Episode #423 – Heaven’s Opening

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Heaven’s Opening
January 11, 2015
Episode #423

With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow

(M) When God’s ways go quirky, and they do, unexpected, surprising, shocking. One day you can be one place, and the next day you’re in a whole different, whole different situation that you have no control over. And that requires surrender, a constant surrender. Well, it comes to mind, so I’ll tell it. Recently my daughter said to me, “Have you thanked God?” And I said, “Yeah,” but you know, I did it weakly. I said, “Yeah, thank You.” And that’s not it. “Thank You,” and I went back and really surrendered to Him and thanked Him, and I feel like the heavens opened, and things happened that were astonishing, because God could do with my cooperation in joining Him in what He was doing; He could do everything needed for me. It’s just so crucial to continuously surrender. And in that booklet, Nee sites those occasions like Job, when Job worshipped, when his children, family were wiped out and all his wealth and goods and cattle, He worshipped. He fell to the ground and worshipped. And David, when the chastening of his sin was the death of his son, he fell to the ground and worshipped. And we don’t know that kind of Christianity. We really don’t know that.
(J) It’s too out of control, and it’s too, He’s too…
(M) Oh, too vulnerable…
(J) Yeah, it’s way too vulnerable to someone that you can’t…
(M) You can’t manage…
(J) Manage, yeah. There’s a good word; manage.
(M) Thank you. That’s it. We don’t, we really hate… The whole attack of the cross on us is the giving up of control.
(J) Ummm.
(M) To God. Not to anything else, but to God.
(J) Yeah.
(M) Giving control to God, that’s what surrender is, and that’s what the cross is. And until you will give up control and let Him be in control and do whatever He wants to, it’s not yet surrender. You have to live with yourself and be. And that’s what it means, really, to love yourself, is to love the life He’s given you. To love yourself has nothing much to do with yourself. It has to do with surrender, to be, and go and do, and not be and not have.
(J) To embrace your story, to embrace what He has chosen for you, to embrace everything… It’s, it is a..
(M) It’s a death.
(J) It’s a major death.
(M) It is a major death, and you’re hitting it, and it’s one of the streams of our major message of Shulamite Ministries is this issue of God is sovereign, but He’s even more than sovereign. He’s gloriously transcendent for those who will surrender.
(J) That actually puts a whole other facet of it, which puts a tremendous piece in my heart, really, because if He’s sovereign then you’re just really tossed wherever He puts you, you know, to and fro, but when He’s transcendent He has a grand plan. Transcendence is huge.
(M) Transcendence is glory out of whatever He has assigned to you. There was something I was going through, and I may or may not tell it someday. But I just said, I was really struggling with it because I said, “Lord, I want You to get glory out of this,” and I opened a book of somebody and it said, “You can’t get God’s glory. God gets His own glory.”
(J) Ummmm
(M) But I asked Him to get His glory out of it, and He is doing so on His own. But transcendence is His glory. And you enter that through surrender. I believe if you fail to surrender, you never enjoy that transcendence. He gets another story. He’s going to get His glory, but it’s not a transcendence that you sail up with Him in.
(J) That you enter.
(M) You enter, and you’re part of and you’re in it, and you experience His glorious pleasure and His delight.
(J) See, you can take sovereignty and become a martyr at the hands of sovereignty.
(M) Yeah.
(J) You know. You can say, “Oh,” you know, “God’s going to do what God’s going to do, and I just have to surrender to what God’s going to do.” And you just kind of cast yourself as a poor, poor sheep on your back and be manhandled by this great Figure in the sky, Who’s just gonna do what He’s going to do. That to me, though it’s true, ok, though it’s true, you are cast, and He is sovereign, and He is the great Figure in the sky. But transcendence puts a loving nature on it. Transcendence puts a view of me in mind as well as Him. Transcendence, that’s… See, I’m going to launch off on that one. I’m really, I love it.
(M) I’m enjoying your launching. You got it. You really got what I was feeling, and you’re getting the words that I haven’t had, so…
