that that’s what He’s done, that so encourages me, that every victory He wrings out in me, He then holds, that’s His ground. That’s His ground that He holds, and it’s real, and it doesn’t move, and I know it’s not me. I know it’s not me, because I know me, a little porcupine, a hysterical porcupine, but I’m a match for Him, it’s His ground, He holds it. And I’m the match.
(J) Ok, I’ve got two things. One, uhm, I don’t want anybody to, especially you, I don’t want to, to ah, join me in my hysteria, you know. Uhm, I don’t want you ever to empathize with it because it, then we’ll both spiral down. And that’ll be a mess, so that’s first, but, (someone speaks in background) absolutely…. The, the thing that, ok, this is the miracle of you, Jennifer, is that ok, if I came into a job and I was not vested in it, and I didn’t, you know I just came to do my job. We’ve had people that have worked at the office that just basically came in, they did their job and that was it, they were done. And there was no vesting in it. It’s real easy to make your statement if you have no vesting, that ok God, this is Your ministry and this is Your day and this is Your time and this is what I have to get done, and if You don’t get it done, I’m sorry; there’s no vesting, there’s no heart connection, if there’s no, there’s no authority and responsibility that you’ve picked up, it’s real easy. It’s real easy to say, ok, here I am, I didn’t get done, I’m sorry. No, then you would just roll it on me, you’d just say, well good luck, bye, my days over, it’s five o’clock, clink and I’m ‘outta here’. But because you vested, you’re vested, you have, you have a heart connection and you’ve taken up your responsibility, it’s not like it’s not gonna affect you if it doesn’t get done. So, because you’ve been willing to invest your heart and take up your responsibility, you don’t ‘willy-nilly’ say that, you don’t ‘willy-nilly’ say, this is my day, these are my tasks, and this is Your ministry and this is the time that I have and, it’s real easy to say if you’re a hireling. If you were just a hireling that just, someone’s just paying your, your eight hour salary, you give them that, you’re out on your fifteen minutes ah, at ten o’clock, you got your you know, hour long lunch, and then you have your, you know, whatever it is, three o’clock, two o’clock, whatever it is, two thirty, you know fifteen minutes and then you’re, ‘click’, I’m out of here, bye, and I go do my life. It’s real easy to say it that way. But if you’ve taken up your responsibility and then you give your responsibility to God, that has so much more weight, does it not? It has so much more weight, because you have something to give. If you don’t take it up, you have nothing to give. So if you haven’t taken up your responsibilities and taken up the authority and taken up the vesting of your own being into the thing that you’re doing, it’s real easy to ‘pitch it’.

Peace Replaces Fear – Episode #372 – Shulamite Podcast