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God’s Passion To Forgive
Episode #317
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guests: Jim Pierce, Carole Nelson and Jennifer Wentzel
(Jim) I’m just, I heard it, when you started talking, I don’t know, two or three stories ago, about unforgiveness and this huge trick that’s being played on humanity in so many levels, about creating unforgiveness in our hearts, the inability to forgive; which is just a trick. We need to forgive so we can be forgiven; it’s part of the deal; and a huge spiritual trick; nations and millions of people that don’t and won’t, may not ever understand that. They’re lost. Satan gathers that foothold and captures them and then they’re trapped in that unforgiveness; and boy I know he’s smiling and loving that.
(Carole) So it continues to perpetuate generation after generation after generation, until the people of the Lord come together who have been forgiven, who have been honest in their hearts, who have repented and received the forgiveness of the Lord for their own violations and sin against Him, and now can be used as vessels to pray and proclaim that forgiveness over peoples and nations and the victory of the Lord over peoples and nations.
(John) You just brought it full circle, and I think that’s, that’s amazing; you just completely brought it full circle. But you know something; you have to have the sovereignty of God associated with that. That has got to be a part of the whole dealing there. I don’t know if you can deal with forgiveness and join in, into a war-room prayer for a people without coming to the sovereignty of God issue. I just don’t think it happens.
(Jennifer) Well, and what I love about that Carole, and what you’re saying, it’s, I’m so on it lately and I can’t seem to leave it, the, the woman who washed Jesus feet with her tears, Mary, Mary Madeleine. And Simon the Pharisee was so offended, and Jesus told them that parable about the creditor and the debtors, and you know, the one debtor’s forgiven like, I don’t know, five bucks, and the other one five-thousand or whatever, and He says which do you think loved the most. And it’s the one who’s forgiven most. And Jesus says yep that’s right. And I keep thinking about that, that the one who’s forgiven most loves the most. And I really can’t get away from that, and there’s the little addendum, which is also scary, which is the one who’s forgiven little, loves little. But I’ve thought about that, and ok, that steadfast love that has to be part of it, the fear of God and the steadfast love. And how perfectly He sets it up, that without the fear of God you don’, you don’t see you; you don’t come to the bottom of you and say yes, this is who I am, ok, I bow. And without that forgiveness, receiving that forgiveness for everything, you have no access to the steadfastness of His love. You don’t get that love. You haven’t been forgiven much, so you’re not going to love much. You don’t, you don’t have that thing. And I feel like well of course Jonah didn’t love Nineveh. He, he hadn’t forgiven. He had no love for them. There was no place for love in his heart because of the unforgiveness. And it’s just astonishing to me, like Jim said. I look at it more as, instead of a trick, although it is tricky, He knows exactly how much motivation I require. He knows that I require incentive, and that my blood lust is high, because I believe God very emotional; we’re created in His image. And there are times when His wrath has come with, you know, He spared no one. So He understands what it is to have that, you know, ‘Rrrrarrr’. Likewise He set it up because He knew what we would need. So it’s just, He’s constantly working on all these levels, and across the board, and knowing exactly what it will take to do it, and also knowing the people that He will be utterly vindicated and still it didn’t happen. Somehow still completely, there’s no question of His sovereignty. I used to wonder, isn’t there something else You could have done that would have broken that person; I really did. I couldn’t imagine that there, that God could be stumped by a mere human refusal. And, but then I started learning from Martha about how He will not violate our will; that is His love, that that is the depth of His love. And it’s just astonishing to me.
(M) Well I think, which I didn’t realize until the Lord showed me the story is about God’s forgiveness, God’s passion to want to forgive, the lengths to which He goes so that He can forgive. And it, it means literally that you live or die according to your forgiveness; you and I live or die. The day God let me really, really understand what John the Baptist said, “Behold the Son of God Who takes away the sin of the world.” He takes it away, that’s incredible, and of the world? That’s mind-boggling. But, I don’t know the story’s just so vivid, as Jim’s mentioned about forgiveness, that what we, the things we harbor in our heart have huge consequences. And to especially, I’m always harping on forgiving parents, because that’s the one stronghold of unforgiveness that we believe we have the right to; that’s understandable, what was done to me. And it’s understandable, but not excusable. We, we will live or die based on our forgiveness, and that is only in the secret of the heart, whether that is real or not. And it says, Jesus said if you do not forgive from your heart, and let go and release, and for me accept, then you will not be forgiven, as Jim reminded us. Our forgiveness literally is a matter of life or death; and not others, mine. Like somebody said, unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. My unforgiveness is my poison. Literally it produces a poison in the body that leads to disease. One day I’ll finish my book on forgiveness.
