"For that reason we should stop judging each other. We must make up our minds not to do anything that will make another Christian sin...Do not allow what you think is good to become what others say is evil. In the kingdom of God, eating and drinking are not important. The important things are living right with God, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. Anyone who serves Christ by living this way is pleasing God and will be accepted by other people...So let us try to do what makes peace and helps one another...Your beliefs about these things should be kept secret between you and God." (Romans 14:13-22)The other day I made the "fatal mistake" of writing these verses in my notebook:"Others, Lord, yes others Let this my motto be Help me to live for others That I may live for Thee."Then I went even further by telling God I really meant this and that I want Him to teach me how not to be so selfish with things that are important to me, such as "me time", but to teach me how to love like He loves. I should've known this is the sort of prayer that should have attached to it "Warning! You are now entering dangerous territory!" So it started, of course. It seems like all I come across when I read is "Love, Emma. Forgive as you are being forgiven. Don't judge, My girl, perhaps they don't do it with a mean heart. Perhaps they just don't understand." It is so easy to sin. Second nature. I don't even have to think about it, it just comes out of me. None of those who truly met God want to sin (by sin I understand what the Bible classes as sin). No matter how "close" or "far away" we are, there is this deep desire planted in us to live for Him as He asks. Bat Melech, my sister:-), has this thing she keeps saying "Emma, cover your brother's nakedness" (Genesis 9:20-27) If I know someone provoked and attacked in what she believes, that's Bat Melech. You can't help it when you stand for Israel like she does, it comes with the territory. But no matter how upset or exasperated she becomes, I hear her "Cover your brother's nakedness" Meaning, if I know a brother or a sister of mine is struggling in a certain area, I don't go and poke exactly in that area only to get a reaction. Or, if I have a conversation with someone and I see they really struggle with something that I say, out of love for them, I should stop. Why bring out the worst in them only to get my point across? They try just as much as I do to keep themselves for the Lord and want just as much as I do to walk in love, so why put a stumbling block in front of them only to make them fall and be judged by people that are already watching them thoroughly from the minute they said "I believe"?"Cover your brother's nakedness" Don't provoke for the sake of sounding wiser or more "spiritual". A clear example from my life. Many Christians I come in contact with either don't understand Israel and God's relationship with them or they completely misjudge them because of what they've heard being preached. So why go somewhere and say something about Israel only to aggravate my brothers and make them sin by getting angry, judging me, and speaking against something they might not even understand.
Don't get me wrong, the opposite applies. If you pick on Israel only for the sake of sounding wise yourself, if you present me with the last piece of manipulated BBC news, and then speak things that are completely against God's Word, I won't be quiet. I might ask you a few questions:-) But I won't start conversations that I know will lead to someone getting angry and upset only to show how many things I know on the topic. If someone is interested, they can come and ask me and maybe we can have a nice conversation. But if someone comes only interested in provoking, I learnt to smell them from a mile and to be quite frank, Israel is to precious to me to drag it in polemics only to satisfy someone's ego (mine included). This is just an example, but the principal in itself can be applied to everything in life. Don't cause someone to sin or fall only to show yourself wiser or better. "Cover your brother's nakedness"Thank you, Bat Melech. You told me this so many times and I failed to see it. I know this is a lesson we are both still learning, because it is hard not to react when someone attacks something that's precious to you. But I've seen you so many times controlling yourself based on this principal and with God's help, I think I get it now. Thank you. xxx
"John the Baptist was in prison, but he heard about what the Christ was doing. So John sent some of his followers to Jesus. They asked him, "Are you the One who is to come, or should we wait for someone else?"Jesus answered them, "Go tell John what you hear and see: The blind can see, the crippled can walk, and people with skin diseases are healed. The deaf can hear, the dead are raised to life, and the Good News is preached to the poor. Those who do not stumble in their faith because of me are blessed." (Matthew 11:2-6)
"If you throw us into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from the furnace. He will save us from your power, O king. But even if God does not save us, we want you, O king, to know this: We will not serve your gods or worship the gold statue you have set up." (Daniel 3:17-18)
What do you do when you are in a difficult place, like John was? You do all the right things- you pray, you fast, you keep close watch on your life, you seek the guidance of God and people and weeks later nothing seems to have changed?
What do you do when nagging thoughts keep popping into your mind "Maybe God didn't listen to you. Maybe He's upset with you. I mean He says where two or three gather in His Name, He is there. That if you ask anything in His Name it will be given to you. He either doesn't listen to you because of something you've done, or He's not even real and you're deceiving yourself."
What do you do when Doubt takes you to court for lack of evidence?
Perhaps John was sitting there in Herod's prison thinking "If He is the Messiah, He will get me out of here. I've done everything I had to do. I prepared the way for Him. He will get me out of here." But time passed and there was no sign of Jesus. So perhaps thoughts would come "Where is He? Surely He knows what's happening to me, doesn't He? Or maybe He doesn't. Maybe He's not the Messiah. I'll send someone to check."
So he sends some of his followers to Jesus. John was Jesus's cousin, he was there when the voice was heard from heaven at Jesus's baptism "This is My Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased." (Matthew 3:17)
I am surprised Jesus didn't say "Go back to John and tell him. I beg your pardon, John, but where were you on that day? How many times have you seen and heard those things whilst baptising people?" But Jesus doesn't say that. Instead he gives John a long list of the signs and miracles that were happening and then he tells him: "The person who doesn't lose faith because of Me, is blessed." Then Jesus carries on saying to those who witnessed the discussion, that of all those who lived John is the greatest, but that even the least important person in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John. For a long time that remark puzzled me. Why? I mean John literally only lived for God. He gave all his live away to God?
