The Best Self-Help Book in the World

Have you wandered about the Barnes and Noble store lately? Once you get past the Starbucks (only place in the world you can get a good $2.00 cup of coffee for $7.00) and all the kids sitting in the aisles reading, you will see the Self-Help section. You can find “whatever” for Dummies books, DIY stuff, and any number of “How to be a Better You” books. How to overcome grief, how to have grief, how to overcome weight, how to accept yourself and your weight …whatever is wrong with you, or (more correctly) whatever you think is wrong with you, you can find a book written to tell you how to feel better about it.

There is another section, not the self-help section, but in there you will find the best self-help book in the world. Have you figured it out yet?

After all, what does a self-help book do?  It identifies an issue that people have with themselves; you can’t get a book published if there aren’t enough people interested in reading it, so it has to appeal to a number of folks. It identifies the issue, gives you a lot of third-party references to how it has affected other’s lives, and then it goes on to dissect the problem, break it down to it’s basic components, and, finally, tell you how, each piece at a time, to overcome or deal with the separate issues. In the end, the third party stories of success bombard you with how they have overcome their big problem, and you can, too.

Whoopie! For the most part, all the self-help books I have seen are ways for someone else to make money off your problems. They don’t really help. They are like the motivational speakers of the ’80’s who made a fortune telling us why we are OK, how to succeed in selling real estate, or getting better jobs, whatever, and everyone bought their tapes and books. They approached their problems eager to overcome them, they followed the program diligently for about 3 or 4 days, then almost every single one of them quit. Why? I think it’s because the basic problem with a self-help book is that the only one you really can depend on to help you is you, the one who can’t overcome the problem.

There is a story in the best self-help book I am talking about that tells a similar tale. A man was sowing his fields and the seeds fell everywhere. Some seeds took hold and grew fast but when the wind blew and the rains came the roots were too weak to sustain the plants. Others fell in good soil and grew roots but weeds sprung up all around the plants and choked them.

I guess you have identified the book I am talking about by now. Most people think of the Bible as the word of God telling us about how we all came to be, sin and salvation and what will happen in the future. Yes, it does all that. But it does more than that.

What really is the best “self-help” we can have?  Learn to deal with grief? Reduce our weight? Get in better physical condition? Deal with anger?  All of these are good things to do, but how long will they last? At best, only our lifetime. Then what?

I think the best self-help book in the world is one that doesn’t just address issues while I am alive, but carries me into the future, after I am dead, all the way to the end of Eternity!  There isn’t going to be a self-help book in the Self-Help section of B&N that will do that for you. But you will find one in the Religion Section.

I say the Bible is the best self-help book in the world because it does what I want a self-help book to do: make me better now and make that last forever. I never felt good about myself before I knew God, mainly because I knew I was doing wrong but had no real idea of how to control myself. And I had no real motivation, other than to get in trouble less. Religion kept getting in the way of my understanding who God is, who my Messiah is, and how I fit in to their plan.

I now understanding that the book is one book, Exodus through Revelations; that Old and New are not different because both are about God, His people, His salvation through a Messiah, and the Messiah’s life; how he taught us what God has been saying all along and how the Ruach (Spirit) can guide me and help me. This book is the one that showed me a real, effective and doable way to be a better me. I still had to work at it, but with the Bible as my self-help book I am not doing this alone. With God guiding me through His Ruach, I am never alone, and the one helping me is the only one in the universe that can.

The Bible teaches us that what we do is because that’s who we are- sinners. Overall, whether you believe you are too fat or too skinny, if you have anger management issues or an inability to deal with stress, bad at math or good at lying…whatever “problems” you think you have, the Bible teaches us that we are sinners and we all will sin. It also teaches us that without God we have no chance of overcoming the sinfulness of our nature.

How is telling us we have no way to overcome what we want to overcome helpful? Simple: it puts us all on the same level. One of the ways to deal with feeling bad about yourself is to realize you’re not alone. Everyone who lives, who ever lived, and who hasn’t even been born yet is in the same boat- we are born into sin and have sinful natures. You’re no better than I am and I am no worse than you are.

The Bible then tells us how to deal with the sin in our lives: simply let go of it. Give it to God. But you first need to have the relationship with God that will let you do that. And that is the ultimate answer to self-help: don’t do it yourself, let God do it for you. Of course, you are part of the process, in that you need to do a couple of things first: one is to accept you’re a sinner, two is accept God as your God and Yeshua (Jesus) as your Messiah, and three is ask for forgiveness; finally, ask for and accept the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) which will guide you and help you to do T’Shuvah (turning from your sin) and then start walking the path.

