Podcast: Download (2.0MB)
Subscribe: RSS
GetalongwithGod.com – Cont.
Episode #310
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guests: Julie, Jennifer Wentzel, and Carole Nelson
(Julie) Well, I’ll just be really honest, when we first started this, I didn’t know this, that John had actually been praying. He’d told the web developer who said we needed something that was going to involve facebook, twitter, all that kind of stuff; John was praying that God would raise somebody up to do that. Well, I don’t think any of us were excited about that at all. It was hard for us to relate to, coming from a different generation. Like Jen said, it seemed noisy and chaotic. And honestly until God moved one morning for me and showed me; honestly I was fussing at Him about it, you know, like good grief, who would want to do that? And it’s like being inside other people’s head’s, and it’s crazy, and it’s chaos, and whatever. And I was fussing at Him. And He just, in His ‘Otherness’, He just shows up and He’s so ‘other’, and He just spoke to me and said, “Don’t you know that I will go there to find My sheep? Don’t you know?” Like don’t you know? Of course, of course I will go into these nations as such. Because twitter is a nation, and Facebook is a nation, and I’d never looked at that scripture that way, I never, never would have seen it that way if He hadn’t moved like that and shown me that His heart was to go into those places. Ah, well, yeah, the great commission, “To go into all nations and make disciples in My name.” So anyhow, I felt like, again, not being a part of that generation it was completely foreign. I wasn’t like Jen. I’d never read blogs. I didn’t know anything about it. But I felt like for a couple of days that I needed to just… what would come? What, if I say OK, yes God, sure, great, You want a blog? What do You want to blog about? And honestly, the first several that I wrote were really terrible. And terrible on the ground that they weren’t being ‘gut level.’ They weren’t being honest. They were kind of being polished and just gross. And then when it began to dawn on me what He was really asking, and it reminded me of something Martha, that He’d said to Martha years ago, that to be a writer for Him meant walking naked down the street. I mean, I was like ooooooh, no, no, no, no, no; no, no, no, no. I didn’t sign up for that, no, no, no, that’s not what I’m interested in. And that’s about the point at which my passion for it sort of collapsed, and thankfully John picked it up.
(J) Well, that’s what happened at that point was you were freaking out. But I had said I’ll support you, I bless you. First I prayed for somebody, because I said, “I can’t do this God, You know I can’t do this’. And I was praying for that, and then you came, and then you collapsed, and then I said, ok, well I’ll help here, and I kind of got involved. This entire process has been God’s divine trick on all of us. Because I didn’t have a heart for it, and I said no, no, no. And then all of a sudden I got sucked into the vortex. And then Jen said, no, no, no, no, no, and then all of a sudden Jen got sucked into the vortex. And then Martha said, oh I’m so glad you three are doing it, and then all of a sudden she got sucked into the vortex. And it’s been like a divine, kind of like ‘surprise!’, because each of us have thought quite, quite apart from each other, oh, well that’s a great idea, and then all of a sudden you’re sinking into the quick sand, you’re going ‘oh my goodness, wait a minute; what’s happening?’ So, I’m excited to see what He’ll do, because I know that this is on His heart, because we haven’t birthed any of this. None of us have chosen this, none of us have foreseen this. We just had a little idea and we said, ‘oh God,’ and then blew on it a little bit, and then God said ‘wow, cool,’ and exploded it. And so I’m excited to see what He’s gonna do. It’s gonna be daily, five days a week, daily, and it’s going to be short, it’s going to be sweet and to the point. And I believe that what will be revealed is not gonna be a personality based. It’s not going to be… it’s not site based. It’s not ministry based. It’s not personality based. It’s message driven. The message is how God wanted to reveal Himself in our individual lives, and then we literally pour out of our vessels what He’s showing us. And it will yes, ok, it will come like a vessel, like if you have a vase verses a cup verses a something else, it’s gonna pour differently, but our goal is that the essence of the site is message driven from His message point, and His vantage point, and that it’s, yes, coming through us, and we can’t be uninvolved with that process, but that we literally are just vessels pouring it out.
