Podcast: Download (13.5MB)
Subscribe: RSS
God’s Victory Over Our Fear
Episode #209
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guest: Carole Nelson
(M) I think for those I’ve seen, Carole has an enormous capacity to just go in life, ah, courageously. You may not know that, but when I travel with you, you will, you’re just not afraid.
(Carole) Hmm.
(M) And so what the enemy has done to destroy you is make you afraid. And now you’re not afraid.
(Carole) As we’re seeing this, I think, I think I’m seeing a picture; that the very area that Satan attacks me is the area of God’s disapproval. Not that I can’t be disapproved of by any means, but that is where he attacks. But why does he attack there? So that God can prove Himself to me, so that the fear can be exposed, and so that I can see more of my Father, more of His, His ruling, His place.
(M) The point I want to make is… And I’m thinking of someone that God sent into my life, very, probably the most unstable person, and the most, ah, (John says evil in background.) evil person sent to me. And she, we’ve told it kind of lightly in different areas, but she planned my murder because she could not control me. So anyway, particularly at one time we all knew that it was Satan’s plan. And I fell on the floor on my face, and sought the Lord all by myself, and He gave me a promise in Job, the end of Job five, that I would live to a ripe old age full of vigor. And there are a number of promises in that passage that have come true. One of them is, “the wild beasts shall be at peace with you”. It was like she evoked a fear that drove me to God, and then God gave me His plan, that gave me a faith that nobody can kill me. Nobody; nobody can do that. And that promise of “the wild beast shall be at peace with you”: well John got this dog named Goliath, wasn’t that his name? And he would devour anybody; he was a watchdog. He would come up to and just, oh just…
(J) He was mentally unstable. (Martha and Carole laugh)
(M) He would just attack and just bark, and scare the liver out of you; he was so ferocious. Well John wasn’t afraid of him, put his fingers in his mouth because he knew that brand of dog, the Pyrenees, so he disarmed the dog. But the dog… I was the only person that he did not attack.
(J) Yeah, he attacked me, went after me. I wasn’t in…
(M) He attacked Carole.
(J) I didn’t believe him, but…
(M) Yeah. He was believable though.
(J) But he never, he never ever, ever, ever attacked you. He never even looked towards you to do it.
(M) No, he’d come up beside me.
(J) It was amazing.
(M) And ah, so. In other words, that attack from Satan, clearly from Satan, drove me to God, for Him to resolve my fear, take it out and obliterate it with His word and promise. And I live by that; I live by that. It is so deep in me. Even in my illness, I said, I cannot… And I told someone who really thought I was dying, I said, no, no, “I’m going to live to a ripe old age; I’m not ripe yet.” I may look it. (Martha laughs) I’m not ripe yet. And I’m going to have vigor. This is not the end; this illness is not the end, not remotely. So anyway, that’s an example that came to mind of how God takes… He allows the enemy as He… And then I saw about David; we talked about him in the last podcast so I won’t go there. But ah, that’s what He did.
(J) Well, I was just amazed at the fact that I quite instinctively went at Goliath with no forethought. Anyone would, in their right mind, would be afraid of Goliath. He was a awful creature; huge, big, awful, and his eyes, absolutely, he was evil looking. And I went right up to that cage when he was there, and he started ‘roaaaah, roaaaah’, and I just shoved my hand in his mouth. And I did that instinctively. And it wasn’t… And the owner that had to get rid of him because they were going to Germany, in the military, looked at me and went, “uhmm, I can’t believe you just did that.” And he was, and he, and immediately he was like ‘oh, ok, will you scratch my rear end, because that’s what I really like’. And I did, I scratched him and he was ok, and you know. But even when I picked him up, he, I went up to the window and he lunged at the window to get at me. And I just shoved my hand in his mouth. Now, I wouldn’t say do that with every dog; instinctively I did that. But he…
(M) Well, you know the Pyrenees dog, you know them well and you, you’ve worked with them for years.
(Carole) And you’re a shepherd.
(J) And I’m a shepherd, yeah, but thing I think was; there was an intimidation that Goliath was trying to invoke on me, and I was not intimidated. I wish I could bring that characteristic in, and will eventually, on everything.
(M) Well this is just practical pictures of what I want to be a spiritual reality in our midst, and that is, what you fear you give power to. The only power Satan has is that which I give him with my fear. And my fear comes believing he has power. And God is working with us. I’m not saying we’re doing it. I’m saying God is working with us to get out of us, to evoke in us, what we’re afraid of, that we don’t really realize, so that we can praise Him and allow Him to put the faith… By praising Him we have the faith that pleases Him, and then He can impart the faith to us.