That’s it, in a nutshell. Form your relationship with God, and let His Spirit guide you along the path to being a better you. As I have said in the past, I am not a different me since I have been saved, but I am becoming a better me. It is a life-long journey, and knowing that it won’t happen overnight, that there is no easy way out, but that I am not going it alone is what makes it possible to get done, and to last.

The best part is because it is a journey with God as my guide, since He is eternal, my journey will become an eternal one. With any old self-help book the best I can hope for is to “improve” myself until I die; but, with the Bible, I will have what I want for myself for all eternity. I will never, ever, ever be sad or hurt or upset or depressed or feel bad about myself again, and for all time.

Spoiler alert: I will still have issues while I am in this world and in this body, with this nature. That will never change. That’s what the self-help books don’t tell you- you will always be yourself. You see, their sales pitch is that the writer can make you a different person. Bull!!  Let’s get real, people: you are a sinner, you want to sin, you enjoy sin, and sin is the natural and comfortable choice for you.

That’s why the Bible is the best. It tells you like it really is, who and what you are (in fact, what we all are ) and how to overcome it. You can’t change what you are, but you can learn to overcome it. The choice is simple: do I want some human being to tell me, totally on my own, what to do to overcome something,  or do I want the God of Heaven, Creator of the Universe, Lord of Lords and King of Kings to help me overcome it? Gee, let me think about that one. DUH! 

Think about this: you can get a self-help book and deal with your issue during your lifetime, with the only help being yourself and some other person who you will never even talk to, then face God with nothing but your book in hand and the author (possibly) already going to the down staircase.  Or, accept God and Yeshua, receive the Holy Spirit then deal with your issue during your lifetime with the help of God Almighty, who is always there to guide and support you through the indwelling Ruach, and when you face God you will have Yeshua standing next to you saying, “This one is mine, Father.”  Then be blessed and joyful throughout all Eternity. Guaranteed.

Nu? Which seems better to you?

Two Taboos Too Many

What are the two taboos? Never discuss religion and politics, right? That’s what we are told, and it’s good advice.

The reason I say they are two too many is because when God created everything, His original plan was that there would be only one, non-taboo discussion: Him. The governmental system in the garden was God, the religion was God. That was it. A perfectly run, perfect example of Theocracy.

The de-evolution of this perfect government started with the invention of other gods (man-made, of course) which is what religion has become.

God has no religion. Gee…where have I heard that before?

Then the gods were not enough, so the system split into gods (religion) and human rulership, aka kings (politics), which further devolved the governmental system into the two taboos of today.

We will eventually get back to the perfect Theocracy that God intended, but that will have to wait until Yeshua returns and the Apocalypse is completed.

As the world falls deeper and deeper into revolution, disruption and civil disorder, helped by human intervention with the destruction of our ecosystem and habitats, I can only smile. Not that I enjoy the tsouris, but that I look forward to His return. And I know that won’t happen until things look their worst.

I hope anyone reading this, who is not absolutely sure where you will be after God drops the other shoe, will read some of the older entries in this ministry blog. Go to Category and (especially if you are Jewish) read some of the Jews and Jesus posts, then the Messianic 101 posts. I think that should give you some level of comfort when thinking about who Yeshua, the real Messiah of Israel is (vice that Aryan-looking guy with the blond hair, blue eyes and whose kingdom has been hell-bent on killing the Jews), and help you to understand how things got so separated.

I recommend that we stick to the two taboos, for the time being, and wait until they are one again. Then we won’t need to talk about politics and religion because, well…they won’t exist anymore. It will be just God.

I don’t know about you, but I can hardly wait.

Reconcile Yourself to Reconciliation

My son is 22 years old today. The last time he talked to me was about a year ago, and then it was to tell me all about how lousy a father I am, I need to grow up, yadda-yadda-yadda. I got this in an email, so I replied and said the things I had forced myself not to say for the prior 21 years, about the truth regarding the marriage break-up with his mother, what I thought about how she had treated Bryce and Alexandra (his older sister, who stopped talking to me years ago because I didn’t give her money for school books- it’s a long story), and other things that I had intended to bring up at some point when he was mature enough to hear it. As it ended up, I figured that was my last chance to say anything, I told him those things, not to “get back” but in the hope that one day he might remember, understand and forgive so we could reconcile.

