Episode #165 ^{_{(Click to Listen)}}

With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guests: Sue, Julie, Carole, and Jacquelyn

(M) At our last prayer meeting I was just sort of sharing that we have to be so intact with the Lord that we could be put in isolation and be complete in Him, that our personhood has to be like ‘a garden enclosed’. That’s the best illustration.  The Lord makes us a garden enclosed, and He goes in and eats the fruits of that garden that He has shut up to Himself. And the process of becoming a person in the new creation is becoming not only connected, able to connect with other parts of the Body, but to be intact and complete in yourself; needing nothing from any person. And the Lord will bring us to that through terrible, terrible losses, through terrific fires and sufferings He will reduce us to needing and not needing at the same time. That all, all we need as an intact new creation is Christ. And wherever He comes, through the church, through the group, through the family of God and through whatever, the only need you’re reduced to is Christ. And that presence of His supply is so perfect, and so evident, that you can live without needing anyone, anything from anyone. You don’t need anyone’s love to make you feel complete. You don’t need anybody’s approval, you don’t need a reputation, you don’t need an affirmation, you don’t need, you don’t even need to be loved. That is the new creation in its completion. And I think one of the things I said that you all picked up on is that when you’re intact as the new creation you don’t… the utter… the utmost humility is to be able to do nothing and to own nothing, but to be complete. And Carole mentioned grace. Grace is given to the new man, because the new man is humble, the new man is not conscious of self; nor the new creation has no ambition and not envy. And I remember in my late twenties when I first came to the Lord, and in my twenties I had a great deal of jealousy. And there was especially one person in my life that I finally realized was evoking it. But the Lord so took me out of envy, and has kept me completely free of envy for forty, for thirty-five or forty years. And I have marveled at it and marveled at it. I haven’t understood it, really, because jealousy is native to us. Envy is native, it’s natural, it’s in the old man. And I think the thing He’s shown me is that the new creation is… there is no competition in the new creation. This is where I want to go to a whole new realm of the new creation, to the intactness and the purity of the new creation; not of me, but of the creation that God has made. There is no competition. The only desire is for everybody to be complete in Christ. Paul had that, but it was Paul’s new creation. It was a being that is not typical of humanity. Humanity in its core raw self, wants everything for ‘me’, and is full of ambition and is full of wanting to be seen. But the new creation doesn’t have that, just doesn’t possess that strife. And envy… the old man is essentially a liar and a thief, but he’s also a murderer. But that envy, that scripture says that was the motive for Jesus’ murder. The Pharisee’s were jealous of Jesus, so they killed Him. They had the emptiness, wouldn’t come to God for the fullness, and so they killed Jesus because He had the fullness.  That was the motive. That’s the old man’s motive.  “You’re jealous and you murder,” says James. And so, to take from another person, is to murder them. And one of the most amazing things, I don’t have the reference in front of me right now, but it’s the commission of Christ to Paul. It’s an apostolic commission that you are to open the eyes of the blind, and bring them into the Light, and give them a place among those who are sanctified. That is an incredible ministry, to give people a place, because if you have a place, you are a person. And each individual new creation has a place in the Body of Christ. And our ministry to each other is to help each other see the new creation and its place in the Body, because see, it requires a strong individual to be in the place in the Body. So that, as Julie read in the very beginning, “don’t steal any more, work so you have something to give.” The new creation gives, the old creation takes. The new creation evokes life, the old creation kills. The old creation is a liar, and must be, and a fraud, as Julie named it. The new creation is utter transparency and truth. So there is… I think you got also Julie, 1Cor.15:45 about the new Adam and the old Adam.
(Julie) Alright, 1Cor.15:45, “ Thus it is written, the first Adam became a living being,” oh this, this is not the good translation of this, “an individual personality; the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit, restoring the dead to life.”
