Tag: the lord

Don’t fence me in

Leave a comment

Anyone remember that old song? It was actually the title song to a Roy Rogers movie from the 1940’s.

Basically, it tells of a man who doesn’t want to be restricted, a man who wants to be free to choose what he does and where he does it.

God is like that, too: He doesn’t want to be restricted into doing or being what others think He should be. Yet, we do that to Him- especially within many religions. Some teach only of His loving kindness and the salvation He provides, and that He is all about love. That’s true, God is love, but He is also justice, and He is demanding, and He is definitely willing and able to punish. If God will not punish the sinner as He promises He will, then His promises aren’t trustworthy. Yet, many religions don’t even like to mention that. They work on your emotional need to be unconditionally loved, and ignore the other aspects of God and (especially) His requirements for worship. Basically, they only want you to know the New Covenant writings and teach the Old Covenant is really just for the Jews.

Wrong!

Let’s be clear about what I mean when I say “punishing the sinner”: we all are sinners, who are sinful (meaning it is our nature to sin), but when those who truly fear the Lord sin, they are rueful and repentant. That is not the sinner who will be punished. A rueful and repentant person, one who goes before God with a contrite and humble heart and asks forgiveness, will be forgiven.

The sinners who will be punished are the ones who are unrepentant, the ones who reject God, willfully and obstinately, and who do whatever they want to do and justify doing so using worldly ethics and morals.

It seems funny using the words “ethic” and “moral” when talking about the world, doesn’t it?

So, sinners who will be punished are the ones who do what they want to do and reject God.

But, what is “rejecting God”? Is it simply to say He doesn’t exist? Is it to admit He may exist? Is it to worship Him and say you are a “Believer” but only do what you want to do and make excuses to ignore what you don’t want to do?

WHOAAAAHH, NELLIE!!!  Steve: are you implying that a Believer, someone who has accepted Messiah Yeshua as their personal Savior and fears the Lord, who goes to church every Sunday and tithes, and makes cakes for the fund-raisers, and doesn’t cheat at Bingo….are you saying this person, this godly, wonderful, angelic representative of the Almighty is rejecting God because he or she doesn’t do everything God says we should?

In a word…yes.

And to add to that, I also confess that I am one of those people. I don’t wear Tzit-Tzit, even though it is a commandment (Number 15: 38-40);often on Saturday I will do work around the house and I will spend money shopping or getting a haircut, and I also do other things I shouldn’t regarding speech and jokes and ….well, I could go on. I am sure everyone reading this could go on, as well. So I am not preaching to you as much as I am preaching to myself.

We are all guilty of not performing all the commandments God gave us, and that is why He needed to provide Yeshua (Jesus) as our “Get out of Hell” card so that when we do T’shuvah (repentance) and try (note I am saying try) to do better, I believe that God, in His mercy and compassion, sees our attempts to do better and our heartfelt desire to obey Him, as the next best thing to actually living a sinless life.

As I often say: we can never be sinless, but we can always sin less.

But what about religions that teach you don’t have to do what God commands? Religions that teach Torah is just for Jews and Christians have the Blood of Christ, and that is all they need. What about a religion that tells you you have to be totally abstinent if you want to be a spiritual leader? What about a religion that teaches you drinking and dancing are sins? What about a religion that tells you it is a sin to eat a cheeseburger? What about a religion that teaches you the Jewish people have been rejected forever by God and that Christians are now the Chosen people of God (Replacement Theology)?

Aren’t they rejecting God when they reject what He has said?  God gave the Torah to the Jewish people not for them exclusively, but for them to learn to live the way God wants us to live, and then teach the rest of the world by example. The fact that (in Acts) the Jewish Elders were amazed when God’s Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) came to the Gentiles shows that they didn’t understand this, either. God gave the Torah to the Jews so that they could bring it to the world.

Which means that Torah is what God wants us to do, how He wants us to worship Him, and to teach us all that we need to know.

God has no religion. He has Torah, and His Torah took on flesh and lived among us to demonstrate what the Jewish people were supposed to be demonstrating all along. Jesus showed the Jews in Israel how to live as a God-fearing person. Not as a “Jew”, but as someone who wants to obey the Lord. He was obedient to the Father, and (as John describes Him in the Gospel of John), Jesus was the Word of God become flesh.

Well, what was the “Word of God” in the First Century? It was the Torah.

If you are being taught that the Torah is for Jews and you, as a Gentile, are not subject to it, you had better start stocking up on Coppertone. I mean it- you need to read the bible, you need to read my book, and you need to make up your own mind about what God wants you to do.

I can help here: God wants you to do as He says you should and the world wants you to do what it says you should. In the end, there will be a fight between God and the world (Satan’s realm), and only one wins.

I’ll give you three guesses to tell me who wins, and your first two guesses don’t count.

