Episode #177 ^{_{(Click to Listen)}}

With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow

(J) Well, I know that I could speak for everybody in our Body with the word we have already been made rich. It’s not something that, you know, that we’re going to eventually get rich off of. There’ll be more riches and more knowledge of Him. But we are currently, and have been, being made rich. The revelation that’s coming out, and the process that God is doing to reveal His Son, and to show… I’ve been made rich, and I know each one of the people in the Body would say I’m richer, because of going just through this with you and the process that God’s taking you through.  And so, I mean if I cashed it out right now I would be richer.
(M) Hmhmm. But see, so much of Christianity today is sentiment. This is a statement of Oswald;  he says, “The sentimental line blinds mans thinking by an ecstasy of thought.” See thinking is proud; thinking is the essence of pride. ‘Thinking you know’ is the essence of pride. Ever, ever,  God has sent me… God has called me in this time and place in dozens of encounters and relationships to confront people who say ‘I know’. And to destroy if I can, by the Spirit, that impertinence. And that was what the four friends did, and in the end God said, “They have not spoken right of Me.” I haven’t gotten to that point of the book; I’m just still in chapter twelve. But they… God condemned them, and they were sick. And He said to Job… He let Job ‘know Him’, that was the whole point.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) There was nothing else to it but the revelation of God where Job said, “Oh I repent in sackcloth and ashes, I have heard of You with the ear, but I see You with my eye now.” It was an expansion of the knowledge of God. The heavens declare the glory of God; and the heavens, just look up, and you’ll see He cannot be mastered or understood or known, except that He is willing to be known. And He is after ‘being known’. That’s what that verse meant in Proverbs 30. Who, who, where were you and so and so….?  But who is God? And what is the Name of His Son? Do you know? And that’s what it’s about; it’s about knowing Him. And that is worth any cost. It was worth any cost as Paul… And as I’ve researched Paul’s life, there was ah… When he said he suffered for the church in his flesh, in that root meaning of those words… Let me see if I can find it in my notes. Paul used an unusual term for “fill up”, when he said he would “fill up the afflictions of Christ”; I never understood that. And I probably still, I’m sure I still don’t. He used that unusual term for “fill up”, occurring only here in all of scripture. The basic root means: the word literally conveys the idea of completing in the place of, or complete for someone else. It’s vicarious. He was suffering for Christ, for the purpose Christ wanted established somehow in the earth, and who can figure that out? Who can figure out why that suffering was necessary when Christ had already suffered? You can’t fit that equation, it’s only exists in the mystery of God. And Paul anguished for the church. It says, he struggled with the energy that God gave him, which was enormous, and how many things he suffered. And when he was blind, struck blind on Damascus by Jesus, by the Light of Jesus,  Ananias was called to go and pray for his sight. And Ananias had a message for Paul. He said he would tell him how many things he would suffer. “Go, he is my chosen instrument to bear my Name before the Gentiles and kings, and the sons of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for My Names sake.” And we have no mentality for… I had no mentality for physical suffering being a vicarious redemptive work. And I… It’s still a mystery. I had no place… I really believed that there should be healing.
(J) It’s just like there’s like ‘a bowl’ of suffering that has to be full, and Christ did not fill it within Himself, that entire ‘bowl’, so He shares that suffering with each of us to complete His suffering and fill that ‘bowl’ up. Do you see what I’m saying?
(M) Umhmm.
(J) And, as well as, but if you have the suffering you also have the joy.
(M) He wants His suffering somehow to take place on this earth, and it is His suffering. At one point I had a week of really, a lot of suffering. And I had a lot of despair. I just closed myself up with the Lord. And I really didn’t get any relief or any answer from Him.  At the end of the week Joan called me, and she said, “Martha, your spirit is in heaven. It’s always in heaven.” And it’s real to me that my life is “hidden with Christ in God”, and that I’m “seated in the heavenlies”, that’s very real to me, but in this suffering I’ve come back down to earth. (Martha laughs) No, what I actually got in was my soul; how I felt, how badly I felt, and how much I wanted to hear God, and you know, focused on myself. And when she said that I was somehow able to separate my spirit from my body, and there was not nearly so much suffering. I think that everything, everything fits into some enormous purpose. T. Austin Sparks has the view that whatever takes place, whatever God gives in any location of the church goes to all the Body of Christ. That we’re not… If you’re in the transcendent church, if you’re meeting in His Name, and letting Him be head, then it’s transcendent over time and space, and others, you know, are blessed by it somehow. But in the end… there’s someway… And I realize now from studying Paul and the things that he said… And of course he did suffer illness. Many people think he suffered malaria and had some severe eye problems from it; malaria recurs over and over again.