This is what God has done for us through His Prophets (not that I place myself in God’s position, just to use as an example). All the things I said to Bryce were meant to “wake him up”, to get his mind focused to see what he was doing to himself, and what had been done to him. Just as too often we are too late to realize that we have been fooled, or used by people, I wanted him to see things that he had blinded himself to. This is what God tried to do, what He did with the Prophets, and what Yeshua did. Yeshua, however, talked in parables, and I don’t know why that was necessary. Maybe because the Prophets were straight forward and that did no good; perhaps by talking in parables, the people (stupid as we are) would remember the story even if they didn’t first get the meaning, then eventually it would become clear to them as they retold the story, over and over.

I sent Bryce a birthday card, as I did his sister on her birthday in June. Inside I asked each of them if they are ready to reconcile. I miss them terribly, and I am still hurt and upset that their mother did so much to turn them against not just me, but their grandparents and aunts, too. Yet, I pray for her. In fact, I have taught myself to do that (see my Drash about forgiveness- it’s in here, somewhere) because I don’t know anyone more in need of the love of God than her. I also pray for Alex and Bryce, that they would be reconciled to God, and (I believe) once they are, the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) will turn their hearts to reconciling with me and Donna, their step-Mom.

Human relationships are, at the same time, wonderful and a pain in the you-know-where. We want to have people act the way we want them to, and they don’t. In fact, they shouldn’t- that’s what makes the relationship so wonderful. It’s the differences, as the saying goes, that makes the relationship fun. Of course, we need to be on the same page on the important things. Yeshua said the most important commandments were to love God and each other; not at the expense of all the other laws and regulations, but because doing that will make everything else fall into place. Same with human relationships- you can have opposites attract, but there needs to be a balance, and a common foundation, ethically, morally and spiritually. By loving God we learn forgiveness, and that will keep our relationships strong and rewarding.

Reconciliation is at the core of relationships, whether with God or each other. The main difference is that humans don’t always want to reconcile. I think in some ways they feel it diminishes them, sort of like “giving in” if they want to forgive and rebuild a relationship. How stupid! It takes strength and compassion, not weakness, to be able to reconcile. It takes deep devotion and God-like love to forgive. Those who don’t forgive or want to reconcile will end up alone, lonely and (probably) mad at the world for being so cruel, when all the world is doing is reflecting back what they are to themselves.

The Torah is supposed to be a mirror that we see ourselves in. When I look at Torah, I see a faint, cloudy image: I wouldn’t even see that if not for the Ruach that has helped me to be more like Torah than myself.  The more I die to self, the more the reflection will clear up. The way to help that image become more and more clear is not just be willing to reconcile with people, but actively trying to.

That is the major difference between reconciling with people and reconciling with God- people aren’t always willing to reconcile, but God is always there for you. I believe even if that old imp, Ha Satan ,wanted to truly reconcile with God that God would be overjoyed at his return. Yeshua said that if a brother (or sister, for that matter) asks for forgiveness, we shouldn’t forgive 7 times, but 70 times  7 times. In other words, always.

Are you ready to reconcile? It doesn’t matter if the other person does or not- that is between them and God. As for you, try to reconcile. At Rosh HaShannah a tradition is to go to those you may have upset or sinned against and ask forgiveness, i.e. reconcile with them. It’s hard- it isn’t easy to open yourself to someone and lay your heart on your sleeve. But it has to be done. If it seems really hard, or you are thinking, “Right. You reconcile- the creeps in my life can go to blazes and I will not reconcile with them because they don’t deserve my forgiveness!” you should read Matthew, Chapter 6. Look at what Yeshua says right after He gives us the template for prayer.  Reconciliation isn’t something that you have a choice about, and when you reconcile with God, it is between you and Him. Even when you reconcile with someone else, it is still about you and God. You have a win-win, even if the person doesn’t want to reconcile, because forgiveness is what God gives us and demands that we share with others. Read the parable about the Master who forgives his servant a large debt, but the servant doesn’t forgive a small debt. Scary stuff.

When you go to reconcile with someone, even if you fail because the other party refuses, you are right with God.

