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God’s Yes and Ours
September 7, 2014
Episode #405
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guests: Jim Pierce, Aaron, and Carole Nelson
(J) “I was researching our blog for posts dealing with our yes to God, and I found several that are exciting. I enjoyed re-reading them because I’ve recently had a personal dealing with my Yes. If Christ is the Divine Yes and Amen, then my every yes to Him is a yes for Him.
“Whereas many as are the promises of God, they find their answer…”
Why don’t you read it? I don’t want to..
(Martha) “For as many as are the promises of God, they all find their Yes [answer] in Him [Christ].” The promises of God mean that in Christ God can say yes to those promises. I’m sorry. I just saw it. “For this reason” because, the reason is the promises of God are all yes in Christ. For that reason, “we also utter the Amen (so be it) to God through Him [in His Person and by His agency] to the glory of God.” That’s incredible.
(Jim) How can He say no to His son?
(M) He can’t. He can deny Him nothing.
(Jim) He can deny Him nothing.
(Martha) Ohhh.
(Aaron) How can He say yes to Adam? He can’t.
(Martha) ooo! “Recently,” this is John’s blog. I’m continuing. “Recently the Lord asked me to say yes to a painful situation in my life. He just asked me to say yes to the whole thing with no caveats. No explanation by Him, no excuse, no defense by Him or me—nothing but my yes. He owes me no explanation for anything He allows or directs. So amidst tears, I said YES!
Over the years, His grace has shown me purpose for certain pains in my life, but simple understanding of what God takes us through really doesn’t have power in itself. No, where there’s power is in my yes.
My yes is surrender and praise of Him as God!
I don’t want to be cryptic, so I will give some hypothetical examples of situations in need of a yes. Years of emotional abuse of a spouse, abandonment by a parent, hurtful scorn and mockery from siblings…all awful situations, I know. Each one is painful, only because of resistance to our own experience. And that ‘no’ to God marks our soul in negative ways. But what I’m seeing is that when we turn back and look at these situations, we’re given the choice whether we want to be bitter or liberated. Liberty is not found in fighting it, but in saying yes to God for it. A yes, at the very least, that He allowed these pains, or even directed them for our forming.
Yes has the power to pull out the poisonous stinger. It’s surrender to the Great I AM who makes one vessel for honor and another for dishonor. God is so sovereign and our yielding makes His presence and reality powerfully evident.
Why in the world would I say yes to God for painful events, seasons or even a lifetime of heartache? Because that’s the only way you take possession of the benefits you paid for by living it. God showed me that to resist a situation, I also resist the benefits I’ve earned. Pain in our lives is not pain for pain’s sake. God is not a sadist! We are built for reward and motivated by return. To say YES to my life is to reap all the rewards and benefits from theses painful experiences. And the reward is to receive the GOOD He has planned for us.
There is a cost we’re required to pay in this life. Our sovereign God uses difficult, even agonizing situations, to form us. To resist is to resist God Himself. The power of yes is incredible. It’s the difference between life and death.
There is another YES required of us: Yes to ME! Yes to my story’s failure, flaws and frailty. Just YES! Did God not know the fallibility of my being? Did He not know that I wasn’t God? This isn’t a means of excuse, like, “Sure, I was an absentee father and emotionally abusive, so deal with it!” No, after I’ve repented, then I can say yes to my own story and accept it. The difference is in the heart – pride or humility. We all have to say yes to our story; it’s the door to enter the victory. It’s surrender to His Lordship, His sovereignty, His God-ness.
God said to me, say yes to the mockery, scorn, abandonment, and rejection—all the pains of life. My yes put it all back in His hands to deal with as He – my God – saw fit. It is yielding to Him and His choices. It’s a yes to Him as Master of my destiny. He is the Great I AM of my life. My yes offers it all back to Him, my bowing worship of Him as God.
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son…
Romans 8: 28,29 NASB”
(Aaron) Just as an individual I was asking, does my yes to my story make all the no’s to my story, all the labels people have put on my story in their no beautiful?
(Martha) I have an answer that came before the question, but I don’t know how it would fit to you, so I’m going to tell what I got, the answer I got before the question, and then you if you need more. I’m not sure. I’ve told this story in part before, but my father was an orphan, left at a Catholic orphanage in New York City when he was one year old, which is strange, one or two years old. He always knew that story. He was adopted by a French family and sent on the orphan train down to Louisiana, adopted into a family that met him at the train, took pictures of him, named their children after him, loved him. He had, his adopted mother was a school teacher that never married, never had any children. She adored him. Her brother raised him. He lived in this magnificent family situation, but he never, ever said yes to his story. So all my life… He lost contact with this adopted family, because he didn’t consider they were his family. And we traveled a lot, because he was with the government federal aviation, and when we traveled with him he would go to the phone book and look for the name, look for his name. And he would call people and say do you know of an orphan that was left at the orphanage? God overwhelmingly compensated him for being an orphan, and he never saw it and never enjoyed. God’s yes to him was incredible. He had favor with the government. He was given a rating as an engineer that he never went to college for. He was brilliant. He was given a brilliant mind, and he was able to grasp things like radar when it first came out and all kinds of aviation technology that he taught. He was given overwhelming favor everywhere. He was given us, a family. He, to the end of his life, he was looking for his family. His second wife after my mother died connected him back to his family. Why she did, I don’t know, but it was strange and wonderful. So, he took my sister and me for the first time in our lives to his French family. And after one day with them we looked at each other and said, “He had a family. He had a family, the best family I’ve ever been around.” They loved each other. They cherished the older people. They reverenced the older people. The grandfathers danced with the little girls. They knew how to love and enjoy life, and they weren’t materialistic. And they just loved us as if we were their own. And we saw how much they loved my daddy. And they made him, not just a part of their family, but a special part of their family. And he never saw God give him that. And Mary and I said, “My God. He had a better family than I’ve ever seen.” He missed the whole story of his own life even though he lived it. And he left them who loved him. And they forgave him for that, and they took him right back in as if he’d never been gone. And all that passed between them for some twenty years was Christmas cards, perhaps. And then they began to come to see us in to Atlanta, and there were beautiful, beautiful… He was marked with French. He couldn’t pronounce certain things that were not. I was Marta, not Martha. And he could speak French and pick it back up with the family as soon as he got there. And he had a wonderful childhood of great stories and lots of cousins, and he ran away from home when he was sixteen, not because he wanted to, ‘cause another boy wanted to and the boy persuaded him he needed to. So he ran away with him, and they stopped at a store and this man said, “What you do, Thomas, here?” He said, “I’m runnin away. He said, “Oh, yo mama gonna cry.” And when I visited him, Edjus was at that point the patriarch. There was always a patriarch and a matriarch of the family. And so, Mary and I went when my children were little and Edjus came and put to my face and said, “Ah, you miss yo babies, don’t you?” And I said, “Yeah, I miss my babies.” They were just that intimate, that joyful, that… And they didn’t care about being wealthy. They really weren’t wealthy. What they made, they used to live and to celebrate life and love and family. It was, it’s a story in itself. Now, does that answer your question in any way remotely?
