Episode #421 – Love is Contagious

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Love is Contagious
December 28, 2014
Episode #421

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

(M) There are times when God gives you the unction of love, and there are times when He calls you to be committed, and commitment is love. And many years ago I had a difficult person in the family, and I would say, “God, You’re just not giving me love for her. I’ve asked You and asked You and asked You, and I can’t stand her. You haven’t given me love.” He said, “What you have for her is commitment, and that is love.” And He said, “You are praying for her salvation. Nobody on this earth is. So that’s what… I call love commitment.” And when He calls me to somebody, I am committed until He releases that commitment, and most of the time never, ever does, no matter what. It’s still His love. But that shocked me, because I always associate love with feelings, and it’s not always the case. It’s answering a calling of God to be committed. He calls that love.
(Jennifer) He does not, He does not come the way I think a situation would call for, and two of them come to mind, so I’m going to give them briefly. But both of them involve me rather embarrassingly, losing complete control of my emotions as in bursting into tears, which I am not prone to do generally speaking, especially not to people I don’t know. And one is a precious woman, whom I know, have real relationship with, and we write back and forth to each other, and I just love her. And I had spoken to her once previously. She called in to place an order. She asked me to pray for her daughter, who had a brain tumor. I didn’t hear from her for a month. She called again, and I remembered who she was, and I asked her, and I was having a fairly chipper day, so I had a fairly chipper voice. And I said, “Well, how’s your daughter?” I used her name. It wasn’t quite so generic as that. And there was a pause, and she said, “She died.” And I didn’t know her daughter. I really didn’t even know this woman, and I just burst into tears and began babbling and said, “Oh, my, I’m so sorry,” and just cried on her for probably two minutes before I could get myself under control. And I just kept saying, “I’m so sorry.” And it was partly over her daughter and partly because I was clearly, to me, making a ninny of myself, you know? She’s the one who lost her daughter. “What am I doing? That’s ridiculous. Get a hold of yourself.” And just cried on her. And that was the foundation of relationship. It wasn’t a comforting word. It wasn’t a suitable scripture. It wasn’t any of the things which I believe would be appropriate in that situation given the fact that we didn’t know each other. It was an embarrassing flood of tears and emotion from someone who really had no reason to be that emotional. And I knew that, and so I was quite embarrassed and thinking, “What is happening? This is…” And that was… She is precious. She began, you know, for a while there she was calling a couple times a week. And the other time, equally burst into tears, this was the Fed-Ex driver, a brand new one, who I didn’t know from Adam. I literally had never met this woman before. She’s a new driver, and in this case we had been trying to get a hold of her to get a package out. She had been hard to get a hold of, so John and I were both kind of like, “Awk,” frustrated, and we missed our old Fed-Ex driver, who we love with a love of a thousand sons; Randy. We love you. And bless her heart. This woman shows up at the door, and she said, “You know, you have a package.” And I said, “Yes, oh thank you so much. Wonderful. I’m so glad you’re here.” I go to get the package, and she says, “Yeah, my boyfriend normally helps me out, and he couldn’t help me out today, because his daughter went to the hospital this morning thinking she was gonna have the baby and it turns out the baby was dead, and so she had to deliver a baby that was dead.” And I burst into tears and just started crying all over her, and just said, “I’m so sorry.” And she just was talking about it, and then she started crying. And we’re both sitting there weeping over a box with a Fed-Ex label on it in the door of the office. And it was, on the surface, somewhat ridiculous, just… And I thought, you know, “You’ve got to get a hold of yourself. You don’t know this woman, let alone her boyfriend and her boyfriend’s daughter, and you know, all of these people are very removed. Calm…” you know. The Lord had me cry, and I cried, and she stayed for, I don’t know, what was it John? Like 15 minutes; she told the whole story. She stayed there, and I cried over her pretty much the whole 15 minutes, off and on. I couldn’t stop. And now she comes, and she is always polite. She doesn’t just barge in. She knocks at the door or rings the doorbell. And then she just lights up and wants to tell me about her day, and I check on her boyfriend and the daughter, and she says, “I still don’t know what to say,” and she just talks. She just talks. But I realize she didn’t take it the way I would have thought she would have taken it, which is, “Oh, my goodness, get a hold of yourself, lady.” You know, “You don’t even know this girl or her situation, so what are you doing?” And instead we both cried together, and that was not how I would have chosen to handle that particular encounter, either one of them, because in both of them I behaved somewhat foolishly in the sense that I had no control over my emotions and was not ‘with it.’ And for all I knew I wasn’t hearing the Sprit at all. I was drowning Him out with tears. I really wasn’t even sure that I was where I needed to be. Do you understand? But He, that was what He wanted. Somehow what these two women needed was not a verse. It was not a particular scripture. It wasn’t a kind voice. It wasn’t somebody being sweet. What they needed was someone bursting into tears over them.
(M) Well, Jennifer, the Bible says, “Weep with those who weep.”
(Jennifer) You said, Martha, that love changes everything, and that’s one of the things that you’ve said to me for years now. And you said that, but I can honestly say Jennifer Wentzel doesn’t burst into tears with strangers, whether on the phone or in person. I never have. That was never something that I decided I wanted to do. I didn’t ask Him for a soft, squishy heart. I didn’t ask for any of that. What I asked was for Him to give me the love for Him, because I didn’t love Him. What I said to Him again and again was, “I will love You, but You’ve gotta, You’ve gotta give me love because I don’t love You. I don’t love You enough. Sometimes I don’t love you at all.” I would despair over that, and the truth is I was no match for His love. His love does change you, and it changes you in ways you didn’t even necessarily ask for. And so, wherever you happen to be at whatever moment, that is a prayer that I still pray, because I don’t believe that I will ever love Him enough. But I believe that prayer and that choice, “I will love You, but please give me love, because I don’t love You. I don’t love You enough. I don’t love You enough for today, for what I face today.” And some days it’s, “Lord, I don’t love You at all right now, because I’m not happy with where you have me. And I want this, and I don’t have it.” It doesn’t matter. There is a choice; there is a setting of my love on Him and an admission that that’s literally all I have. I choose this. I’ve got nothing else. I’ve got absolutely nothing to give You. And He doesn’t care. He doesn’t need specifics. He… I didn’t even want to want these things, and it didn’t matter. He did it beyond even my wanting of them, and that’s, that’s something He will do for everyone. If He did it for me, there’s no way that He won’t do that for every single person. And that’s pretty amazing.
(Carole) But Love went out and captured you… through the Body. That’s what it was. It was contagious, and it went out, and it captured you beyond your… It had nothing to do with you. It has nothing to do with me, and it’s undaunted by us.

Love is Contagious – Episode #421 – Shulamite Podcast