This blog is in honor of Judy Ruggles. I am glad you are seeing His face....and to the rest of the Ruggles family: May God give you His Shalom.
Sorry this is SO long, but please read it. I beg you.
-Tuesday, September 14th, 2010-6th of Tishrei, 5771-
So. Last week I had an epiphany.
Thinking about it now, a whole 5 days later, it seems like such a small deal.
But at the time it was a huge deal for me.
I have really been learning a lot lately. Amazingly, a lot of it is not stuff I have not necessarily not heard or learned before, but rather more in depth to something’s I have "focused" on for awhile.
One of these things is the understanding of "community", or church.
Hold tight, cos' this blog could get long.
The past two blogs I have posted have kind of been leading up to this, I just did not fully realize yet as to what that meant.
I typed my blog entitled
"#10-Reunion". The first half of this blog was talking about the understanding that God put His name on places and people that he called it His own...He is everywhere, but He is especially in some places more than others.
The next blog I typed, was one that I had actually typed a few months ago, I just published it last week though. It was called
"#4(B)-Shalom". This blog began to touch more on the idea of what I think God is showing me and making a significant part of my life.
When I first began the process to come to Israel last year, I did so with two motives:
1) School.
2) My relationship with God...
However, I feel like I need to clarify that: I needed to get away from the things that cause me and encourage me to NOT walk the way God wants me to walk.
See, I have struggled with lust and a desire for unhealthy things for a very long time. Specifically since 6th grade, but I think it was there long before that. This struggle I have had with this sin has been at the fore-front of my mind since the day I realized it was a problem. It is the very thing that has drawn me from God, and yet the very thing that has drawn me to Him, for it was because of this sin and the way my youth pastors and Church leaders treated it that eventually led me to question the accepted theology of God in the first place.
Let me clarify: I have been dealing with lust for a long time. Short story, my search for the Church and youth group I would attend was really backed by my view on sexual immorality (the very thing I struggle with). I remember my first real youth group I attended in 6th grade: Hosanna. I started in September and by February I had to quit going because it became not a place for me to develop a healthy lifestyle and what not, but rather it became one of the key places for me to walk in my lust. This was because the girls there were hardly dressed at all. So I quit going. Again, to keep this shorter, every youth group I went to through 10th grade, it was either the youth pastor, the pastor, my small group leader, or just any general person in the Church who would cause me to leave because of this fact: I was always told by every person I went to with my struggles with sin that "it is normal to lust and masturbate...as long as you don't stumble into porn."
This was what I was always told: "It’s normal." I couldn't stand it...because I KNEW that that was either
A) Not true,
Or
B) Does not excuse my actions.
There was only one person in my church history who actually dealt with what I told him and we actually talked about it...Tim Whittmore...and he did not rub it off as some "normal" thing. I have the utmost respect for him to this very day.
So it was through all of this that eventually led me to lose motive to not sin at all. My logic took me down this path: "Well, if it is OK for me to do what I am doing because I am a male, then why should I do anything that God commands?...Why should I keep Sabbath at all? Why Should I not lie?....etc."
I lost any care about my actions... because, as the Church taught, Jesus would forgive me. People would tell me that did not make it OK for me to do whatever I wanted, but in the end their logic would die because as soon as they would say "you can't do what you want." I would ask, "How are we saved?" They would say" through Jesus' death and resurrection...by the grace of God". I would say "Is there anything we can do outside of Jesus to secure our salvation?" "They would say "No." I would say "Then why does it matter what I do?".
And people would try and explain it, but in the end the logic never flowed or made any sense.
To this day it still doesn't.
And that is my point: The theology of the Church has no understanding on the relation between being saved by God and walking with God. Because Salvation is through Jesus and grace alone....but that has NOTHING to do with what you do in life....as in, your walk on the path of God.
It has nothing to do with it, and it has everything to do with it...I can't explain this right now. So, it was my sin and struggle with lust that led me to where I am today, and for that I am eternally grateful.
Note: If I have time in the future I will type a blog explaining what it actually means to Follow God by keeping His Torah and have Salvation through Yeshua. The church has miss-understood it.
So, coming to Israel this year has been done with one huge motivation: to finally leave this struggle with lust behind for good.