I would love it if I could reconcile with my children. I am willing to ask forgiveness, to open a new relationship, but still there are still rules. I am not saying that anything goes, whatever they say, Dad is wrong and will never try to teach them, or refute things with them, or get angry, or ever try to change them. They are too immature and too blind, after years of wrong conditioning, to really know what is best for them.  I mean, really- I’m the Dad. Being a parent is not being a friend, and parents have an obligation to try to teach their children how to get along in the world and protect themselves from harm: spiritual, emotional and physical.  They don’t have to listen, either. They do need to make their own mistakes. It’s a constant battle- parents try to teach the hard lessons they have learned, and children refuse to listen so they end up learning the lessons the same way their parents did- the hard way. Then they have children and the cycle starts, all over again. All I want to do is have them in my life, and to be in theirs. The Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best and My Three Sons innocence of the 60’s TV family life is not what anyone has or ever had. We all come from dysfunctional families. If you think about it, since we are, ourselves, a dysfunctional creature, it only makes sense when you put a bunch of us together that our relationship will be as we are…dysfunctional. I know that we will fight, will have differences of opinions, and will get on each other’s nerves. That’s how humans are, for Pete’s sake! That’s no reason to disown each other.

If you really want to have a right relationship with God, you need to have right relationships with people. You can’t love God and hate people (although I often feel like the less people in the world, the better…and I have a list of names to start with); if you really love Him, you have to obey Him (that’s what Yeshua said) and that brings us back to the two most important commandments.

Please!- reconcile yourself to reconcile with others; I guarantee your life will be so much better when you do.

A Class on Covenants

You will notice as you follow my rantings (please follow this blog if you like what you are reading, and buy my book, too!) that I do not use the terms Old Testament and New Testament.

I call them covenants, and there is just the one book, to me, and should be only one book to anyone who is “Born Again”, no matter what religious affiliation you care to say you belong to.

So, why call it a covenant?

Mirriam Webster defines a covenant as:

“A written agreement or promise usually under seal between two or more parties especially for the performance of some action.”

A testament (also from Mirriam Webster) is defined as:

“An act by which a person determines the disposition of his or her property after death.”

The covenants God made with us can be defined in this way:

A legal contract with blessings for the fulfillment of it’s terms and consequences (curses) for failure to comply with the conditions and stipulations contained therein. In all these covenants we speak about a contract between God and man. All of the covenants are based (ultimately) on God’s grace.

Since God is alive, and we are to keep our part of the conditions while we are alive, it is evident God made covenants, not testaments. This is why I call them covenants. God gave us laws, regulations, commandments, mitzvot, etc. to perform while we are alive. Once we are dead, there is nothing we can do except face the consequences of what we did while we were alive.

Did you know that there are 5 covenants God made with us?  The list below is condensed from a Messianics 101 Class I used to teach when I lived in Philadelphia.  I hope you find this information interesting and useful as you learn more about God and as your relationship with Him matures.

First Covenant was with Noah (Noahic Covenant) after the Flood (Genesis 9). This covenant of faith stated God would not destroy the Earth by flood (catch that- not by flood, but that doesn’t mean He can’t do it some other way) and has supplemental laws, which are:

no idolatry; don’t take the Lord’s name in vain; respect property of others; respect life; chastity; blood is sacred; do not steal.

 

The Second covenant is the Abrahamic Covenant (Genesis 12). This covenant of faith included:

the promise of the land; specified lines of blessing (to Abraham in Gen. 15:7-8, to Yitzchak in Gen. 26: 3-6, and to Jacov in Gen. 35:12); there was also a sign to mark the covenant (Gen. 17:9-14) and God was to bless all people through this covenant.

 

The Third is the Mosaic covenant (Ex. 31: 16-17). This is a covenant of obedience. The Ten Commandments are part of this covenant, within the total of 613 laws in Torah. Some main elements are:

this is the first covenant of obedience; blood is used for atonement; the Shabbat is a sign of the covenant.

 

Number four is the Davidic Covenant, found in 2 Samuel 7 and 1 Chronicles 17. This covenant of faith promised:

David would have a son on the throne of Israel forever (Messianic prophecy attesting to the lineage of Yeshua) and the kingly line of the children of Israel would be through Judah’s lineage.

