Episode #428 – Surrender, Yes, Praise

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Surrender, Yes, Praise (Remembered)
This Podcast originally aired Sep 23, 2007
February 15, 2015
Episode #428

With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow

As previously state in Episode #422, I wanted to feature two reposts of episodes originally recorded in New York City during our first year of hosting the Shulamite Podcast. They were fun to do and I hope they bless you.  These two message actually fits our theme of transcendence very well as we were seeing the Lord move transcendently over our trip to Ireland. These episodes are just another object lesson in how the Lord works within the lives of those who love Him.

(J) Martha we’re here in Times Square. We’ve been delayed on our trip to Belfast Ireland, and we were flying into Newark, and then we were told we were not going to get on the plane because it had left. And now we’re spending a day, because we had 24 hours to wait until the next flight which goes into Dublin. So Martha, what is this saying to you?
(M) On the way down to Atlanta, I had a phone call from someone, and John was driving, and we were all set to get on the flight at five and go to Newark and then from Newark to Belfast overnight. And someone called me, and she said essentially, I don’t want God to put me in a situation the rest of my life, like ‘this’. And I said, oops, first of all, you have to be willing to be wherever God wants you to be; and His pleasure has to be of greater concern to you than your pleasure. And I said, He’s found enough “NO.” “No, I don’t want this God.” And I said it’s ok to have that no, but you have to understand that you can have no, no to God. It comes up, and you give it up to Him. And I said, you know, He wastes some of His best saints; and it pleased God to bruise His Son. So I was saying, ok, there are three things I can tell you. First one is surrender, surrender to God, but also say yes. And I was saying I’ll give you three steps, which I’m not a three-step person, but I’ll give you three steps. Well John was listening intently, and I could tell he was, on my end.
(J) John was writing and meditating on ok, how can I muse, and how can I meditate on this, how can I get this one, so I’ll remember it totally, and I got three words that I remember, surrender, yes, praise. So surrender to God the situation.
(M) God I’m here, and I surrender to You that I’m here, but you have to also say, yes, yes, not only ok I’m here, but yes I will be here for Your sake. And we laughed, but I said, remember, God doesn’t want anything from you but your body. And He wants to be the contentment that you need in this situation. And she was finding great joy in it, but anyway, God can provoke a no, and He finds every no in me, and He does it through all, and I have to recognize it and say uh, uh, anything but this. So, I said to her, what you live for (you can hear the noise of Times Square behind us).
(J) I’m hoping you can hear the podcast.
(M) Thank goodness there’s not a siren going. I said to her, you come to the place where His pleasure is your pleasure, and you’re not after your pleasure, you’re after His. And when He’s pleased, then you decide you’re pleased. So you surrender and you say yes, and I said the one thing I end on, and am not good at beginning on, is to say thank you. I can’t remember the Psalm it was, but at the end of it, it says, offer the sacrifice of praise and God will open to you the way of salvation. And I told her recently that I had done that. And I had a lot of anguish, and immediately the next day, the way of salvation was opened up to me. And I said, now you can remind me of this Wednesday, ok? Because it is not natural to human nature to be in an adverse situation, or a situation you simply don’t like, and to say thank you, praise to you Lord.
(J) Just how that reflected yesterday for us, is that I heard the words from you, and God put His exclamation point on it, He said, surrender yes, and praise. So I started surrendering the trip. I said God, this is your trip, this is about You, it’s your trip. And I said, yes to your purposes, I don’t know what your purposes are, I say yes to your purposes, and then I said, I praise You, whatever You do. So I should have known at that very second that, I should have said, You know something God, I bet you’ve got a test coming up. Then we get to the airport, and we’re sitting in the airport, and realizing oh my-gosh, we’re not going to get there on time. And I’m calling around trying to find out, are they going to hold the plane for us? Ha, ha, NOT. And we got there and within five minutes of the plane leaving, but it left obviously without us. There was no way they could have got our bags over and everything like that. But you know something, this turned out to be a wonderful deal.
(M) And you were happy the whole way through and you never got frustrated.
(J) Which is funny, because that’s not me. I’m normally foaming at the mouth, calling everybody saying deal with it now. But you know something, what if we’re stuck in New York City, who cares?
(M) Let me go back and emphasize something I didn’t, that the second step is yes, that His purposes, I’m committed to His purposes.
(J) Right! It’s His purpose.
(M) It’s His purpose, He has something in mind, and sometimes we don’t know what it is. But my yes is to His purpose above my own. So the word purpose is big in our conversation a lot isn’t John. So we knew He had a purpose, and we kept saying, what is His purpose.