Needless to say, it will ALWAYS be a struggle, and I am not perfect by any means...not to justify myself, but this is way harder than I thought it would be.
And that is what this blog is about.
Rabbi Stan Far has said in countless teachings that without Yeshua he would be a drug addict.
Well without Yeshua I am a sexual pervert.
I still struggle with lust. Even here in Israel, lo' and behold!
However, I really thought over the years (knowing I would be coming to Israel for a year) that I would get here and God would just go BAM! And knock any desire for my sin out of me.
That has not been the case. At all....therefore making this trip here hard because I am always fighting and struggling over my sin, and yet the fact I am in Israel makes it harder... because there is no excuse. This was why I needed to leave the states to really deal with this...it's way too easy in the USA to just throw your sins under the rug and ignore them...in Israel, at least for me, it is a struggle to ignore my sin. I can't just ignore it; I have to actually face it.
So I am here in Israel, and again, I was expecting this to be the thing that God would really lay in on me over.
Not the case.
Instead, He has been showing me something else.
Something else that has been blowing my mind.
However, this something else is directly related to my struggles with sin.
Community.
That’s what this is all about.
Every class I have been in thus far has talked about in some way or another, either the direct meaning or a sub-support meaning, of the word "Shalom".
In my last blog, I defined it as "Living life as it was intended to be lived: under the gaze, control and security of Adonai."
In other words, Shalom=Eden.
But I have not realized until lately how inter-connected the idea of Shalom is and the idea of "Church".
Let me re-phrase that:
I have not realized until not how inter-connected the idea of Shalom is with the idea of
community.
I am emphasizing community because there is a big difference between what I am talking about and what the Church does. I will explain what I am talking about...hopefully you can figure out where the Church fails at this. If I think it is necessary, I will explain that, but in the end.
Before I begin, I need you to go read my paper on the word
Church and Ekklesia. Just click here to read it. Scroll down. It is the last paper I have on there.
To summarize it:
Church comes from the Greek word "Ekklesia." This word means "Community" or "Congregation". But in my paper, I show that the roots of the Biblical use of the word comes from "קהל" or “
Kaw-Hal”.... this word basically means "Assembly". Here is something I have noticed since I wrote my paper: The Greek word for the book of Ecclesiastes is "
Ecclesiastes". It is named so in Greek because it is named after the Hebrew name of the book: "
Kohelet" (Strongs #H6953). The Hebrew name is titled so after the first word of the Hebrew in the book. In English it is translated as "the Preacher". However, the word Kohelet literally means in Hebrew "
THE ASSEMBLER. The word is a derivative of the word "
Kaw-Hal.
In other words, the Biblical understanding of a
Preacher is the word "
Kohelet" and it means "
The assembler".
who is he assembling?
The Kaw-hal.
Or
The Assembly!!!
I was so excited when I saw that.... because it means the name of the book Ecclesiastes proves my whole paper and my whole belief on what "Church" is.
Sadly, the modern day "Church" has just totally missed the point.
Anywho, notice: The Biblical definition of what a Church is IS THE ASSEMBLY:
(Here are all of the verses in the Torah using this word)
-Exodus 32:1
-Exodus 35:1
-Leviticus 8:3,4
-Numbers 1:18; 8:9; 10:17; 16:3,19,42; 20:2,8,10
-
Deuteronomy 4:10; 31:12,28.
Notice Deuteronomy 4:10 especially:
"...how on the day that you stood before the LORD your God at Horeb (Mt.Sinai), the LORD said to me, '
Gather the people to me, that I may let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children so.'
(Deuteronomy 4:10)
Kaw-hal.
What is my point???
This is:
I have defined Shalom as "Life lived as it was meant to be lived, under the gaze of God", AKA Shalom=the Garden of Eden.
I believe that the whole purpose of the Scriptures and what God is trying to do in the world all throughout history is to
bring His creation back under His gaze in the Garden of Eden
You are thinking, wait, I thought the whole point to the Scriptures was God trying to bring Salvation to the world?
EXACTLY.
Eden IS the result of Salvation.
So, if everything God has done through the Old Testament with the Hebrews, on through the New Testament with Messiah, is to bring His people back to Eden, what does that mean for us today???
