“Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near: Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon” (Isa. 55:6-7). But how will we seek if we do not believe? And how will God be found unless God makes it possible for us to find Him? Hashivenu. We first believe the invitation to return is for us, and the moment we believe we draw near, which is to say God reveals himself to the heart of faith. If you feel devoid of God’s presence, heed David’s words to “set the LORD” before you (Psalm 16:8). Ask God for help to truly know Him and have confidence that he will indeed heal you. No prayer offered according to his heart will ever go unanswered (1 John 5:14-15). “The greatest honor we can give to the Almighty is to live gladly because of the knowledge of his love” (Julian Norwich). As Yeshua promised: “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (John 14:21). Note that the Greek word translated “manifest” means to “shine inside” (i.e., ἐμφανίζω, from ἐν, “in” and φαίνω, “shine”), indicating that the revelation would be inward light of the Presence of Messiah himself (Χριστὸς ἐν ὑμῖν, ἡ ἐλπὶς τῆς δόξης, Col. 1:27). God calls you so that you might find him to be the greatest love of your life, and as you receive that love, as you embrace it as your own, the love of Messiah will become inwardly visible to you. This comes from a place of surrender and acceptance. As Paul Tillich said, “Sometimes in a moment of weakness light breaks into darkness, and it is as though a voice says, ‘You are accepted; you are accepted… Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted.’ If that happens to you, then you experience grace, and everything will be transformed.” Ultimately teshuvah is about salvation and transformation – beauty from ashes – and the love of God…
Category: Daily Dvar (דבר יומי)
Daily teaching audios from John Parsons at Hebrew for Christians
The Burden of Bitterness…
Do any of you struggle with bitterness and chronic grief from being hurt in life? It is hard to forgive when we have been betrayed or seriously wounded by others… Perhaps you were abandoned as a child or suffered terrible betrayal from a friend or spouse. How do we get past the heartache? How can we move past the pain? There are no easy answers, and deliverance from evil comes at different stages for different people, but bitterness is essentially rooted in unforgiveness, and harboring it means losing sight of how much God loves you — despite your own betrayals and sins against others.
Refusing to forgive enslaves you resentment, pain, and life in despair. Forgiveness is therefore not optional for a follower of Messiah: Your forgiveness of others is your own forgiveness (Matt. 6:15). Give up your demands for justice (Elohim) and appeal to God as Savior (YHVH). Instead of focusing on what harm others have done to you, examine your own heart, confess your own hardheartedness, and learn to be thankful for the grace you hope to partake in Yeshua. “Forgive one another, as God in Messiah forgave you” (Eph. 4:32); “for while we were still his enemies, he died for us” (Rom. 5:8).
Teshuvah’s Paradox…
To be a human being is a paradox, caught between the realms of the infinite and nothingness; a union of endless possibility yet terminating limitation. Man desires to live forever but is conscious that one day he will die. He is an incongruity – a mix of flesh and spirit, saint and sinner, good and evil, angel and animal… A spirituality that demands for us to be always happy, always “up,” is therefore dishonest, since the truth is grounded in what is real, and that includes both the miserable and the tragic as well as the joyful and sublime. It’s not that there is no difference between good and evil within the heart, but both are part of who we really are. It is the bittersweet struggle, the process of walking as “saintly sinners,” “holy fools,” “dying immortals,” and so on, that defines us. We must embrace our brokenness, in order to become whole; there is no healing without true confession of our need. Therefore we come to the paradoxical cross – the place of utter pain, separation, and death – to find atonement, acceptance and life.
Waking Up to Reality…
It’s vital to remember that one of the main tactics of the devil is to cast a spell over you to induce a sense of forgetfulness and apathy… The devil wants you to forget that you are a child of the King. The entire venture of teshuvah (repentance) presupposes that you are created b’tzelem Elohim – in the image of God – and therefore you have infinite value and dignity. This is all the more evident in light of the awesome ransom that Yeshua paid to reconcile your soul with God. So what is the greatest sin you can commit in your life? To forget what God has done for you… Remaining asleep, unmindful of your true identity is one of the most tragic things of life. Therefore Rosh Hashanah is sometimes called Yom Ha-Zikaron – the “Day of Remembrance” (Lev. 23:24). The blast of the shofar is meant to jolt us from our sleep… We are to remember who we really are — to remember that God is our King. The person who says, “Tomorrow I will do teshuvah” really is saying, “Not now.” And then tomorrow comes and he says, “Not now.” And in this way his entire life passes by, saying, “Not now.” Finally one day he wakes up only to find himself already dead. May God help us wake up to the Reality that is set before us.
