Bless you, Father, for yet one more time to praise you, to love you, to bring our petitions to you. You hold time in your hands and give to each of us the time we were created for.

May your name be known in all of the earth, YHVH.

Friends, we are the people of the mightiest Elohim -the mightiest god that there is. There is none greater. There is none more loving and kind, nor more just and jealous and true.

The truth is that time is a valuable commodity. We only have so many hours in the day to learn and complete what the Father has for us for the day. If we defer from his plans, those minutes will never be gotten back. Much different from money, isn’t it? We all worry about where our next dollar is coming from or what we will do if we don’t have X amt of money, but we fritter away time and miss opportunities without giving it another thought.

We are only given one life and the hours in that life. Money can be made over. Time is gone once it ticks away.

What will you do with your time?

We spent the past twenty years training our children up in Christianity. We never knew we were supposed to train them up in Scriptures and Torah alone, not man’s doctrines. That may sound stupid to you, but when was the last time you were in your church and the preacher said to follow the Torah commandments? Or turn to this week’s Torah readings? If you sit in a Christian church each week, you will not hear this, even though it is the foundation for our faith. The foundation of the faith of our Messiah. Yes, Yehoshua(aka Jesus) is the foundation – the Living Torah – the Son of YHVH, who walked in Torah, taught us from Torah, based all of his words on Torah, and then told us to go and teach it to others. But the Christian Saviour is severely lacking in being a Torah Keeper. You might say he is a man of Torah-lessness(lawlessness).

In twenty years of being a Christian, I never heard that Jesus walked in and kept the Torah. I never heard this Torah truth – the fact that he himself said that Torah has not been abolished and the Feasts are still appointments we must keep with YHVH. I had no idea what my Messiah really looked like. I didn’t know his given name. But, yet, I cried out for him in my spirit for all of that time.  I was taught and told to love a Saviour different than the Messiah sent by the Father.

For all of that time, I tried to teach him to my children, but I was teaching the wrong Messiah. I was teaching a Saviour who does not look like the Messiah. I was teaching a truth that is but a shadow, a speck, of what the Father has for his people.

[How did that happen? ]

Jeremiah 16
10 “When you tell this people all that I have said, and they ask you, ‘Why has YHVH decreed all this terrible disaster against us? What is our iniquity, what is our sin, that we have committed against YHVH our God?’ 11 then you are to say to them, ‘It is because your ancestors abandoned me, says YHVH, and went after other gods, serving and worshiping them, but abandoned me and did not keep my Torah. 12 And you have done worse than your ancestors, for – look! – each of you lives according to the stubbornness of his own evil heart, so that you don’t listen to me.
19 YHVH, my strength, my fortress, my refuge in time of trouble, the nations will come to you from the ends of the earth, saying, “Our ancestors inherited nothing but lies, futile idols, completely useless.”

LIES. Lies. We were passed down lies. The cornerstone of the faith is a tallit-wearing, 7th-Day-Shabbat-keeping, Torah teaching, Jewish Rabbi. THAT picture is a bit different than the Jesus I heard about all my life, from the time I went to Catholic school to the time I got saved in an Assembly of God Church to the seeker-friendly church we attended last in small-town America. Not one of them knows who this man is.

And, he said they wouldn’t know him.

Matthew 7
‘ 21 “Not everyone who says to me, `Lord, Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, only those who do what my Father in heaven wants. 22 On that Day, many will say to me, `Lord, Lord! Didn’t we prophesy in your name? Didn’t we expel demons in your name? Didn’t we perform many miracles in your name?’ 23 Then I will tell them to their faces, `I never knew you! Get away from me, you workers of lawlessness!‘ ‘

Lawlessness: without the Law: Torahlessness.
Do you see the picture starting to take shape here?

All of that T I M E to learn the truth. All that time to teach my children that we are indeed to walk as the Messiah walked. I believed the lies. Gone. All that time to search the Father’s words and put the weight on them that Yehoshua(aka Jesus) did.

All that time to learn the Feasts and Times and Seasons that showed his first coming and his second.

