The Character of Yeshua (Jesus) Pt 1: Understanding Boundaries

Learn from people — the healthiest people emotionally aren’t always the folks who had it easy growing up (it might just seem that way because they haven’t been tested). The healthiest people (or the people who will one day be the healthiest), do two things better than everyone else — they set clear boundaries for themselves and respect the boundaries of others. And they do it without resentment, complaints, and judgment.

This is something I wish I would see more of in online preaching.

People who have been on my facebook wall long enough pretty much know my boundaries. No calendar or name arguments, and I am not willing to argue about the divine nature of Messiah. I am also not willing to have anyone insult or belittle anyone on my wall. And I very rarely allow anyone to post a video or a teaching here unless it is from a very select group of teachers that I have vetted and feel comfortable about. I also really want things to stay on topic. Now, to someone who wants to do what they want where they want. that is going to seem controlling. And it would rightfully be considered controlling IF I held them to the same standards on their walls as well. But I respect the rules everyone else has on their walls, and I abide by them.

Now, people may CHOOSE not to be on my wall, and in fact many choose not to, which is fine. And there are walls of people I really like but I CHOOSE not to go there because I am not willing to interact with people under the guidelines they have set (especially the “anything goes” sort).

Now that right there is a facebook example of what the boundaries in our lives look like. And we all choose whether we are willing to be in relationship with others based on whether we are interested in respecting their boundaries and if they are willing to respect ours. No respect for boundaries means there is no real relationship, because when two people love each other (not necessarily talking familial type love, but friendship love as well), they want to stay within the reasonable boundaries set by the other person.

Reasonable boundaries are about what we consider to be right and wrong. If my husband loves me and respects my boundaries, he will not ask me to do something sexually that I find revolting. If I love and respect my husband, I am not going to cook the types of foods that he hates. If I like that food, I can wait until he has gone hunting or make it for lunch while he is at work, but I won’t put it down on the table in front of him.

So how does this relate to facebook preaching and preaching in general? You know — Yeshua (Jesus) our Master, He would stand up and preach in the synagogues when asked to. He would go to a town and preach in the open, and those who wanted to hear would listen and those who didn’t could walk away without Him following them home. He would preach in the wilderness and people could come to Him. When He was in His Father’s house, the rules would change and He respected His Father’s boundaries and overturned the money changer tables.

Yeshua showed us something important here — you have a right to listen, or not to listen to someone’s preaching or teachings. Like Paul, who probably heard Yeshua preach at some point or another, you have the right to not be ready to understand something yet. No one has the right to force you to listen to a teaching, or to try and push an understanding or revelation on you that you are not able to deal with at this time. The things I say, I don’t force them on anyone. I don’t post them on people’s walls unless they ask. I don’t send out friend requests so that more people can hear what I preach. My Master didn’t force Himself on anyone and so how would I dare to do it?

By all means, preach, and whoever comes will come and whoever runs away, let them run. Don’t slander them, don’t judge them and don’t try to manipulate them into coming back. That would be as pointless as judging and giving fertility advice to Sarah, Rebekkah, Rachel, Hannah and Elizabeth — when the time is right, the ground will be fertile, and who would we be to judge them in the meantime?

The Character of God as Father Pt 14: Letting Bad Things Happen to Good Children

So why do bad things happen to good people?

First, our Messiah said there was none good but God, period.

Matthew 19:17 And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.

Scripture says that we can do good, but to be good requires there be no evil whatsoever, and I don’t measure up to that and neither do you. Evil can be a mixture, like salt or bitter water, but good must be pure or it is no longer good.

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Second, God is in the business of refining us TOWARDS goodness, and to that end, He uses the terrible things that happen to us. Evil circumstance is our ally in refinement, not our enemy. Without the bad things happening TO us, the bad things IN us would never be exposed.
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Think back to Shadrach, Mishach and Abednego (affectionately known as Rack, Shack and Bennie to many of us). Something bad happened to them, well a couple of things really but I am going to focus on one because this was the picture Father just gave me.

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Sin was happening to these three Hebrew men in the midst of Babylon, in the terrible place that God placed them, and through the prophet Jeremiah, told them to settle down in and make themselves at home for a good long while.

Jer 29:4-7 The Lord of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, proclaims to all the exiles I have carried off from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and settle down; cultivate gardens and eat what they produce. Get married and have children; then help your sons find wives and your daughters find husbands in order that they too may have children. Increase in number there so that you don’t dwindle away. Promote the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because your future depends on its welfare.

It was God’s will that Judah be in Babylon, that they experience Babylon, that they be tested and afflicted by Babylon so that they would grow up and be able to be a viable nation again, under Him. And as we see in the writings of Daniel, Esther and others, life in Babylon was fraught with difficulties and dangers — things designed to make Judah long for what they had and did not appreciate.

