Podcast: Download (47.5KB)
Subscribe: RSS
with Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
(M) Morning John, and I want to continue the conversation from the last podcast, which was about responsibility. And this morning I want to take it back to the core of all human understanding of nature, human nature. This morning I want to take it back to the scene in Gen. 3 of all our dealings with God; and it’s been said that everything can be found in that story, and I believe it fully. Scott Pink wrote once in a book called “The People Of The Lie” that sin is laziness. It took me awhile to see it; I think the laziness is a result of rebellion, but we’ll say laziness is the problem in the garden. Eve heard a lie from Satan, and she dialoged with Satan, she did not go and do the work of dialoging with God. When she took her choice to Adam he exhibited laziness, he didn’t dialogue with God over it, he dialogued with the woman. The curses that God declared over the man and the woman reveal the propensity of their nature. And they’re beautifully and perfectly designed to bring us back to God. The man who didn’t assume responsibility to do the work of dialoguing with God, and I believe that is the consistent failure of the male nature, is given….do you agree John?
(J) Absolutely, positively.
(M) was given the responsibility to toil in the midst of pain and difficulty, so that, not so he’d be punished, but so he’d need God. The woman’s laziness was in the same failure, to dialogue and do the work of relationship with God. And her curse was, and someone in our Body has had this marvelous revelation. To the woman the Lord said, I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you shall bring forth children. And to me, that’s not only the childbirth issue, but the whole range of life with children, that’s full of suffering; And having children, forced me to God. And He says, yet your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you. And my sister in the Body of Christ has the insight that so long as a woman desires relationship with her husband, the husband will rule her. When she desires relationship with God she will be free to submit, but also free of tyranny. So the woman’s two crisis are in her marriage and her children, which is a woman’s world. So her laziness there is wanting to control her husband so she can have from him what she wants. I just wanted to take this back to this conversation ongoing here in front of our fireplace, is to bring it back to the word of God, to the origins of our imprisonment. The Bible says we’re imprisoned; God has shut us all up to disobedience, that He might show mercy on all. So in these arena’s of a mans responsibility to work and produce, whose responsibility is to leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, in those areas, that’s where the laziness of the soul comes in.
(J) Martha, what is the solution to laziness?
(M) To the believer it is the willingness to do the will of God. That’s where you start. You start to be committed to the will of God, and that is your absolute only goal in life. And when you set out to do the will of God in order to know God, then you come to clearly, your responsibility; so you face up to your responsibility, you face up to the will of God, to the known will of God. I think so many believers, the problem is not finding the will of God, the problem is surrendering to it. And when you surrender to the will of God you find your own responsibility, and you find the power to perform it through Christ. So the solution to laziness is responsibility. And the coming out of the curse is assuming complete responsibility, not so much for what you do, but for the condition and state of your heart; for who you belong to.
(J) Well you know I’ve seen that it’s God’s kindness, His utter kindness to reveal to us where our heart direction is. It’s the kindness of God. It’s the mercy of God to reveal us. So in showing us our laziness, God brought about the whole situation with Adam and Eve, ok?, so that Adam could have his heart revealed. Because it would be such cruelty to get before God and have to answer for a heart condition that you can’t see. But God can reveal the heart. He can set up circumstances so that the heart will be revealed. And what the heart’s desire is will be revealed. And so I believe that what Adam and Eve basically had in that whole entire setting is God’s mercy to say, let Me show you what is in your heart. Let Me show you where your hearts passion is and your desire is; ok, so that you can deal with it, so that you can take My remedy for that sin. So it’s complete kindness and mercy of God to bring you into a situation of capture, of whatever, so that He can say, let Me show you. Then you can look back to God and say what do I do in this situation, or the very choice that you have made, I don’t want God, would be revealed. But we are all without excuse. During this we will be completely without excuse because God is revealing to us the very core, and giving us the choice because He’s a good Father. Giving us the choice because we’re going to choose Him, or choose self and Satan.
(M) This morning I’m thinking about the great sword, the division that Christ spoke of. He said I did not come to bring peace but a sword. And the sword, He names the family relationship that are the most tending to be controlling, and capturing. And see, He brings the sword not to kill the captor, but to kill the captive, the captured. He brings the sword to kill me. Even yesterday, I experienced an intense fear of man. It exposed to me my heart. And I went to ask the Lord’s forgiveness, but He took it for me to another level. He said that person’s soul awakens your soul, because you want something from that person. You want their approval, or just peace. And then He took it to another solution that when someone is attempting to capture my heart and rule it and cause me to be in my soul, the remedy is that great sword that God brings to kill me, and put me back in the only remedy, the only solution of freedom, the only soul, one way out of the human dilemma.
