Episode #387 – Life and Heart

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Life and Heart
May 4, 2014
Episode #387

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

(Martha)  Jennifer had an insight recently that if everything is solved in Body life and nothing in solitude with God, then that’s what a cult is.  Is that accurate, Jennifer?  It was a powerful insight she had, and she was talking…  Do you want, can you talk about it?
(J)  You know, the difference between teaching and discipleship is head versus heart.  When you have to disciple, you have to involve your heart, and that’s…  Teaching is something that I can give someone and I can leave and there could be mental ascent.  Discipleship is life and heart.  And so..
(Martha)  And above all, accountability.  That’s what Body life is best at, because that’s where it starts in Matthew 18.  It starts with, “If your brother sins go to him.”  It’s responsibility.  He also taught me early on in Ezekiel.  Goodness, it’s still in there currently.  If you see someone who’s going to death and going through sin and you don’t warn them and they from their sin, their blood is on your hands.  You’ll  become a murderer.  That’s, He literally ties my destiny, my own destiny, to the destiny of others.  He makes sometimes a bond of love, where you’re just joyful.  Other times He literally ties you to the mule, and you are dragged where the mule goes until you bring that mule home.  And your very life is at stake.  That’s what it means to be your brother’s keeper, John.  It means that your own destiny, not only needs this person to your fulfillment, but God commits you to their destiny, and you can be counted as a murderer without having done anything except neglect to confront.  And that’s, that’s a frightening thing.  I’ve told, I think before that when I was very ill, very dangerously ill and asked for healing, the Lord said, “I cannot deny you anything.  There’s no blood on your hands.”  And I never dreamed it was connected until His voice connected it.  But Body life is not to be exalted above the individual relationship.  So what did you get, Jennifer?
(Jennifer)  Well, I got specifically that you, Martha, when you take someone on to disciple them, you absolutely put yourself out there.  I can’t fathom at this point, because I have not discipled someone else.  I can’t fathom the time spent in prayer, the time spent with them.  Time.  You know, it’s your life.  Time is your life and is such a costly, costly thing.  But you don’t disciple someone to you, ok?  And I want to make absolutely clear about that.  You disciple them to Jesus Christ.  Some people don’t want that.  Some people want you.  Some people want a mommy.  Some people want a bosom pal.  Some people want a dinner party friend.  Ok?  That’s who we are humanly.  There’s no problem there.  That’s, yeah. Ok.  But you, you ever and always point to Him.  You are discipling someone to Him.  Body life that does not have at its core Him, one on one relationship with Him, the indwelling life of Christ in every single individual person.  If you did not do that, Martha, if you were discipling people to you or to this Body, that’s where things get wonky.  Because if you disciple us to have relationship with Jesus Christ, which is…  Frankly, one day we’re going to stand alone without a Body, without a husband, without a wife, without a mommy or daddy, without a brother or sister.  We’re going to stand by ourselves in front of God and give an account for our life.  Nobody’s going to be there holding our hands.  Nobody’s going to be there stepping up for us.  We’re not going to be able to turn and say well, then so and so said blah, blah, blah.  It’s just me and Him, so it has to be me and Him.   That has to be the primal relationship in my life, and as much as I love you and love this Body, I have one prime relationship in my life, and it is with Him.  And all of this means nothing if that falls apart.  And that is what you disciple us to.  That is how this Body stays clean, because that matters.  And I was struck by the difference between Bodies where everybody gets together and the focus is not Christ.  The focus is not individual relationships with Christ.  The focus is unity.  The focus is family.  The focus is, you know, you can even make an idol out of accountability.  You can go “cray-cray” with accountability, and turn it into this weird thing where everybody gets together and rolls around on the floor and confesses stuff to each other.  It’s like @#$%^$#@#$$%%, but it’s not clean. It’s Oooooo.  There’s no, there’s no fundamental integrity of the members.  They are not whole.  They are not wholly focused on their own relationship with Jesus Christ and then coming into the Body.  So things get weird.  Things get…  Frankly, you end up disrespecting yourself and disrespecting other people.  Boundaries are crossed.  You know, we violate ourselves.  We, indiscretion becomes the rule, the norm.  There… We’re human.  This is what we’re gonna do.  That’s why it’s so, it’s such a vital; it’s just so vital that there be one.  And it’s absolutely Biblical.  I don’t know how you get away from that.  I don’t know how you set it up any other way.  I have one first love.  You have one first love.  John has one first love, Carole, Jim.  