It means that we are supposed to be living in light of Eden (This was the best sermon series I have ever heard from a Christian Pastor-Pastor Paul Marzahn at Crossroads-called "Living in Light of heaven)
Let me explain:
God defines the assembly at Mount Sinai in Exodus 19 with the same term He defines the assembly in Acts Ch.2.
In other words, as Hebrew 10:1 and Colossians 2:17 suggest,
The Assembly at Mt.Sinai in Exodus 19 are a "shadow" of the Assembly in Acts 2... Because it is Shavuot (Pentecost).
Now, tie these two things together:
The Bible shows that on Pentecost God gave the Torah...AKA the Way to Walk.
The bible shows that on Pentecost God gave the Holy Spirit....AKA to
show us how to walk (I could talk for hours on this.)
And what is the point of this????
Well, as I suggested earlier, the Torah does not make a difference on your salvation.
However, it shows us how to live life NOW that we are saved.
So let me bring you to back to what I said at the beginning of this blog: I had an epiphany.
It is a mixture of all of this and the History I have been learning in class.
-Egypt-
Egypt was the land of all lands to live in for a good 3,000 years. In the ancient world when life was an unsure thing and no one knew what would happen. The only place on the face of this earth that had any form of security was Egypt. Why? Because the Nile was guaranteed (more often than not) to flood on a yearly basses, and the flooding of the Nile is what guaranteed life. Therefore, to the Egyptians, life was directly related to the Nile River. The only other thing more important than the Nile was the sun.
Because of this, Egypt had wealth like no one’s business in the ancient world. People and governments came from all over the world to buy food from Egypt, because there would be nowhere else to get it, at least guaranteed. And in the years when there would be no Nile flood, which would result in no food because there would be no water, Egypt always had such an over abundance of food that they stored that so they could survive.
The world came to Egypt for life.
Egypt had everything. Food. Water. Sun. People. Civilization.
Security.
All of Egypt's religious life focused in on this fact: on this Nile river.
And Pharaoh made himself out to be the guy who was in charge...and therefore, was some form of a god for how else could he guarantee life and satisfaction???
-Israel-
I am living in Israel right now. Israel is hot. Israel does not have any major rivers running through it....at least none that won't eventually dry up if it quits raining (and let’s face it, the Jordan is a terrible river at best!).
The Land of Canaan is very hilly. The Land can only support life if it rains during the rainy season. The Land is made out of rock...good to build out of, hard to farm. And what good is building anything if you have no food?
Israel was an insecure place in the ancient world....still is today. The only guarantee was that you would work your butt off to live.....assuming you don't die.
Life in Egypt just happens by the natural forces of the Nile.
Life in Israel is controlled by something else.
So imagine this:
God calls Israel out of Egypt.
Look at this:
"For the land that you are entering to take possession of it is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it, like a garden of vegetables.
But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven, a land that the LORD your God cares for. The eyes of the LORD your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.
(Deuteronomy 11:10-12)
God says that Israel is different than Egypt...and to the Israelites hearing Moses speak this knew that that difference is a matter of life and death. Sure, life was hard in Egypt...but nowhere close to that of Israel.
In the 4,000+ year history of the Land of Israel, there has never been a major world empire stationed here...why?
Because it is a crappy place to live in context to Egypt, and Italy, and Babylon, and every other place of a major world empire.
However, because of its location on the Med. and the fact that it is surrounded by desert, this land was very important for the empires to control for trade purposes....but not to live in. Israel was a resource to the empires not for its natural resources but because you could tax the people walking through with the natural resources they got from other places.
In other words, the land of Israel was a Land Bridge.
So ask yourself this:
Why didn't God give Egypt to the Israelites?
Why didn't God just make Moses pharaoh, and have everything easy peezy???
Why didn't GOD LEAVE the Israelites in Egypt?????
Notice:
"On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates"
(Genesis 15:18)
Everyone (as did I until I learned else-wise) thinks that "the river of Egypt" is the Nile.
Not so.
Why? Look at the boundaries being set. God said "to the great river, the river Euphrates".
The River Euphrates was ALWAYS the boundary of Mesopotamia....not part of it.
The Nile is NOT the boundary of Egypt...the Nile IS Egypt.
God did not take land from the people living in the area now known as "Assyria" and give it to the Israelites.
He also did not take land from Egypt and give it to the Israelites.
