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Following Where He Leads
Episode #325
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guests: Don and Carole Nelson
(J) Martha, we are traveling abroad, and we have our lovely brothers and sisters with us, Don and Carole, and so, where are we?
(M) We’re in Canada, in Orillia in Ontario. And we’ve sort of been, it’s one of those trips where we just went because the Lord seemed to assign it. And ah…
(J) We actually had assigned ourselves to go to this, or He had assigned us to go to this quite before the conference ever was. And we actually kept on forgetting that we were even doing it. Carole had to remind us, “You know we’re going (John and Martha laugh) in a couple weeks, don’t you?” We’d say oh, we have forgot.
(M) And it’s somehow when the four of us get away, there’s pleasure, and there’s travel, but there’s an enormous presence of the Lord, and He has shared so much with us, and I think when I talked about that when I taught on the ten virgins, seems like I remember that you cannot share oil, that it’s relational. And that when… The difference between the ones who went into the marriage feast, and the ones who did not, and the door was shut on them and not open-able, was the measure of the oil. And the oil is the Holy Spirit; that is the relationship that can’t be transferred. The Holy Spirit cannot be transferred. And what I saw kinda from Zechariah 3, we take this verse out of, I’ve taken it out of context a whole bunch of times. “Not by power, not by might, but by My Spirit saith the Lord.” And that’s the King James Version from a long time ago. It’s chapter three in Zechariah. This verse we take out of context is Zechariah 4:6, “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit says the Lord of Hosts.” And in this vision of Zechariah, “Joshua the high priest is standing before the Angel of the Lord, and Satan is there standing at Joshua’s right hand to accuse him, and as his enemy.” “And the Lord rebuked Satan,” He said, “Rebuke you, O Satan! Even the Lord, Who now habitually chooses Jerusalem, Rebuke you! Is not this returned captive Joshua a brand plucked out of the fire?” And then Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes and was standing, and he didn’t say a word. He was, I know, helpless. Here he was. I think he stands for the priesthood of which all believer’ are a part. We are a kingdom not so much of kings. We’re a kingdom of priests according to Revelation one. And so this is a picture of what Christ has done for us. The Lord commanded, take the clothes from him, and take his filthy garments, and He says, “I’ve taken your iniquity to pass from you, and I will clothe you with rich apparel”, and that’s the cross. And on the cross Jesus took our iniquity, that thing which is the root of all sin is iniquity. It resides in our very nature because it’s what we inherited from Satan. And then they put a clean turban on his head, which stands for, of course, the cleansing of the mind, and coming into the mind of Christ. I think, I’ve always said, that the last surrender we will give, and we don’t give this surrender readily or easily, nor do we think we need to. It’s the surrender of thinking, that we don’t have the right to our own thoughts. We dare not think our own thoughts because they are from Satan. They are from flesh, and flesh is under Satan. And I think this is probably Christ, it’s the Angel of the Lord, and is present there in this meeting. And so, Joshua is clothed with rich garments, and that’s the new creation, the new nature, and a clean turban is put on his head. And that is really, so much of our surrender has to be in the thought life, because Christ is the Head, and if I stay in my head I will be in rebellion.
(J) Hmmm, hmm-hmm.