(J) You know the scripture, ah the Luke scripture, “But he who has been forgiven little, loves little.” I see that two ways. It’s issuing out the forgiveness, but also receiving the forgiveness. The, the one who, who does not receive big forgiveness, his own debt, I feel like it kind of goes there first, it’s kind of the scripture, “You love Me, because I first loved you.” Will you forgive because I first forgave you? And you receive this amassing forgiveness, and I believe that that stops the forgiving to you and to others because you put a big wall right there and say I don’t have anything that needs forgiveness. Or it’s not that bad, or it’s not that much. And so you have to go through that tunnel of being, of, of seeing your depravity. You have to go through that whole pathway of going through the depravity and you’re complete leveled. That’s, the Pharisee’s, they didn’t have anything to be forgiven for because they were perfect. So the one who receives much forgiveness, loves much; and he who is, is, receives much forgiveness, offer’s much forgiveness.
(M) Well the last, remember who Simon was, the Father of Judas Iscariot. They were in his home and he had been healed by Jesus; yet he had contempt on this woman. Does He not know she was, she’s a sinner? But the last statement of Jesus was this. After He said about forgiveness He said to the woman, “Go, your faith has made you whole.” And her faith was in His forgiveness of her. That’s crucial. Sometimes we don’t access, receive, internalize that we are forgiven; we don’t believe it, so we don’t have, we don’t work to believe that He has forgiven. The story of Jonah is the proof He wants to forgive. He’s almost, you’d almost think if God could be desperate, He’s desperate to give forgiveness and have it received. And that story means she believed she was forgiven, and it made her whole. Oh my goodness, do you get it? She became healthy spiritually, physically, mentally; in every way she was a whole person by He forgiveness; but by her faith that she was forgiven. Oh it’s just incredible.
(Jennifer) Ok, well I was just thinking that faith, what you’re saying is that faith is receiving and living as one forgiven and loved; that that is faith, resting in the reality, having gone down and so it’s, it’s in you, you’re living it, you’re living forgiven. So by the same token, people who are operating under, I call it the delusion of atonement; I don’t know it that’s correct or not. But that whole seven pounds mentality that says somehow I can, I can pay it, I can atonement for, I can make up for. Right, which, but if you’ve been to the very bottom of you; if you’ve seen your heart apart from Him, then you know there is no atonement possible. So you don’t, it’s not even an option I guess. So what I’m asking is, if you’ve got that atonement, or whatever, does that mean that you simply haven’t been willing to see the very bottom of you? To see? Because once you see I mean, I know that, that spirit that says there’s gotta be some part of me that’s not that bad, that, that… You know what I mean? I look out and I see People that are worse, whey don’t You go pay attention to that guy for awhile and leave me alone. Because what’d I really do, I didn’t run over anybody with my car, and you know you always go to those extremes. But the, the gift of seeing, and I do consider it a gift because I refused to see for so long, so it had to be a gift from Him that I was even able to see. But I think that, it’s not a gift that’s exclusive; I think He’s willing for it. Anyway, it’s all a great mystery. But that whole ‘maybe I can make up for it’, ok ‘I’m going to be better tomorrow’, ‘I’m going to be better today, today’s a new day, I’m not going to mess up like I did before’, ‘I’m gonna be nicer’; you know, I did that all the time. I really did, I would make these vows that would usually be broken within thirty minutes. Uhm, they never went very far. But to get down to the bottom, atonement’s not even, nothing, it would take more lifetimes than you could ever have. And so there’s something in that, that desperateness, like you always… Well never mind, Martha, it’s exactly what you always say, you’ve got to come out to the very bottom, to the nothingness. There’s nothing that you can do, nothing. And then you can receive Him and receive His love, because you have nowhere else to go.
(J) So, so this woman, ok, so you have, Jesus was tying the knot. Here you go with your Nineveh and Jonah. There was a knot being tied here. You have this woman who comes, this man who’s forgiven, and then you have this woman come and he’s like ‘yuk’, she’s a ‘scumbag’, and how can’t He know that, He must be stupid because look at her, she’s ‘skanky’. And then she literally was forgiven much. She would have to immediately… Guess who her first candidate, who was first in live for forgiveness, probably Simon. The fact that he sat there and he defied you before the entire people’s there, group of people, by calling you ‘skumbag’. He probably wasn’t very quiet about it, probably very loud. She’d have to stand up in her wholeness and say now I offer you forgiveness too, Simon.
(M) But remember what Jesus said to Simon when he did scorn her; when I came here you gave me no kiss, you gave me no oil for my head, you gave me no water for my feet. Simon didn’t love Jesus because he had not been forgiven. Jesus was demonstrating her love for Jesus. She had received much forgiveness, so she loved Jesus. And he contrasted Simon with her.
