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The Vibrancy Of God’s Rest
Episode #244
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guest: Jennifer Wentzel
(M) Human labor is a complete drudgery, but the work of the Lord is a power, not an inertia.
(J) Hmm.
(M) It’s the power to live your life and your responsibilities in the most practical realm. That’s what He taught me in the kitchen years ago. I am in… You cannot do one thing apart from Me. And I am to perform what you have to do; actually perform it, practically. That’s what we don’t know as the gospel. It’s unknown. And that’s the glory of knowing Him.
(Jennifer) I just… I can’t even believe it, the vibrancy of rest.
(M) Did you get it?
(Jennifer) The vibrancy.
(M) Yes.
(Jennifer) It is vibrant. It is as alive as something can be. That is rest.
(M) Yeah.
(Jennifer) I can’t even, ok? I can’t wrap my head around that; I can’t. It blows up at everything.
(M) It’s my rest, and His work.
(Jennifer) Exactly! Exactly! But you know I, I, I mean I don’t even know how to rest humanly in my idea of it. Ok?
(M) Right.
(Jennifer) Because you’re talking about the only thing we can do is, is die.
(M) Hmhmm.
(Jennifer) Well, the letting go, the surrender of ‘me’, I mean I can’t even tell you the work that that is. In the sense that, you know, I mean I could be more stressed out sitting in a chair just thinking about recent revelations that the Lord has given me, and I will get myself so worked up that I’m on the border of a panic attack. Because I’ll say, ok, You’ve shown me this, and ok, blood covered, good, check, ok, ah, ah, ahhh. (Martha laughs.) And then you just come… I, I will completely lose it. And that’s my idea of sitting still and getting quiet before the Lord sometimes. And, and, and I have no idea about rest even in my pitiful human perversion of it, let alone this explosive ‘Him’.
(M) Hmhmm.
(Jennifer) Where I’m resting, and He’s living and doing and, I mean He’s God! It’s just… Sorry, I’m not…
(M) It’s so great a salvation, isn’t it?
(Jennifer) Yes!
(M) It’s the most unbelievable total salvation from it’s, it is… Who is it? Is it Sparks or, that says He wiped out one race, and brought in another race of people.
(Jennifer) Yes.
(M) An entirely new race of people, an entirely new humanity; the humanity of many sons and daughters in the Lord whose life is the life of Christ.
(J) Hmm,Hmm,Hmm
(M) It’s not… It’s completely… The human labor and the rest in Christ’s performance is of two different races.
(Jennifer) Yes.
(M) Completely.
(Jennifer) And it’s the total salvation and transformation of my fallen body, that physical body.
(M) Exactly! Weow!
(Jennifer) And you talk about 1985 to now, that seems a very short time when you consider the fact that you’re talking about a transformation that’s not just of the mind, which is a mystery that humanly we haven’t even begun to touch; not just of the heart, which I can’t see anything in my own heart, ok, I don’t even know what I feel half the time.
(M) We do.
(Jennifer) Right, well that’s Body life, thank You God. (Martha laughs.) But the physical, down to a cellular level, a race, a genetic code for ‘fallen-ness’ (Martha: exactly), that He has to come in and transform…
(M) Weow!
(Jennifer) …and save you! You’re literally saved from your ‘self’, your very being, your very race. How are you ‘gonna’ take that in? I can’t take it in. I think my left eyeball just exploded back from behind. (Martha is laughing.) But, I mean, how complete is that? To the last detail.
(M) Yes! To the very, to the infinite miniscule (Jennifer: Yes!) point, of a, of a human life.
(Jennifer) Ooooh.
(M) And He’s… Most of it, all of it, let us say all of it, He has had to press me into, right by the cross.
(Jennifer) Yeah. Well, as miraculous as it is, as much as I would want to step into it and say ok, I’m open, I’m wide open, let’s do this completely, I have no idea how to even do that. Do you understand? I can’t effect my own salvation.
(M) No….
(Jennifer) I can be willing for the work, but I don’t even know where to start for something like that.
(M) You ask and receive, and that’s not terribly easy. But you only ask when you need, and that’s what He reduces you to, to need.
(Jennifer) Yeah.
(M) You ask Him to take control. Recently, this year, some point in this year, I said Lord I keep praying Romans that the Holy Spirit will take control, the NIV version, and He said, “Your problem is you don’t believe I have, and I have.” He said, “There is no problem with Me, I heard you, and I’ve done it. What you don’t get, what you don’t have is the faith that because I gave it to you in Romans, and you asked for it and agreed to it and submitted to it, you don’t believe I’ve done it.” So He is in control, but you’re not enjoying it.
(Jennifer) Oh no! (Jennifer laughs.)
(M) So many times when I come up against something the Lord called me to do and I am totally unable, I beg and beg and beg for Him to control me and He does. I see it in hindsight more than in the moment. He has taken complete control. He did it with this podcast; He gave me insights now that I have not had before for this podcast because we prayed before and asked Him to take control. And He did; He gave you anointing, John anointing and me anointing.
(Jennifer) Amen.