(M) If I live by my thoughts, if I make my judgments, if I make my conclusions, if I label things, if I decide I know things, I will be in the enemy. And I will have, I will be back in the filth of the old nature. To surrender your mind so that you don’t go down that road of your own thinking… Once you start down to figure it out, or decide what it is, or want it to be what you want it to be, whatever, whatever it is, you’ll have a hard time coming back. The mind has to be so surrendered that it is disciplined to hear only the Shepherd, and not the voice of a stranger. And it says, “bring every thought captive into the obedience of Christ.” And “The weapons of our warfare are mighty, not carnal, to the pulling down of strongholds.” And we have to bring our mind under the Head, so that we have the mind of Christ. That’s not fantastic. That’s very practical, very real and so utterly essential. We have to think like He thinks. We have to have His thoughts take over. We have to have the Holy Spirit take our mind in Roman’s eight, and control our thinking. It’s just crucial. You can’t make it if you don’t have a clean turban on your head and be stripped of your old, of your mind. This is such a picture of the regeneration, or the transformation or the experience of being born-again. It’s a picture of all of that in Zechariah three. And then it’s an amazing thing, I’m going to be speaking on this later at some point, but in verse seven He says, after the Angel of the Lord has solemnly affirmed this to Joshua He says, “Thus says the Lord of hosts”, which is the Lord of the armies. That’s what that means. “If you will walk in My ways, and keep my charge, then you will rule My house and have charge of My courts, and I will give you access to My presence and places to walk among those who stand here.” That’s a tremendous commission and possibility to us all. I’ll deal with that later. For now I want to go on to what happens after Joshua is commissioned, called, cleansed, prepared and made a priest, and this is referred to by Jesus, “In that day says the Lord of hosts, you will invite each man his neighbor under his own vine and his own fig tree.” And that’s you’ll have your own relationship with God, and you own fig tree means your own communion with Him in private. So, I’m leading up to the revelation the Lord gave us one morning. It was very rich, and I have to go back and really listen to it. If you all remember any of it please break in. But the Lord was showing me that I am not to enable people by giving away oil that I’m not to give away the space, the time, the relationship that I have with the Lord. I’m not to give that away. I’m to guard that with a ferociousness, (Martha laughs) that my relationship with Him cannot be invaded, distracted, taken from me, and I’m not to… What He tells me, I’m not to give away readily. What He says to me is between He and I. And I learned this years ago and often don’t obey it. I often fail at it, but Watchman Nee says, “When the Lord shows you something it’s for Him to enjoy your knowing it.” A revelation is for His enjoyment, that He is able to share it with you and you see it. If He wants you to share it, fine, and He usually does. Sometimes He asks me to give more than I want to give.
(J) That reminds me of the booklet that he does, “Deep Calls Unto Deep”. And that is precisely what he says. Remember I taught on that one time in Texas, and it was about that there’s a deep well that He is digging and bringing out of you, and the waters are deep. And if you, basically, I mean this is my translation of this. If you run your mouth and you spread it out, you lose the power of it. And that’s basically what I was teaching on in Texas, that when you are given a revelation, and if you go about sharing it too quickly, you lose it and really it doesn’t have the power to impact anybody anyway. And so, you’re just basically wasting it. You might just as well be pouring it out on the ground, because it gets trampled by the people because it has no power. If it has no power, then there is no value. Only, only words that have value, that have been birthed in life, only those words are the words that have any lasting impact on somebody. And you can’t blame someone for not accepting a word that you haven’t personally allowed to be wrought out in your own life. You’re casting your pearls before swine, but really you’re the swine, because you’re taking what is precious and throwing it down and allowing people to trample it. And so, what I really gleaned off of that is, you know, you would get a word. You’d get this word and you’d be like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve have to share this, I have to share this.” But Nee really challenges you to hold your tongue and allow it to get deep; go deeper, go deeper, go deeper until He wants to take His ladle and spoon it out of you and bring it out to the world. And it’s real powerful; it’s a real powerful message.
(M) I remember the story that Madame Guyon tells about a Monk who was in silence for two years, and he had not spoken to anyone. And when he came out she was the first one he spoke to and it hit her and changed her life because of the concentrated power of it. And it’s just been a struggle of my walk to keep my garden gate closed. And that’s what He says, “You’re a garden enclosed.” Then, this is in Song of Solomon, the King says, “My beloved is a garden enclosed”, and then He says, “Come in friends, imbibe deeply”, but only when He invites it. And so it’s back to the virgins, it’s if you give your oil away… What I saw so clearly when we met that couple of days ago, I saw it so clearly, that we are to burn with the oil that we are given, and we are to be the light that shows others. As Carole says, “The light reveals Him.” I can see Him, and then everybody gets their own oil. But it’s the foolish virgins that didn’t have enough oil, and the wise virgins wouldn’t give it away. And once again, it’s relational. My first, and only obligation is to be in relation with the Lord. So it was a time of repentance for me because I have a tendency just to give it. And the Lord said to me, “You give a crumb, and you don’t wait for people to be hungry for the loaf.”
(J) Hmm, hmm.
(M) And He did that over and over again. He made people hungry. You’re not hungry enough for the riches I want to give you. You’ve got to be hungrier.
