Sometimes Waiting on God is the Hardest Part – Episode #562

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Sometimes Waiting on God is the Hardest Part
Episode #562
September 10, 2017

With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special Guest:Fabiola Fernandez, Gaby Schubert, Carole Nelson, Lori Thomas

This is the continuation of a series of Podcasts started in Episode #560.
How often do you wait to hear God’s voice? Waiting on God may be the most difficult part of the Christian life, but it is also the very essence of it.

(John) I’m writing some notes about a situation I’m going through right now. And they seem to be very applicable. I’ll just read what I wrote. “You must not only do the will of God, but also do it according to His way. If you do the will of God in your soul, you are in as much rebellion as if you’d never done the will of God. The will of God and the life of God are one or it is rebellion. There is no distinction between the life and the will.” And I can do anything with the best intention. I can do even – this is the scary part – I can even do it, I can even hear what the will of the Father is, but then doing it myself, in myself, it’s not just second best, it’s rebellion. It’s not just, you know, that blows my mind. You know, if He says, “Oh, I want to build a, I want to build a church building in Honduras,” and I go down and do it and it’s me doing it, it’s rebellion, because basically whenever He gives you a directive, He’s saying, “I want to do this in your life. This is what I want to do.” He’s not saying, “Now, you go do it.” Yes, you are going to do it. You’re going to be the one who does it. But it’s not going to be you. It’s going to be Him. If it isn’t Him, then it’s rebellion. That blows my mind. That just blows my mind. Even the right thing done from the wrong source is rebellion.
(Fabiola) Martha just said that before when she was talking to us the Levites had the service at the Temple, but they had lost the priesthood. That was just a reminder.
(Martha) That’s incredible, Fabiola, what you just said. When they hear the Message of the Month, they’ll understand what you’re talking about. But God had to prove everybody couldn’t do it. Everybody couldn’t do it, even the best. And we traced the priesthood of Aaron down to Zadok down to Malachi, and they completely failed. That’s putting it mildly.
(Gaby) What you say, John, was exactly the place where I find myself in now. This, I thought I knew the will of God, and I did the will of God, and yes, exactly. I did the will of God, and that’s the problem. I read with Andrew Murray this morning, “To know the will and to see the just One is inseparable.” So, it doesn’t simply be enough to know the will of God. What I understood now, I cannot, I cannot separate it from seeing Christ, knowing Christ, having Christ living it in me. This is the only way to do the will of God. God isn’t interested in me doing His will. God is interested that everything is Christ. And I’ve been quite puzzled in the beginning when Martha said to me, “You’re not in the will of God.” I said, “Well, why?” But now I understand. It’s really, in a way I have lost the connection to be with Christ, in Christ all time, 24/7, each second, each step, no move without Him. And I simply didn’t take the time somewhat. Things were busy. It’s seemed so logical. It was so clear what’s the next step. And I think it was the next step, only it was not me to go it. And I understand that I, yes, this is sad. This is simple rebellion. It’s nothing else. It doesn’t depend on what we do. It might be the right of all things the ways in whom we do it and/or who we let it do. And so, I simply have to get back to the very place on my knees to wait on Him and not to move before I see Him, hear Him. And as I said before, this is then our food. This is what brings life into us and into the world. Doing the will of God will sustain us and will sustain everyone, seeing Him doing it in me. Otherwise it’s just me doing it, and then it had happened, and that’s all. And that’s not Kingdom
(Martha) Oh, Gaby, well said.
(John) Perfect.
(Martha) John says perfect. Oh, I was going to say that Austin-Sparks says we give life, and if we have the life, what comes from us is life. And people have said to me, some said to me in the conference, “What you gave me is life.” And that means you have to let Him live it, so there is life. But I’m seeing it so beautifully in what you’re saying about His will being our food. That’s precious to me, because sometimes when I can’t move to do His will, then the energy comes. And I see that the energy and the food is in His will. Thank you. That was just wonderful. But as we’ve been talking about it, it’s so big to me, because we’ve seen so much of it that, and yet it’s still shocking that what the flesh does, no matter how good, no matter how God’s will, what the flesh does is death not life.

