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The Burden Is Light
Episode #327
March 17, 2013
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guests: Don and Carole Nelson
(M) Well it’s another way, responsibilities another way to say the will of God. And in the will of God, there is God. Apart from the will of God there is no God.
(J) There you go.
(M) So.
(Carole) But we will not even begin to take up responsibility until we surrender our minds and our understanding. Oh, just like in the military there is an order and there is an authority, we will not take up any responsibility until we bow to authority, period, I don’t believe that you do. Not the right, not what the responsibility that Jesus Christ has called us to. We may even think we are extremely responsible people. We can be busy, just busy, busy, busy, and maybe even successful. Success is does not define responsibility.
(Don) If you can’t understand and bow to authority, you will never understand responsibility. There’s no way.
(Carole) There is no way.
(Don) If you can’t bow, and understand what authority is, then how can you be responsible.
(J) You know how Jennifer always mentions the dance. There’s a love affair that you can have with responsibility. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?
(M) Yes, because when I get in working so hard and I’m sweating and I’m dirty in my garden by myself I’m just in bliss.
(J) If you know it’s God-given…
(M) He’s there.
(J) That’s right, there you go.
(M) And He’s there at the kitchen sink if I let Him be. He’s there, He’s there in the practical, the…
(J) It’s like oh, I don’t know if this is the correct word, is it love tryst? It’s like my meeting place with God, it’s like a love place that I meet with God, it’s in my responsibility. (John laughs.) It’s really cool, because it’s like my little… You know usually you’re doing your responsibility by yourself, even if you’re with some people or involved with people, it’s really by yourself. You’ve taken it by yourself and you’re with, but somehow it’s a, it’s a, it sounds bizarre, but it’s a romantic meeting place with my God, and I can say, ahhh, there you are. And we’re by ourself, even if there are people involved with the responsibility.
(M) And if you truly, truly, take up the will of God with joy and with commitment, and I read this morning, it’s in the Psalms and it’s quoting Jesus, “Behold in the volume of the Book it is written of Me, I delight to do Thy will.” And that delight to His will lives in you in Christ living in you. And so then He takes up the responsibility if you truly pick it up. So He’s performing it, and the love affair is because you really are involved in His performing the responsibility. And that is, that is bliss, because it’s union. You’re not gone, but you’re not doing it. So thank you for bringing that in.
(J) Well I, the place I can see it is, is in the chicken pen, when I, when I had that whole revelation about taking up the responsibility and then sloughing off the responsibility and then taking it up, and having the death and you know, everything. It was a neat podcast. It was back in podcast #279 called ah, “Real Life Reigning”. And it was where I literally went through a fiasco with the chickens. But there was a, there was… When I came into my responsibility and when I entered into it, there was a love affair going on in a chicken pen, which is odd. But it was, it was He and I taking up the responsibility and, and in a love affair. And I would have never; right this moment I’m seeing it, ok, I’m seeing it like this because I would’ve never said this before. But I’m seeing it very clearly at this moment.
(M) Well that explains something about it that you never told me. And probably never realized it until this moment. But that taking care of the chickens for the whole seven families, or six families, is a relentless, unending, dirty, daily responsibility. It’s not what you would call a fun job. And it would be eight o’clock at night and you would realize that you had to go do the chickens because you had to gather the eggs every day. And you took on the whole responsibility for everyone. And I used to think, you never complain, you never ‘mind’, and now I see why. And that responsibility in the ‘nitty-gritty’, and the dirty eggs… (John whispers: It was a love tryst.) Yeah, yeah, I didn’t know. How wonderful.
(J) Well I didn’t know until this very minute.
(Don) Timing is everything; it’s all in God’s time.
(Carole) He’s making me see… I don’t know if I told this. I’ve just had a little, you know what, anyway. When a whole group of people came to the cabin and I went in the bedroom, and I was cooking and cleaning and changing, and you know doing towels and all that kind of stuff that you need to do. And I, I realized the delight of the Lord, not so much even for me, it wasn’t, it was delight, His delight to minister to these people which was…
(J) It was indwelt. It was…
(Carole) It was, it was a tryst, I didn’t see it until…
(J) So you don’t have to really; it doesn’t have to be about oh Carol I love you for doing this for me has nothing to do with that.
(Carole) And you can’t tell somebody that.
(J) Right, right.
(Carole) You can’t tell somebody that. You want to be able to tell them, but you know that I, I Carole, had nothing to do with that, it was, oh it was…
(J) Union.
(Carole) Union.
(M) Yes.
(Carole) And that was a delight. That was, oh wow, that took whatever hard work, it took whatever… You said it John, you say it so much better; it was a tryst and you’re going, well it’s worth, it’s worth whatever I have to do to, to have this.
(M) I’ll tell you in each case that you’re talking about it was way beyond your personal responsibility. You were assuming the responsibility for others. You had five houseguests?
(Carole) Probably.
(Don) Yeah.
(M) And you had, and you were the entire, you and Don had the entire responsibility for the whole four days and all the food and all the ‘everything’. And so it was outside of you. You took a responsibility outside of, beyond you. And that to me is the greatest, the greatest, ah, experience of Him. And you took everybody’s responsibility and handed them nice clean packaged eggs week after week after week.
(Carole) Everyday.
(M) Everyday. And there was no small task; fifty eggs a day or so, right?
(J) Umhmm.
(M) And so I marveled at your grace.
(Carole) I guess I did too. (Martha laughs.) No, I guess I did too. Didn’t you marvel at that? That it was…
(J) Absolutely.
(M) Hmhmm.
(J) I wanted to do it.
(Carole) Yes, yes. You wanted to do it.
(J) But you know we always ah, ah, hear of the worship that about Him loving me and stroking my hair and blah blah blah, whatever, you know what I mean? And that’s not the highest. The highest is where He does something for someone else in me quite apart from me by taking up a responsibility that’s mine. I, I don’t…
(M) That’s so perfectly said; that’s exactly. You take it up, and He takes it up. “Take My yoke upon you; My burden’s light.”
(Carole) To experience His joy and delight in performing something through you and letting you know, it’s beyond the word ‘know’…
(M) Experience.
(Carole) Experience.
(M) Hmhmm.
(Carole) Experience His performance, and the delight in that performance through you is a bliss.
(J) It’s mind blowing.
(Carole) It is mind blowing.
(M) I’ve never heard it expressed like, like you’re expressing.
(J) I’ve never heard it expressed that way either. (John is laughing.)
(M) See, I can think back on that village of Nazareth that they have rebuilt. And it’s such a common earthy little village. Houses with dirt floors, herbs strung up to dry in the sun, little tiny places to live, and agriculture going on, sheep, dirty sheep, dirty donkey’s, little dirt paths, oh just the most beautiful…
(J) The oil press.
(M) Yes, the oil, oil press; and the synagogue, the beautiful synagogue.
(J) Well the synagogue was the nicest building in the entire…
(M) Yeah, plain, simple, beautiful. And that, that is were He came to. That is Who He is, in the practical. And, and we learned they had uncovered this wine press, which is nothing but a big vat where everybody would press the, everybody in the village came to press the grapes when it was time. And the vineyards and gardens, and just the most ordinary place, you would not be impressed, compared to how we live. But that’s Who He is, He is earthy and practical. If God is ethereal to you, you don’t know Him yet. If you’ve got to have visions of angels to make your life go, that’s fine if you get that, if it’s real. But to have delusions of that kind of thing, which is so prevalent today, is to miss the real romance.
(Carole) Hmm.
