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The Vision is Christ
Episode #306
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guest: Julie
(J) Well all these events that happened to these guys, all these, these hardships that happened to these guys, were simply training and, and it was sovereign training. It was sovereign by the, the military was sovereignly leading them through this training to make them who they could be and would be. And so I see it the same way. All the hardships that, that may be going on, they’re just, they’re sovereignly used by God to make us who we would be and come into His reality of Himself.
(M) I saw it as; I learned a long time ago that the quality the Holy Spirit wants of us is complete flexibility.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) We think, you know, our little cliché’s like ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’, and all the things that aren’t in the Bible, but what the Holy Spirit is after is flexibility. And one of the soldiers said, ah they would go to this white board, chalk board, and find their instructions. They had to stay with that board, because they, they were not given instructions by a, a person, it was simply written. So they’d say, “go gear up”, they’d run gear up, then they’d come back to the board and it’d say five minutes later, “go take off your gear”. And, and the, they never knew. They would start on a march and not know where they were going or what they were going to be assigned to do. And it is so; it’s such a picture of, of God’s. He, he, and (Martha laughs) the seasoned veterans who watched them knew what it would take, and knew what each man could do. And very, very protective of them; they had medic’s and psychologist’s all along the path. And the ah, the assessors ran with them when they had to jog. So there was complete oversight. And those, over two hundred men, they knew each one so individually, and kept notes on each one of how they responded. They were watching them even in pitch-black darkness.
(J) Yeah.
(M) And with amazing equipment, it was fascinating. But my point is this, that we are being trained for a purpose bigger than ourselves, as Julie said earlier. And I had to remind our group this morning, remember, our mandate came to me, what, thirty-five years ago, from Sparks, said, “God gives a disproportionate power to an insignificant entity.” And because we are so small and so insignificant, so tucked away, it, you would think that we were limited, but we are not. Ah, the testimony of Christ among us is going to the ends of the earth. And ah, where it’s going I don’t even know. We now have a book, a missionary in New Zeeland of our own… Well speaking of missionaries, I want remember a little episode we had at one point in Honduras. We had a team of about five people. And there was a crisis, I don’t remember the details; maybe you will John. But one of the team members was in total narcissism at the moment. She wasn’t seeing the need of the people, or the need of the moment, or the crisis of the team to move, whatever, whatever was happening. And you said to me, if I was in a war I’d turn around and shoot her in the head. Because she was, because she was selfish and afraid, or whatever she was, she was disturbing the whole team, and distracting us from, from the needs of those people, which is what we were there for. And you said without any hesitation, I would turn around and shoot her. (Martha laughs.)
(J) Because I knew that in a combat situation we all would be dead in that situation. She would have compromised every single one of us, our lives, ah, because she was dragging us all into ah, away from the mission, away from the (Martha: purpose), the purpose, and everything like that, and into frivolity and stupidity.
(M) Hmhmm.
(J) And so I’m thinking, ok, this would be friendly fire. (Martha laughs.) I mean, this would be ‘opps, oh well’.
(M) (Martha laughs.) You’re gone.
(Julie) That’s what I saw in the difference, in the difference of what the soldiers would say. I mean the thing that just killed them, took them out, was the moment they really began to focus on self.
(J) Hmm.
(Julie) It’s, it’s terrifying really. I mean they’re doing this one march and they go to one guy, and “Oh it’s the worst thing I’ve ever been through in my whole life.” And then they go interview another guy and he goes, “Well, every step gets you closer to somewhere. It’s gotta end sometime.” And it’s, and I just, I see that, it’s not about positive thinking, it’s, it’s not that, it, it come, all of a sudden I think it comes down to love. It really comes down… Life flushes out, and you say this, life flushes out what you love most. All these pressures flush out what it is or who it is that you love most. And if that’s self, you’re not gonna make it.
(M) Hmhmm.
(Julie) If you haven’t, and you’ve said this, you’ve said this before, a key to, do you say it, emotional healing is you have to love something more than yourself.
(M) It’s basic, ah, it’s just basic, you have to. Everybody, whether they need emotional healing or not, everybody has to love something beyond themselves.
(J) But it, it’s worse than that, because it goes back to what I was saying with the, with shooting this person, is that it not only, ah, prevents you from coming into your own, it puts me as, as a comrade and as a person next to you, it puts me at risk, absolutely. And, and so you’re putting people at risk around you for not doing that. And you said, I’ve heard you say recently that that one there would be a problem.
(M) Yeah.
(J) You said, ah, if there was a crisis I would think that that one would turn.
(M) Would turn against.
(J) Would turn against.
(M) And jeopardize the whole thing.
(J) Because they were involved with self.
(M) Hmhmm.
(Julie) Well and that, I, I suppose that just from watching that sometimes I think the military have a much greater grip on reality in general than we do, certainly at this hour. But remember at that one point, they were yelling at that one soldier whose arms were so weak he couldn’t hold his gun up, and he said, “Who’s gonna take the bullet, not you! It will be your buddy.”
(J) Hmhmm.
(Julie) So they must have an understanding that we don’t, even of how critical it is. It’s not even the one being selfish that gets wounded, or killed, it’s going to be the one (John: exactly) depending on the one that’s selfish.
(M) Hmm. No man is an island. And I think there’s a scripture that says, “If you live, you live to the Lord; if you die, you die to the Lord.”
(Julie) And I think there’s a sense in which just like when we live in a democracy, we think we have a right to vote. I think that we’ve slipped into a mentality too, where we really think that it’s our choice whether or not we’re involved in the war.
(M) Ahhh.