All that T I M E. Why? Why wouldn’t I read it and teach it? That’s part of the lie. I never read it for myself. I never read it without the shadow of man’s doctrines. We all know that grace entered the world at the cross and did away with the “curse of the Law”, right???

WRONG.

We have inherited LIES. And those lies bind us up and waste the precious time, the years that YHVH, the Father, has prepared for us to live out in him. Time for us to teach his true words, his lost words, to our children. Want to know what to train them up in? Train them up in every word that comes from the mouth of YHVH, the Torah. Want to defeat the enemy in your life? Learn the same Scriptures that Messiah used to turn his lies back. Speak the words of Scripture that Messiah knew and put into action. Want to know the truth? Grace came into our lives as humans in the GARDEN when the Father gave them the hope of Messiah.

Time. It is a precious commodity in our lives. We are the stewards of it, and it is up to us to teach the use of it to our children. Use it wisely. Be wise in his ways.

“23 Then I will tell them to their faces, `I never knew you! Get away from me, you workers of lawlessness!‘ ‘”

Do not spend another minute wasting time.  Read it for yourself. No longer practice the Lawless lives you are leading. Turn to him and embrace all he has given us and all that he is.

Have a blessed Shabbat rest. May you learn all he has for you this day and walk in his narrow path.

Shalom!

Thank you for joining me for Shabbat Shalom! Praise. If you would like to read others’ thoughts, praises this week, please follow the links below. If you would like to join us for Shabbat Shalom! Praise, we welcome you! We welcome you to participate. You can read about the meme HERE. Please leave a comment with your direct link on this post. Please use the icon, linked back to Walking Therein, in your own Shabbat Shalom! Praise.

We also shipped the Shabbat glasses we use each Friday and Saturday nights.  They were my Great-Grandmother’s.  On my mother’s side. Some of them, Amanda sought out and bought at the Goodwill, and some my mother bought. About half of them made the trip. I should have packed them better.

We had celebrated two Shabbats here using the china and the glasses, and Hannah washed them and set them out to dry. When Eric got the bottle of honey out, he had no idea it would slip out of his hands, right down onto the Shabbat glasses and break four of them. Yes, FOUR! I have to admit I cried. It wasn’t that they are so important, but probably more that these were the glasses we had used when we were all together in our HOME, having Shabbat, and now they were gone. We brought so little of what we had, and it was just too much at that moment. Just an emotional thing, I suppose.

Things can be an emotional for us humans, can’t they? We can get attached to our things and think we can’t live without them. I get attached to all of the memories of all we have done with our things.  A lot of the things I left in the States I had a hard time parting with because one of my children had bought it for me – or made it for me.  I did bring a few things like that, probably more than I planned, because, when you get right down to it, they are important to me. Like a piece of that child at that moment in time. Granted, I left a whole lot that held dear memories for me too, but when I look around here, I am surprised at all we did get to bring.

As I thought about the broken Shabbat glasses, I had the same feeling I have every time something like this happens. After I cry and think of all the memories attached to it, I have to say, “They are only things, Jacque; just things.” I had a bowl, several years back, from the dinner set we got for our wedding, and about fifteen years later, I think I just had the one bowl left and a few plates and coffee cups.  One of the children broke the last bowl, and I was very upset. It was, after all, the last one I had, and it was special to me.

But it was just things.

After overreacting, and feeling horrible that I did, I did something to remind myself how much more important my children are to me than my things are, precious or not, memories or not. I glued all the pieces back together and wrote on the inside of the bowl. Some were sayings and some was Scripture. I would show you a picture of it, but I don’t have the bowl anymore. It didn’t make the cut of things to leave the States with. My children did make the cut. All but one of them came with us.

I daily look around and think of something else we had to leave in the States. A week after we arrived here in this new home, Caleb wasn’t listening, and he broke a glass piece I had brought with us. Again,  another broken thing. When we were on our way to Florida to take our things to ship to Costa Rica and fly out from Ft. Lauderdale, I can tell you that it was very emotional. We all were thinking of our animals, our home, our family and friends… all we were leaving.

