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with Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
(J) Well today we are sitting in the Picnic Café And Dessertery which is on the Square in Dahlonega, and it’s Martha’s son-in-law and daughter’s restaurant, and they have a really lovely restaurant sitting here on the Square in Dahlonega, in an historic district. We decided to do a podcast here because of something you were speaking of the other day Martha. You were saying that God continually speaks, and you can’t live without His Voice, that it’s an ever-present thing, and that He speaks wherever you are. So we’re basically ‘have podcast, will travel’, so here we are, and He’s decided to have a revelation right here in Dahlonega, and in the Dessertery. So you hear all the background noises, the laughs, the clinks, the noise, and everything like that, but we’re hoping it will come through and that you’ll be able to hear it without all the distractions distracting you. Well how are you doing Martha?
(M) Well I called you John and said, can you do a podcast over the phone because I have got an anointing from something the Lord said to me, and John just said I’ll come down, because I have to anyway. This morning the Lord said something to me that seems to go along with what we were talking about. He said, “Inertia is the closest thing to evil”. And I looked up inertia in several dictionaries, and it is the willful unwillingness to move, to change, it’s a tendency toward not moving. And it seems to be different than the word passivity. Inertia is the closest thing to evil; and I began to process that with the Lord, and such excitement came. Sometimes I get the anointing and there’s not a recording nearby, and I wanted to do it in the middle of my enthusiasm. So this is strictly spontaneous, I haven’t even been able to run the scriptures, though some have come to mind. Last podcast John, we were talking about the Lord’s travail He gave me about the laziness of men; remember?
(J) Yes, I do remember that.
(M) And it’s not that it’s exclusive to men by any means. And I think I mentioned the parable of the talents, the one that buried his talent?
(J) I don’t know if that was the last one we’re going to be airing, but you did talk about the talents and the parable of the talents.
(M) And where the man who buried his one talent gave his master the excuse that he was afraid, and he thought he had done well just to keep his talent safe. And the repercussions were pretty shocking, really. He said, “You wicked and slothful servant”, and the New American says “You wicked and lazy servant”. “You knew I reap where I have not sowed and gather where I have planted no seed. Then you ought to have invested my money and it would have gained, at least I would have had interest.” Then he takes the talent from him and gives it to the one who has ten talents, and hear this statement; “For to everyone who has more will be given and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has shall be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into outer darkness, in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”. You know I think the Christian life is learning the same thing over and over and over again, deeper and deeper. I believe there are really only about seven issues in the Christian life that God takes you through over and over again. This one, this parable I have been in for almost forty years now. I always go back to it. Inertia is a word that describes adult laziness, aware laziness.
(J) You know the funny thing about it is that usually the people are inert, if that’s the word, is that the word, inert? The people that are inert are the ones that are the busiest, that appear to be working the hardest. I know several people that they are frantically working, but they’re the most lazy people spiritually that I believe I know.
(M) Yeah John I was thinking about that too this morning, that sometimes men will work furiously to avoid real work; and that the laziness is not necessarily an absence of activity or labor. But the laziness that the Lord was on was a laziness of not listening and seeking God.
(J) That’s funny, this morning God brought me to that scripture, and I was just kind of tra-la-la-ing around, and He brought me to the scripture, “the work of God is to believe”. And I think that’s what we fail to do, isn’t it?
(M) Yes, “The work of God is to believe in the Son whom He has sent”. That’s our work, because once you believe, you produce.
(J) Because we don’t do that, that makes us inert and lazy?
(M) Exactly. The laziness is the failure to listen. To listen to God is the most exciting thing on earth. And in the last couple of days, it’s taken courage to listen to Him because I really expected Him in a situation to correct me. And someone I know has taught me that many times the religious will not listen or grow, because they’re afraid that they’ll be wrong. Well, you know, the Christian walk is constant adjustment, and to fail to see and hear the chastening of the Lord, which is there to challenge inertia, is to miss living your life.
