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The Power In Work is Love
Episode #254
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guest: Julie
(Julie) And I see how, recently you and I were talking about Colossians three, and how Colossians three begins in the heavens and ends in the heavens, but in the middle it goes all into the depths of family. So, nobody can escape; I mean nobody can escape the work he’s called to, because it is down to in the nitty-gritty of the most inescapable relationships. I mean He…where the work is, is not ‘out there’, like I’m going to go across the seas and do something great for Jesus. And I think, and as I’ve learned unfortunately from my own life, you can be a terrific fraud trying to do that, if you’ve never done the work in the depths of your own home. And it’s those relationships that kill us. (Julie laughs.) If, if you’ll ever be honest and accept the responsibility God has called you to in those nitty-gritty, at times very un-fun relationships. That’s where the work really gets us, and that’s where the challenge of honesty comes in, of are you going to face the fact of what a complete failure you are. You know, I mean I had to face that I wasn’t a good mother, and I didn’t even want to be. I mean I was, I was fundamentally lazy, and I’ve had to deal with that over and over and over in my life, that I’m fundamentally lazy. My old man just totally, totally lazy and wants to do nothing for anyone at all. And, and I can’t even come up with the willingness to do it. I mean it’s that depth of collapse, and that depth of need of Christ. And it is, like John said, it’s all over the scriptures.
(M) Oh, thank you, Julie, for being, putting it that way and being so totally honest, because the old man, the old Adamic man in all of us is utterly selfish and lazy. It’s not you, it’s me. (Martha laughs) It’s all of us. See, I really think that being humanity, that the only reason you’d ever pick up true responsibility is if you come to love Him. Otherwise, if you don’t love Him, that’s your problem. And I think possibly, the presence of irresponsibility is simply the evidence of not having experienced the love of God so you could love God. I really believe that’s the basis of a life that goes on and on in irresponsibility. I’m just on the verse that says, “Keep yourselves in the love of God.” I think it’s the end of Jude in the Amplified. And Jude is such a stark, awful book about evil, but when it comes to the end it is so hopeful. It’s Jude 20:21, “You beloved, build yourselves up on your most holy faith, rise like an edifice, praying in the Holy Spirit.” Now there, praying in the Spirit, and if you have the gift of tongues, pray in the gift of tongues, because that’s really what I think he means, praying in the Spirit. “Guard and keep yourselves in the love of God.” “Guard and keep yourselves in the love of God; expect and patiently wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
(Julie) I don’t really know how to say this, but it is something that I have learned, learned by my relationship with Christ in you, and that is, I don’t know how to say that then that what you’re saying, love is the basis of all true morality. It’s like the only thing that ever causes me to rise out of, get up and out of that selfish, lazy self, and go to anything else is the love of Him. And I just see how powerful it is because unfortunately nothing will cause us to do right, other than to love Him enough to want to come. And like you’re saying, we realize we ultimately can’t do it, and that is a very real crisis, because then when you do love Him, and you want to be it, and you realize you can’t be it; but it’s still, I just see how important that is. Love is the motivation, love is the only thing. Even, even as I discovered that I wasn’t a good mother, and I didn’t even want to make the effort to do it, I could see it was going to take to be a good mother, it was the love of something beautiful of Him that I saw. That is what caused me to rise up and seek Him for it. I think there’s like a guise of morality that a lot of people can keep up to a point, and I’ve come to honestly realize that sometimes the most apparently nice people can be vicious if you, if they’re pushed past a point. But true, true morality springs out of that love of God. Right?