(J) So His purpose was obviously to have us stay. And you know the funny thing is, how do you know that His purpose wasn’t to stop it, so you know, what if the plane that we were going to be on wrecked, it didn’t, but what if it did? And you know, if you would’ve fought and told everybody you better get me on that plane, and then He was saving your life. I don’t always do this real well, and I don’t always trust real well, just open handedly, but I’m purposing to do that. The great thing is that God was preparing me for this test, right when you said, these are the words, blah, blah, blah, and I’m just listening to the conversation, and saying ohhhhh. So I was given the preparation for this whole thing.
(M) That’s what I spoke about in the last podcast; how the Holy Spirit goes before you and you never have any excuse in the test, because you’ve had a rehearsal. And I ought to know when I start telling somebody a solution that I’ve learned that I’m going to get an opportunity to live it out. Anyway, it’s wonderful.
(J) It was very gracious of the Lord to prepare me, to prepare you. I think He saved you because He didn’t have me writhing on the floor. So He saved you, I’m just happy about it, ok, whatever. We sat at the gate for two hours after we got there while this guy got re-routed.
(M) It was late at night too.
(J) And it was too, so we didn’t get into the hotel till midnight. So anyway, praise God for the whole thing. We’re here, and we got basically the whole day in New York.
(M) Yes, and we’re meeting with dear friends who live in New York. And I said a month ago John, it’s time to go to New York and meet with this couple that we love dearly but it’s very expensive to come to New York, so. I didn’t say Lord give us the money to go, I just said, oh it’s too expensive we can’t do that. So He said, no it’s not, I can do it. So we’re having lunch with them today; hopefully, perhaps this afternoon.
(J) Well the funny thing is that if we had made this trip, if we had gone to Atlanta to Newark and Newark to Belfast, and we had made a stop in Newark to visit them we would have had to pay a lot more. But because God did this we don’t have to pay any extra really.
(M) Because it was a mechanical problem that delayed it.
(J) So we can wonder around in New York City, look at these wild people.
(M) This pure America, shouting at you from every side. And who knows, God may want us to walk the streets and pray. Who knows there may be something coming to New York that we should be praying about. We’re going to walk and listen, and be with our friends, and we may never know what the purpose was. That’s the issue, He is so mysterious, He doesn’t tell us everything, all He tells us is where He wants us to go, and what He wants to be in us, which is so exciting; to live with Him like that.
(J) So hopefully we’re going to do kind of an audio journal of the trip, and maybe make a podcast of it, if that’s what God wants. Right now we’re in Times Square, on Broadway and 7th Av. And 45th, and so here we are here.
(M) One thing we’re aware of, about four times since we got to Newark, we’d ask a question and they would say since 9/11 we don’t do that. There are still things that are so drastically changed here, that are not the same in any other city.
(J) Right, we wanted to just put our bags in the airport, and put them in a locker, and they said we don’t do lockers anymore.
(M) So they’re still very aware of 9/11 more than we are. And it brings you back when you come here. Whoever you talk to, brings you back to that event as being our history.
(J) It is our history now.
(M) And we tend in the South and the West to forget.
(J) Though we were affected, these people are really affected, this is their city.
(M) It’s their memory. So we go and seek Him, and wanted to take you with us on it.
(J) The thing I’ve learned about life is that the fun things that you do are always the things that look a little bit stranger than the norm. If you just walk on the street and do nothing, ok, you had that experience. But if you are willing to stop and do a podcast in the middle of Times Square, or you’re willing to take a picture somewhere that people wouldn’t take pictures there, if you just go outside of the norm, it’s really cool, because that’s where the fun things are. And that’s where you can share them with other people, and they go, I can’t believe you did that podcast. Why would you in the middle of Times Square, just stand there and do a podcast. Well, what makes a memory is something that’s unusual, and that was unusual.
(M) But John, you describe yourself in certain ways, but you don’t understand that you “carpe diem” seize the day. I remember you driving in Honduras in San Pedro Sula, which to me would be a nightmare, and you were the funniest, you were delighted with that experience of life. So to you walking down the street in Times Square when you didn’t mean to be here, to you that was adventure. But it’s equally an adventure to you to drive a car in a strange land.
(J) And I am about to do it again!
(M) Yeah you really are, on the wrong side of the road.
(J) Yeah, Yeah! So anyway, who would do a podcast, you’d say oh I may look stupid or someone may think we’re weird. I’m never going to see these people ever again in my life.
(M) Yeah, who cares; the point is, you take the Lord where He takes you.
(J) And He’s right here right now.
(M) He’s right here, on the sidewalk, on Broadway.

Surrender, Yes, Praise – Episode #428 –  ShulamitePodcast.com