"The river of Egypt" is not the Nile (because the Nile is the heartland of Egypt)...it has to be a river that was the border between Israel and Egypt. There is a dried up river bed south of Gaza that Archeologist suggest is the place.
On top of that...
If God had meant to give the Israelites the Nile River in Egypt, Why did He not leave them there???
WHY DID GOD BRING THE ISRAELITES OUT OF EGYPT?
AND WHY DID THE ISRAELITES WANT TO GO?
I believe this is a CRUCIAL question that needs to be answered.
Here is my answer:
"For the land that you are entering to take possession of it is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it, like a garden of vegetables. But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven,
a land that the LORD your God cares for. The eyes of the LORD your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.
(Deuteronomy 11:10-12)
God did not "care"(in the sense of mend, or take-care-of) for the land of Egypt.
God says in His own words that He takes care of the Land of Israel. God is the Gardner in Israel....(Wow. He was the Gardner in Eden too...and wow again: read John 15!)
God controls the Rain in Israel.
In Egypt, the Nile controlled life.
Pharaoh controlled life.
NOT GOD.
Why couldn’t God leave His people in Egypt???
Because in Egypt the Hebrews had no way of living life in light of God's control because God let Egypt be....Egypt already had its way of life....God however cared for the Land of Israel.
If God left His people in Egypt, they could not live with God!
"Afterward Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, "Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, 'Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.'" But Pharaoh said, "Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD, and moreover, I will not let Israel go."
(Exodus 5:1-2)
Do you understand what I am saying???
SHALOM.
EDEN.
SALVATION.
God brings them out of Egypt!
Egypt becomes a metaphor for "sin" for the rest of the Bible (as does Babylon).
I think this makes commands such as this make sense:
"If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of his city, 'This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.' Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.
(Deuteronomy 21:18-21)
Why does God command to stone a rebellious son??? A son who breaks God's commands (by not honoring his parents?) Because the Land of Israel became the physical place on earth where God tried to re-establish a connection to Eden...reestablish a connection to Himself.
God tried to give Israel Shalom. So He brought them out of Egypt to a place where they can dwell under His Gaze...and as Christians teach that if you sin (funny...sin is defined by the Torah) you
don't deserve heaven, the same applies here: if the
Israelites broke Torah, they did not deserve the Land. Yet God still gave it to them
"And if you will indeed obey my commandments that I command you today, to love the LORD your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. And he will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you shall eat and be full. Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them"
(Deuteronomy 11:13-16)
Why was it such a big deal if the Israelites chased after other gods? Because it would defile the Land and defeat the WHOLE purpose of leaving Egypt!
See! If the Israelites chose to LIVE UNDER GODS GAZE....He would let it rain.
God would do for the Israelites as the Nile did for the Egyptians: Bring water on the earth and therefore, food, and therefore, LIFE (and LIFE Lived the way God commanded IS SHALOM)...but they had to accept Him and trust Him to do that.
"And you murmured in your tents and said, 'Because the LORD hated us he has brought us out of the land of Egypt, to give us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us. Where are we going up? Our brothers have made our hearts melt, saying, "The people are greater and taller than we. The cities are great and fortified up to heaven. And besides, we have seen the sons of the Anakim there."' Then I said to you, 'Do not be in dread or afraid of them. The LORD your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness, where you have seen how the LORD your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place.' Yet in spite of this word you did not believe the LORD your God, who went before you in the way to seek you out a place to pitch your tents, in fire by night and in the cloud by day, to show you by what way you should go. "And the LORD heard your words and was angered, and he swore, 'Not one of these men of this evil generation shall see the good land that I swore to give to your fathers"
(Deuteronomy 1:27-35)
The reason why the Israelites did not enter into the Land was because they did not trust God....they did not rely on God for His
security...so what do they do???
THEY WANTED TO GO BACK TO EGYPT: the place where they know is secure.
Now here is the next part of the epiphany.
Notice how all of this is connected: Kaw-hal, living under Gods gaze, relying on God for life, letting go of your life....
This is the true sense of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Cos' here is the fact:
God knows what He is doing.
All of this was the basis for a much greater point in History: When ALL of the world would be welcomed into God's Gaze.
And Welcome to the background for the entire New Testament.