(J) The other thing He told me is, He reminded me about what you said, that you continually hear God, and that you would die if you didn’t continually hear God. This is your life, I walk with you and I see you live this, and you live it before me and display it before me that you really do listen. Your sustenance is truly the Word of God. Like Christ says, He says “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God”. I watch you and I really see you live that, and you display that for me, that Christ example, that Christ life principal, that Christ life period. You live that out before me and you give me that example of it. Because even on the way down the mountain today to join up with you, I saw several things; but I was not just seeing things in my mind, I was hearing, He was telling me things. And we were having a conversation as I was coming down the mountain, and it was life for me. Because it was telling me a direction to go that I have to go. So I really want to thank you for living that out before me. I really appreciate it. You’re really the only one that I have seen truly do it. Some people can say that ok, I live by the Word, and it’s about the Word, and the Words in the Book.
(M) In the Book, it’s about the Book.
(J) Yeah the black and white page. It’s about what I can read and then say yeah that applies to me. I don’t see you doing that; though you read your Bible more than I’ve seen anyone read the Bible. You really live by the essence of the Word, and the Life that He’s giving you, and you will take it to every situation. It’s not just about what you’re to speak about, it’s not just about what you’re to do, but how you’re to respond to every step of your life. And I’m not exalting you in doing this, I know that this is a work that Jesus has done, because only Jesus can do what He’s asking us to do. But you display it for me and I appreciate that because I am able to see you die and listen and turn and shift as the Wind blows and as His Voice moves. And so, thank you. I will ever be grateful for that and I’m striving to do that; that I don’t want to immediately snap up an opinion. You know that’s ‘me’, I typically ‘pop’ here I am, there’s an opinion and I’ll go off on that. But with what you do, you say, I lay my opinion aside before you ever devise your opinion you lay your opinion aside and say, ‘what are You saying in this’. And so I’m thanking you for the challenge.
(M) You’re making me cry on the air John. But what came up, and this really relates to the work that we are to do. I read an article, and it was a good typical Christian article. The person talked about the silence of God; and how in some of the worst situations God is silent, and I could have wept over it, because it’s not true. He may not explain the worst of situations, but He is never silent. And I was telling a church about it. I told them that oh, that’s tragic to me, there’s never a time that God isn’t speaking. There’s only a time when we aren’t listening. And I’m sort of dealing with Luke 14 in the Manna, and we’re coming to the end of it where He says, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear”. And see, that is the work, that we have to get up, and wake up, and do the work of listening.
(J) Ok, so how does this relate specifically to the original direction we were going in, with inertia?
(M) Well what the Lord gave me in travail was His grief over the laziness of men. And the lazy was not about work, not about labors and jobs and taking care of families. The laziness was about seeking God to hear Him. It’s quite a challenge to listen to God. It can be very frightening, unless you know Him, and you know that He’s always for you, and He’s for Himself in you. But Jean Nixon gave me something from a novel she was reading, and I think it is a picture of the work of thinking and the work of seeking mentally and spiritually to hear. The work is to hear. He who has ears to hear, who can hear, he who can hear, let him be hearing!
(J) Don’t you have to fight the other voices? Is it not only a conscious effort to hear, but also to resist and fight? Or is that the work? Is it just the work of positive listening? Or is there also the aspect of resisting the ‘other voices’?
(M) I think John that I would like to call it, keeping the blackboard clear, making a space in which God has to fill it because you don’t know anything. I live in a conscious mental ignorance in every situation. And what Jean gave me about this novel was a certain detective trying to solve a case would take the facts and put them like stars in the sky he said. And he would create a deliberate incomprehension for himself. See the problem in the garden was thinking without God. Thinking without listening to the right Voice. There are two voices in the universe, and I’ll never forget the day God showed me Eve had no original thoughts, nor did Adam. We are listeners, John, we’re always listeners. We think we listen to ourselves. There’s a message I did one time called “Your Thoughts Are Not Your Own”, and it’s about this. But back in the garden, that was the failure in the garden, thinking without the work of listening. And to work to listen you have to make a space for God to speak with a Voice that will shock you. And we’re so full of those thoughts we hear and think are ours, that there’s no space to receive the mind of Christ, which we have access to, we can hear, we who’re born again. And what this detective would do is create a deliberate chaos where he didn’t allow the facts to influence him. And I said Jean, that’s how I think, I didn’t know it, but that’s how I think. She said I know it is, that’s why I’m giving it to you. And another friend said, “Martha, did you deliberately do that?” I said, no I had no idea; all I did was realize that I don’t know anything without God. I begin John, it’s not hard to because I have learned that I don’t know anything about anything, and yesterday’s knowledge may not fit today’s at all. I have to have, you eat three times a day; do you not listen three times a day?
