Episode #262 ^{_{(Click to Listen)}}

With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guests: Julie Wilson and Carole Nelson, Dana Rimback

(Dana) I keep seeing the Body of Christ as a body, and Christ as the head, and we’re the parts of the body. And the impulses from the brain go down to make the body move, and that’s the way Christ is in the true church. And you have to come, the hand has to come under the authority of that Head in order to do anything but die of gangrene or something, you know, right away. And that’s where the authority comes in, as a member of the Body of Christ; the only way we can do anything is through that impulse that comes from the Head.
(J) Hm, hmm.
(M) I’m going to do a tape someday, somebody dear to me went through something and she was upset about her failure, and I said, “Oh, you’re just growing backward.” (Martha laughs.) And I got so excited when that came out of my mouth, because we do not grow forward or upward. We only grow if it’s down; we only grow if it’s decrease. And the decrease is to become the child. We grow away from the adult and back to the child. Matthew eighteen says, “Unless you turn and repent and become like a little child you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. And so the holiness ironically, strangely, mysteriously, its phenomenal to me that holiness comes as we are decreased. We don’t increase or progress into holiness, which is the world’s way of thinking everything is done. And that thinking is in my flesh, always. It always has to be dismantled as a lie. We have to be decreased, as Jennifer was saying so vividly, we are decreased in order to simply receive, just simple, as children. And I can see it; I see it right in front of me, the ability to live in such delight, just to receive everything. My efforts are like Jacob’s. My efforts toward Him thwart Him.
(J) Why do you think I was laughing so hard when you were saying that during the, during the C.D. of the month! (Martha laughs: I didn’t notice…) Oh I was laughing because I’m going ‘oh, my-gosh’, there’s me again.
(Julie) I think one of the things that released me so much, and I’m only three chapters of the Murray book too. (Laughter.) But uhmm, chapter three is really good. (Julie is laughing.) And I might have to stay here awhile, but, he explains in chapter three, and it’s so simple, I mean it is, it is childlike. He makes a statement that’s just so profound, just as God is the only One Who has the power to create, He’s also the only One Who has the power to sanctify. I mean that’s so ‘like duh’, how did I never get that, but I didn’t. And he talks about how, he explains creation in a way I’ve just never, ever, heard it. He explains the seventh day and the purpose of it like I’ve just never heard. And Martha in the tape of the month called it a revolution; that is what it did for me, the first, when I read it, it just changed everything. And he says that after the six days of creating, God was so sure that it was all finished, that He had finished the work of creating so much, He’d set everything in motion that all by itself, without any little human being help, was going to carry on to completion of everything that He purposed, so much that He could enter into His rest. And essentially what Murray says holiness is, is when God comes in to rest in a place. That it is His presence, that holiness is the presence of God resting. And then he makes this incredible statement, Murray says, “Where the soul enters into the Sabbath stillness of perfect trust, God comes to”, God comes, “to keep His Sabbath holy, and the soul where He rests He sanctifies.” (John and Martha respond: Hmmm.) This is just amazing. I mean holiness is the presence of God. And to know, to be able to ‘get it’, and you know, being the child I am I may forget it in ten minutes and have to re-learn it, but uhmm, to realize that totally before time began, before the earth, before I certainly ever was, He set in motion all of creation so perfectly and so completely that all that’s left for Him now is to enter in and rest; there is no work to be done, and that it’s as I believe that that He will come into me. Because eventually what Murray says is what where God rests is holiness, and where we rest we enter into His holiness. And so it’s just, it’s just an amazing, amazing thing to realize how much He’s done it from beginning to end. There is nothing for me to do except receive.
(M) I don’t think we mentioned the name of the book as it is now printed, it’s “The Pathway”.
(J) Well, I wanted to say that because Carole was mentioning ‘the path’, and I was like, well isn’t that interesting, that’s what they’ve changed the name of the book to, “The Path…
(M) “The Pathway to Holiness”
(J) “The Pathway To Holiness” (Actual title is: “The Path To Holiness”)
(M) And ah, we haven’t mentioned that will be available this week.
(J) Well, by the time this comes out it, it will be on the website.
(M) And Carole kept telling me about the awesome prayers he gives in here, after each chapter is an amazing prayer that you can pray. And ah, I said earlier, I think in the Lord’s Prayer in the Amplified it says, “Your will holy and revered”, I believe it says in the Lord’s Prayer. “Your kingdom come, Your will holy and revered be done.” And Murray says, Your will is our sanctification. He uses that word interchangeably with holiness. Your will is our holiness. And he gives prayers that… “I humbly ask you for the grace to learn and hold fast the deep spiritual truths you’ve revealed in making holy the Sabbath day.” Meaning this age, not a day of the week. “Your purpose in man’s creation is to show forth your holiness and make him a partaker of it.” And so, oh you could just take these prayers and just get in them, and pray them for yourselves.  It’s just, I think I said on the tape of the month, it’s one of the most phenomenal books; I cannot imagine being without this book now. That’s, I don’t feel that way about many books.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) But you can’t be without this book. It is the way to the marriage of the Lamb.