We recently went somewhere that looked like a great work, and I’m not going to say it wasn’t. But I’m going to say that when I came away – I went expecting life. But I was so puzzled, because when I got home all I felt was death. So, the registry, as Sparks would probably say it, what you register is life or death. I went thinking I would experience life from this ministry, and when I came home there was only death. The message was death for me. There was no life in it. And it shocked me, because it looked like life. And that’s going to be the end time. We’re going to have to register things as life or death, because the appearance could be miracles, fantastic teaching, words, etc. And it’s quite, it’s overwhelming really how big, what big death my flesh can create. Another thing about it being simple, Carole, I love that, because when the Lord gets down to it, it is always so acceptably, beautifully simple. And that’s because it is. I think it’s the enemy that makes it complex. And the enemy tempts us to knowledge, and that is complex, always complex. And He takes it down to such simplicity that we can handle it, and I love the simplicity. You mentioned it, Carole. Jesus was simple, profound, puzzling, but very simple. His stories were actually very simple, even though those great mysteries, and you can’t fathom the depth of it, they’re very, very simple.
(Carole) But talking about what you’re saying, Martha, about our trip out there. We can take anything that God calls us to do and make it the god, make it the goal rather than Jesus Christ.
(Martha) Carole, I just saw that in that experience, a portion of scripture was chosen to be everything, and it became a law that we do what that scripture said. And we went out, sort of in… For me it was death, because it was a law. It wasn’t… Paul said I’ve given you the whole counsel of God. This was not the whole counsel of God. It was a portion of scripture that was taken to be the everything, and it was not Christ, Himself. And I just realized that a little bit.
(Carole) And I believe all of us felt that because it… When we began to see it was a law, it was mean. There was a meanness, and a cruelty, which comes with the law. And the Pharisee, it becomes cruel and it becomes mean. But I believe that presumption, presuming we know what God is going to do is a very dangerous ground. It doesn’t matter how much we know scripture. It doesn’t matter how much of God’s word we have. I have watched Martha over the years, God has called her on more than one occasion to put away, let go of, get rid of – I don’t want to speak for you – but everything up to that point and start it fresh, because if we presume we know, and it looks like a good, good way to go, and if we keep moving there without – we can stop listening, we can stop depending on Him, and we will find ourselves in that place of another law. And when Martha was at the conference, she would meander through all of us, and it was to illustrate our journey is wandering. It is… The Spirit blows where He chooses to blow. And if we’re not in a place – and I watch this in her – I’m sorry but… It is such an example to me. She doesn’t know. If I ask her a question or we ask her a question, she doesn’t presume to know. She waits. And even if it’s something we’ve been doing, it’s still, it’s something new and we have to hear what the Holy Spirit is doing, because He can absolutely change directions in a second, and you think you’re going one way, and He turns and He goes another way. It’s doesn’t mean it’s wrong, if just means He’s decided to go someplace else. So, I don’t know, I think presumption is a…
(Martha) I was reading. I think it’s Psalm 81 where God says, pleading, “If only Israel would have listened to Me, I would have subdued their enemy. I would have fed them with honey from the rock and the finest of wheat.” If only… It’s like He’s saying, “All you had to do is listen to My voice. That’s all, and I would have done everything… I would have performed everything you need. All I wanted you to do was listen.” And that’s, you know, I realized some time ago that that’s what when Eve was tempted, she went and talked to Adam. She didn’t go and do the work of listening. And listening… I remember Art Katz saying, “The essence of Priesthood is waiting,” and waiting kills us. And learning… I had wanted to mention that in the conference, and the Lord didn’t lead me that way. But waiting is so much a part of what we need to learn to do. Our effort should go, and our waiting should begin. That we just wait to hear. And if you do that, you become an expert hearer, and you can hear Him almost instantly. You know His thoughts and His mind, but it takes an awful lot of investment in waiting to come to be skilled at listening and hearing Him. And He says startling things, things that are outside of my range of understanding, and they’re fascinating. But it’s His Voice that we need, and that requires putting every other… It’s like making a level playing field where you will go this way or that way, whichever He says, and you’re waiting for Him to make the choice that you choose with Him. That’s Mary of Bethany.
(Lori) She was the only one that heard and knew that He was going through the horror that was coming. And she was ready to do what she did with that anointing and…
(Martha) And Jesus told the disciples over and over and over, “I’m going to die. I’m going to suffer. I’m going to go away,” and because they didn’t want that to be, they thought it wasn’t. And I know how to do that too.
(John) Ultimately, presumption is death. Period. It’s just death. Ok, so He said, you know, “If you would just have… If you would just have… If you would just have…” But the good news about that all is that He never anticipated them ever to do it. He never thought they would do it, and He had the solution before the foundation of the world. So, it was all solved, all the complete lineage and path and disgusting trashing of everything, He had a solution for it. He had the solution in Christ, and He had the solution in Christ’s life, and the solution in the Spirit coming. And so, I’m grateful that it wasn’t like, “I gave you every opportunity all the way to this point. So, I had to come down there and fix it for you, because you guys just totally messed it up.” It wasn’t like that at all. It was like, “I’m just going to prove to you, ok. I’m going to let you go and just level your entire world, so that you can see that there was absolutely never any way that you were ever going to do it. You fell. It was a complete fall. You didn’t fall partly. You didn’t slip. You fell completely. You were totaled. But I already had the— Because I’m God, I already had in My mind what I was going to do, and how I was going to prove it to you, and how I was going to bring that Life.” So, that’s amazing. That’s the hope in it.

Sometimes Waiting on God is the Hardest Part – Episode #562 -Shulamite Podcast

How often do you wait on God? Do you wait until you hear His voice? Do you wait for Him before you move in a situation or responsibility or relationship? Waiting on God may be the most difficult part of the Christian life, but it is also the very essence of it.