 

Finally, the fifth and last covenant is what we refer to as the New Covenant (B’rit Chadasha), found in Jeremiah 31:31 (that’s right- it’s not in the New Covenant book. That’s because there is nothing “new” in the New Covenant- it is a Jewish book that completes the story of the Messianic prophecies in the Old Covenant.) This is a covenant of faith that promises:

forgiveness of sin that allows for eternal salvation; it is made with the physical seed of Abraham, and is available to all the adopted children of Abraham (we can pretty much call them the ones who accept Yeshua/ Jesus as their Messiah); it changed the mechanism of atonement, but not the means: there is still need of  a blood sacrifice for sin, but instead of killing animals the blood of the one, true Messiah serves for all.

 

I hope you liked this little lesson. If you did, please “Like” this post and make comments. Also, as I asked above, please follow along. There is a link at the bottom right of this page where you can follow. Every time I make a new post (which is usually Mon-Fri) you will get an email notification. Word Press promises not to sell your email address.

Thank you, and Bless you.

Politics and Religion Should Mix

Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem (Shalu Shalom Yerushalayim). I hear this, we pray it, it’s written on my Tallit. It is even commanded for us to do, is it not? Yet, in the Acharit HaYamim (The End Days) won’t the whole world come against Jerusalem? Isn’t nearly 2/3 of the Earth (and people) to be destroyed, and a new Earth and a new Jerusalem to be created?

When we pray for Yeshua to return, isn’t that going to happen only at the very end of the near total destruction of the World and of the “religious” center of the Universe (that’s Jerusalem, by the way), according to Revelations?

The Bill of Rights guarantees that there will be a separation of church and state. That is a fundamental right of all Americans. But is that a fundamental right of all believers? It shouldn’t be, should it? After all, isn’t the way God wants us to live politically called a Theocracy? A God-led government? The Torah is our Constitution, it is our Penal Code, it is our Miss Manners, it is our Ketubah (Marriage Certificate) with God: it is all we need.

When the Israelites wanted a King, didn’t Shmuel (Samuel) warn them? Wasn’t having a separation between God and Government, in fact, a rejection of God’s authority in our everyday lives?

When people ask me if I am going to a Pro-Israel meeting or event, I usually refuse. Why? Am I against Israel? Certainly not! I don’t do politics, I do God.

You probably won’t agree, but because I want Yeshua to return as soon as possible, to me praying for the (immediate) peace of Jerusalem is almost tantamount to telling Yeshua to stay away. I know…I know…how can I think that? We are commanded to pray for the peace  of Jerusalem. Well, I do. But not for now. I want Jerusalem to have the ultimate peace, an eternal peace, and that will only come with the End Times. Right now what we should expect is anything but peace.

If you believe, as I do, that we are in prophetic times, that we are getting nearer to the End Times (of course, that’s an oxymoron- since the End Times are in the future, by definition every day brings us closer) I look forward to the return of Messiah. I don’t look forward to what that means to us- tribulation, war, death and destruction on a scale never before witnessed by human beings. Not a pretty picture. Maybe that’s one of the reasons Shaul (Paul) told us to keep our eyes on the prize, i.e, the final victory.

When you play golf and you come to a hole with sand traps and water all over it, the methodology is simple- don’t look at where you don’t want to go, keep focused only on the areas you want to hit to. If you look at the sand trap, you will be in it. Let’s look to the end of the end, the new Earth and the new Jerusalem.

I can’t tell you what to do when it comes to praying for Jerusalem or attending political events. If you want to be told, get religion. They’re good at telling you what to do, how to do it, and what will happen if you don’t. This blog/ministry won’t tell you anything but what I see in God’s Word, and to make up your own mind. I don’t want to put myself on a level with the Prophets , but I feel the same responsibility that they had: God told them if they spoke His words they were innocent of the blood that will be shed for disobedience, but if they didn’t they would have the sinners blood on their head. I want you to know what God says, but it is still me interpreting God’s word for you. And I’m a sinner and a bit of a Shlemiel, so you can’t take what I say as an a priori truth.

You need to make up your own minds because, ultimately, it will be you before God and He will hold you responsible for what you do and don’t do. There are no excuses, and what you do or don’t do is your decision. He gave us all Free Will, and he gave us His word to read and , by reading, to understand Him and what He wants from us. Which means we are accountable for ourselves, and it’s no one else’s fault.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, by all means, if for no other reason than we are told to do so. Which “peace” you pray for, the peace made by men (how long has that ever lasted?) or the peace that God promises, is up to you.