I would love to be able to do everything in the Torah that God tells us to do, but I can’t. And, yes, I confess (and ask forgiveness) for the things I am too weak to control and discipline myself to do, such as wearing Tzit-tzit and observing the Shabbat fully. In fact, today I am going to work and it is the first day of Sukkot- I should be celebrating a Sabbath rest. But I’m not doing that, by choice. I have no vacation or personal days left, and already have taken two days without pay for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

I am sinning, I am rejecting God, and I know I am doing it. And, I really feel lower than whale poop. I pray God will forgive me, and strengthen me to do better in the future.

That’s the difference between who I was and who I am: I used to be a sinner that rationalized my sins, and now I am a sinner who regrets my sins.

Please read the word of God and let Him guide your understanding: don’t be lazy and just take what you are told as God’s truth. Religion is not for God, it is for itself, and teaches you what it wants you to do. Not all the time, and not all the commandments, but all religions teach something that is against what God wants. And when you face Him at Judgment Day, He will hold you responsible for what you have done or failed to do, and the reasons for it will be yours. That old cop-out, “But that’s what they told me to do!” won’t hold water with the Big Guy upstairs.

So, do what you do, don’t do what you don’t do, but (at least) know what the rules are before you decide what choice to make.

Because it is your choice to make, and you will be held accountable for making it. .

Get out of the way

Leave a comment

We are usually all about ourselves. There are many more people in the world, at least in my experience, that would prefer to talk about their life and their ideas than listen to what others have to say.

I include myself in the talkers group.

When God speaks to Moses, and instructs him what to tell the people, it is all about Himself, too, but not the same as with us. We want people to acknowledge us, we want to feel liked, respected and wanted. We like the “ego rush” we get when we are authorized to tell someone what to do. But with God it’s not the same. He doesn’t need our approval, He is no respecter of persons, He doesn’t need to feel important, and He tells us that He is God, over and over, not to please Himself but to remind us of who He is.

We are created a little bit above the angels- we are the sons and daughters of the Almighty, but we are not Him! We are about ourselves for selfish reasons, and God is about Himself for selfless reasons- He reminds us of who He is so we will listen; He reminds us of who He is so we will pay attention; He reminds us of who He is so we can live!

When we talk about what we want, it is to please ourselves; when God tells us what He wants, it is to save our souls!

I don’t have enough room to quote everywhere God tells us that He is the Lord, and you don’t have enough time to read it all. The phrase “I am the Lord” and similar words are used throughout the Tanakh, mostly in the Torah (especially throughout Leviticus) and throughout the writings of the Prophets (Nevi’im).  In Leviticus it seems to follow almost every commandment and regulation, which makes sense- the Lord is telling us what to do and reinforcing just who it is telling us.

It is easier to make friends by listening than by talking. When I was in sales, the hardest thing for me to do was to listen, but a really good salesperson knows that when you listen to the customer they will tell you how to close them. You can’t really talk them into a sale, at least, not one that will “stick”. You need to listen in order to know what to say that will close them. The same thing is true when talking to people about God and trying to minister to them- we need to listen to people and tell all about God, not about ourselves.

Of course, you can talk about how in your life obeying God and accepting His Messiah has helped you, but when talking about how God can help them, you need to get out of the way. You need to be about God, how the peace you feel comes from His Ruach, about how the hope you have is from His promises, which historically have never failed to come about. And you need to ask the person about their needs.

Ask what is important to them, ask if they feel there is more to life, ask if they care about others, ask if they are certain of their beliefs. Ask, ask, ask…that is the only way you will learn about them.

And if you ask, they will tell. When they tell, you will know, and when you know (what is important to them) you will be able to show them how God can make what they really want to happen in their life come about.

If you want to bring people to God, get out of the way. When we talk all about what God has done for us the people we are talking to don’t care a rats’ butt about what God has done for us- but they do care about what God can do for them.  Tell them briefly how God has done something wonderful in your life (and I mean, briefly), then ask them if this is something they would like to have.

Ministry is sales, and what we “sell”  is salvation. God is the manufacturer, Yeshua is the delivery system, and we are the field reps. To get people to buy they have to want what the product can give them.

I was a very successful salesman when I was in that business because I wore a rubber band around my wrist. It was suggested to me by an excellent teacher- he said every time I feel like saying something I think is important I should pull on the rubber band and let it go. Ouch! The pain was to condition me to listen and not talk. Nowadays I don’t sell for a living, and I have upgraded the rubber band to a gold bracelet, but it is still on my wrist- I never take it off because it is a reminder to shut up and listen.

It is all about God and them, not about God and you. When you talk about God, keep focused on what they want and how God can make it happen.

 

 

Who Really Said That?

Leave a comment

I was reading the “Today in History” section of the paper the other day and it said that in 1858 Abraham Lincoln, during his run for the Senate, said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

What got me was that I am absolutely convinced that there are many, many people reading that who think Honest Abe coined that phrase, himself. They have no idea that Yeshua said it, or that it is from the Bible.