(J) I’m getting my copy this week.
(M) Are you?
(J) From Shulamite.com. (Everyone laughs.)
(M) Oh…
(Julie) This is a question for you Martha. When I read that about Murray, about this seventh day, it just kind of exploded, and it’s not clear but I always wondered why Jesus made such a ‘big deal;’ I mean it’s almost like He purposed to heal on the Sabbath to irritate the Jews. You know?  I mean I know He didn’t really do it that way, but why was, why was that such a contest? And I never understood that and I never ‘got it’. But when, I mean I’m asking, am I understanding Murray correctly that in a sense it was like Jesus as the incarnate ‘I Am’, standing… They were thinking that by their works they were going to become holy, and by following the law they were going to become holy. And Jesus was just standing there saying I Am the One Who heals, I Am the One Who makes holy. That’s almost like one act, one whole thing; I am the One Who does it, there is no work for you to do. Is that, is that what He was attacking in a sense? Or establishing?
(M) I don’t know if I’ll answer it exactly, Julie. But I came to understand He is the Sabbath. And He had begun the seventh day of God’s creation. He was the Sabbath standing there. He was the rest, He was the completion, He was the holiness. The last day, the Sabbath day, the seventh day was the one Jesus, that God declared holy. He declared that holy. And that, the Sabbath is an age.  It began right there when He was healing on the Sabbath. And He healed and offended their concept of the Sabbath deliberately, yeah, I think you’re right, He did.  He offended them deliberately to wake up their thinking, to break up their rigid idea of what it meant. It was not a day, from Friday to Saturday at sundown. And we are living in the age of the rest, because He came to finish it. I don’t know if that’s answering.
(Julie) And I see how they thought that they had to do something to keep the day holy, which is kind… And I understand that; that’s what I do with Him all the time. I think I have to do something to, even to keep it holy, as if I could contribute anything. And I, I get, ok, that helps a lot.
(M) Does it answer what you were asking? That He is the Sabbath.
(Julie) He is the seventh day.
(M) Wow!
(Dana) Right, He’s the seventh day of creation. He was already in it because He was there at creation, like you just said, so that’s what He was telling them.
(M) And He also says this mysterious thing. The Sabbath is for man; man is not for the Sabbath.
(J) That’s where I was going to go.
(M) Ok. What was what…
(J) He was basically offending it because He said that man… And this is I think what she was saying is higher, that man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made for man. And so I mean that’s obvious, that’s an obvious one, but where she has taken it, it’s wonderful.
(Julie) I like… The thing that… Another statement that Murray makes that just blows me away is that he says when God closed the work of creation He introduced that, the way Murray puts it, he says, “God all at once a new word and a new work of God is introduced, God sanctifies.” He says that’s the only mention of holy in Genesis. And it says, “Something higher than creation, that for which creation is to exist, is now to be revealed.”  So you’re saying that began when Christ came. Oh wow.
(M) And we’re still in it, until He returns. And we are, we are in the great crisis that ‘it is finished’ even though it doesn’t look like it anywhere; not in nations, not in nature, not in earth, it doesn’t look finished, but we’re in the crisis of that to believe it in spite of. It is finished in spite of my inadequacies, my deficit, my, ah, my inability to even stop trying. I mean you’re really foolish if you know you can’t do it but you can’t quit trying. And God has to kill that, even that, to make His holiness my rest. But I read something that’s so beautiful, by Michael Card. He said, “In this fearsome fallen place, I will be Your home.” And I, I really came to see, because He says Zion is His resting place, and I’ve puzzled over Zion. Zion’s been in my heart for years. And I think I came to see that we live in Zion when we are no longer opposing Him. And He can rest in us and have a home when we are, He is everything to us, and we are everything for Him. I don’t know if that… But that, that is the Sabbath rest to me, when I no longer oppose Him on anything, then He has, He can rest in me without a fight.
(Carole) The scripture that popped into my heart, my head, was “Blessed is he who is not offended by Me.” And that just opens up a whole realm, because I can get offended at the drop of a hat, over anything, and it’s really getting offended with Him, on some level. Is it not? Is it not getting offended with Him?
(M) Yes. I’m really coming to see that to resist anything that comes at me, to me, against me, to resist anything, to resist any person, to resist any event, is to resist Him. That’s all, that means He is God.