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with Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
(M) I think I’ve come to the final message on fear, and the solution, the real, real solution. We Americans like our religion real complex, and real intellectual, and we think that makes it deep. But everything is really very simple. And the further I go, the longer I walk with the Lord, the simpler it gets. Really everything He said reduces the complex to the absolute simple. He put everything on its fundamental basis, what it was, what it was not. Usually it was in two’s. So really, if you just take what Jesus said, as it is, simple as it is, and believe it, and come to understand it everything really boils down to two’s. A deed is either flesh or spirit, and the flesh profits nothing. It’s not the deed that count’s, it’s what is behind it.
(J) Right, sure.
(M) A word is either life or death, and a person is an enemy of Jesus, or a follower of Jesus. There are just two categories, what do you do with Jesus is just the categories under which humanity falls.
(J) It’s an either or period
(M) Either, or. Everything with Jesus is two’s. It’s this or that. And He said, “He who is not with me is against me; and he who does not gather with me scatters”. So, it’s the affect of people on their world in either good or bad; good fruit or bad fruit, because people are either good trees or bad trees. So your life is built on either obedience or disobedience. Real simple.
(J) I’ve got a question for you. Do you believe that the reason why it’s broken down into the two camps is because we put ourselves into those two camps; into that judging of the two camps, to know the difference between good and evil?
(M) (Laughing) Oh John, you make me laugh so, because you always go right over my message to the simplicity of it! Yes, we put ourselves into one of two categories.
(J) I’m so sorry, ok.
(M) (Still laughing) But could you just let me do it in little footsteps? Let me get a little complex before you get to the simplicity of it. Ok, back to the message. So, there’s the issue of identity; it’s a matter of who are you? It’s no Italian, Presbyterian, northern, smart or dumb. There are only two categories of people, those who are born again, and those who’re not. And the spiritual world is divide into two worlds God and Satan, the spiritual and the satanic. And human activity is as I’ve said, two categories, flesh and spirit. There are two forces in the universe, God and Satan; there are two goals only, love and hate, two motivations, love and hate. Once you understand the categories, then you can see all of life really. You know what John, you are a person who, ah, you’re not simple, but you do see things in stark realities; and not everybody does. You so see things often as this or that, black or white. Do you see that in yourself?
(J) Yeah, I do. It’s kind of painful actually, because it’s almost dogmatic, it feels dogmatic.
(M) It does, that’s a good point.
(J) And you go, where[s the grace in all this. I temper it with mercy, and I’m hoping it’s the mercy of the Spirit because I do, I see it this is this way, and.
(M) Well, one thing in that scripture I just quoted, if you’re not for me you’re against me. You don’t hesitate to call something anti-Christ.
(J) No, no.
(M) If it’s not Christ, is it not anti-Christ? That’s something you tell me often. And I think we’d be better off if we didn’t, if we were as black and white as Jesus was.
(J) He really boiled it down, I mean, everything you just said is real black and white, real clear.
(M) There are two camps, and there’s no fence to sit on. We often think there is one and we can play both sides. Not only can we not play both sides, but there is no fence, not in God’s eyes; in man’s eyes that might be acceptable. Ok, the thing I’m seeing about fear John, is not complex. Fear makes everything complex, makes you think everything is.
(J) Convoluted.
(M) Convoluted, and mysterious and dark. But the thing I want to get to about fear is that when you are in a serious level of fear, it takes you to being a liar. And if you don’t get rid of fear, you’re gong to be captured in the realm of lies. Anytime there’s the presence of fear, we can know there’s somebody saving their life; and that everything they do is going to be about saving their life. Well, to do that, if that is the agenda, you’re going to have to lie. And that’s the natural place you go to. And you deceive yourself, fear makes you deceive yourself, and then you deceive others.
(J) This is one thing that happens when Satan’s coming at you. God is really straightforward with you. He brings His correction, and His conviction.
(M) He’s clear.
(J) It’s very clear. When He’s ever brought anything to me it’s been dead on. And regardless of what it is there’s not that deep sense of confusion, and condemnation, and it’s all convoluted in there. God goes straight forward, but Satan always. Whatever we normally deal with, we deal with as ‘there’s something wrong’. It’s not a pinpoint thing, it’s a mystical thing, and it’s vague.