We left a lot. We gave away a lot. One day, it hit me that of all the things I left in the States, there is nothing more dear to me that I left behind than my daughter. Of all the things I will never have again because it was broken, I would say the hardest thing I deal with is my broken heart. And hers. I would leave all of these things there to have her here with us.

So, broken things, they all teach us a lesson. And that is the way to live: learning from each and every moment that comes into our lives. Brokenness is a good thing in the Father’s eyes. It is when we are broken that we are able to be molded into what the Father has for our lives. He wants us broken, not to our detriment, but to our good and his glory. We can be cool, smart, pretty, whatever, but that’s when we are seeing ourselves. When we see him is when we are broken and at our end, and he can be what we and others see.

That is what Yehoshua did. If he were a composer or artist, we would deem that as his “magnum opus”. He had finished all he was purposed here for, to teach us how to walk in the Father’s ways and to give his life to ransom us from the stronghold of sin. He was broken. He was beaten, degraded and broken, and that was when he said it was finished.  He had accomplished his purpose for that time.

We will live lives, some of us with broken hearts, broken things, broken marriages, broken relationships, broken bodies, etc. etc… and this is the time he can be seen best if we place it in his hands. I am not always so good with fixing broken things. There always seems to be missing pieces, and it never looks the same with glue. There are always cracks that stay visible to the eye… But the Father, well, he can make those scars heal or leave them there, and still heal us. He takes broken things and makes them his and creates in them something we could never imagine.

So, it is not so bad a thing to be broken. To be a broken thing in Yah’s sight is a precious thing. It is the time when I am ready to be his and allow him to work his work in me. I imagine, just like when I have had things broken, that all of a sudden, their value is seen more greatly by me, just as our being broken is a valuable thing to the Father and its value is seen better by others then through his hands too.

I need to get better at being broken and allowing him to fix me. What about you?

Shalom~

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I can honestly say that this is truly a place where there is No Greater Joy. Teach your children the truth, Mommas. Hold up the standard in your home, and when you sin, repent and turn from your wicked way. Ask, seek and obey when you are shown the sin in your life, for it is a loving Father who corrects his children and won’t leave you in your sinful state.

Live what you believe. Stand up for what is in Scripture, and when others disagree and revile you, count it all joy. It will help you grow, strengthen your resolve to walk, draw you closer to Messiah, and after all the tears, you will come out a purer, more-refined Believer.

And your children will see you are real. And it will not return to you void.

May you have peace in your home~

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Purify my heart
Let me be as gold and precious silver
Purify my heart
Let me be as gold, pure gold

Refiner’s fire
My heart’s one desire
Is to be holy
Set apart for you Yah
I choose to be holy
Set apart for you my Master
Ready to do your will
Refiner’s Fire/Brian Doerksen /1990 Mercy/Vineyard Publishing

I have heard this – sang this – in church so many, many times. It is truly a great song and a great desire for a Believer. It has great depth and includes important things we should all pursue to understand and gain knowledge of. As a home school mom, I can see a lesson here. Some vocabulary words come to mind. Some thought-provoking discussions for younger and older believers to strengthen their understanding and perception of who they are and who the Father is. A most important question to answer:

How should they then live their lives?

To Think About

These words seem clear, but are they? What is this refiner’s fire? What is his will as we are put through the fire as a refining? Seriously, do we understand this fire? Do we know what this purging and refining is? Do we know what the word holy means? Are we really willing to be set apart for him? Set apart from whom? The world? What about other Believers who are not set apart? Are we willing to be completely set apart from what everyone else looks like, speaks like, behaves like? Or just those habits we consider sinful? What about what the Refiner thinks? What about HIS plans and HIS instructions and teachings?