But then I saw something similar at apostle Paul. An almost obsession to make it (Philippians 3:13-14). Why? Because he saw things. He saw miracles, he heard the Lord speaking directly to him, he saw the things to come. When you witness things like those, that increases your responsibility before God. We all crave to see signs and miracles, but what good are miracles if they don't change you forever. If afterwards you end up somewhere asking yourself if all this is real, those signs and miracles were nothing else but displays of power. Jesus perform the most miracles in Korazim, Bethsaida, and Capernaum. Still He ends up saying "I did many miracles in you. If those same miracles had happened in Tyre and Sidon, then the people there would have changed their lives a long time ago. "(Matthew 11:21)
Supernatural deliverance doesn't always achieve the same results as faithful endurance. It's harsh and it's painful but I've seen it in my life and in the life of others around me to be true. God can do the same miracles He did back then, but what's the use if a few months later we end up questioning again?
What I'm learning these days (I don't enjoy this lesson by the way), is that no matter how much I hate endurance, no matter how desperately I want my King to come on a white horse and save me, like John did, this endurance gave birth to something in me. A sort of resolution. It almost pushed me in a corner where I had to choose like Sadrac, Mesac and Abed-Nego (Daniel 3)- if He doesn't come at all will I bow my knee? Will I accept those thoughts as being truth? Will I exchange all I know about God, all that I lived with Him these years just because I've done everything He said and "things don't happen"? And what do I mean by "things don't happen"?
When John asked, Jesus gave him a list as long as his arm of things that were happening, it just wasn't what John wanted to happen...
What do I do when Doubt takes me to court for lack of evidence? I tell it:
"He who vindicates me is near. Who then will bring charges against me? Let us face each other! Who is my accuser? Let him confront me! It is the Sovereign LORD who helps me. Who will condemn me?" (Isaiah 50:8-9)
Why? Because I choose to remember that blessed is he who doesn't lose faith because of the way God works.
Last night I watched on BBC2 a documentary by Louis Theroux called "Ultra Zionist". It was aimed to be a "neutral" opinion on the situation in the West Bank, who according to the international laws belongs to the Palestinians. Theroux was trying to understand why Jews risk their own lives every day to live in an area they're not wanted in, amongst Palestinians, going about their every day life in anti-bullet cars which are stoned every 5 minutes my Palestinians children, to whom this appears to be the main source of entertainment.
I just finished reading the book of Joshua again, so for the daughter of God in me, this was very personal. Why? I know I'm not Jewish, but if I believe that Bible, than I must believe all it contains not just what I want. And if God said for hundreds of years, I will give you that land to be yours forever, I will believe Him. "And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting, solemn pledge, to be a God to you and to your posterity after you.And I will give to you and to your posterity after you the land in which you are a stranger [going from place to place], all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God."
Theroux, is a self-confessed atheist. He mentioned it in the documentary last night as well. I can appreciate that there is no way, an individual who doesn't even believe in God would be able to understand what a Jewish heart feels for their land. He asked a Jewish woman holding her child, why she submitted herself and her family to that lifestyle. She simply said "This is home"
I just finished reading in Joshua, how the city of Hebron was given to the tribe of Judah, then it became a city of safety (Joshua 20) or what a Christian would call a city of grace, where you could find refuge if you've done something you didn't mean to, such as accidentally kill a man. You would run there and the people of the city would defend you from those asking you to pay for what you did. Then the city of Hebron was given as a gift to the tribe of Levi, God's priests, and it became a city associated with holiness. Last night I saw Jews being stoned and insulted for trying to live in Hebron. All because the international community decided that is not their land anymore, that it belongs to Palestinians. The only reason, Jews were not lynched in that place was because of Israel Defence Forces (IDF) defending them.
As I mentioned, I am not Israeli and I am not Jewish. I am Romanian and I carry around in my heart responsibility for what my nation did to them when they tried to live as Romanians. We killed hundreds of thousand of them and what we didn't kill we packed up in trains and sent to Hittler as a good will gesture. So if my ancestors kept quiet, I will not. I spend my life asking Jews to forgive my nation. It might not be a lot and it might be very late, but I will not pretend it didn't happen. As a child of God (John 1:12-13) I take a step back and ask myself "What do I stand for-international law or God's Word?"
I am Transilavian. Transilvania is the north west part of Romania, which was under Hungarian occupation for hundreds of years. We were forced to learn their language, sometimes change our names and slave away for Hungarian nobility. That's way on a very small scale, I can understand a Jewish heart. For them, international law coming and telling them that land no longer belongs to them because it was under a different occupation for a long time, means exactly nothing. For a Jewish heart that sounds just as ridiculous as it does for a Transilavian heart if someone would come to tell us we are not Romanians and that is not our land anymore because we were under occupation for a long time. So yeah, I got my answer to my question "What do I stand for?" I stand for Israel and their inheritance- all the land that God promised them: "On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadiof Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates— the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.” Genesis 15:18-21)
If this makes me an Ultra Zionist, than that is what I am and I will wear that name with pride. May the Lord bless Israel and keep it strong. The God who chose them will be their Guardian and their Light forever. And as Daniel, an Orthodox Jew, said last night there is nothing the world can do about that.
"I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them,” says the LORD your God." (Amos 9:15)
