2010-07-16
Good Morning Cherished Ones,
Last week we finally began our new study on covenants. In doing so, we embarked upon something greater than just an intellectual exercise. Instead, we are going to be taught by the Holy Spirit about our relationships with the Father and the Son, Jesus Christ. The idea here is to help us make the head-heart-hands connection, meeting with God’s expectations and learning about what we can expect from Him. IS 55: 1, 3, “The Lord says, ‘Come, everyone who is thirsty-here is water! Come, you that have no money-buy grain and eat! Come! Buy wine and milk-it will cost you nothing!...Listen now, My people, and come to Me; come to Me, and you will have life! I will make a lasting covenant with you and give you the blessings I have promised to David.’”
Since I’m the person I know the most about, I will share a little of what my own life was like before and after I entered into a covenant partnership with God with Him in leadership. Each of you can insert your own story here. For the first 25 years of my life, I was oblivious to God’s presence, except for my parents’ efforts to tell me I am Jewish and therefore must learn about God at the shul [synagogue]. Because of the legalistic way I was introduced to God, I was quickly turned off, disinterested, and simply went through the motions of attendance on the Sabbath [Shabas, as it was called] to keep my parents satisfied. Sadly, nothing I ever did really satisfied them anyway. Since I was a girl, I was not pressed to learn to speak Hebrew fluently, although I couldn’t help learning some words, memorizing certain key prayers, and from the sentence context, learning some Yiddish words and phrases. My brothers were taught Hebrew for at least one year before each of them became a Bar Mitzveh, i.e. deemed an adult in the Jewish faith in a special Sat. morning service on the week of their 13th birthdays as a right of passage. They were made to read from the Torah [the week’s reading from the Torah scrolls] in the original Hebrew language without any kind of punctuation on its parchment pages. Even with this training, neither brother remained observant in the faith upon leaving home and reaching adulthood.
Certainly, I’m not going to say that all Jews brought up in North America turn out as my brothers and I did. Some really live their faith today and go on to a better understanding of it. Our situation was deeply complicated by being reared in a very emotionally dysfunctional household. So none of what I say about my own experience is in any way a total denigration of the traditional Jewish upbringing. Nothing is all bad or all good, except for the devil and the Lord Yeshua [Jesus Christ]. Since my story is much longer than this, I will share it in pieces. This period that I describe above extends to just beyond my 15th birthday, the time at which I was “confirmed” in the Jewish faith in a long service in which each of 92 confirmands having to give a speech. Yawn! We were each given a copy of the Masoretic text of the Tenach [OT], and I still have mine today, 51 years later. Truthfully, it wasn’t until the Lord Yeshua was gracious enough to bring me to faith in Him through the Holy Spirit and to allow me to become His covenant partner, did I ever read it with any real understanding. But that’s for later. For now, the Holy Spirit is directing me to continue writing about covenants with an eye to letting each of us find out experientially how the issue of our covenant partnership with Him makes us come alive in Him.
So, you might ask, what did I do while my training in basic Judaism was going on? The answer was precious little of any spiritual value. When I was old enough, I cut out on classes with pals and only returned to the shul in time for my parents to pick me up and take me home. I lied eloquently about what went on in class each week. I had learned to lie well, or so I thought. One time when I was in grade 8 at age 13, I caused a bit of a stir in my class-one of the few I actually attended. The subject of Jesus Christ came up, and the teacher carefully said He was a rabbi, a teacher, maybe even a prophet. [I didn’t even know the word rabbi means “teacher” at the time]. Something stirred in me, and I raised my hand. “Isn’t He the Son of God too?” I said, having heard this from a friend upon sneaking to catechism class with her at St. Stephen Catholic school without my father’s permission. This comment set up a lively response, “Oh, that’s Christian clap-trap!” the teacher said. That night, a phone call was made to my father. “Doctor, we have a problem, a big problem with your daughter.” You can just imagine how the discussion led to where I got such a notion and to the revelation of my trips to St. Stephen’s catechism classes. I was grounded for a month! “There’ll be none of that in this house!” my angry father exclaimed. But our family did have a problem, a big problem! It was one that never left us. When the Holy Spirit has chosen someone to come to faith, He means business. He loved me so much that He never let go of me [PS 9: 9-10]. Even when I traveled with the wrong crowd and almost landed myself in Juvenile Hall at the age of 15, He was there. As it was, my father arranged for an overnight there for me, just to give me a taste of where my angry and very bad behavior was leading me.
PRAYER: O Lord, You have many wonderful lessons to teach us in the course of learning to better understand our covenant relationship with You. You showed me that You have the power to use people in our lives, even ones who don’t believe in You, to reroute us spiritually and in every other way to bring us closer to you [PR 21: 1]. That is how You used my earthly father, and that is why I am a true believer in Your Son today. You can turn rebellion to faithful obedience. You can bring spiritual life, where there is none. You have told us what is in IS 55: 6-7, “Turn to the Lord and pray to Him, now that He is near. Let the wicked leave their way of life and change their way of thinking. Let them turn to the Lord, our God; He is merciful and quick to forgive.” You have led us to pray for the unsaved. HE 10: 16-17, “’This is the covenant that I will make with them in the days to come,’ says the Lord: ‘I will put My laws in their hearts and write them on their minds.’ And then He says, ‘I will not remember their sins and evil deeds any longer.’” We can’t begin to understand the depth of Your power to bring good on this earth. That is because of our limited human perception when compared to Your omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. You can take someone who is a sinner and oblivious to Your presence and completely turn his life around to obedient faithfulness. IS 55: 8-9, “My thoughts,” says the Lord, “are not like yours, and my ways are different from yours. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are My ways and thoughts above yours.” That is how You were able to give us a prophecy of things to come through Jeremiah. JER 31: 31-34, “The Lord says, ‘The time is coming when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the old covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and led them out of Egypt. Although I was like a husband to them, they did not keep that covenant. The new covenant that I will make with the people of Israel will be this: I will put My laws within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be My people. None of them will have to teach his fellow countryman to know the Lord, because all will know Me, from the least to the greatest. I will forgive their sins and I will no longer remember their wrongs.” That and so much more has always been available to non-believers in the Lord Yeshua, but the tragedy is that so many traditional Jews don’t understand it. Thank You and praise You, Dearest Abba, for being here for us. In Christ’s holy and mighty name, I pray. Amen.
Next week: As my own story unfolds, we will also learn about the different kinds of covenants that exist. We can be encouraged to discover reasons why we should take steps to strengthen our faith and that of others around us. The waning time before the age of grace ends is one motivation. God really is going to make the seemingly fantastic accounts in the book of Revelation come true. As MT 24: 36 tells us, we are not to know the time or the day that Christ will return, but it will happen. God alone knows this, but we are encouraged to get our spiritual houses in order now. PS 103: 17-18, “But for those who honor the Lord, His love lasts forever, and His goodness endures for all generations of those who are true to His covenant and who faithfully obey His commands.” God’s concept of time is not the same as ours. In fact, we are too limited in our perceptions to really understand it. However 2 PET 3: 8-9 gives us what we do need to know. “But do not forget one thing, my dear friends! There is no difference in the Lord’s sight between one day and a thousand years; to Him the two are the same. The Lord is not slow to do what He has promised, as some think. Instead, He is patient with you, because He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants all to turn away from their sins.” Our God loves His human creation deeply and wants all of us to come back to Him for a blissful eternity of close relationship with Him. No one is left out of this opportunity. Praise and thanks be to Him!
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn
JS 24: 15