Episode #162 ^{_{(Click to Listen)}}

With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guests: Sue and Jennifer

(J) Well, we just did forty-five minutes of a wonderful podcast that the taping equipment ‘ate’, so it is no longer here. So, we’re just believing that God had an even a higher rendition of this. And so at the end of this podcast, at the end of these sessions, however long this lasts, we will tell you the testimony of how He increased His word and His message; And how it was so much better than the first one because the last forty-five minutes has been absolutely awesome, and the revelation was tremendous.     So…
(M) Well, I just said that this message is not just the great need, the emergency need of Christians to know. And we just ended the series on the skit of the old and new man. But the subject is exploding in us. It’s, if you remember, “Strip yourselves of your former nature, put off and discard your old unrenewed self which characterized your previous manner of life and becomes corrupt through lusts and desires that spring from delusion.” Now that’s clearer to me than ever before. “And be constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new nature, the regenerate self, created in God’s image, Godlike in true righteousness and holiness.” And the marvel is, that that new nature is fully, completely intact in us. It’s not something to access, it’s something to discover. But it’s a creation. And I think the thing that’s striking me now is that it is called a new creation. That word means: created out of nothing. God didn’t take your old nature and fix it up, change it, or refine it. He put that old nature to death. It is utterly worthless. And He made someone new. You have within you, as a born again believer, a nature… you are what you’ve never been. You can be what you never were. You are what you always wanted to be. But you haven’t… You had an insight, John, about the new wine, and you were seeing that… W hat did you see?
(J) I was seeing in the Luke five account of the old wineskin and the new wine, and I was just seeing that we prefer the old to the new. We believe in the old life to perform, and we really feel secure in this old life because it’s familiar. And unfortunately it says in the Luke 5:39, “New wine must be stored in new wineskins.” Ok, “But no one who drinks the old wine, seems to want new wine. The old is just fine they say.” Or is better; some versions say oh, it’s better. And that’s really what we believe, is we believe that the old man is better, because we continually try to adhere the new man, and affix the new man life, the new creation life, on the old man system. And it fails every-time.
(M) What I’m seeing is this illustration of the old man and new man, is Old Testament, New Testament; it’s all over the scriptures. And this is… this I realized the other day; I was reading it also John, so it’s the Holy Spirit among us revealing this. I all of a sudden saw this is the old man, new man. And the Amplified says, “New wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine immediately desires new wine.” We don’t desire the new life. “For he says the old is good, or better.” And when we were saying this, Sue had the insight; she had already gotten this about the wine, the new wine.
(Sue) This reminded me of Jesus at the wedding, when His Mother asked Him to do something about the wine running out, that He had made new wine. And the manager of the feast said that it tastes so good.  This is the wine that you saved to the end of the feast… at the beginning of the wedding, not at the end. But He was showing us that the new wine is His gift, and it is better than anything we’ve ever had.
(J) And really, in that account the… I mean old wine is always better, you know, unless it turns to vinegar. But, you know, it’s always a better thing if you have an older wine. But He said, I’m superceding the precedent here, over your way of making wine, because I don’t want your wine anymore. I’m going to make new wine that’s coming right now, and it’ll be better. So it goes against even nature, the nature of wine. Because He says I’m making out of this water, wine, and it’s brand new, and it’s going to be better. And …
(M) And it was a creation.
(J) Exactly.
(M) It was not, it was not even from anything of earth. He didn’t… He took it from water, plain water, and created wine. The word created is so marvelous.
(J) That gives me tremendous hope.
(M) Oh,  here it is. Ok. It’s Eph. 2:5 “Even when we were dead, slain by our own shortcomings and trespasses, He made us alive together in fellowship and I union with Christ; He gave us the very life of Christ, Himself, the same new life with which He quickened Him.” So when He raised Jesus from the dead, He raised Him by a new creation of life that transcended everything human and earthly. “For it is by grace you have been saved.”
(J) Not only by … supersedes human, it supersedes this earthly plane.
