The Kingdom Foundation of Knowing Your Calling – Episode #689

Joan:
Or, we’re so busy aspiring to be someone rather than being willing to work from who God says I am. I am a unique design. I’m not to be like anyone else. And in a world where sameness is worshipped and uniqueness is not valued, we struggle with it. At least I do, because I think you feel like if I do x, y, and z then I will BE and there’s no power in that. Because that’s you trying to keep up something, whereas when God tells me who I am, then I work from His life in me. He, He is the life force in that word of who He says I am. Not me trying to be someone.

Jennifer:
And the beauty of it is that if you will, if you will be honest and go through the, the very real struggle to receive that nothingness, the reward is enormous.

I recently went through a situation that was just, it was the cross. And it was so painful. And when you go through the cross and your filters are off, there can sometimes be a stream of consciousness quality to what you’re saying, what you’re praying, all of it. I mean it’s just kind of, it can be a real deluge of what’s in the heart. So one second it can be grief. The next second it can be anger. You know what I mean? You will… There’s a gamut that’s in there. The heart is, is… There’s a lot in the heart and sometimes we don’t see it. And I found myself sobbing, “Why does it hurt if I’m nothing? If I’m, if I’m nothing should, this shouldn’t hurt, right?” And then I started crying and said, “I’m not nothing.” And then I stopped and said, “Is it pride? What is this? What is it I’m— What is it that I’m saying? What is it that my heart is saying?” And what I got to was that the grief was I am not worthless. And there was a place in me that had equated being nothing with being worthless. And though I am nothing, I am not worthless.

John:
Right.

Jennifer:
The highest price that can be paid, by the purest Being in the universe, was paid for me, for you, for Martha, for my mom, for all of us. That is where my worth is. And that is where my defense is. When someone comes and, and stomps me, it’s not on me. I don’t have to defend myself. I don’t have to, you know, rise up and all the rest of that. To be nothing also means to have everything and that includes His defense of me or not! Because we are also called to die. “Greater love hath no man than this that He laid down His life.” That is (starts laughing), I call it one of the worst scriptures ever because it’s awesome and you don’t come through without it but also, it means what it says! You know? And until you’ve started dying for somebody else, and the biggest part of dying for somebody else is dying to the right to get in their face and say, “How dare you!” You know? That stinks. That really stinks. It’s not all like Hollywood. You don’t always get the, the movie comeuppance scene of, you know, Scent of a Woman, where he smashes down the table and says, you know, “I’m just getting warmed up!” You know. We don’t all get that great speech where we get to put somebody in their place. That’s not how it works.

But when you do the work of letting your heart speak to Him and to yourself so that you can listen in, the “I am nothing,” the reward in the other side of that is finding out who He thinks you are because that’s part of it. That, that is part of what came out was, was who He, He asked me to be.

And, and Martha mentioned about my heart and I did take that as a prophetic prayer. Martha prayed over me years ago to be a vessel of His love. And the heart was part of that and some of it was, you know, went right over my head because it was too much for me to even take in. But I, I believe that and He told me, “You are, you are not a vessel for shame; not for your own and not for other people to dump on you. You are a vessel of My love.” Now I have no idea what that means, but I do know that it is holding me.

And, Martha, when you were talking about this earlier you said, “I have to know who I am so I can stand up to the devil.” That’s how you put it. And, and that’s it in a nutshell. Because now I can say, when he comes to me and tries to make me ashamed, I can say, “Oh, no, no, no. no. I’m not a vessel of shame, not mine and not somebody else’s.”

Martha:
Wonderful, wonderful, Jen. That’s great.

In the booklet about nothing, I do end on the issue of worth. But it means more. I know that it needs a booklet of its own because what God comes to you with is worth. And the, and the worth is in my unique creation. The worth is in your uniqueness.

And what I’ve seen about your heart, Jen, is it’s big enough to take in the suffering of humanity and pray over it. I, I, I’m just amazed at the size of your capacity to take the world in to your heart: the, the hurt, the abused. You’re always mindful of those who are hurt. That’s your heart. It’s big enough for the world.

Joan:
For me it seems like the attack comes in the place of, just like Jen was saying, the wounds of feeling worthless or negative words that have been spoken over you or negative thoughts, you, and words you’ve spoken over yourself because we do that. But we all… Being nothing does not mean you’re not valued and loved. And we think if I’m nothing, nobody wants me, I don’t count, I don’t matter, nobody loves me. And like Jen said, I’m not worth anything. That is not it. Our whole life is in Him and He wants us to prosper and know we’re loved in Him.

Martha:
Okay, so I feel that the Lord comes in our lives with challenges of life. Everything in life, however small, is a lesson to learn of the Lord. He is in everything. He is so perfectly, completely sovereign and His orchestrating your education as to who He is and who you are. He is… We are in school but we have a magnificent Teacher who is on our pace and on our level is helping us to see who we are to Him and who He is to us.

You have life messages. Do you know your life message, your life scriptures? Do you know what you are to demonstrate in your life here? What issue? My issue is, “Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength and the neighbor as thyself.” That is my basic foundation. And it has cost me and it is, I have failed at it and I have gained it and I have all kinds of experiences about that. And there are other things that are a foundation.

And, I was speaking to someone recently, and I said, “You don’t have a foundation of your calling.” And the first foundation is, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done.” That is your first prayer assigned to you. Are we praying that? Are we even aware of the kingdom coming into this room right here where the King can rule? We are here for the kingdom. “Seek ye first the kingdom and His righteousness.” So that’s, there are some priorities given to in the scripture and one of is seek the kingdom first. Above what? Above everything. Above my comfort zone, my everything. We’re dealing with a King and a kingdom, and that kingdom has already been won and is already in existence and we can gauge things by that kingdom. That’s a foundation. The other foundation is I will… ”You will say to me Lord, Lord, did we not cast out demons in Your name and so forth and so on” and He will say, “I never knew you. Depart from Me, you lawlessness.”

So that foundation of obedience is where you find who you are. And if you’re not living for obedience and to bring the will of God to earth in yourself first, you, you will never find out who you are.

And many people in this day and age live apart from obedience. They just live, I don’t even know how. It’s not a, an anchor. The will of God is, is my goal, my commitment, my duty, my anchor. And it’s where He is. He is in, in His will. I used to call it Will Street. God’s on Will Street. He’s not on Rebellion Street. He’s not on Goodness Street. He’s on His Will Street. And that’s where you will find Him.

So those are the ways that you find out who you are, because whatever situation comes has a secret inside it, a fascinating secret. It’s not without interest or transformation or shock or revelation. Every, every situation. And you can say, “Oh, this, this is exciting because I have no idea what this is and I’m going to find out. Why, why would God do this? What is He after? What is He saying to me?” His voice is to you directly. Cultivate that until you have it. But His voice is also speaking to you through everything around you, including the people around you.

I think I told about Gene Spears telling me, “You don’t need to do a conference.” That’s… You know, I may or may not. But he said, “You need to get what you know on paper. That’s your focus. Do that, Martha.” And I took that as a huge word from God. And I’m so grateful. He spoke up. He knew who I am. He knew what I was called for. He knew how, what I do. I do conferences and writing. And he’s been to my conferences. He, he knew me and he made me be true to myself. And he was absolutely right. He said, “I need a permanent record of what you, what you know. A conference is good. It comes and goes but I want it on paper so I can have it.” Well, that was very heartening for me; very encouraging and very supportive of who I am. It’s a, it’s a treasure. That’s what happens to us if we’re, all of us, are living in awe of the Lord, as that said.