So if we, the so-called "Church" today are living in light of this re-attempt by God to let His people (those under Christ) live in His Shalom-His Eden....and God does this by repeating what was already done in history under His authority....
SHOULDN'T"T WE THE CHURCH BE LIVING LIFE TODAY THE SAME WAY THE ISRAELITES WERE SUPPOSED TO LIVE LIKE WHILE IN ISRAEL???
The Answer: YES.
(I can't scream this enough): Read ACTS. Read Romans. Understand in the way God meant for it to be understood!
Here is the sad fact: Israel in all of its history has never, not once, lived their life together as a corporate assembly, as kaw-hal, the way God desired it.
This is why "the LORD said to Samuel, "Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you,
but they have rejected me from being king over them.
(1 Samuel 8:7)
Does my blog on my problems with
Zionism make sense now???? It should.
As soon as Israel finally makes it into Israel, they do the very thing God did not desire.
So God sent prophet after prophet to try and fix it....but it did not work. So God sends them back into exile! This time east....and Egypt is repeated (historically after the Babylonian exile, many of the Jews STAYED in Babylon and did not return...more Jews stayed and Babylon than went back to Israel! Heck.)
Now go read the second half of my blog entitled
"#10-Reunion".
God lets His followers do as they please...to a point.
But He still wants to show us His face.
But through this all God sent His Son..In order to bring Shalom to His chosen people!
"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest (Shalom!). Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
(Matthew 11:28-30)
I could type another billion words just going through Jesus' words in context to what I am explaining here.
And so, here is how all of this fits into my epiphany:
I have really struggled this past week with my "signature sin". It has really been burdening me down.
I had a very long talk with my girlfriend about all of this, and at the end, I decided I was going to go down to the temple mount to pray.
It was Midnight. It was also Rosh-Hashanah.
I was praying the whole time I was walking... begging God to answer me why He won't take this sin from me. I was literally crying out to Him.
I got down to the complex at 12:30 or so...
There was no more than 10 people down at the wall...i could not believe how silent it was. It was the day Ramadan was ending and Rosh-Shoshanna had just started. It hit me when I realized how deathly silent it was there...I have never in my life felt SO peaceful...this coming from me being in agony 10 minutes before.
I sat down with my Bible. I KNEW God was going to give me and answer...I just had no idea how.
Then it hit me....start at Genesis 1.
It's Rosh-Shoshanna. The Torah portion starts over today. I knew that whatever happened that night was going to impact me forever....
New Beginnings.
Genesis 1.
I read it. Awesome.
I get to Genesis 2 and I ran across something that blew my mind:
God gives the very first command in the entire Bible right here:
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
(Genesis 2:16-17)
As soon as God gives the very first Mitzvoth (Command)....He then says this:
Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him."
(Genesis 2:18)
Why is it that as soon as God gives the very first command...why is it that THAT is when we see something is not good???
Why is it not good for man to be alone??? Because when man is alone...that is when he breaks God's commands.
So God sends...a helper.
A helper to do what???
To help each other not break God's command! A helper to help one another live with God! This hit me SO hard that night.
Since then, I have done some research and looked at the Hebrew: The Hebrew word for "helper" used there comes from the word "
ay'-zer or "aid" or "protect". We help each other not break God's commands!
See, here is why this was a huge deal for me:
I can honestly say my biggest struggles with my sin came when I started Northwestern.
Why? Because I was completely alone.
I had no friends at school. I was living in a dorm room meant for 4 people by myself. I suddenly found myself spending days by myself. I would go 1-2 days without even talking except for in class simply because I had no one to talk to...and I was testing myself. Needless to say, I failed.
I came to this realization just now. I thought of it this week because I thought of a conversation with my girlfriend last July: I told her that NWC would change me....I was desperately hoping to go there and have a community...a group of friends where we can all walk with God together…and leave this all behind.
It does not exist at Northwestern.
All of my real struggles with my reality that I shoved under the rug for so long came at me full on last spring.
And it was simply because I was alone.
Now, was God there? Yes. He still is.
This was a huge deal for me last year....I would sit in my dorm and just contemplate what it meant to have God be your ultimate satisfaction in life.
If I truly loved God, why do I feel alone??? Why should it matter if I have people around me or not?? Why is it that if someone was here right now, I would not be sinning?
I was not able to answer that since I thought it. It really drug my faith in God down....especially coming to Israel now and running into the same problems.
