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The Work Of Faith
Episode #253
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guest: Julie
(M) This morning we’re gathered together, and there’s something I wanted to be sure that we get to in the podcast about work, because we were focused on physical work for the most part. And the last podcast, I think it was, or Julie mentioned where Jesus said this is the work of God. They said what do we do to work the works of God. He said, “This is the work of God that you believe on the Son Whom He has sent.” And so the work is faith, and that’s where I’m trying to go; is that you believe He performs for you, in you, through you.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) And when you believe it and let it be, then you receive it and it happens. It’s very easy once you get to it. But the paradox is, we are called to this enormous work. We are given assignments of enormous work, and then we’re told not to do them.
(J) Hmhmm, hmhmm, absolutely. (Martha laughs.)
(M) So the issue is, you find out, when you take up the work…If you don’t ever take it up… So if you’re irresponsible you will never know Christ; never. You will never experience Him, see Him, hear Him, comprehend Him, because you are here for a purpose. And that purpose amounts to an enormous mountain of what you could call work. There’s the work of relationships. Doesn’t it take a lot of work, people, on relationships?
(J) Absolutely.
(M) It takes work to understand another person, to find the will of God in that relationship, to see that person through God’s eyes; that basic work of seeking God. You have to seek God for your relationships. And then there’s the work of your own heart. If you don’t do the work, keep your heart with all diligence, which is work, for out of it are the issues of life. It’s keeping your heart. And if people don’t keep their heart, they will fail, because everything comes from that heart. I call the heart the meeting room, where the spirit and soul and will… And we do operate in the heart, but the deliberate work is to make sure that you are forming in that heart the decision, because the will has the final decision in that meeting. Your emotions and your thinking come together along with your will; but your will win’s because you choose. So, and there’s a work of your own heart, there’s a work of your relationship with God. It’s, it’s a work. It can be an easy work, all of it, it can be a great adventure, but never the less it is a work. And then there is His will. You have to work to find it, then you have to work out how to work it, then you have to take it up. But recently I was asking the Lord, “Please Lord, tell me why a number of people that I’ve walked with have completely crashed.” And no matter what pressure was put on them they, they continued to be crashed. And He said, “Very simple, irresponsibility verses responsibility.”
(J) Wow.
(M) And I keep over the years going back to Bill Gothard’s statement, “Mental illness is varying degrees of irresponsibility.” So there’s a work for us to do, but we have to pick it up. Once to pick it up you find you can’t bare it, you can’t do it, you hate it and it’s too much for you. Then is when you transfer the work to God, but if, see why if you’re irresponsible you’ll never get to God; you’ll never get to your destiny. I was grieving recently for someone who in the Lord would have been so splendid. I saw who she would be, and because she would not take basic responsibility for her thoughts, words, and deeds done in the body, she has never yet, it’s not over, become the person ‘she is’. She’s remained the person she ‘isn’t’, based only on not being willing to assume responsibility for her every thought, word and deed done in the body. And being willing to just settle for so, such a low state. And some people would rather die than take responsibility, and perish rather than pick up life and live it. And maybe that’s why we’re on work. Maybe that’s one reason we’re on work. But you have to… One of the things, I’ll just say this personally. I have this big property, and I have resisted it. I. I didn’t want the responsibility this big. I’d love a cell and a little tiny garden, but I have much more than that. And not long ago, I received it as what He had given me, rather than a distraction, whatever I thought it was. I received it. And I think it has changed the unction and the anointing on my work in it. And I’ve just experienced great joy. It’s one of the reason’s we’re on the work, because I just decided, ok, I must be up to this. I must have in the Lord all I need. So we’re going. Some of the days we’re flying over this property. But I wanted to go back to… I wanted to bring up that paradox, and how you really have to go through the process of doing it. So it’s Hebrews is the big issue on ‘rest’. And the one thing we’re allowed to fear and work on is entering the rest.
(J) Not entering the rest.
(M) Is not, right. Fear not entering the rest, and diligently work to enter.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) And the work to enter the rest is the work of faith. The work of questions, what on earth is this, Lord? And then He answers, because He wants us to enter the rest so that He’s free! He wants to be free in us, to be and to do. So it says, “Let us therefore,” Hebrews 4:11, “be zealous and exert ourselves, and strive diligently to enter that rest of God, to know and experience it for ourselves, that no one may fail or perish by the same kind of unbelief and disobedience into which those in the wilderness fell.”