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So, sin happened to the Nation of Judah exiled in Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar built a golden idol of himself and was forcing all nations to worship it, but the three Hebrew men refused. The King was so incensed that he commanded that the ovens be stoked seven times as hot as usual and that the men be thrown into it.

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Now I want you to look at that fire as you would any temptation to do evil. We all face fires, but this fire was seven times as hot as a normal furnace because this was the severest form of temptation — the temptation to save ones own life through bowing down to false gods. Notice this — that the men who had failed the test were consumed by the fire as they tried to throw Shadrach, Mischach and Abednego in, but Shadrach, Mischach and Abednego survived the fire because they had already been refined by the true fire of temptation and came through like pure gold.

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Note that these men would not have passed the test at all if they were still warm and comfy in Jerusalem, never having been taken captive, or if they had eaten the meat and wine from the King’s table when they were brought to court.

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I don’t think their lives were ever “good” in Babylon. Yes they were given authority and wealth, but they lived in a veritable minefield of corruption and sin just like we do — only worse. No one is trying to force the entire world (at this time, only parts of it) to worship a false god yet — but we are in a position where we are not living in the Land, under the leadership of our King, and we are having to make difficult choices about what we eat, watch, listen to and participate in every single day. The Word says that Shadrach, Mischach and Abednego were trained in all the language and culture of Babylon for three years, and that they did that without compromise. It could not have been easy. But every single bad thing they faced daily was preparing them for a fire stoked up 7 times hotter than normal.

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And in our lives, every bad thing we face is preparing us for a fire stoked 7 times hotter than normal — and it’s coming. And praise YHVH that He is preparing us with all this bad now, the minor things, training us up, starting with the little so that we will have the endurance and faith to withstand the big. Thank Him that He has provided a way for us to know our right hand from our left, good from evil. Be grateful that we endure evil now when it is safer to fail and to learn so that all of a sudden one day we will not go unprepared from absolutely unchallenged comfortable lives to being forced to bow down to Allah, or whoever. I want to be able to look at a knife coming for my throat and to be able to be faithful despite my fears, or have a gun pointed at my head and remain obedient to my King.

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That kind of faith doesn’t just magically come out of thin air, or emerge out of wishful thinking — that kind of faith and faithfulness is borne out of being obedient in the small stuff, and then the greater things — and not being resentful of it but being grateful for one more chance to have the hate, ingratitude, divisiveness, impatience, cruelty, greed, evil, adultery, brutality and lack of control exposed and dealt with.

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This is how my Father loves me best, by making me uncomfortable. Through exposing the evil that I have blinded myself to, by forcing me to look at it so that it can be dealt with and destroyed. My Father is doing everything in His power to make sure I don’t take a look at that hot furnace and bow down to another god just to save my skin. He wants me to have eternal life, it’s important to Him that I do not take the Mark of the Beast — that’s His goal. It isn’t His goal that I be completely sheltered and that my inner sins go undetected. He is a good Father, and He is preparing me for the future He knows that I will have to endure.

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In His eyes, the costs to me in this life are very small, but the dividends in the world to come are eternal. I lack perspective, and so I place my trust in His.

Who am I? My Statement of Faith.

This has been making the rounds on Facebook and other people’s blogs since I first wrote it in December 2013, and it has been altered a lot, so I wanted to post the original here. Okay, I altered it once more for the rewrite of The Bridge: Crossing Over Into the Fullness of Covenant Life so here is the altered alteration:

One of the first questions I asked in this book was “Who am I?” I’d like to expand upon my answer now, with something I wrote a while back –

I am not a Jew, not by modern definitions. I was not born into a Jewish home. I am not trying to be Jewish, and I will never replace the Jews in God’s heart. I don’t find myself overly drawn to Jewish traditions. It is wonderful to be a Jew – but I was not made to be one, not by modern standards.

I was born of the Nations. I was called out from the Nations by a God who designed me to be from the Nations, speaking one of the languages of the Nations, so that I could be one of His multitude of witnesses in full view of the Nations. I make no apologies for having come from the Nations, nor should I! I also refuse to be defined by my having originated from the Nations.

What I am is grafted into the olive tree of Israel; I am not of the Jews and no longer of the Gentiles. I am called to obey the Laws of the people of Israel, the Torah; they are the Laws of my King and as a Citizen of His Kingdom they are my inheritance. I am not called to walk in the ways of the Gentiles (paganism and humanism), or the laws of the Church (denominational doctrines and traditions), or according to the traditions of the elders.