We have one first love.  And if it’s not Jesus Christ, then we have nothing in common.  We just don’t.  And that’s, but to me that’s safety.  I have always felt safe in this Body, and I’ve always felt safe under this authority, because at the end of the day there is absolute love for every member of this Body.  And there is, you know, the fundamentals of authority and accountability and responsibility, all these thing are in place.  But they all fall down like dominos from one, one main thing, and that is Jesus Christ.  He’s the centrality. So He takes care of everything else.  And when things get wonky, when things get a little sideways, because humanly they will, He corrects the course.  It’s not that this Body hasn’t seen, you know, it’s fair share of  ‘the ship is keeling over a little bit,’ you know?  That’s, of course.  Of course we have.  What we’ve also seen is that He rights it, and He has the place to come in and right it.  He is given the place to do what needs to be done to right the ship.
(Martha)  Jennifer, what you’ve described is His headship.  His headship has to be in me before I can come to Body life and be a viable member of His body.  I was so struck before the Love Reigns Conference with the scripture that said, “Don’t call anybody father on this earth.  You have one Father.”  Don’t call anybody teacher on this earth.  You have one Teacher.”  And that’s why I began, a little bit probably obscure, but I began by saying, “I’m not you’re teacher.  You have the Holy Spirit as your teacher.”  Otherwise that’s what a cult is.  And everybody…  I don’t know if I said this, but every person at the conference will have received something unique from their in-house Teacher, which is the Holy Spirit, an in-house counselor.  So Body life is established not on the Body life, but on the individual headship of Christ.  And it will become obvious as it states in Matthew 18.  “If a brother sins…”  The sin is always going to be a breach between that one and God.  The breach between members of the Body is evidence, not source.  The breach between members of the Body is evidence that there’s a breach with God.  It’s not the problem.  The Lord taught me early on, “There is no problem between people.”  I said, “What do You mean, there’s terrible problems?”  The problem is always between that individual and God.  So if the Body is built on people who deal with headship…  There are things I don’t tell ya’ll.  I don’t come and tell you everything in my life with Him.  And neither do you and us.  That’s not obligatory.  You come with the headship telling you what to share and what to give and what to not give.  You’re His alone.  You do not belong to the Body.  You belong to Him, and He is the Body.  He is the Body of Christ.  And that’s why you can have two, three and five witnesses that this person is not right.  This is wrong.  So, somehow my reverence for the Body is coming fresh.  Literally, I couldn’t have made it through my life in the last twenty years without the Body of Christ.  Ok.  The other thing that I’m seeing, because Love Reigns was really a lot about the presence of God, enjoying the presence of God.  Well, what He really means by, “I am in your midst,” means His presence is there.  We experience that before the mike was turned on.  His presence came in power and in confrontation before the mike was turned on.  And I realize it, but I have a new appreciation of it, that when two or three in His name,” not in Martha’s name, not Jim and Jen’s name.  When two or more come together in His name as under the headship of the name, Jesus, as you beautifully described, Jennifer, “there I am in the midst.”  That means His presence is with us.  And our best meetings are when I stop and just turn it all over to the Holy Spirit.  And then things happen, and people are anointed, and the unction goes from this person to that person.  And while I may have a word, this has happened this morning.  Everybody has had an unction, an anointing of the Spirit to testify to Jesus.  That’s what we’ve done.  He has been in our midst.  This is a church meeting, where the house was swept clean before we began, and then was ready to receive the Head to come into the house.  The house is not a building.  The house is the temple that we are.  Somebody said to John, “Where do you go to church?”  John said, “I am church.”  And that’s the best answer you can give is, “I am church.”  There’s no, there’s no basis for the building to be the church, the bricks and mortar.  No basis for that.  That’s not the house of God.  The people under the headship are the house of God.  That’s where He dwells.  He doesn’t dwell anymore in a building.  He did that in Israel in the temple.  He did it in the tabernacle.  He dwelt in a place, in a box and in a building.  And He comes to the building only on the grounds if the church is there.  This house we’re in could be called a place where Jesus comes because the church is here.  So, I’m so outside of all the basic perceptions of what church amounts to, because God has build His own church, and we are living stones of that temple.  And it’s going to be constructed in the next age as the New Jerusalem.  How that’s gonna work, I don’t know.

Life and Heart – Episode #387 – Shulamite Podcast