(J) That one, I’ll write. I’ll continue because I’m on sovereignty in Get Along With God. I’m writing about sovereignty. I started with just one article, and it has just sucked me into like this rabbit hole, and I just keep on going down and down and down with sovereignty. And, but this transcendence, that word… I can see His love in transcendence. I can see there’s something about the transcendence that I can see His Fatherly face, His Abba face in transcendence, where sovereignty, I can see His Godship, His Lordship, His authority, His kingliness, His reigning. Those things are in sovereignty. Those things, when, you know, you’re a subject of a kingdom, you look at the King and you say, “Whatever edict He sends out, that’s what will be law,” and you’re, there’s not a relationship in that. But transcendence, that includes me. Am I right?
(M) Umhmm. I think you’re getting it beautifully. Isaiah says in 65:10, “The Valley of Achor is a resting place for herds, for my people who seek Me.” Isn’t that awesome? The valley of trouble is a resting place for the herds. In other words, ok, here we go with another aspect of the transcendence. Not just, not a Valley of Achor is becoming a resting place for the flock. When I begin to tell this, it’s going… It’s a resting place for than just me. Transcendence means God takes my life, my failings, my troubles, my torments, my everything, and He turns it sovereignly by His transcendence into food and resting place for many others. I got the most encouraging letter from a woman I do not know, never heard of her; a glorious letter of what my message is doing in the world that I don’t know anything about. And it just, that letter also showed me the transcendence of God, that He is moving in our lives. If we surrender – it really hinges on absolute surrender – He moves way beyond our capacity out into the world, out into the ages in ways that are just splendid, that we could not possibly do if we could do it. He takes our little insignificance and He… The only thing we can give Him is a surrender to His will. That’s our constant gift. There’s nothing more to do than to say yes, and then praise Him is… Praise Him is… I don’t know how to say it, but I read David’s psalms sometimes and He tells the whole story in the first two verses. Then He goes back and tells the details. So he begins with the praise that was at the end of his Valley of Achor. And I’m astonished that I’m working on Psalm 18 right now. The first three verses say I can call on the Lord and He will answer me, and it tells the whole story. Then he goes through the whole history and ends up praising God. So it begins and ends on praise, so many times with David psalms. And boy, did he have he have Valleys (and valleys!) of Achor.
(J) Well, I told you during your current situation, I told you that within crisis that’s when it seems that He’s the closest. There is something during crisis that happens when I’ve seen different situations in people’s lives. I’ve just seen the nearness of God in the trouble, in the crisis.
(M) I think it’s because we need Him so badly.
(J) I wonder if that’s why Julia saw something as so precious.
(M) Yes.
(J) You talked about that.
(M) I talked about it in the devotional.
(J) Oh, yeah.
(M) She had gone through experiencing cancer and being enormously made whole and healed, and she just said, “I don’t like to talk about it,” and I thought maybe that was fearful. Was it fearful? Then she waited a minute and she said, “It was too precious.”
(J) There’s something about crisis.
(M) And there are times when she went though it that she didn’t want anybody with her but God.
(J) That’s right.
(M) And that’s incredible.
(J) But it’s just the nearness. There is a preciousness and there is nearness with God when you go through crisis that, you know, where in the mundane sometimes we can feel distant.
(M) Uhhmmm.
(J) But when we’re in the crisis, we’re in such need and such desperation, and He comes right along side. And I’ve known when I’ve been sick, when I’ve been cast, I’ve had some of the deepest, most intimate times with God.
(M) And it’s also where you get the revelation of Him. It’s where you come to know. I know He’s transcendent by experience right now. It’s not by, it’s not just by my need and His coming along. No, I know transcendence because I’m seeing it, experiencing that He goes swooping over everything and makes glory and wonder.
(J) Experiential. That’s a great word for it.
(M) Yeah.

Heaven’s Opening -Episode #423 – ShulamitePodcast.com