Podcast: Download (2.0MB)
Subscribe: RSS
Holy To The Lord
Episode #260
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guests: Carole Nelson and Jennifer Wentzel
(M) Ok, we’ve just, we’re meeting here at Carole and Don’s beautiful cabin, and just completed the Tape of the Month here, on the 5th. And the message that we’ve been on in this Body is about holiness. And I’ve said a number of times that when I asked God to form church, to build His own church, and He did; as the years went by I was so stunned to realize that His first interest was in holiness. He really didn’t care about numbers. He reduces and reduces; He would rather have three who are willing to be made holy, than a hundred or a thousand who are mixed with holiness and un-holiness. And that surprised me; I always was kind of like a lot of churches, I figured He needed numbers to get His work done. Oh no, He needs holy people. The process of that though is the death to everything. And we just… God brings things our way, sometimes that give a name to what we’re going through. And Carole was led to get a book out of her library called “The Believer’s Secret To Holiness” by Andrew Murray. She got real excited about it, and then she got me excited to go read it. Well I couldn’t take but one chapter (Martha laughs) of it, and, and I’ve only gotten to three now, in weeks, and ah, it’s an absolutely awesome book. I don’t know that any book I’ve ever read has the insight into God and His holiness. Do you feel that way Carole? Tell us; tell us about its impact on you.
(Carole) Well as Martha said, I just went up to look for a book, and ah, I pulled this book out and it was weeks before I could get into it. I’d put it down and lose it, and I’d find it again, and then I started to just slowly get in. And I mean really slowly, because you can’t, I can’t read much without just… I can’t read much; it’s like eating dinner until you’re going to ‘pop’, and you can’t, you can’t eat anymore because you can’t take anymore in.
(M) So rich.
(Carole) It’s so rich. It’s just so rich. But I don’t know where it was in it that I, I don’t know what chapter; it was early in the book. And I, all of a sudden, or I slowly came to the realization that the call, the pathway that he was talking about was my life from the time I was born again. Because I was born-again through Martha, and so I was called, and that word that you used a little while, the call, I’m seeing now it’s just exploding, because He was calling me first to Martha, in submission, under authority, which was totally and completely against my nature. (Chuckling in background.) None-the-less, it was a call, and then as I was reading the book I realized that the call under that authority was the call to holiness. And Martha has always called to holiness. What kind of blows my mind is when I share these things with her and she goes ‘Ooooo’, ‘my-gosh’ that is just so rich and wonderful; and I’m going, ‘uhmm’, you’re the one that started this a long time ago. (Laughter.) You’re the one; but what, what I saw was I had, I don’t think I have ever understood that the word holiness was the purpose of Martha’s call to Him. Does that make any sense?
(M) Yes, it does.
(Carole) He put a word to His intention. He put a word to the process. He put a word to what, what He had been about for twenty-some years, thirty years, and really since before the foundation of the earth. But that call to holiness, I can’t tell you; I can sit here and say oh my God, I don’t have any, that’s all I know. That’s what I know today is I don’t have any. But the one scripture that he gave that just pulsates is Lev.21:8, and in The New Living translation, it says, “I the Lord Am Holy, and I make you holy.” So it is nothing that I do, other than to cry out, to surrender and submit to His call by choice, and believe that He’s going to do, that He’s got to do what He promised that He would do. He has given me, so many times He’s given me rainbows as ah, I can’t even tell you why, except that for me the rainbow always speaks one word, it speaks covenant, it speaks promise, it speaks ‘I will do what I have said that I will do.’ And He said that He’s going to make, He, He is holy and He will make holy. And I’m, I don’t want to ramble but, but I just see that all these years were summed up as I read, as I began to read that book, because He call has been, from the very beginning, it has been to be holy. And then I saw a little while ago that for me the holiness could only be opened up under authority.