Malachi 3
1 “Look! I am sending my messenger to clear the way before me; and the Master, whom you seek, will suddenly come to his temple. Yes, the messenger of the covenant, in whom you take such delight – look! Here he comes,” says ADONAI-Tzva’ot(YHVH of Hosts). 2 But who is able to endure the day when he comes? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire, like the soapmaker’s lye.
3 He will sit, testing and purifying the silver; he will purify the sons of Levi, refining them like gold and silver, so that they can bring offerings to YHVH uprightly. 4 Then the offering of Y’hudah and Yerushalayim will be pleasing to YHVH, as it was in the days of old, as in years gone by. 5 “Then I will approach you for judgment; and I will be quick to witness against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers; against those who take advantage of wage-earners, widows and orphans; against those who rob the foreigner of his rights and don’t fear me,” says YHVH-Tzva’ot.

6 “But because I, YHVH, do not change, you sons of Ya’akov will not be destroyed. 7 Since the days of your forefathers you have turned from my laws and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says YHVH-Tzva’ot.

“But you ask, ‘In respect to what are we supposed to return?’ 8 Can a person rob Yah? Yet you rob me. But you ask, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In tenths and voluntary contributions. 9 A curse is on you, on your whole nation, because you rob me. 10 Bring the whole tenth into the storehouse, so that there will be food in my house, and put me to the test,” says YHVH-Tzva’ot. “See if I won’t open for you the floodgates of heaven and pour out for you a blessing far beyond your needs. 11 For your sakes I will forbid the devourer to destroy the yield from your soil; and your vine will not lose its fruit before harvest-time,” says YHVH-Tzva’ot. 12 “All nations will call you happy, for you will be a land of delights,” says YHVH-Tzva’ot. 13 “You have spoken strongly against me,” says YHVH. “Yet you say, ‘How have we spoken against you?’ 14 By saying, ‘There is no point in serving God. What good is it to obey his orders or to walk about as mourners before YHVH-Tzva’ot? 15 We consider the arrogant happy; also evildoers prosper; they put Elohim to the test; nevertheless, they escape.’” 16 Then those who feared YHVH spoke together; and YHVH listened and heard. A record book was written in his presence for those who feared YHVH and had respect for his Name. 17 “They will be mine,” says YHVH-Tzva’ot, “on the day when I compose my own special treasure. I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him. 18 Then once again you will see the difference between the righteous and the wicked, between the person who serves Yah and one that doesn’t serve him.

To Discern and Act On

What is his will? What are his words? What are we to do? Don’t skip over the important stuff and make this about ‘tithing’. This is about returning to Yah. This is about my ways versus his ways. This is about my making my own Laws and his Torah instruction.

Let us not be clanging cymbals and whitewashed sepulchers. Let us not walk in our own ways, but align our choices with scripture. Let us refine each other as iron sharpens iron. I have a good friend who is set apart. Her very words cause me to think about my life and how I live, what I say, what I think. She is very open and honest about her own sins and failures. She does not exalt herself or her family, but you will find them joyful and proclaiming the Father and his love and victories. I want to be like her. I want to be like the Father.

Let us not cling to what we want, who we want to be. Let’s not “let it all hang out” and be cool, but let’s BE SET APART from those worldly examples. Showing people who he is does not require us to be like them. Quite the opposite, showing people who the One True God of Israel is requires us to be like him and his Son, our Messiah, so that they will know he is set apart for them. For, even if you might find him hanging at the local bar ministering to people, you would not find him swinging to the latest hit, just going out for drinks. You would find him about his Father’s business. And so must we be: Set apart and about the Father’s business.

So, sing that song again. Think about the words. Do you really want to be purified? Do you really want to be as gold? Do you really want to be set apart? It was too much for the rich young ruler. Yehoshua said, “No one is good except one (YHVH). If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” But he did keep the commandments, but he couldn’t give up all. He walked away from the Messiah, grieved at hearing this, for he could not give up what was necessary. (Luke 18, Matt. 19)

Shalom!

Thank you for joining me for Shabbat Shalom! Praise. If you would like to read others’ thoughts, praises this week, please follow the links below. If you would like to join us for Shabbat Shalom! Praise, we welcome you! We welcome you to participate. You can read about the meme HERE. Sign the Linky with your direct link on this post. Please use the icon, linked back to Walking Therein, in your own Shabbat Shalom! Praise.