(Julie) And so we’re not prepared, you know. We, we always, I can’t imagine how many people are gonna be utterly incensed when God begins to do things which are absolutely within His right as God. And we, we will be, there will be many who will be undone and furious at His audacity to throw them into a difficult situation.
(J) Well, I with my, my injury here, I could easily have said, ‘wait a minute, You don’t have the right to do that’. And I realized at that moment when it happened, this is just loaner, and I said that, remember, I just said this is just a loaner body. I, I’m on borrowed time here on this deal, you know.
(M) What He did in you was amazing, because I know you.
(J) You do know me. You know that that’s not me.
(M) And I know you, I know you in you, and I know you know you in Christ. And somehow He immediately got hold of you; and it was phenomenal to watch. I’m anxious to tell the story, and the things that you said. Because it, it was encouraging to me that in the worst moments God will take over.
(J) It should put, ah, incredible comfort in my heart that I can go through things and that God can supercede my abilities mentally, physically, emotionally, whatever.
(M) Yeah, He did it.
(Julie) That reminds me of something that came up this morning in our prayer meeting, that I, I saw that you have been, by vision, by impartation, and again it is Christ, it’s now just vision like some idea, it is a Person. But you’ve been planting transcendence in us for years. And that’s what I see even in this situation, how comforting it is to know that Christ in you rose and caused you to transcend this entire situation. And the moment, the moment it happened He did it. That, that to me is what you talk about; we’re being trained every single day in practical situation. And there’s a sense in which even that builds confidence in Christ to know that if a bigger crisis comes, not that what happened wasn’t significant, but uhm, if something else happens you can, you have history with Him. And that really is what makes a veteran.
(M) Ahhhh.
(J) History, absolutely, history. Well you said the word, see the transcendence, and that is amazing. There’s something just ‘yummy’ about that; I don’t know what it is that…
(M) She was talking about Matthew thirteen, the seed sown, and when the seed goes in, and it goes into a noble, plowed heart. That’s what Luke eight said. She said the transcendent seed; you tell it Julie. You have, you have the concept, transcendent seed as….
(Julie) The ones you have set before us from scripture are Daniel. You know you, you’ve always set, you’ve always set transcendence before us as, I don’t even want to say as a goal, it’s almost like you continually prophecy that over us as destiny.
(M) It’s the norm. Hmhmm.
(Julie) Yes.
(M) Should be.
(Julie) Yeah. And so I didn’t realize it until this morning, but that has gone into me like seed; and it’s own life. So my anticipation of the future, come what may, is not tragedy and defeat. I believe that the Lord will rise. I believe that’s what you’ve… To me that, that is the vision that commands me now. And the only thing that gives me anything to give to anyone else.
(M) Well, go ahead.
(J) I’m excited that this, this seed is Him, the transcendent seed is Him. It’s His life, right?
(M) Coming through His Word; His Word. And Julie, we’ve watched this in you, sending your daughter, eighteen years old, to New Zeeland, letting her go, and God sustaining you on the drive from the airport and giving you this fabulous vision you’ve talked about earlier in the podcast. We’ve seen that Life take you over in a most, for a woman, a most difficult and challenging thing is to send your daughter to New Zeeland to the total unknown. And then watch her, now she leaves today for the Philippines,
and ah, you will not have direct contact with her for about two months, right?
(Julie) Uhmhm.
(M) And ah, yet you have, I know you’ve had you’re….
(Julie) See that too, everything is colored by, everything is colored by the vision of Christ, I’ve received everything, every decision, yes, even that, how could I, how could I do that without a vision of the life beyond this one.
(M) Hmmm.
(Julie) Because the cost is real, and YWAM makes, YWAM requires the parents to count the cost, you have to sign off on what happened if something happened to the body of your child. I mean they don’t mess around. And ah, I, I counted the cost. And in that was the whole way I see things is Him before me and the life beyond this one. It just, it right’s, I don’t know, I don’t know how to say it, it right’s reality, it sets a, it set’s priorities straight.
(M) Hmm, there you go.
(Julie) It’s probably a very low way to say it.
(M) No, it’s a very high way. It establishes it’s own priorities. And the vision creates the motivation that supplies the discipline for it to take place, and the courage. Yeah.
(Julie) Because I realize, uhmm, (she laughs) although it may look like to a lot of people that I have haphazardly run my life off a cliff, (Martha chuckles in background), it’s not true. I have invested according to, I know Whom I’ve believed, like Paul says, you know, I know Whom I’ve believed it was deliberate, it was choice.
(M) All ordered.
(Julie) There were all kinds of unexpected, but the fundamental choice, at the core, was made very deliberately.
(M) Within God’s exposed will. And, and had… Well I hope to do a podcast on Alexia soon, because she’s just flourishing. And ah, her blog, I want to read some of her writings, my goodness, she’s teaching us all.
(Julie) And it’s amazing to see that that is a harvest that came out of seed. It’s so encouraging to me because you taught us fundamentally; you sort of plant the seeds in very ordinary days that don’t look like much.
(J) Umhmm.
(Julie) Very ordinary days and very ordinary decision, and very small steps that don’t look like anything; it’s shocking then when it comes up, and it is thirty or sixty or a hundred times more than what you imagined when you were making that tiny choice. Like in that, in the military testing, they put them out in the middle of the night and purposely separated them all, because they said, you have to know, they have to know what a man’s going to do alone. And that’s central to your training of us in discipleship, what you do alone, the seeds you plant alone.
(M) And you’re a champion at dealing with it alone, that’s the secret of your seed in Alexia, it’s not, it’s that you plowed your heart before God alone, and so the seed took fabulous root and bears fruit. It’s, it’s strictly who takes the seed in.