(J) Is there only power where, where there is faith? Whether it’s faith in the enemy or faith in God?
(M) I think that’s absolute, say it again.
(J) That there’s only power for us, concerning us, where we put faith, which is whether it’s in Satan in fear, or God. The faith is the power of life.
(Carole) I may have told this before, but back to Goliath. It was… He attacked me. He scared the ‘be-jabbers’ out of me. (Martha laughs) And I’m not afraid of dogs; I’m not. I’ve stood up to a lot of dogs, but this dog scared me. Well, it was after he did that it was probably less than a week, where I met up with Goliath again, only I didn’t know it was Goliath. I thought it was Lily, who was a sweet Pyrenees. And I was over in another place, By the River Drive. And I saw this big white Pyrenees, and I thought it was Lily, and I said ‘come on over’ (Carole clapping her hands). And she came over, thought it was a she. (Martha laughs) And we walked for a while and she went on back down the driveway where John was. And later on I made a comment about Lily, and John says, “That wasn’t Lily, it was Goliath.” And I said, “Who”? (John is laughing) That was Goliath? Well, we didn’t have a problem. And the point that the Lord made to me over that was, I didn’t know that that was Goliath, and I wasn’t afraid of that dog. And so I didn’t give him any power.
(J) Goliath was all about intimidation. And if you were intimidated and intimidatable, then you gave him the power and he took it. But if you didn’t and shoved your hand in his mouth, then he was like, ‘pbhhht’, well, that didn’t work. (Martha speaks in background) He really was. (John laughs)
(M) But the point is, all of these instances are to get us to the place where we are not intimidated by anything, we’re not afraid. And this is what Jesus did. I taught it lots of times, but I see it even bigger. He came, Heb.2, where you said, “I will tell of Your name to My brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing Your praise.” And what you’re seeing in that, Carole, is what He has… You’re seeing that He comes in and praises the Father with us. His presence is in our praise.
(Carole) I see that it is literally His very presence that comes in. When we… He comes in through the open gate of praise. We open that gate to Him and He comes in and He is there, and where the presence of the Lord is, (Martha says, Satan flees), Satan flees, yes.
(M) And I got… I remembered the verse, as we were dealing with this, that, “The Lord inhabits the praise of His people.” And He inhabits our praises. And there’s an element that comes in that you’ve witnessed at time, and I have too. There’s an element of praise that goes heavenly. And John, you’ve not been able to bear the praise that doesn’t, where He doesn’t inhabit.
(J) Hmmm.
(M) You can’t, you can sense it with your spirit, and you can’t receive it. It’s too much flesh? Is that what you hear?
(J) It’s ‘ickky’. (John and Martha laugh)
(M) But we want to be able to praise so that He comes in and praises the Father with us.
(J) Well, is that not what He was doing… Didn’t He evoke their fear in the boat?
(M) Oh, yes, I guess He did.
(J) And didn’t it… The end result of that was that they praised.
(M) Ahhhh, John! Oh yeah. It’s Matthew, John is talking about when Jesus walked on the water in Matthew 14:26, “But when the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, It is a ghost. And they cried out in fear, but immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying ‘ Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.” And then Peter says… Peter goes out on the water. “But Jesus immediately stretched out His hand and said, You of little faith, why did you doubt? And when they got into the boat, the winds ceased, and those in the boat worshipped Him, saying You are truly the Son of God.” (John claps in the background.) You got it!
(J) He evoked it in them. He evoked the fear, He brought them to a situation that would instill fear so that He could prove Himself, and that they would enter into praise and worship.
(M) There is the whole picture.
(J) Look at the other, when He was asleep in the boat; look at that one. What happened in that one? I bet the same thing happens.
(M) Well, it’s all through here in Matthew. In Matthew ten, I just stumbled on. It’s talking about sending out His sheep in the midst of wolves; v 26, so have no fear of him. You’ve got a wolf after you? Have no fear. “For nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known, rather fear… Do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear Him Who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” And then He goes on to the preciousness of us, that no sparrow falls, but what He knows. Ok, you want me to get in the boat.
(J) Because I want it where it actually goes into what we’re talking about, where it enters into that praise realm, and how He evokes the fear to gain the praise.