But I finally got my answer:
Me feeling lonely and therefore not being in a good situation for myself has nothing to do with my lack-of relationship with God...
What about Adam?
Wasn't God enough for him??? Heck, God walked with Adam in the Garden.
Who knows...but obviously God thought no.
So my point?
Look at this all:
I have an individual relationship with God.
However, I also am supposed to have a corporate relationship with God.
The problem is that I don't. I have no community. I have no friends my age who try and live a life the way I do.
I am obsessed with talking about "these-type" of things. I could talk about the Bible with anyone at anytime all of the time. It is my true desire....it is the reason why I quit Aviation school and came to Bible College. I was expecting to get to talk about these things all of the time...but no. No one else wants to. That is the fact....so I turn to other things; mostly wasting time watching movies, because what else is there to do?
I am having this precise problem now at JUC.
See, it is OK to be obsessed with football. It is OK to be obsessed with school. It is OK to be obsessed with movies, or music, or anything...including the Bible.
But as soon as you find yourself wanting to talk about God all of the time, then people shut you out.
This is why last year I started watching so many movies. I started to watch football for the first time in 10 years….(Yes. I quit watching football after the Vikings lost in 98’)
I have done this so that I could talk to people about the same stupid things they are obsessed with. But that is my flesh. I have no desire for any of it, but what else can I do when no one wants to walk along side with me??? But the problem is now…is what originally was done out of my desire to wanting to relate to people…has now become my go to thing…and I am not ok with it.
My best friend has practically ignored me the past few years. He probably has good reasons. But it makes me want to just say "screw" all this and become music major and follow him.
But I can't.
I need to clarify: I have nothing against football. Football is great. There is nothing wrong with playing music...I love music. Heck, the next step in this understanding of "corporate" love for God is what it means to worship...(THAT is an interesting study...and anyone who claims to be any form of worship leader needs to understand what it meant to worship in the Temple before you can understand what it means to worship God on a stage.) There is nothing wrong with watching movies.
I am not against these things...
However, I am talking about the MOTIVE.
For myself, I know my motive in watching movies is two-fold: sometimes it is because I want to relax, and that’s OK. However, sometimes I watch movies because I am trying to ignore what I really should be doing, or how I really should be living, this is not OK.
Make sense? I am not bashing the things you love to do. I am just frustrated because I want to leave it behind.
anywho....
Here is my point:
I don't believe my generation is walking the path God wants.
I don't believe my college is walking the path God wants.
I do not believe the Church is walking the path God wants.
I do not believe my friends or family is walking the path God wants.
I AM NOT WALKING THE PATH GOD WANTS.
But I have found it. I have found the path... finally!
....and ah! there is a difference between knowing the path and walking it.
I know the path. God has shown it to me.....I just spent the past 6 hours trying to explain it to you.
I just can't completely walk it by myself...because part of the path IS the community...that’s why God said He was "the way" out of Egypt, and it is why the New Testament believers were called "The Way". This is why all of this was a huge deal for me this week. I realized for the first time that God has it integrated in His plan for my life: That we all walk together.
People of God need each other. We are supposed to live in Shalom. NOT ME-BUT US. ALL OF US TOGETHER.
I can't walk with God by myself....and I won't be until others come along.
The synagogue I attend is a great place.....I have more respect for that place than anywhere else on the face of the earth. However, it is not my home as much as I want it to be. There is a big difference between having a community with people your own age...and with people who are a lot older than you. I learn a lot from these people, and they are all amazing, however, the fact that they are the only ones around at the synagogue is just a constant reminder that no one my age is interested in the truths of God. I do not want to go into details on my thoughts on Sar-Shalom. Just understand I love the place. The only thing is that the people there are not willing to go to this level of a Community that I am talking about. Except for a few…however, they are all way older than me. Basically, they all follow God: individual. The services at Sar-Shalom are great. But as soon as it’s over the community dies…at least from my perspective.
I hate to just leave that explanation there, but I can’t go into details on Sar-Shalom right now..That’s not what this blog is about.
The Church I attend is a great place....and heck, there are plenty of people my age there: but people are more obsessed with the things of this world than they are with God....so how can I walk beside them? I can't…..however, this Church has a great community aspect to it….they just don’t follow God.