(M) He came through and He did what I asked Him to do, to take control of our thoughts and words, and that He would speak what He wanted to speak. So He just demonstrated it; you too. He took you over and gave you the wonder and joy and revelation of what was being said.
(J) Hmhmm.
(Jennifer) And frankly, opened me up enough to comprehend what you were saying.
(M) Ahhhhhhh.
(Jennifer) How is that a small thing? I mean you’re talking about things that are far beyond my understanding, ok?
(M) Hmhmm.
(Jennifer) Truly. And yet I’m following along, and I’m not sitting in a chair in a heap asking for notecards because He does even that, seriously.
(M) Yeah, yeah.
(Jennifer) I don’t really even thinking that, that’s, I mean that’s just it, He covers all of it.
(M) And it is His joy. I was going back to listen to some of my tapes, which I never do. I can’t bear it usually. But I was listening to the one on the heavens.
(J) “Heaven’s Rule”.
(M) “Heaven’s Rule”. Ooooh, my goodness, I said it all on that tape series many years ago. I can’t remember now what I saw, that was so…Oh, what I said was, “Here’s how to serve God, receive all He wants to give.” That’s how you serve God.
(J) Hmm.
(M) That’s, that’s giving Him delight, is to receive all that He wants to give. That’s totally different from the Christianity, the average Christian perception, totally different. And that’s what He said. Ok, the question of your day is going to change, ‘what can I receive today’, instead of ‘what can I do’. And that day resulted in this podcast, and these insights. What am I going to receive? And you know what? He will have to keep me in the memory of it. And He will, He will, because He wants to give. This verse I keep reading to you in Romans, Ro.8:32, “How will He not also with Him freely give us all other things graciously.” God wants to give. And we’re so difficult to give to. We are so self-sufficient. We are so intact. We are so intense. And we are so confident. We’re so difficult to give to. So He has to break us down by the cross. You mentioned dying, so that we are capable of receiving the lavishness. He is so lavish to me I can… I am stunned by how lavish He is to me, and how probably, how much I probably miss of what He wants to give, spiritually, practically, in relationships, in everything. I probably miss ninety-nine percent of it. Yet I’m overwhelmed at what He gives. Just, it has nothing to do with earning, or worth, nothing. Oh, this is one thing He gave me this morning for the podcast. Here He brings it back to me. The prodigal, he had to be crushed into simple receiving. The elder brother did not receive the party, anything, the robe, the ring, the sandals. The elder brother was so intent on working. There’s the story of it, the picture of it. The elder brother said have I not worked with you, been with you? You never gave me a party, because he wouldn’t receive it. He was out to earn his inheritance and the father’s favor, and so he had nothing. The prodigal, who was reduced to the shame of need, and needing to be forgiven. The main need was to be forgiven. He was then able to receive. And what he received was the trust of the father. The ring was authority. He received the cleansing from the world, and the sandals, and the, the coat of many colors, of favor, and the celebration. God’s celebration is when we are humble enough to receive. And we get to go to that party.
(Jennifer) Hmhmm.
(M) We are to some degree in that party all the time. Would you agree John?
(J) Hmhmm.
(Jennifer) Ok, I have a quick something. The elder brother’s pride, I think is really out there, you know we see that like he’s going to earn the love, he’s going to earn his place, so to speak, right. So at the end of the day he can say, “Well of course I’m loved, and of course I have this. I earned it, I deserve it, right?”
(J) I deserve this.
(Jennifer) But Martha, (Jennifer laughs) the thing that came to me was that I was quite happy to refuse to believe that pride was the flip side as well. And I think the enormity of the pride that says, well, I won’t receive because I don’t deserve it, is basically just saying Lord, let me school You, because You clearly slow, ok? (Martha is laughing.) I’ve done this, and so I deserve this as punishment, I don’t deserve mercy, I don’t deserve grace, I don’t deserve kindness. And since You clearly aren’t aware of that, then I’m going to take it upon myself to say no, no! Ok, because that, that… Oh, I can’t even tell you. I’m sorry people, that’s me, that is so me.
(M) Oh, that’s good.
(Jennifer) And I can do it with almost entire impunity, because I feel like there’s something low about saying, I just don’t deserve it. Right, all right, I call that humble. I call that humble to say, no Lord, I don’t deserve it. As if I ever could! That’s what’s awesome. That implies that, give me a day or two, I’m going to work my way back up there, and then You can give me that there blessing, because I’ll have earned it. (Jennifer laughs.) I’ll deserve it then Lord. That’s what I do, yeah, I pervert humble; that’s awesome. (John and Martha laugh.) That’s great. I wanted to throw that out there, because the prodigal son, the first reading of it, God help me, ah, you know I was like, I can’t stand that elder brother! He’s ‘blah-ba-blah-ba-blah’! That meant of course, you know, my humbling was coming. Yeah. But that’s a gift. Because you can feel real high and mighty, with that, that flip side of the pride, that, that…
(M) False humility.
(Jennifer) Yes.
(M) My idea of humility.
(Jennifer) Which is still, none the less telling God. Yeah, ok.
(M) I think we all know that, Jen. I think we do.
(J) Hmmmmmm.
(Jenn) How you doing there John?
(J) Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
