As disciple of Yeshua, how have I grown?
Wow... I have learned SO many things from God's Word that I never imagined. From my pastor, from reading Scripture, meditating, and memorizing, I have indeed grown a lot. My bookshelf is getting heavier and heavier. And i have only begun to know God in totally. So little do I know of Him! If my memory, mind, and
body were so filled and encompassed by God to the brim and were I filled to overflow I still cannot contain God and all He is.
It's so important that when I am young that I input and inscribe into my heart as much as possible from God. I can imagine God as the ancient scribe,
inscribing upon the clay of my heart in ancient cuneiform Hebrew. The younger i am, the softer the clay. Clay gradually hardens through exposure. The younger
I am, the better it is to seek God. The things I inscribe from God's Word now will last beyong this lifetime. I want to memorize as much as God's Word as I can, so that I will be prepared for the last days.
Many begin well with a genuine love for God and then later fall away. Gradually their heart grows cold, and sometimes God revives them in later years, and sometimes God doesn't. Far be it from me (God forbid!) that that should happen. I don't want to waste any more of my life on my self or on the world. I just want to grow and grow, and love God more and more.
When did I become a disciple?
When I became Bat Mitzvah. It's especially special when one is brought up believing in God. There is a great parallel between a believer becoming a disciple and a child becoming an adult. A believer becomes a disciple when he really begins to follow Yeshua and obey all His commandments. A child becomes an adult at Bat or Bar mitzvah, a son or daughter of the commandments, when she or he reaches maturity. A bar mitzvah, though having been growing all his life, puts off and cuts off all childish things at maturity. A believer, becomes a disciples, by cutting off and putting off all the things of the world.
What does a disciple do? Obey the Mitzvot. What does a bat mitzvah do? Obey the Mitzvot. So it happened to me. Yes, I may have believed in God as a child, but it was after becoming bat mitzvah that I began to truly be a disciple, to truly learn of the cross I have to take up to follow Yeshua, to begin to love God with all I am to begin my serious Torah study, etc. SO this was my experience. What is interesting is that my spiritual growth parallels my physical growth, discipleship parallels my bat mitzvah. Perhaps not everyone is like that, but it how God chose to work in me.
Surely, yes, being a bat mitzvah and a disciple is not the end but rather a beginning, of lifelong commitment to God, to His Mitzvot to Obeying the Torah which YHWH speaks to me, to fasting, to prayer, etc. There are so many things, infinite, that a disciple has to be, just there are infinite commandments a bat mitzvah has to obey. Yet I know that YHWH is leading, teaching me, speaking to me. Let me never let Him go.
Btorat Ha Shem is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The requirements He makes of His servants to follow Him has always been the same, His calling is constant whether to Abram in Ur, to Moshe in Mizraim, to Shmu'el in Ephraim, to Kefa in Galil, to Shaul in Damascus, even down to Bonhoeffer in Berlin, and
today, dare i say, also to me. Leave all! Leave the comforts of the world you see to venture into the unknown to a place I will show you, based upon nothing but the sure rock of the promises of YHWH. Far from the religion of convenience, it is a demanding, taxing, and difficult journey. It is a relationship that brings you into the unknown. It calls to all. Only few hear, and even less still follow.
Shalom again to my readers. I will write a more conclusive meditation on discipleship and becoming bat mitzvah, in fact, I have been working, God willing, on a more comprehensive, topical, and systematic resource where you can go, read, explore, search Scripture, etc rather than a sporadic and inconsistent blog.
Please enjoy this month's lighted lamp magazine too!
Shalom Aleikhem,
Beka.
When Christ calls a men, He bids him come and die! - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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