Amazingly, the only place I have felt like things are happening the way it should be is with the group of junior High youth I teach. I have more of a community with the junior high kids I teach than I do anywhere else.
Everywhere I have gone in the past 6 years looking for this "group of people" to share my life and my struggles with and to walk the path of God as defined by "the way"....
(This group of people I can go up Mt.Sinai with....)
I have never found it.
For as long as I can remember, I have had a desire for it. I use to tell people "I would rather have 2 REALLY good friends then have 20 fakes ones".
I spent my elementary years devoted to one or two "true" friend. I spent my Junior high years devoted to one true friend. Same with high-school. I never knew why I always desired to just have some people really close. People I can share and do everything with.
But now I see why these friendships always failed or never existed:
Because it is not supposed to be about me and them.
It is supposed to be about us and God.
And I know this is true. However, that means I need to find someone else who believes that Jesus is Christ and Sabbath is on Saturday and needs to be kept?!?
Ya right. I have been searching for years.
I have met people over the past year or so who God has blessed me with the opportunity of knowing...and they are amazing. However, they still do not seem interested in the path I am desperate to walk. I don't know.
The best examples I can think of what I am talking about are these:
-two people from my church: Jeremiah and Beau. Their friendship is exactly what I am talking about.
-The AA Hall my mom had me going to: a group of people coming together under the common understanding of where they fail, and yet all coming together daily to support each other to look towards the higher-power.(granted they do not define that higher-power, but at least its there.)
Why didn't the Israelites leave Egypt one by one???
Because they would have died. You can't walk from Egypt to Israel alone. You need others.
Plus, God would not lead just one person out of Egypt...He had to lead everyone. He led Moses out but then told him to go back!
Same thing here.
And so this is what I realized. I have not been searching for "friends". I have not been searching for "a friend."
I have been searching for a Kaw-Hal.
A group of people ready to live a life on this earth fully devoted to living under the gaze of God.
Next to God Himself there is nothing I want more.
So, I believe I have found my calling (I think..I still have 8 months here, we will see where this all goes).
I need to start a commune or something to that extent....(not by myself: with other like-minded people)
A place where people who WANT to live the way the Israelites were suppose to. A place where people can live who WANT to live as the followers of "the way" did in the 1st century. It will be a place devoted to letting God be our King.
I have no idea at all as to how any of this will work out...I don't care. It perhaps will involve the two places I attend right now…
I don’t know.
All I can say is this is the truth....I would give anything to live a life that follows the people of “the way” in the 1st century....
the only thing I can't give up for it IS my desire for it....
and sadly that’s what my generation of the so-called "Church" today wants.
As soon as I read Genesis 2:18...this whole idea flew into my mind like a gust of wind. It blew me away. (No pun intended).
God answered me and showed me the way.
But I was still not sure...I was still sad and lost.
Then a guy walked up to me.
I do not know his name.
He asked me "Why are you here?"
I told him I feel the presence of God there.
He said "really?"
I said "Yep."
he said "Can I sit next to you?"
I said "Sure"
We introduced (I cannot remember his name!), then his friend came over.
Guy 1 was a Jew from Holland, visiting Israel for the first time.
Guy 2 just met Guy 1 an hour or so before I did....he was a Jewish Atheist.
We talked about God until 4 in the morning.
We talked about things like why God allows suffering.
Things like why God gave Adam a choice to eat the fruit...
things like what is important about the Temple Mount, the existence of God....etc.
It was not until 5 o'clock in the morning after I had gone back to my dorm that I realized what had happened.
Everything we talked about and my answers to their questions were the same questions I was asking God.
His question: "Why Did God give Adam a choice between the trees?"
My question: "Why DOES God give me a choice to lust after him or after His daughters????"
Love. ( I will be typing a blog just on this topic this week).
I realized right then and there that I found what I have been so confused and searching for for so long.
I still struggle with my sin.
But now I know why. Now I understand what it is God desires for me...
Now I GET IT.
I just need to live under the Gaze of God and hope that God sends others with me....while it is hard to walk this walk now, by doing it, it will get easier.
I just need to live it....and that is easier said than done.
so those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
(Acts 2:41-47)
(A group of Jews studying Torah at the Temple at 12:30 in the morning)
Shalom!