(M) Ooo, Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, yes. And I view life, for instance as I’m, as I’ve looked into the coming days and the difficulties, and He has shown me… It’s not real to me right this moment because I’m not quite there, but as I’ve seen the things, events that’ll happen before the return of the Lord, I finally said to Him, “I don’t love You enough to go through this. You have to give me more love for You, so that I can do it.” It’s coming to weigh every problem is an issue of love. Any failure is a deficit of love, and He brings that failure to show you. And I’ve often said you have to come to love something outside yourself more than yourself. And sometimes it can be the love for your mentor that takes you to the love of Christ, and that’s ok, because the Lord takes care of that in the individual. But it’s got, you’ve got to come out of yourself at some point and get beyond your self-love. I think to some degree He’s answered that for me, He’s given me measures of love for Him that are sort of new. So I think His preparation of us for the coming days, whatever they hold, is going to be love. That is our need. Our need is not… He says don’t give thought for the morrow, what you’ll drink, what you’ll, what you’ll wear, but look at the lilies and the birds of the air, and consider that God takes care of that, don’t focus on that. What is my need for the coming days? I need to love Him, and I need to live in and be immersed in His love. One of the things I’ve learned in all these years is very, very difficult for all of us to receive the love of God simply and fully. We are, I don’t know why that is, except that we love ourselves, or we, we hate ourselves because we’re not lovable to ourselves. Does that make sense?
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) I’m not… I don’t like who I am in my old man, so I don’t love my old man. But that’s the basis of any life is what you love and whose love you love and what you love. So the awareness of that is your basic core need. And I think I said it in some tape series, we think our need is to be loved, and we go after getting love wherever we can find it with any compromise of integrity to get it.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) But what we don’t understand is that our need is, yes, to be loved, but our need is also to love, because we are made to love. So the work boils down to the issue of love. As He showed me the answer to my question, why is it people fail who have the truth so clearly and have seen? Not, not… there’s not excuse, and it’s irresponsibility, but irresponsibility is a lack of love for Him.
(Julie) I like what you’re saying about this because responsibility itself will never appeal to me. I mean it just won’t. And that’s what I see that the motivation is the desire to be with Someone, to be with Christ. I mean that, that is my motivation. And when you accept the fact that, I mean God’s pretty honest about, you can’t be with Me unless you’re like Me. He kind of starts… I mean He’s pretty honest about that in scripture. So, I don’t know, I just think that’s important, because responsibility is not appealing; it’s just not. But the desire to be with Someone you love, Who happens to be, (Julie laughs) as God is, extremely responsible, and, and joyful; I mean He’s joyful in all of His work. And that’s what you come to realize when you’re with that One that you love, work is joy, especially because He carries it all; but I just think that’s important. And if this fits, this is something T. Austin Sparks wrote just yesterday on this same subject. He says, “Nothing but love will keep us going. It is the power of endurance through the years, and it is an awful thing to come to a Christian life, which has got to be kept up, without that love for the Lord in the heart. It is only that love that really makes the Christian life possible under all the strain of the years. I am quite sure that in the case of the apostle Paul, with all his suffering, and all he had to meet, the thing that kept him going was the flame of love in his own heart for the Lord Himself. Through the suffering, nothing but a strong love for the Lord will keep us going.”
(M) How perfect, Julie, thank you. I’m thinking of someone I’ve worked with that’s been very, very difficult, and I’m sort of tied and bound and chained (Martha laughs) to this one, in fact a number of people. And I said to her recently; I said the thing I have experienced in my relationship with you is the incredible, unbelievable patience of God and love of Christ. I said He loves you so much, and I wanted her to know that it wasn’t me, because I said I wouldn’t have put up with you. I want you to know that whatever patience He has, is Him, because I would have written you off, and happily skipped my way. That is who I am; to give that much is… we’re incapable to endure. We are incapable. But I … And that’s one of the, a great adventure of love, and I really would like to share sometime. To watch Him love who He calls you to love is an incredible revelation of His love for me. It’s got to be the same for me. His patience with anyone is His patience with me. (John laughs.) And I tend not to think I’m so difficult, at times, and I have to remember that I require as much endurance as anyone, mercy and kindness. But that’s, that’s the great adventure; the work, the work He does, if you will let Him have your heart and your body and your mind… oooo, that’s your heart and your body and your mind to, to think through, live through, love through you, you will discover Who He is, and how much He loves. And if you… Oh! Oh I, I want to say go beyond, do the work to go beyond to believe in His love and to want to witness His love above all things.
