Podcast: Download (7.6MB)
Subscribe: RSS
Podcast (podcast-mp3): Download (5.7MB)
Subscribe: RSS
Seeking His Sovereign Touch
Episode #793
2/13/2022
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
To see the sovereignty of God in our lives is shocking. In the Sovereign Touch John has made this shocking and poetic and personal.
Martha:
This week I had something that happened that gave me some things to say. I was sitting in John’s living room beside his recliner and I was doing my own writing at the time and the Lord said, “Open John’s book in the light of what you are looking at.” I looked down and he is very much with his books beside his chair and I picked it up and began to open it at random and read and it answered whatever I was on. I said to him, “We’ve got to get this book out. This is one of the most beautiful, exquisite, dynamic books I’ve ever read. It answers the hardest of questions; is God really God.”
And you answer it in a dozen if not fifty different ways, John. John has a way of tacking the worst and most difficult situations and turning them into gold. And this he did with the subject of Sovereignty of God.
I remember when God began to reveal to me the sovereign. I don’t remember the name’s name but you would know it. I went to his book on sovereignty and I was so disappointed because it was all scripture.
John:
It was Pink, wasn’t it?
Martha:
Yes.
John:
Pink did an amazing book called The Sovereignty of God. The problem with it is it’s not personal. He didn’t make it deeply personal…
Martha:
Right.
John:
He didn’t make it deeply personal. He made it deeply scriptural and doctrinal. He literally takes you from beginning to end through the scriptures and shows you the sovereignty of God which is amazing. It’s not that it doesn’t have its place because it does. Scripturally we need to know.
Martha:
It’s like a doctrinal statement.
John:
Right! And we need to know the sovereignty of God as seen through scripture. It’s not like I don’t take you scripture. It’s not like I don’t back what I say with scripture. What I do do in this book is I put my life and heart and practicality into it.
Martha:
Yes.
John:
I bring the scripture into real life which is what I always saw Christ do.
Martha:
Your book is about meeting God. And you did meet Him doctrinally, spiritually in every way. You met Him as a human being and He is God.
John:
Absolutely, totally sovereign.
Martha:
Really, to see the sovereignty of God in its actual place it should be in our lives, it’s shocking. And you have made this shocking and poetic and personal.
John:
Right, right.
Martha:
And so, it’s an amazing book and I wanted to just go back over it one more time, folks.
And I want to do something we’re never done. I want to ask you, learners, listeners, students who have read this book I want to ask you to please comment on it and send it to the web site or to John personally, however you want to do it. I think it would be interesting to find out now that it’s been out a year. It’s received a lot of commendation. It’s worth a second go-around.
When it’s called this wonderful title, Sovereign Touch, John is talking to you about how God has touched him through people, through accidents, through difficulties, through everything. John has had the sovereign touch and the sovereign touch is a revelation of a God, the only God. And that’s what makes it so powerful. It’s not a commentary. It’s not a scholarly thing though it could be. It’s a man’s journey; makes everything in your life relevant to the sovereignty of God. And it’s just brilliant.
When I answered my question that morning whatever it was, you were writing about Moses and it’s most interesting. And where you say in essence “God said to Moses I am sovereign over your body. I created it. I maintain it. It is mine. The Lord has to show Moses this truth so He can prove He had power over Moses’ world.”
John:
He took it to Moses personally to show the microcosm of the macrocosm that He was in control of his entire world.
Martha:
And here’s what the Lord said to Moses as a quote from Exodus 4:6:
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Now put your hand inside your cloak.” So, Moses put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out again, his hand was white as snow with a severe skin disease. (oops) “Now put your hand back into your cloak,” the Lord said. So, Moses put his hand back in, and when he took it out again, it was as healthy as the rest of his body.
“In essence God was saying to Moses ‘I am sovereign over your body. I created it. I maintain it. It is mine.” The Lord had to show Moses this truth so He could prove He had power over Moses’s world.’” Which included picking up a snake a number of times as I remember.
You make these Biblical things relevant to your walk and that’s ingenious. I want people to have access to it. I want it to be available and knowable so that they won’t miss this most serious, most important thing is to know God as God; He’s sovereign. But we don’t know that. We really don’t believe that until it is tested. And we are all being tested and pursued. And you make the pursued a very exciting thing.
So, I’m delighted to go back over it again.
John:
What I do is I basically hand walk you through how God can be sovereign over the most painful situations of your life. And that’s where we really have a hard time with God and His sovereignty. His Lordship is difficult to accept and receive because was He really over the pains of our life? Was He really there? Was He really present? Was He really over it?
Martha:
And did He care?
John:
And, really, did He care? Did He love me enough to even care? Exactly!
I show literally how God and His sovereignty and His Lordship were over and in the most painful situations of your life. And I don’t sugar coat that nor am I really graphically explicit with it. I know that there are things in this world that have happened to people that are heinous and grotesque. As the subtitle said, “God is either sovereign over all or He isn’t sovereign at all.” And we know people that have had horrible things happen; horrible, I mean unspeakable; literally unspeakable things. And how can God be sovereign over those horrible and unspeakable things? How could He allow it? And most of time it happens to children.
I feel like God through me, pouring through me has done that, has shown that in this book.
Martha:
Definitely.
You do it from a personal standpoint which makes it acceptable.
John:
I’m not pointing fingers.
Martha:
Right.
John:
I’m in my own struggle with His sovereignty. I read this one section that says, “If I have called His love a prison and it has been, I am the Lord prisoner bars or no bars. We are all captured into the Lord’s idea of us and if we resist, it is a prison, a solitary confinement in the walls of His thinking.” And to understand that He is over all. Sovereign is a tough one.
Martha:
The most.
John:
It is because we will scream and yell and fight against the sovereignty of God because we’re powerless.
Martha:
But you give the purpose in one statement: “Our life events and situations have one purpose in their design that we should come to know our God. Happiness in itself is not the goal but rather the result of connecting with God. Life is a continuous continual invitation by our Creator for us to know Him in every facet of existence. That’s awesome, John! That makes God acceptable. And this is the toughest concept of the Christian walk to let God be God without understanding. I did it this morning for two hours with someone; explaining God around and beyond her suffering. And that is an adventure not to be missed. It could be painful; it could be stretching; it could be violent. To allow yourself to know God as sovereign takes you to bliss and glory.
John:
There is a purpose behind it all. I’m not doing it just to say, “God is God, shut up and sit down.” That’s not really my goal at all. My goal is to make peace with the sovereign God so that you can experience life and joy and peace.
Martha:
Yes, and you are sharp to not miss any event that helps you know Him.
John:
Right.
Martha:
You are brilliant at it. You turn everything into an expose of Him as He is and you don’t spare Him; you don’t spare man and you don’t spare God. You just go to the truth.
John:
Right.
Martha:
And that truth goes from being intolerable to ecstatical.
John:
Yes, the ecstasy of God. Absolutely.
Seeking His Sovereign Touch – Episode #793 – Shulamite Podcast
In the Sovereign Touch I basically hand walk you through how God can be sovereign over the most painful situations of your life.