Why Celebrate Rosh Hashanah?
Should followers of Yeshua observe the festival of Rosh Hashanah? Surely you know my answer, chaverim, but I thought I’d provide a few reasons why we observe this special time for the sake of our Christian friends who might not understand the importance of the moedim (appointed times). What follows is a “short list” of reasons, though a lot more could be said on this topic of course.
First, the LORD God is indeed the King of all the earth, our Creator and Redeemer. He is Melech Gadol al-kol-ha’aretz, (מֶלֶךְ גָּדוֹל עַל־כָּל־הָאָרֶץ), a “great King over all the earth” (Psalm 47:2). Though Christians should acknowledge His righteous rule and Kingship at all times, Rosh Hashanah is a “sanctified reminder” of God’s creative authority in our lives. Yeshua (Jesus) is called the Mashiach (מָשִׁיחַ), a term that denotes His Kingly dignity and royalty (this idea is unfortunately obscured by the Greek word “Christ”). Yeshua is also borei Olam – the Creator and Sustainer of all creation (Col. 1:16). He is coming to rule and reign from Jerusalem (Zion) in the near future. Christians will be judged according to their deeds of service (2 Cor. 5:10) and the world system (and Satan) will be judged during the Great Tribulation period that precedes the Second Coming. Just as the heavenly shofar was sounded from Sinai, so it will be one day sounded from Zion (Isa. 27:13).As the only true King and Judge, God indeed has a Sefer HaChayim (Book of Life) as well as a Sefer Ha-Metim (Book of Death). The Scriptures clearly warn that on the Day of Judgment to come, anyone’s name not found written in the Book of Life will be thrown into the lake of fire (Rev. 20:15). The Kingship of our LORD should be of great interest to those who wish to honor Him…
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Teshuvah and Sin…
Many people minimize the idea of sin because they fail to recognize it as life-threatening, lethal, and spiritually disastrous. Sin (and its justification in our lives) cuts us off from God, however, and that invariably leads to a sense of existential dread (Isa. 59:2; Ezek. 18:4). “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23), and that means those who practice sin are considered “dead” even while alive (Berachot 18a-b). Tragically, sin can lead to the dreadful punishment of karet (כָּרֵת), being “cut off” from any awareness of the Truth. Regarding this the sages note that the Hebrew word for sin, chet (חַטְא), is written with a silent Aleph (א) because when we sin, the Master and LORD (אַלּוּף) is present, because without his power no one could lift his hand to do anything great or small. Here we note the terrible reality that our sin is witnessed by God himself, a pain that pierces his very heart.
Established in God’s Way…
When you become alive to the truth that the LORD is your Rock, the very ground upon which you live, move, and have your being, then your steps are made sure, as it says, “The steps of a man are established by the LORD, when he delights in his way; though he fall, he shall not be cast down: for the LORD holds his hand” (Psalm 37:23-24). When you are unsure of your way, when you walk in uncertainty, you are unsteady in your resolve and are tempted to regard your life as being without any solid foundation. As you commit your way to the LORD, your steps are made sure, for you are walking before his Presence, and therefore you are upheld by his power.
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Relentless Blessings…
From our Torah portion for this week (Ki Tavo) we read: “And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you hear (shema) the Voice of the LORD your God” (Deut. 28:2). The language here is unusual, as if these blessings would seize you like an army takes an enemy stronghold. The sages comment that God’s blessings can “overtake” you in a way that may hide their true purpose for your good (Rom. 8:28). At such times we do not understand they are a concealed mercy (רַחֲמִים נִסְתָר) designed for our benefit. Therefore king David affirmed his confidence despite being surrounded by trouble. Where it is written, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life” (Psalm 23:6), the verb translated “shall follow me” (i.e., יִרְדְּפוּנִי) comes from a root word that means “to pursue,” as a hunter chases after his prey. David was sure that God’s lovingkindness would “hound” him as he made his way through this world – even in the dark places, even in “the valley of the shadow of death” (בְּגֵיא צַלְמָוֶת) – where God’s rod and staff would there comfort him and shepherd his way (Psalm 23:4). Therefore we we pray: “May your love, O LORD, be upon us, as we hope in You.”