(M) I think this is one of the most shocking things I’ve ever seen about humanity. But, I believe it’s absolutely true. It might be hard for many listeners to agree; but I believe we are ‘listener’s’ only, that we are not the source of original thought but we are listener’s. I did a message on it, “Your Thoughts Are Not Your Own”, a message of the month. It’s astonishing to me, I got a verse from a friend recently, Ps.36:1, it says: “transgression like an oracle, speaks to the wicked in his heart”. I remember the Lord showing me something similar in Isaiah about how thoughts come into a person, and I began to pray against the thoughts of the devil coming against a person, and I saw a real improvement. But, transgression in the Hebrew, it’s just sin, and sin is Satan; sin is actually a person in me. And in this instance it is considered that Satan speaks to the wicked deep in his heart, like an oracle, as though it were true. What a revelation of fantastic truth. So, we are who we listen to. And if you get in fear, it’s because you are listening to the lies. And when you listen to the lies and believe the lies, you enter the lies. But when you make lies a means of saving yourself, of covering yourself, then you don’t just enter sin, you enter another realm; a realm where Satan is in dominion, and it’s by choice as you said earlier. You choose which category you’re going to be in. Fear motivates you toward the category of the liar. And when Jesus described Satan, He was speaking to Pharisees. And ironically some of the worst strongholds of lying are in the religious, I’ve often said, when you really face who you are you have to either bow to God, or become a liar. He said in Jn.8:44, “Why do you misunderstand what I say; it is because you are unable to hear what I’m saying. You cannot hear, you cannot bear to listen to my message, your ears are shut to my teaching.” But see, their ears were open to the devil. So you see, there’s an either or right there. You either listen to the devil or you listen to the Lord. Then He says, “You are of your father the devil, and it is your will to practice the lusts and to gratify the desires, which are characteristic of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a falsehood, he speaks of what is natural to him, for he is a liar himself, and the father of lies, and of all that is false.” So you see, there are two sources of thinking, two sources of thought. That’s what the trees represented in the garden. There were only two trees. So, if you hear lies, believe lies, you will live out the lies, and you enter the realm of the satanic; and then, in that realm, you are deceived as to what the truth is. So that’s where fear takes you. I was in a professional building the other day, and I looked up and saw a sign that said, “Escape Plan”; I didn’t bother to find the escape plan because I was going to be out soon, but it seemed to me that if you’re in fear, you always have an escape plan; and it doesn’t matter who you pull down with you. Usually when you’re in fear, fear of not being loved, fear of not having enough to eat, whatever the fear is, fear of not making it spiritually, fear of being alone, all those fears, they take you to saving your life and having an escape plan. One of the things the Lord does when He is on the throne of your heart and life, in reality, He holds the escape plan and you don’t have one. There have been a number of situations and times John, and you’ve seen me there, and been with me there, where God would not permit me to get out. Yet, there would come a time when His escape plan would work. But if you live in fear you’re going to save yourself. And we’re going to miss the true rescue plan. God knows how to rescue the godly from under temptation. He knows how to do that.
(J) So, that’s the Russian subway token isn’t it.
(M) Yes, tell that story.
(J) Well, I had that in my own life when we went to Russia. I always had an escape plan; and I was a man of incredible fear. (M) At that time. That was ‘95.
(J) I had incredible fear and I was always looking for the escape plan. There was a Russian missionary, and I didn’t trust him. That’s just where it goes. And so, I worked it out that I got the bus tokens, I got the subway tickets; and I went around and purchased them.
(M) I never knew how you did it. It was so funny because Carole and I were standing there once and you just opened your hand and it was full of tokens. And I said how did you get those? And you just smiled and said every time I had a chance I just got them.
(J) I didn’t let anyone know I was getting them.
(M) There are times when I want you to do that John!
(J) Well, my motivation, I looked around and said this isn’t safe for us, so I’m going to make sure that we can get out of here.
(M) It was very controlled.
(J) He was, but that was a lifestyle for me, and God has shot that in the foot a number of times. Even when I did have an escape plan, I still was trapped. And knowing the end of the story, I was still trapped. So God was saying, you may think you know and you may think you have a good escape plan, but it doesn’t work.
(M) And you can take care of yourself. You see, fear is unbelief above all.
(J) That He’s good, that He’s God.
(M) Usually people I’ve known with fear, what they really fear is Satan; they fear evil. If you fear evil excessively, and you will at times, goodness, when you face evil as a reality, it can make you very afraid. But that fear has to be resolved and dissolved in God.
(J) Absolutely.