That made me think (yes, it hurt, but sometimes I can) about how many other statements or sayings that are biblical, but which people do not know came from the bible, or (even worse) how many things do people think are biblical that are not?

How many times do we hear people say, “The bible says….” and then say something that isn’t in the bible? For instance, “God helps those that help themselves.” I hate that saying because it leads people to the wrong conclusion- it leads them to think that God wants us, first and foremost, to look to our own power for resolving our problems. And, if we do, then He will step in and help us.

WRONG!!!!  We need to look to God first: first, foremost, only and always before we do anything on our own. God is the one to count on, and God is the only one who can overcome. Yeshua said that for man it is impossible, but with God anything is possible. If what we need is possible only with God, then why even start on our own?

There is one time that you can say, to a degree, we need to start on our own- that would be regarding faith. When it comes to having faith, I believe that is something we need to show before we can have it fully justified. If we have faith only after some miraculous event, then we are reacting instead of acting. Faith is, to me, more than a word, more than a noun- it is an action verb! We say to “have faith” but it really should be (if you ask me) to “show faith.”

God will be faithful to support our faithfulness. We need to step out in faith, then He will walk beside us and guide us.

But when it comes to anything else, pray first, go to God first, and after you have first asked Him to guide and help you, then walk out in strength; fearlessly, faithfully knowing that God is with you.

We all need to know the bible- what it really says, and just as importantly, what it doesn’t say. We need to be able to right the wrong that people say which can only lead them to Sheol, and not to salvation.

How often do you read the bible? There are calendars that have a bible verse for each day of the week, there are tracts galore, there are online reminders, and every sort of biblical “reading” and daily devotional that you can find. These are not what I recommend, mainly because they are out of context and can be misleading. I believe, and I preach, go to the source. God can show you what He wants you to see, give you spiritual sight that will allow you to receive whatever message He has for you no matter what biblical reading source you use, but why go anywhere other than where He wrote it, in the way He wrote it. See what happened before the verse, and see what happens after it.

Too many of these sayings from or referring to the bible are misleading because they are out of context. The bible is not in true, chronological order, and the Christian order of books in the Tanakh is different from the Jewish order, but at least you get the history, the stories and the events in the way that Moshe wrote them (for the Torah) and in the way that people have learned them for millennia.

If you were given a book to read- history, mystery, self-help, whatever- would you read it haphazardly? I mean, would you read the first chapter, then the middle, go to the third from the end, then the second, and bounce all around like that? I hope not, but the Christian world does that. Pretty much every Christian service I have gone to preaches a sermon that takes from the bible, but the sermons have no biblical order. Now, in all fairness, maybe I am just a little too used to the Jewish system of reading the Torah portions (called Parashot) every Shabbat , in order, so that every synagogue throughout the world is reading the same message at the same time, and we all turn the Torah back to the beginning every Simchat Torah (Joy of Torah) on the eighth day of Sukkot.  There is also the haftorah, or additional reading from the other parts of the Tanakh, which emphasize the Torah portion reading.

I am not saying it is bad to use daily devotionals- any time you are reading from the bible is better than not reading from it, at all. But I hear too many people that do not know the bible, and think that there are things they hear that are from the bible. This is the path to destruction because the enemy knows the word of God as well, if not better, than almost anyone else. And he will use that to destroy your soul.

Let’s finish with this- gun control. Yes, gun control. If you own a gun, and don’t know how to use it, you are much more likely to have it used against you or to hurt yourself with it than to get any benefit from it. The word of God is like that- even Shaul tells us, in Ephesians, about how the word of God is both armor and weapon (from shield to sword.) The enemy will try to use the word of God against you, just as he tried to use it against Yeshua during the forty days He was in the desert, so if you don’t know it, and know it well, you may find the very weapons God has provided for you to protect yourself from the fiery arrows of the enemy, being used against you.

You can, and will, be defeated by the very weapons God has given you to defend yourself if you don’t know how to use them! And the way to know how to use them is ….to use them. Read His word, in order, from start to end, then go back and read it again. And make that as much a part of your daily routine as eating, drinking, and brushing your teeth (I certainly hope that is a daily thing!)

And always, always, always pray to God for the Ruach to guide your reading so that all He has for you to see in that book is made available to you.

We are living in prophetic times- the battle is coming. Quickly. If you don’t know how to use your armor and the weapons God has given you, you will be lost. Don’t think that just because you are saved now you can’t be fooled into giving up your salvation. In Revelations it tells us that many will be turned and apostatized. “Many” is a lot of people; in some translations I have seen , it says “most”- meaning more than 50% of the Believers will be fooled into taking the mark of the enemy. I believe those will be among the ones who don’t know the word of God as well as they need to.

Know your bible, know how to use the armor of God, and know your enemy.

He certainly knows you.