(Jennifer) Right, it’s not about personality, and it is about vessels, but what I’d like to stress is that we are individuals under Him. So there may be people out there that can’t relate to my journey at all. That’s completely fine. That’s no problem. What I think is so powerful is how utterly unique He is in His relationship with each one of us. And each of our journey’s are completely unique and so while someone may not be able to relate to me or to what I’m saying, or to my walk, it’s very foreign to them, it doesn’t mean that they won’t ah… The Lord and the Holy Spirit won’t give them kinship with Julie, or John, or Carole or Martha or Don. That’s just another way in which He is so willing and able to reach who He wants to reach, as He did with me, you know? Writers or speakers who other people were, they were incredibly anointed for them, weren’t anointed for me, and I had other people. God is… He doesn’t… it does nothing to halt Him or even slow Him down, He is so huge. And this blog is in many respects a function of His Body life, Him, and Who He is in each one of us, and it is about what He has to say. And I think that’s, that’s what I’m looking forward to anyway.
(Carole) Well, I for one, and I don’t know if it’s just me but, I for one, as well of most of human nature, loves to jump from the beginning to the end and say it’s all done; wash my hands and say, ‘thank you very much I’m there’. And this is about, this is about the process, the real gut-wrenching process that many may recognize and see as their own. They may identify and, and go ‘wow’, that is what, oh my, that is what God is doing in my life. And oh, oh, I want that, I want to see Him like that, ouuu, that’s a way I’ve never seen Him before. And uhmm, so there is a process in that, and these blogs will express the process.
(J) Well, everything on the site is basically broken down into five topics, and the topics are: “Live the moment,” “Letting go,” “Living loved,” “Enjoying Him,” Being real.” And when we were developing the site, we really wanted to be able to categorize things so that they were easy to find and that you would understand what the site was about. And the Lord really impressed on me that these were the five things that were really important for getting along with Him. So, ah, if you break it down into the definition of each of these, it would be: “Live the Moment” would be, releasing the past and future, and living in the now; and then “Letting Go” is letting God be God; and then “Living Loved” is letting God love you; and “Enjoying Him” is loving every facet where I find Him. And “Being Real” is facing truth. And I really believe that, I feel that these are the crux of getting along with God, and because God is not an entity, external, far reaching, non-existent, whatever you want to say. He’s a Person, and He has a personality, and He has emotions, and He wants to, He wants to get along with us, and He wants us to get along with Him.
(M) I think somehow, in many places, the essence of Christianity gets completely lost in the works of Christianity. The essence is relationship with God, the Creator, and with the Savior, and with the Holy Spirit. It’s relationship. And I requested about this ‘Get along with God’, that it not be any aspect of evangelizing, or preaching on the streets, or doing works, but this is about relationship. We’re confining this blog to relationship. I don’t think that we understand that God wants to be involved in every moment, every aspect, every situation of every life. He is that practical, that intimate, that involved, and that desirous to be with us. I keep thinking of Enoch. Just one little half of a sentence about Enoch in Genesis, “Enoch walked with God, and was not for God took him.” That means God took him on up to heaven. He was enjoying Enoch so much that He just flew him right on up. He didn’t die, he just vanished into heaven, because he walked with God. And that’s what this blog to me is about, walking with God. A walk is a practical thing. It’s at the sink I meet Him, at the grocery store I hear Him. Some of the most significant things He’s ever said to me have been said while I was putting the groceries in the back seat, or how I was pruning the roses, or whatever. And it is, how do you get along with this God, and what does He require for you to get along with Him? He requires that. Someone said today, I think it was Jennifer in our meeting and conversation. She said, “It’s about on His terms. We get along with Him on His terms.” Well, this is going to be a blog about finding out what His terms are. And He doesn’t, He doesn’t bend to us, but He’s waiting for us. He doesn’t let us dictate to Him, but He will let us beseech Him and He will hear us. And that’s what I want. I want it to be confined to relationship, because that’s the basis. Everything else flows out of relationship, whether you follow Him, whether you minister for Him, whether you speak for Him, whether you go love people for Him, it has to be, the core has to be how to get along with Him. So my excitement comes because it’s relationship.
(J) I think the fascinating thing in the entire deal is, it’s His excitement to get along with us. It’s His passion to get along with us. It’s His heartbeat and His purpose to get along with us. He’s created us to have relationship with us. He’s created us to live eternity with Him, and He wants us so badly, and He wants us to enjoy Him now. It’s not just in heaven, He wants our current experience of Him to be a exciting adventure, a wondrous time that we get to know Him. If I’m dating a girl, I want to get to know her. I want to understand her. I want to see how she responds to things. I want to hear how things feel to her, and how her heart is moved by things that I do for her. And in the same way God, the beautiful, glorious Bridegroom, has a Bride that He is looking for, and He is wanting to woo us. And so I want to see this site express His passionate ‘woo’ of us as His creatures and creation and Beloved.