Scriptures are taken from The Complete Jewish Bible, though I have restored Yah’s sacred name within the text.

Isaiah 55
8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways,” says ADONAI. 9 “As high as the sky is above the earth are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10 For just as rain and snow fall from the sky and do not return there, but water the earth, causing it to bud and produce, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater; 11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth – it will not return to me unfulfilled; but it will accomplish what I intend, and cause to succeed what I sent it to do.” 12 Yes, you will go out with joy, you will be led forth in peace. As you come, the mountains and hills will burst out into song, and all the trees in the countryside will clap their hands. 13 Cypresses will grow in place of thorns, myrtles will grow instead of briars. This will bring fame to ADONAI as an eternal, imperishable sign.

For his ways are higher than our ways…

We know this verse. If we know him, we know his ways are so much greater than our own. We are mere humans in the face of the almighty Elohim – God – YHVH. We know this in our heads. We know that he has a plan for each of us. We know that he has a plan for our salvation and the salvation of those around us. We can know what is his desire from what he tells us in Scripture.

We would say his desires are also our desires. Then one day we are faced with something we do not recognize as his ways. We are faced with dying to our self. Dying to our self is usually when his ways become apparent. When we are faced with something in Scripture that we like to do or that is just ‘our personality’ or even something that makes us appear to be or feel important and what Scripture tells us about it is contrary to our own desire is where the rubber meets the road. Will we adhere to the truth of Scripture? Will we be able to recognize his ways? Will we go on cliches and partial verses we have heard or will we know what his word is? Do we know his Scripture well enough to know his ways or will we violate his words?

We know the blessings, but do we know what obedience will give those blessings? Do we really know his words?

Deuteronomy 28
1 “If you listen closely to what ADONAI your God says, observing and obeying all his mitzvot which I am giving you today, ADONAI your God will raise you high above all the nations on earth; 2 and all the following blessings will be yours in abundance -if you will do what ADONAI your God says:…
3-13 {These things will happen} if you will listen to, observe and obey the mitzvot of ADONAI your God 14 and not turn away from any of the words I am ordering you today, neither to the right nor to the left, to follow after other gods and serve them. 15 “But if you refuse to pay attention to what ADONAI your God says, and do not observe and obey all his mitzvot and regulations which I am giving you today, then all the following curses will be yours in abundance….

When a trial comes into our life and we are faced with something we do not want to do or something that seems too hard to bear, will we recognize his hand in it? Will we fight against it in our hearts? Will we recognize it as it aligns with the personality of YHVH and Scriptures or will we be out of touch because we do not know his words?

Sometimes what is just ‘his ways’ become trials because we do not recognize them. They come up against our ways and we do not recognize them as his way versus our way. Then it becomes a trial to our flesh. That situation may turn into hurt or even disobedience if we choose not to obey. Perhaps it becomes a bitter trial and leaves a bad taste in our mouths because we do not discern a situation as his way.

It is imperative that we know Scripture and are able to recognize his hand. As time passes, it becomes more imperative to know the Scriptures and if something truly is of his hand. Certainly all things that happen, whether of his hand or not are allowed by him into our lives and will be worked for a benefit because of his great love for us.

11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth – it will not return to me unfulfilled; but it will accomplish what I intend, and cause to succeed what I sent it to do.”

If we will recognize things that are his ways and are not determined to have it our way, then we will go out with joy and be led forth with peace. When we walk rightly in his words in what seems to be working against us, his glory will be shown. We will have given in to his words and his will and will have conquered the flesh that so desperately desires to be its own person, its own boss.

This will bring fame to ADONAI as an eternal, imperishable sign.

Shabbat Shalom!

Thank you for joining me for Saturday Psalm & Praise. If you would like to read others’ thoughts, Psalms and Praises this week, please follow the links below.  If you would like to join us for Saturday Psalm & Praise, we welcome you! We welcome you to participate. You can read about the meme HERE. Sign the Linky with your direct link on this post. Please use the icon, linked back to Walking Therein, in your own Saturday Psalm and Praise.

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All Scriptures taken from The Complete Jewish Bible by David Stern.