(J) Well Martha I know that we all need a solution. We’re all in desperate need for a solution for this. What do you see that as?
(M) Well I see it as “I am crucified with Christ, I no longer live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me and the life I now live I live by the faith of the Son of God”. It’s just, reckoning yourself dead. Paul gives the solution and there is no other. Well, I am dead. I cannot be captured. I am dead and my life is hid with Christ in God. To come back to that solution over and over again, the remedy for the soul, not a specific sin, the Lord told me once again for the thousandth time. It’s not your sin of fear. It’s that you were alive in the soul.
(J) I heard you again this morning say, that in the spirit we’re completely free, but when we’re in the soul, that’s when we’re captured. So again, I guess that’s the kindness of God to reveal when you are in that soul so that you can know that you’re being captured. (M) The remedy has been accomplishedk. Ro. 6, 7, 8. God has freed us. We’re the ones who go back into the bondage of the human nature, of the soul. He has done it all. And all I have to do is to come back to believe that my problem is not a sin, my problem is a nature. It’s an entire identity, and that identity has nothing redeemable in it. It is assigned to the grave. It has been done, and that is always the solution to come out of any oppression, any conflict, any strife, any difficulty in life. Wherever there’s life there’s a clamor of death that comes against it, and a clamor of need from human nature that comes to get it.
(J) Well going back to the whole capture thing, how can you tell when someone’s going about to capture you? How can you tell?
(M) The Bible gives only two roots for life. One is Satan. The other is God. The Bible doesn’t admit a third possibility. When Jesus ended His discourse on the Mount, He went to the issue of fruit. He said, beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing, here’s how you’ll know them. You’ll know them by their fruit. Because a good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. So the issue becomes, what is fruit? Fruit is not… the nature of a thing will express itself.
(J) So you’re basically saying what you’re rooted in that’s what you’re going to bear fruit of?
(M) Absolutely. You will express the hidden root of your life, the hidden source of your life. If your source, if you’re in self-government and independence, your root will be the enemy, whose intention is independence and self-government. And so eventually the fruit will appear. It will appear as oppression, as criticism, as strife, envy, all the fruits of the flesh. Galations mentions them. If your source is God, the fruit of the Spirit just appears. So it has to do with character. It has to do with result. God intends us, and demands that we bear fruit, because we can. John 15. I quoted in the last podcast that God intends us to bear fruit. The fruit is what happens as a result of your presence or your life. Something will appear from your life. Every life has a fruit.
(J) Is that a furthering of that kindness that I was talking about; basically that God would show you what your fruit is so that you can see where you are rooted?
(M) Life always reveals it. It’s your affect; what is your affect on people around you, people around the world? What happens when you arrive? There comes with you the presence of either life or death, depending not on you, but on your hidden source. And so the good tree has its source in God. It will bring life into any setting.
(J) Well isn’t that merciful of God? Isn’t that completely and utterly merciful of God? That He would be willing to show you where your heart direction was?
BREAK in message …
(J)We at Shulamite Ministries wish to make available to you a new resource. It’s the CD series, “Leave Thy Parents.” These three CD messages have been extracted from “The Good Shepherd” series, and deal most specifically with the issues of the heart that we have been dealing with in this podcast. If you see in your life these elements of the heart and desire freedom, we ask that you prayerfully consider acquiring these messages. In them we delve deeper into the issues, reveal God’s solution and walk through prayers. Gain freedom today. Start the journey for regaining your heart for God.
(J)Do you think that we often don’t know where our heart is, and what our direction is, that He has to reveal it to us, because we don’t know our heart?
(M) I think we don’t know our heart. But the one whose life has chosen God will not be unaware of the heart. There might be hidden areas, but there will not be a hidden cavern. Because the one who chooses God has as their source the light. It’s the one who hasn’t chosen God in their heart, who doesn’t in the hidden places seek Him, know Him. The wicked say there is no God, and even the religious operate in that realm. “I don’t need to ask Him. I know.” So, I think, John, the heart is more unknown to the one whose source is in self-government and independence.