(M) The fact that He didn’t go get grapes and make new wine, He didn’t do that. He created the wine out of nothing. And that’s a picture of the new life.
(J) And gives me tremendous hope.
(M) Did you have something Jennifer?
(Jennifer) In, in talking about the wine and the account where some persons would say ‘the old is better’. And John was talking about the familiarity of it, and why we move and kind of go back to that, this familiar, this knowledge. And I think I just saw in a second that it goes even beyond that.  I think for me it’s a loyalty that we have to the old man, because we love them. And it just popped out the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, who can know it? I don’t know the depths of my own heart. And I feel like the Lord is constantly breaking and showing me all the ways in which I love myself and think me worthy. And I can say until I’m blue in the face, no, I know that I’m completely wretched, and I’m a total sinner. And I’m not lying when I say that, because I’ve been shown a certain amount that proves without doubt to me that that’s true. But I harbor deep within me these little loves for myself that says, well, you were funny there, or that was real nice what you did for that little boy.  I mean people have to like you for that. And it’s, but it is, it’s holding onto this, this, like fingernails, that there’s something there that’s worth preserving; that doesn’t have to be thrown out for the new creation. And can the new creation really have something that’s that delightful and adorable. I don’t know…
(M) Wonderful. And this reminds me of something I saw recently, Jennifer, where Jesus said in order to be His disciple you have to hate this, this, yea, even his own life. And I saw in that that you have to come to hate the old man, because the old man loves the old man. And you have to come to see that old man to such a degree that you don’t want him. You hate him. That’s when you’re a disciple, when you come to hate that old life.
(J) And on the opposite side of that, what I’m seeing recently, is that ok, I can see wretchedness. Wretchedness is… (in background Martha says ‘easy’) abounding, it’s ever there. So, I can’t get into how He feels about me, how He views me. I can say, oh yeah, God, let’s go beat me up, you know?  But how, how, how can I get into the… His view, lay down that old life, that old nature, that old thought process, the whole thing, and get into His thoughts about me, His thoughts about… He says things about me that I don’t believe.
(M) But He’s addressing the new man. There’s something I’ve instinctively… I’ve been doing. And I didn’t even realize it for some time. When somebody praises me, and I believe it’s true, and not flattery, I instinctively say, that’s Christ, that, that is… Oh, and it’s so encouraging that He is in ascendance in me. Am I making sense? There is no encouragement to the old man; there’s nothing good. But, but as the emergence of the new man is recognized, that is a joy. But it is nothing that I can take to me. It’s a rejoicing with Him; Oh, You are in existence; You’re in residence; You’re in manifestation. That’s the encouragement we should have for each other. This is your new man; this is who He is in you. And so the new creation doesn’t take any credit, but instinctively knows anything valuable is Him.
(J) Because there’s nothing good in us. The thief part of that is that you’re trying to adhere… See I’m… if I take what He’s saying about the new man, if, if He says your new man, Christ in you, is courageous. And I say, yeah John is courageous, uh! There you go.  Let me prop that one up. No! Thief, thief, thief! Deflate. Christ is courageous in you; you are not courageous. And so when He’s saying this about me, He’s saying it about Him, but it’s in me so it is me, but it’s not me, and so, but I mean…
(M) It’s a madness.
(J) It is a madness, absolutely. But there’s the thief,  is trying to say this new creation is the life of the old nature, and it’s like, really? When did you produce that ever, a day, a moment, a second in your life, you know? And so, when I’m saying to you, you know yeah, I can hear wretchedness, but can you hear what Christ says about Christ in you? Well, that’s where … No. But don’t you remember who I am, and what I’ve done? Don’t you realize that that’s dead, John? Really? Oh, ok, it’s dead, ok. But that whole exchange is going on continually.  It’s a wrestling match. There’s where I’m wrestling as Jacob. I’m saying but this is who I am. No, that person is dead. Oh, ok, so this person’s dead, this is who I am. So, I go round and round and round and round in this little dialog, and it’s craziness.
(M) If you believe, then it manifests.