(M) But, when Julie gave me that I looked at it, and forty-six says, “But it is not the spiritual life which came first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was out from earth, made of dust, earthly minded. The second Man is the Lord from out of heaven.” Then that’s about Jesus, but forty-eight is about us. “Now those who are made of the dust, are like him who was first made all of dust. And as is the Man who is from heaven, so are those who are of heaven, heavenly minded.” Our new creation is a heavenly identity; it is a heavenly being. If we’re in the new creation we have access to the heavens. One of the… one of the goals I had in the conference was to bring us to being heavenly beings. But… And I introduced it as the old and new creation. But I didn’t have time to take it to this point, that it’s not that we ‘go there’, it’s that we live in the new man, because the new man is totally heavenly. Paul was in it so fully and so beautifully. He said we look at what is not seen. We do not look at what is seen, we look at what is not seen, and so that’s the wonder of it. The new creation, if we can believe it we can access it, and it is of another order. It is of another kind of life entirely. It has no relation to the earthly, human life, as we have all known it and lived it. And the wonder of it, the unsearchable riches of Christ in it, are just… We don’t even begin to tap it. But if we could believe… See, we think oh, I’m not heavenly, I, I never will be; I can’t do that. But the new creation is essentially heavenly and has access to everything that’s there, and lives in the access of that, lives in the Kingdom. That scripture in first Corinthians goes from Him to us. It goes from the first Adam and the last Adam. And one time I wrote about the second Adam and someone wrote to me and said, “no Martha, it’s the last Adam.”  Oh, I was so grateful; I missed it; the last Adam. Not the second Adam, the last Adam. And that last Adam, by His work has not only saved us from sin, but has given us an entirely new creation, and a unique individuality. The old man, all of us are the same. Every one of us are the same in our old man. Whether we take it one way or the other, as you said, it’s still the same. Whether it’s rebellion or conformity, it’s still the old man. And he is boring and ever the same. But the new creation is ever unique. Every… every member of the Body is completely a unique expression of God; and when those expressions come together, to manifest Christ in His many faceted, unsearchable, unimaginable aspects, then the brilliance of the diamond , who is Christ, comes forth. So we want to have a passion, we want to possess our new creation, so that we can have passion for the new creation in all of us. And it will take all of us to affirm it, this is where your new creation is shinning, and this is the old man. It takes that commitment to the new man, in the Body of Christ, for that splendor to explode, of all the aspects and facets of Jesus. That’s the ideal, that’s the, the hope of God in the Body of Christ. It’s just… And it’s possible.
(Sue) Martha, when you shared about the fact of our being in our new creation, that we would help others find their place. They would find Christ, but be a new creation. But I, I got the picture that when you have a place in Christ you don’t feel like an orphan anymore; and I think everybody feels like an orphan sometime in their life. And when you have a place, you’re no longer an orphan, but you’re a son or a daughter. And that’s just what we all want.
(M) One of the great strivings of the old man is to be accepted, and that is to have a place. And they’ve often said about teenagers that they will go wherever they are accepted, even if it’s into the wrong culture. That, that drive to be accepted is satisfied in Christ. And it said, “a place among those who are sanctified”. That means it’s not just a place in Christianity, it’s a place amongst those who are cleansed and made holy by Christ. And the verse I’ve always loved says, “He sets the solitary in families.” And I always thought that meant, you know, an orphan, like you say, Sue. But He showed me we’re all father-less, because we all had an imperfect father, imperfect parents. And so we’ve never been satisfied with our parents because they couldn’t possibly be God, and He is.  He is the perfect Father. And He gives… He’s speaking of humanity, “He sets the solitary in families.” And one of the things Julia says to… used to say to me often is. “Mom, remember that your family is those who do the will of God.” And that is the sanctified ones. So it’s… and it does become a family.
(Carole) Martha, I don’t know if this is taking it in a negative, or looking at it negatively or not. What I’m thinking over the last five minutes or so is back to Paul, when he said imitate me, I never really understood that because in the old man, as I understood it, it meant, do what I do, say what I say, be what I am. But this morning, as it’s all, as it’s all processing and coming together, I wonder if what He meant was imitate my way of grace, imitate my running to the Lord, imitate that, you know. You have never required me to imitate you. Jesus in you has never required me to imitate you. The old man in me has required me to attempt to imitate you, because I could see you, and I couldn’t see Him. In the old, we are all imitators; in the old man we are all imitators. What would Jesus do? We really think we can imitate who Jesus is, and what He does, and because it gives us a sense of control, because we have no self, we have no… It is proof of our not having a self to attempt to self-meaning new creation. It is proof that we really don’t understand or move in the new creation, to have the need to imitate. It is, it is exposing then in me, is that I don’t move in the… When I attempt to imitate, when I attempt to follow the law of imitation, whatever, it is proof that I am the old man.
(Jacquelyn) I’m glad you brought that up, because I was going back to what Julie said about Martha not putting a yoke on us, and I wanted Martha to put a yoke on us, on me. I wanted a yoke, and I was frustrated because she wouldn’t do it. She wants His yoke, because His yoke is easy, and His burden is light.