(M) Let me tell you where that is in the Bible. You want me to show you a blog in the Bible? (John says in the background: A Bible blog.) A Bible blog, it’s David in the Psalms. It’s the sons of Asaph in the Psalms, telling about their experiences. Oh God, the cruelty of a man came to me, but this is what I found out about You.
(Jennifer) Ok, and see, that to me says perfectly what I also want this blog, have passion for this blog to do. It’s not just about how to get along with God, but the relationship says, “why?” Why do I even want to get along with God? I just finished watching that wretched documentary that you told me about, beware of Christians (Jennifer is laughing)… Oh, it was like pulling teeth or having my toes sawed off one at a time. It was horrible. And I thought, ok, if it’s like this if I have to watch it, what must it be like to live this life. Yes, no wonder these young men are hurting each other. No wonder they’re traveling across Europe asking other people to tell them about their faith. Let’s think about that for a minute. Why do I care what anyone else thinks about my relationship with God? Well, they don’t have one! It’s not about a Person. What a horrible life to live without it being about a Person. And for me it was searching for years. There were years, and I could see no good reason what-so-ever why I would want to have anything to do with God, let alone get along with Him. Now, the Lord knew perfectly, exactly how to present Himself, and I found Him running away from Him. I would watch movies knowing full well that these were not godly in any way shape or form movies, read books, same thing. Guess what? He was there. He was there. He kept showing up, so it’s not, I’m not saying that, you know, we have to do this because otherwise nobody’s gonna find God; it’s not about that. This Body, these testimonies, these podcasts, all of these things, to me, they offer Life, because they say… these are the ‘why’s’, this is why I do it. As a human being, yes, the Lord knows that we have to be wooed. He knows we have to have a reason. He made us, He made us to have a heart to seek out something genuine and real and, I’m sorry, interesting. Ok? I don’t think it’s shallow to not want to be bored to tears every single day with some great God in the sky who doesn’t notice me and doesn’t know anything about me. That is boring, that is disconnected. It is not shallow for me as a human being to want to be interested and alive and engaged. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s Who He is! He’s a mystery so deep I can’t solve Him. Well, tell me about that. That I want to know more about, that mystery of Him, that unbelievable kindness and mercy and yet terrifying, immoveable; He, He’s God. You know, I can have a relationship with Him and there is an emotional impact between the two of us, but at the end of the day He is, He is God, and He can’t be moved, and that’s fascinating to me too. I can’t budge Him. (Jennifer laughs) I love that; I love that. That tells me why I should care about getting along with God, why I should even want to. That’s the Person of Him, that’s the relationship with Him, and that’s what I want from this blog. Because that’s the only part of my, my walk with Him that, that remotely engages me; if He’s not involved in it, the mystery of Him and frankly the joys of this life. This is not a life where I wake up every morning and cry a little bit because once again I’m gonna have, you know, a rated ‘G’ existence, with fluffy bunnies, and you know, Little-Bo-Peep greeting cards, and ughhhh, God, no. That’s, that’s not me, and that’s not real. So I, I love the reality that I get from, as Carole says, it’s a process, from being encouraged that other people are in this, and that it is a real relationship, and a real give and take, and a bowing, and a work to do that. And that is an adventure. That’s not dull. That’s a Person that’s Alive!
(Julie) What you’re saying, Jen, reminds me of a quote. It’s actually an excerpt from a novel that George MacDonald wrote. I say this often, so I’m sure you all have heard this before, but I love it and it changed my whole entire view at one point, where one of his characters is saying, “How do I convince this person to follow God? And the other character responds and says, “You don’t have to convince anybody to follow God, just set a God before them that’s worth knowing, and see if they won’t get up themselves to find out if He’s true.” And that’s what I see in, as our heart in this blog. We’re simply sharing the God that we are encountering day by day, and how wonderful He is, and how interesting, and how unexpected, and, and inviting people to ‘hop on the train.’ There’s still seats left, so come on.
Announcer:
Hold it there podcasting, listener person, don’t you go anywhere, coming up next on our show.
(J) We at Shulamite Ministries invite you to download the most current version of the Shulamite app. It is available today through iTunes, or on your Apple device through the App store. Please delete your current version, as it is no longer supported, and cannot be updated. The new version is compatible with all app supporting Apple devices, and built for your enjoyment.
(Children shouting Yeahhhhhhh!)