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Whatever the heart seeks, it will find. We are constantly “asking, seeking, and knocking” (Matt. 7:7), even if we are often unaware of our heart’s search. The one who pursues righteousness will find it, just as evil will come to the one who searches after it (Prov. 11:27). As it is written, “Those who worship worthless idols forsake the love (i.e., chesed: חֶסֶד) that could be theirs” (Jonah 2:8). David understood that as he pursued God, God’s love would pursue him; as we seek, so we are sought by God; as we draw near to God, so He will draw near to us (James 4:8).
The prophet Hosea likewise cried out: “Let us know; let us press on to know (i.e., נִרְדְּפָה, “pursue after”) the LORD; His going out is sure as the dawn; He will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth” (Hos. 6:3). May God help us pursue him be’khol levavkha – with all our heart – because He has promised, “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:13). And may the love of the LORD indeed be upon us, even as we put our hope in Him. Amen.
The Knowledge of God…
The knowledge of God (ידיעת יהוה) is our supreme good and the “chief end of human life.” It is our highest blessing, more precious than earthly riches, power, or any of the pleasures this world affords (Jer. 9:23-24; Prov. 3:15; Matt. 13:44-46). Those who do not esteem the true knowledge of God invariably fall into darkness, idolatry, and despair (1 Thess. 4:5; Eph. 4:17; Hos. 4:1-2). The knowledge of God set us free to receive the inestimable blessing of eternal life given in the Messiah, as Yeshua testified: “And this is eternal life, to know you (לדעת אותך) the only true God (האל האמיתי היחיד), and Yeshua the Messiah (ישוע המשיח) whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Knowing God is the very reason for your existence and nothing can be compared with its superlative excellence (Phil. 3:8). Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! (Rom. 11:33).
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We seek the knowledge of God by first of all believing in its possibility. This in itself is a miracle, since only God can make us come alive to “see” and “hear” the truth of the Spirit (John 3:8). We must humble ourselves, confess our need, and ask God for the grace to truly know him. We must be willing to study his word. This involves doing teshuvah – turning to God and trusting that he desires a genuine relationship with Him (Deut. 10:12). We first know know God in our need for deliverance, our poverty of spirit, and our inner desperation for life, for without these primary and existential concerns, we will not be actually receptive to the divine presence. As we begin to trust in God, however, holy desire is awakened within us to know Him more deeply. We begin to “enshrine” his Presence within the sanctuary of our hearts, making a “place” for him, affirming his reality as what is most precious and glorious (Exod. 15:2). We discover the “one thing” that King David desired – to dwell in God’s Presence all his days, beholding the beauty of the LORD and inquiring in his palace (Psalm 27:4).
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Torah of Adversity…
How we deal with trouble and suffering (i.e., tzuris) makes all the difference. We may be tempted to bitterness over our lives, but then what? To paraphrase Soren Kierkegaard, the way of life is how more than it is what. You may be powerless to control reality, but you are nevertheless responsible for how you respond to it. Check your attitude. Do you chose to live in lament over a healing that has not yet happened, or perhaps regard yourself as a hapless victim? Or will you attempt to justify your suffering as a means of personal atonement, accepting it passively as a “good child” or martyr? Does your suffering stretch your heart, or does it cause you to shrink back in fear or self-pity?
In this connection, recall that when the Jews came to Marah, they “could not drink the water because it was bitter” (Exod. 15:23). The Hebrew, however, could be read, “they could not drink the water because they (i.e., the people) were bitter (כִּי מָרִים הֵם). The problem is often not “out there” but within the heart (Matt. 15:19-20). How we choose to see, in other words, says more about us than it does the external world. If you make the mistake of reading the daily news and taking it seriously, you will see only ugliness, and you run the risk of becoming hardhearted. Worldly despair eclipses apprehension of the Presence of God….
We have to use ayin tovah, “a good eye,” whenever we encounter the inevitable (and ubiquitous) adversities of life. Instead of seeing ourselves as victims of undeserved trouble, and instead of harboring resentment over the past and entertaining fear of the future, we must learn to see adversity in the light of faith that teaches lessons about finding resilience and hope. Faith affirms that adversity has an end that is ultimately good. Faith will not bow the knee to dark visions and live in dread of worldly fate.
It’s been said, “hurt people hurt people,” which means that if healing is not found for our woundedness, our pain will likely “leak out” as depression and hostility toward others… Finding inner peace is therefore crucial lest we become poisoned through a “root of bitterness” that defiles many (Heb. 12:15). The worst sort of prison is the one we make for ourselves, by choosing to be taken captive by fear and anger. May the Lord show us mercy and help us grow in grace and in the knowledge of his heart in all things. Amen.
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