The original Christians were Jews, according to the pre-Roman definition of what it meant to be a Jew – one who worships the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and follows His commandments. That they, as have I, accepted Yeshua as Messiah did not exclude them from the Jewish community at large for the majority of the first 400 years after the life of Yeshua.

I am not trying to be a Jew as defined by the Romans. I am not trying to be a Christian, as defined by the Romans. I am trying to be an Israelite. Because I came from the Nations, I will never look authentically Jewish to most Jews, although to the Gentile eye, it might appear so because I will do some of the things that the Jews do, the way that they do it, but other things I will do in a way that looks utterly foreign to one of my Jewish brothers or sisters. That’s okay – it was that way during those times that predated the legislated Roman Orthodoxy as well.

I look this way because I am a person who was called out of the Nations, by the Master Yeshua the Messiah of Israel, to be a part of His people, obeying His Laws, and waiting for His return. I am doing my best, and it’s going to look weird to people, but that’s where patience and compassion and a desire for unity come into the picture. I have to obey the Torah of YHVH, but the way I obey it doesn’t always have to look exactly the same as the way that you obey it.

Torah is a pursuit and a journey of a child with its Father. As each child is individually unique, so will our walk with the Father be unique. Same rules for all the children, born Jewish or born of the Nations, but at different points along the walk, we will be better and worse than others at figuring out how to live in obedience. It’s absolutely okay for those of us from the Nations to look strange; we weren’t raised like this. It’s a struggle and a learning process. We are wild olive branches receiving nourishment from the root of Israel and learning to thrive. We will fail all the time; start expecting failure and realize that after 3500 years, we are all doing it wrong, but love spurs us on to try anyway. Faith tells us that YHVH greatly rejoices in our pursuit of obedience.

Who am I? A woman greater than I will ever be said it beautifully. I am just “a mother in Israel.”[1] I am what once was perfectly acceptable before Roman Orthodoxy – a Christian Jew.

All of my hopes and prayers for a full life in our Messiah go with you that you may know my joy – the faith once delivered to our fathers. I pray with all my heart, mind and being that this book has served as a bridge across the muddied waters of tradition and time – leading you to the fullness of Yeshua and Torah. Don’t stay on the bridge, whatever you do. Keep moving. Get somewhere.

[1] Judges 5:7

The Parable of the Pile of Garbage

I am retiring some of my old Facebook notes here, this is one of my favorites, dealing with one of the dearest topics to my heart — the emotional healing of the body. This was originally written in May of 2014.

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I want to thank our Heavenly Father for showing me this as I lay in bed this morning.

There once lived a man who had a huge pile of garbage. Most of it he had inherited, but he had also added to it as he grew older, having decided from his early adulthood to dwell on it. Dwelling on the garbage set him above his peers and he could see everything around him, from the perspective of his garbage pile. He became, in his own mind, quite the scholar as his vantage from above allowed him to see everyone else’s garbage clearly.

People resented the rather distasteful perspective that his garbage afforded him, and after a while, the stench of it became even too much for him, and he fell. Now finally at the bottom, he started seeing the garbage for what it was, and he was very ashamed of it, embarrassed that he had dwelt on his garbage for so long.

He now looked around and saw a great many people on their own piles of garbage, but not everyone was dwelling on it — some had erected boards on top of it so that they could get over their garbage. Some had created very nice looking stairs, but others had just quickly slapped together old 2×4’s and nails that allowed them to get over their pile of garbage with varying degrees of success — but the stench was still there, even if they had gotten so used to it that they no longer noticed. And they still had to struggle over it each day, their path still obstructed.

The man looked at his pile of garbage and lamented, it was too big to simply get over, but that didn’t stop people from telling him to do it. After careful consideration, the man grabbed a shovel and approached the pile.

The people who had built overpasses yelled to him, “What are you doing? Just get over it!”

“No,” he replied, “It’s too much, and it stinks of decay and death, I am going to have to deal with this. It wasn’t enough to stop dwelling on it, and it isn’t enough to just get over it, the garbage has to get dealt with or it will always be here.”

He took his shovel and started digging into the pile. The first few shovels full were only good for the fire pit he had erected, but as the process went on, sometimes he would see, in the debris, precious things, and in the ashes, glimmers of things that survived the fire. Here was the gold watch the kind woman down the street had given him before she died, but he had forgotten her kindness in the midst of the garbage. He slipped it into his pocket, feeling lighter as the memories of her life infused him with the sort of feelings he had forgotten existed.

Sometimes his shovel would bring down an avalanche that would threaten to consume him, sometimes he could barely get his shovel into the pile, sometimes he rested from his labors, sometimes he walked away for a season. But day by day, year after year, the garbage pile got smaller.