(M) That is so strange Carole, because when I came here, as I was going out the door the Lord said, “Pick up that book on authority.” It was in my bookcase; I didn’t even have it out reading it. And when I got in the door I just opened it and it said, “Before we can work for God we must be overturned by His authority. Our entire relationship with God is regulated by whether or not we have met authority. If we have, then we will encounter authority everywhere and thus be restrained by God, we can begin to be used by Him.” And that’s what you did. You didn’t necessarily want it or like it, but you were called. And the Life in you enabled you to accept it. And ah, but to overthrow God’s authority is to overthrow God. That is why the scripture indicates that rebellion is as the sin of divination and self-will is as iniquity and idolatry. As God’s servants the first thing we should meet is authority. So He’s… You put the emphasis there, that that is where you meet holiness, under authority. And I never comprehended that. I really haven’t. I, I know even your daughter Carole, recognizes the glory of God on you. And that’s really, that’s really something. She recognizes, and your husband too, and we recognize what God has done in your life and how He has really made you the new creation, brought you into the new creation that you are. And its, its about authority. And authority is the cross. Authority brings the cross, and that’s why most people will not be subject to authority. They’ll be independent; they’ll serve God independently, but not under authority. And ah, it’s a strange… This is Watchman Nee’s book, “Spiritual Authority”, which is so very amazing, amazing book.
(J) Umhmm.
(M) And we know how He has blessed and rewarded you overwhelmingly, because you have taken this always as a matter of authority. Not of what you wanted or what you preferred or what you liked, but as a matter of authority to which you were called. You heard the call and you answered, and I’m astonished that you relate the authority issue to holiness.
(J) Hmm.
(M) Because it, that’s where, that’s where you learn it, under authority.
(Jennifer) I’m just kind of ah, ah, seeing my journey in a bit of a different light than kind of a, a progression of ah, the call to holiness and the role of His wrath and His chastening leading to the fear of God, the righteous fear of God, and the coming under authority; and that each one of these things are perfectly, perfectly ordered by Him to bring us to a place where we can even receive any part of Him; to take in any part of the gift of the new creation that He’s given us, and what it means to be a vessel for the life of Jesus Christ. Which I still can’t comprehend that. You know what I mean? Like that’s still something that I just have to kind of accept it and receive it and believe it. Kind of in the same way that, you know, we can all ‘parrot’ back children’s songs or fairy tales that we heard before we could comprehend them and we just accepted these stories. That’s really the only way I can take in on a daily basis the miraculous and utterly supernatural nature of Him and of everything that He does. But in holiness, and of course in part with that, defiling, that was something that Martha shared a little bit with, I guess it’s a couple weeks ago now, and through thinking of that He showed me my wounds in a completely different light. The wounds of being defiled and the wounds that we inflict on others by defiling them and inflict on ourselves when we defile. But I saw them in a completely different light through Him, which is to say these gaping holes and these wounds enabled Him to pierce into my otherwise utterly fortressed nature and heart. You know without that suffering, that role of suffering I would have no need for and no door open to Him, to His holiness, to His healing, to His love, to any of it. I would have no need of Him. I would be utterly and entirely alone; and just glimpsing that I was brought to the place where for the first time I could say I don’t just thank You for the wounds that I received, for defiling other peoples hands for the seeing of my own nature in action, my own defiling; I praise You for every last bit of it! Because without it I have no need for You, and I have no ability to receive any part of You, there’s no entrance for You. And I don’t know, there’s something about being able to move even beyond thanksgiving into praise of Him, that just, it just opens up everything, and you are able to say without equivocation, and without it being an act of faith or belief, “God You are utterly and perfectly good.” Without equivocation, without any mystery to it, every last part of it, perfect beautiful love. (Jennifer laughs.) And when Carole was talking about the authority, I just saw the, the perfection in everything that He’s done in every part of my life to bring me so perfectly to Him, to fulfill the calling that He laid on me even before I understood that such a thing was, was there. I don’t even know it that is making sense.
(J) Totally..
(Jennifer)But this calling to holiness and His fulfillment of it is just uhmm, (Jennifer laughs) it’s just awesome. Frightening, but awesome.