(J) What’s the, what’s the scripture reference?
(M) Hebrews 4:11 in the Amplified. And it’s like if you have unbelief, that’s not a problem. The problem is if you stay there. If you have unbelief you’ll have disobedience, because it takes a certain amount of faith to believe that you know, you’ve heard, and you know the will of God. Doesn’t it?
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) But, this is the verse I wanted to read. I’ll read it in the New American first. The verse before the one I just read is so… “There remains a Sabbath-rest for the people of God, for the one who has entered His rest has Himself also rested from His works, as God did from His.” I’m going to read it from the Amplified, because it’s, it’s very graphic. “For he that has once entered God’s rest, has also ceased from the weariness and pain of human labors, just as God rested from those labors peculiarly His own.” And the way you rest is to let Christ do it. First to see and believe that that’s what He wants to do. And that means He is the life and the force that does the work through you, even of thinking. Well there’s another verse, Romans 4:5, that I’ve pondered for years. “To the one who does not work, but believes in Him Who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness.” There’s a world, a universe in that one verse. Now to… The verse before it, verse four says, “Now to the one who works, his wages are not credited as a favor but as what is due.” You know what that means? It means if you work for God you expect a pay, but if He does the work as a gift, then you’re in a different, you’re in a different realm. “But the one who does not work, (John in background: Jesus, Jesus, Jesus) but believes in Him.” And Who is He? The One Who justifies the ungodly; his faith is credited as righteousness. That’s what righteousness is, it’s faith in Him. And so that’s the work. Romans 3:28 says, “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.” But I’ll say that the discovery of that’s a process.
(J) Oh my gosh.
(M) For some of us dumb sheep it’s years. Nee wrote something, and I read it recently. He said, “Its one thing to find out you cannot do anything, but it’s another to quit trying.” (Laughter) And he said in essence that to quit trying is harder.
(J) Oh, absolutely.
(M) It’s the hardest thing in the world to accept that you cannot work, and you are dependent on Him. That is a test of faith. And you have to have faith to survive it. Because when you find out that you cannot do anything, and He orchestrates each life individually on some ground where you can’t do what He’s called you to do. You can’t be what He demands that you be. There’s two parts to it, doing and being. And if you do the work of the heart, you come to the honesty to know that you cannot be what He wants you to be. And that realization takes you to the discovery within. Until you push it to that limit, you never know it. I’ve said before that if you find out you can’t do it, you either have to lie, or go to God. And most of the time we lie and keep trying; I’ll just try it one more time. But that’s a dream. Is the anointing over here?
(Julie) I just get it. I mean as you said it I just… Talk about taking years, this is pathetic, but uhmm, I see how I’ve tried so incredibly hard to be responsible. I have really tried, and recently I have come to new depths of just collapse, exactly what you’re talking about. And suddenly it’s just clicking for me that if I had never picked it up, if I’d never picked it up and I’d never tried, I never would have come to the total, total, total collapse and failure that lately has been a horrible crisis for me. I mean, it has just been… I can laugh about it in this moment, but it’s been devastating. And you’ve been telling me all through this, this is part of the process, this is part of the process. And it’s just all this is coming together all of a sudden how you say; one of my favorite sayings that you say is that the only integrity that we’re capable of is telling the truth in our hearts. And, and it is… I just get it, it all goes together; if I’d never picked it up, I never would have come to the crisis that will push me over into then the faith, out of total dependency. That’s just awesome, I never saw it all connect.
(M) Well, the other day I was thinking about our lambs. And it was so clear to me that a lamb and a sheep, can do no work, absolutely none. They can’t carry a burden, their little legs will collapse. They can’t pull a cart. A goat now, that creature can do things for you. It can clear a field for you, pull a cart. And so, it’s really kind of an irony or a dichotomy, at least a contradiction that God calls you to work and not work. So thank you, Julie, that’s a living experience of what you, what you go through. But it, it takes willingness to say yes, before you can ever find out that your yes takes you to freedom, freedom from the work. The thing we want to do is not work, and that’s His intention, that we are vessels just to watch Him work, and experience His attitudes and His manner. It’s just exciting.