(Aaron) You can tarnish a beautiful story, something meant for good by saying no. But even if he would have been raised by horrible parents, if he’d of said yes, it’d have made it all beautiful.
(Martha)Yes. It’s what John said. Life or death. Yes or no.
(J) Well, when you said that, what I heard is, does it make it beautiful for you? But what I heard is does it make it beautiful. When I say yes, does it make it beautiful for other people? Do they see the beauty of it? And I said to you that my yes makes my life beautiful to me, but if you have a no to your life, you will not see the beauty of my yes. But if you have a yes in your life for your thing, then you can see. Then it is… Does that make sense? Ok, so your story. If I had a yes to God about my story, your yes would meet my yes and you would see my story as beautiful, and I would see your story as beautiful. But if you have said no to your story, you couldn’t even see the beauty of my story, because a yes will meet a yes, because yes begets… It’s life. A yes is life.
(Carole) Ok. I just went back to “What the Beep.” And what I see is when you say yes to your story, it goes out and can diffuse other people’s no’s.
(John) Oooooo.
(Carole) I believe it can change the atmosphere of the water. And your, your very yes can change the world.
You all have been my inspirng companions as I say YES to the Lord and His ways for me, a long way now.
Lately, my mother was diagnosed with a tongue cancer to wich I reacted with severe judgements and I was affecting one of my sisters with them, she easily accepted my words because through all our lifes we did the same (she was a very young widow, used to be very critical and controling affecting us and deep inside I made her responsible for all my failures).
Then the Lord made me see how hardened was my heart and how I was still rejecting my whole history. I then could repent easily and asked my sisters forgiveness. It was like the three of us changed in an instant and a dark cloud left. Then I had to go a month and a half to care after my mother douring a very intensive quimo-radio treatment 24/7.
We were at the hospital for a weekend and after an evening talking so honestly to each other of our difficulties to believe and surrender, the Lord told me that a rain of grace will fall upon my family. Well, I was really changed. I could love her patiently, expressing her tenderness and service was easy as never before and without a sense of tiredness after a lot of work. I was enjoing being so title and honoring her. I´m seeing fifferent and beauty seams invasive.
What amazes me is the joy that began to flow among the family, recognicing the need we all have to humble before the Lord, to accept each other and quit complaining. Some relatives said how I was making the difference and were moved by my simple service. I was given the hability to overcome with kindness where usually only resentiment came out.
My mother is recuperating really well but the best is that she is really craying for help to God, to have an honest repentance.
The Lord also told me to come and find refuge in Him for what is to come because I told Him YES, and accepted that other side of my story… my husband and his weird family wich I had rejected also. It is a time to see Him doing what I never, ever could and they so much need to be loved.
(Carole) I believe it can change the atmosphere of the water. And your, your very yes can change the world.
YES LORD, THY KINGDOM COME, THY WILL BE DONE!
Love you Shulamite family!
You are absolutely right. When you enter the real Yes, you have entered a Yes that is not yours; it is mine, but it is not mine. It wholly becomes the very YES of God to you and the world all around you, and HIS Yes permeates all. So, my task is to let His YES win, and my NO, lose.
In my youth I knew of a man (an “apostle of love”) with a great yes to God, amidst a terrible life, and very terrible circumstances (both in his body and in close and far family relationships), and the impression he marked on me has not faded with time. It was not him… it was the Love of God through Him bursting up to Life with such a power that cannot be told.
Bless you today my dear people.
Isaiah 1:2-4 seems to be a summary of saying “no” / rejecting our story. Saying “yes” is reconciling all things to God’s goodness.
Over and over…and over again! our Loving Father blesses us. Praying that this message will be blessed and, like the song, He will ‘Open the Eyes of my heart, Lord’ for His children. There is a secular PBS movie called ‘Happy’ and it documents the lives of people from Louisiana to Kalcutta, India and how they are/aren’t content with their lives. Even the foot taxi guy in India can choose to accept the life God has given him…and be happy. I think this is the blessing of saying ‘yes’
It is Sat. and this Podcast is not usually posted until Sun. If I am correct. But for me it’s timing was perfect even to the moment from my utterance and cry to God for help. I do not think that I could have even heard, believed or accepted His word to me in this had it not be evident except through His Sovereign and divine instantaneous answer to my cry. Please pray for me, this broken lump of clay.