The people who were still dwelling on their piles and still getting over theirs, would call out to him every once in a while, appalled by the dirty work he was undertaking, but even they could see that his garbage was getting dealt with, especially as his pile started to grow smaller than theirs.

In the end, the man was left with a pile of ashes, a pocket full of treasures, no garbage, and a shovel he could now expertly use to help the people around him who were tired of “dwelling on it,” weary of settling for “getting over it” and who realized that “letting it go” just left a pile of garbage ignored, for other people to deal with.

And so he washed his hands and shouted, “Who wants to get rid of their garbage?”

This, beloveds, is the difference between drowning, surviving, and thriving. This is about being an overcomer.

The Character of God as Father Pt 13: Peter, Paul, and protecting the younger siblings

Galatians 2

11 But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.

12 For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision.

13 And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation.

This passage can be difficult to understand if you don’t know about the traditions of the elders that Yeshua (Jesus) spoke against. I’m going to just give a quick overview of what was happening here that was rabbinical instead of biblical.

Biblically, all believers have been on equal standing since Mt Sinai. In fact, there has only ever been one difference — that being that the eating of the Passover Lamb is forbidden to the uncircumcised, but other than that, all things are equal and always have been. But the traditions of the elders, the Pharisaic laws, changed all that and made a wall of separation between those born Jewish and those born Gentile. Belief in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was not enough, keeping the commandments was not enough — because one was still considered “common” or “unclean” until they had formally converted to Judaism according to their traditions. This was also the heart of the matter before the Acts 15 council, and the whole point of Peter’s vision — the belief that, unless one converted to Judaism according to the traditions of the elders (now recorded in the Talmud), they were unclean and anyone who touched them or ate with them or ate what they touched would be unclean as well. It was accepted to the point that ten years after the resurrection of Messiah, his own followers weren’t questioning it!

And might I say that to call someone unclean whom God has made clean is to question God Himself, as well as the scriptures? So this tradition had to go — or else the gospel would have never traveled beyond the Jews into the nations.

Acts 10:28 And he said unto them, Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation; but God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean.

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But in Galatia, we have a problem — Peter, who was the very man the revelation that believers are not unclean or common was given to, backtracked and refused to eat in the homes of the former Gentiles who were now joined to Israel. Nor were the former Gentiles allowed to eat in the homes of Jewish believers in Messiah! There was now a separation — and who was it at the hands of? The mature, the older siblings. Not Jews who denied Messiah, but Jews who received Him!

Sidebar: This is the antithesis of the kind of family that God is building. In a good family, the older help care for the younger, the older serve the younger — because it is the younger and weaker who need served, not the eldest! The older teach the younger, patiently. The healthy aid the sick. The older are never permitted to beat up, or discourage, the little ones. The older siblings do not lord authority over the younger, but instead serve as faithful representatives and extensions of parental authority and never step beyond it, or assume that authority for themselves.

So we had the older siblings (1) abusing the younger and (2) treating them as though they are not even family at all. And the worst part is that Peter and Barnabus were in the thick of it — anything tolerated by Peter was going to be accepted as Messianic halakah — the doctrines that the Messianic believers would live by. Someone had to step in to avert the destruction of the family that God was trying to build through Yeshua. Fortunately, Paul stepped in — even though it would seem he was the only one who did.

He let Peter have it, because the family was at stake and the character of God the Father and Yeshua were being misrepresented. The Torah was being misrepresented. Their actions were calling people unclean who were clean! Paul did what Peter should have done. Peter knew the truth better than anyone that Gentiles were being brought in as full citizens of Israel WITHOUT becoming Jews, and be subject to the same King, the same laws, the same blessings, the same standing.

In the Body today, we see an upside down system. Leaders being protected as they misrepresent the character of our King, and the youngest and weakest being trampled underfoot. No true family works like this, even most bad families don’t work like this. Because we are doing this, because we are tolerating and promoting this, we aren’t being real brothers and sisters, we aren’t being real children of the King. It really reminds me of the cutthroat atmosphere of High School, where really, no one loves each other and everyone wants to be associated with the in-crowd — no matter what the cost to their souls or to their fellow human beings.

What would Paul say if he could see us? I don’t think he’d be nearly as concerned about the Sabbath as he would be with the obvious fact that we obviously don’t love each other as family. Perhaps if we were more focused on being a family and not turning a blind eye to those who are not acting like big brothers and sisters just because they are interesting, we would shine and lead many to righteousness. All these little ones need care, they need a real family, and we need to start working on providing them with something better than the world can offer.

Family is about the older caring for the younger, the strong protecting the weak, the wise instructing the unlearned. It is about being joined with like kind and producing the kind of fruit that speaks well of the Patriarch. Anything that does not meet these criteria, by definition, does not qualify as a healthy family.