(J) Ok, so what I’m seeing, that there’s ‘a bowl’, ok, a, a vessel of suffering that Christ has filled up with Himself, with His suffering, but that it wasn’t complete, it wasn’t full. And that as we are empty vessels, only when we’re empty vessels, we can bare that suffering; otherwise it’s just suffering for sufferings sake. But if we will be empty vessels, open ourself wide, then Christ is able to fill up the measure of His suffering through us. But see I can’t just say, oh, ok, I’m a Christian so I’m suffering for Jesus. No, you have to be an empty vessel, a empty vessel. You can’t have your own life and agenda, and… It’s not about… If I have my soul life intact…ok, so there we go back to the conference on the Body of Christ.  If my soul life is intact I am not a vessel for Christ, and He cannot pour out of me suffering, His suffering. He has… It’s like… It’s weird; ok it’s like a mystery kind of weird thing. I just see there’s a vessel, a bowl full of suffering that He has to fill. But it’s not like I’m going to live that suffering, though it’s going to be in my body. Now that Christ is out of His earthly body, now I’m the vessel. I’m the body, and so if I am in my spirit and emptied He can fill up. But I don’t only think that it’s suffering, I think it’s His ecstasy, His joy, His… But you have to be empty of self. You have to be His vessel, but then He can fill up. And, you know, then you can look at the other side of that. He also has a… He also has a fill up then of wrath. And if you are ‘in self’, I think you’re filling up… It’s whichever one you want to choose to fill up. Do you want to fill up to complete His suffering and His fulfillment? Or do you want to fill up His wrath? You know, that one scripture in Matthew, ‘fill up then’? Yikes! That’s a scary one.
(M) He said to the Pharisee’s “Fill up then the measure of your father’s sins.” And I’ve heard even master’s of the faith talk about that, that God draws a thing out to judge it. And I won’t… that’s a sidetrack. But I’m impacted by what you’re saying, John, because I felt like you were about to say, and you did, that we’re a vessel of Christ’s own suffering. I don’t understand the value of suffering, as such. I don’t understand the whole mystery of suffering. That’s the point of Job. Paul suffered as an apostle. All of the disciples suffered, even John though he lived, suffered. When I was in Patmos… they believe that he was chained to a scribe day and night with handcuffs. And he lived in a cave and in exile, and in ecstasy. So I don’t… I don’t understand what God achieves; the value to Him of suffering. It pleased Him to crush His Son, to crush His soul. And ah, you enter the Kingdom through much tribulation. And ah…
(J) I don’t think this is going to be a popular message.
(M) I agree. I don’t believe we have any mentality for the mystery of suffering. We have, as Job’s friends, boxes to fit it into. But you know what God said about his friends is when you, you know,  Job had multiplied and so forth, turn and pray for your friends to be healed. I don’t know if that means they became sick for judging Job, or if that means they were sick in their minds and spirit by their presumption to know what God was doing. And Job was faithful enough and godly enough to be honest through the whole thing, and to have his anguish and have his question, and have his need, and have his… the crisis of his relationship with God. I’ve always been astonished… I think I might have been under such an onslaught, willing to say ok, I’m guilty, like you say. (Martha laughs)
(J) Hmhmm, hmhmm.
(M) Ok, go ahead and condemn me, and then maybe I can get out of this. But Job would never admit what God had not convicted him of. And that’s an incredible faithfulness to the relationship with God. That’s what Job had. And that’s what Chambers is addressing. A creed would not… he would not be satisfied with a creed, only with God Himself. And frankly, John, we’re going to have to learn suffering in the days to come. The church is going to suffer in the end times, suffering is coming; I declare it prophetically. And that doesn’t mean anything… we know it, but we’re not… We have no ah, theology of the mystery, of letting suffering be a mystery. And yet…
(J) Or, or part of the fellowship of Christ.
(M) Yes. That is what Paul said, the fellowship of His suffering. That fellowship means joining in a relationship, in an experience of suffering. And what it means to me now is literally letting His suffering be manifested within you in some form. And you know, we may adjust this to another side later, I don’t know. But all I want to say in this podcast is that you don’t know God until you know He’s not knowable. And if you have a closed door, if you have a category, or a creed even based on scripture, you’re going to miss the Reality of God Himself.