Why I’m Not Just a Natural Girl

I’m thinking a lot about natural things lately: the sun, the sky, herbs, making sprouted grain bread, drinking natural goat’s milk. But this morning as I worked the soaked grain bread with the plastic spatula I was reminded of what Scripture says.

For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

(Romans 8:13 KJV)

For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

(Romans 8:5-6 KJV)

If I live naturally, eat naturally, breathe naturally, and wear 100% all-natural cotton, it doesn’t make one bit of difference. I’m going to die. If we live according to the natural, and sin according to the natural, we die according to the natural.

It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.

(1 Corinthians 15:44 KJV)

To be natural to be limited to our senses, to this realm, and to this earth. We don’t have spiritual understanding or spiritual awareness. According to what we see and think, we act. The flesh of a man consists of his physical flesh and his soul: his mind, will, and emotions.

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

(1 Corinthians 2:14 KJV)

No matter how natural we are, we cannot avoid death, and we cannot avoid sin. Sin is natural to us, because we were born into it. Is there something pure and undefiled about creation, something tranquil and florescent? No. Creation was created in glory. Now Creation is subject to futility.

For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

(Romans 8:22 KJV)

If we have ears to hear and eyes to see, we would see that everything of the flesh has a death sentence of it. If we have ears to hear, we would hear the groans and wailings of creation, its restlessness, its longing, to be restored and to see the sons of God in glory.

The value of worldly and earthly things is hyper-inflated. Like a giant bubble, it is colorful, attractive, sailing happily and smoothly.  One prick is all it takes for the world’s values, systems, programs, concepts, accomplishments, to drop as a little soapy splat on the infinite pavements of eternity. It will be no more.

I don’t just want to be a natural girl, or grow into a natural living woman, eco, green, organic and all-natural. I want to be a spiritual being. I want to have eternal life. I want a spiritual, eternal body. I want to have the eyes of the Spirit, to have discernment and not divination. I want to be a work of God’s hands, built according to His pattern, not according to self. I want to hear the voice of God that thunders, and deep within me stirs me to rise up, take up my cross, and follow Him, He being the sole object and focus of all my being.  

We can be as natural as we like, but unless we grasp, lay hold up, and root ourselves into that which is of God and of the Spirit, when we die, it will be as the natural grass of the field that naturally fades away. Here today and gone tomorrow.  

We won’t make a dent on destiny. We won’t affect eternity. We will just live happy, and die happy, that’s the end. How sad, if all we live for is this life. Futile. Vanity. Worthless. Passing.

But if we live for the kingdom, the eternal Kingdom, and the eternal Messiah, what joy, what life and peace!

God, make me a spiritual girl. Not merely an intelligent girl, pretty girl, witty girl, natural girl, talented girl, sweet girl, useful girl, or good girl, but a spiritual girl. Hey, but wait. Now in the Spirit there is no longer male nor female, circumcised nor uncircumcised, Jew nor Greek. Messiah is all and in all.

Are we going to bury our talents in this earth, or multiply them as an investment into eternity?

A Poem by Rebekah Mui, “Oh My Precious Hyper-Inflated World”

Oh My Precious Hyper-Inflated World,

Don’t go away, leave me, in a bit,

Stay around and don’t your surly lips curl,

I will be so ever good and sweet,

Fill your pockets with dainties you will never eat,

Dear me how quickly time goes by.

Hark! All time’s wasted by and by,

Why not invest a little quick pleasure,

Something tangible to treasure,

Something possible to measure,

Enjoy my own little gesture,

Feeding this little twinkie who will take my heart,

Fly away; drop and die, and drown.

What’s the harm.

Just a little fun.

Take a break from this endless sojourn,

To chat with the locals, tales to spurn,

While the hurricane nears the ground,

You don’t want to leave the town,

Your heart and your destiny forever bound,

In Futility.

With Him and In Him.

We think often about the glory of the Church in Christ. In eternity, and even now, we are literally His body, in Him and of Him.

It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him: If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us: If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself.

(2 Timothy 2:11-13 KJV)

We are yoked with Him.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

(Matthew 11:28-30 KJV)

Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.

(1 John 4:17 KJV)

And as He is the Son of God, we are made partakers of the divine nature, and are made sons of God.

Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.

(1 John 3:1-2 KJV)

Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

(2 Peter 1:4 KJV)

What a glory! It is an eternally supreme and wondrous glory, indescribable.

And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:

(John 17:22 KJV)

 And we the Body of Christ will be made One, just as One as He, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are One, and we are One in Him!

I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.

(John 17:23 KJV)

And we will be perfected in this Oneness and glory, so that the majestic glory of Christ will be the glory of His saints!

But what is the nature of this glory?

When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day.

(2 Thessalonians 1:10 KJV)

We like to think of the glory, but what precedes and catalyzes this glory? Why does the Father exalt the Son in such glory?

Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

(Philippians 2:4-11 KJV)

Namely the cross. The cross of Yeshua the Messiah is the suffering before the glory, the labor before the birth, the pain before the joy, the shame before the exaltation, and the deaf before the life.

We are to take up our cross and follow Him. Yoked with Him, together with Him, we die. He puts to death everything of us – our inherent flesh, our inherent body, our inherent nature, our inherent goodness, and our inherent evil. Remember – we are born into the knowledge of good and evil, lest we think Christ puts to death our evil, we must not forget He put to death every good of ours, which when weighed by the eternal holiness of God is not goodness at all, nor right-doing, but filthy rags of wickedness. No matter how beautiful the fruit, it is bad, because the tree is bad, rotten, and deformed.

This glory comes only by the cross and nothing else. Next time I think of something great I want to do for God, I must put the cross to it – to death with myself! I must judge the effect and potential of such a doing with the power and glory of the cross, and my own works pale and shrink in estimation. What can we do that exceeds the wonder of the cross, what else can please God? Nothing save the cross of Yeshua the Messiah, by whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.

Being yoked to Him, therefore, imagine ourselves chained to Him at the time of His rejection, trial, scorn, and crucifixion. Imagine the jeers of the crowd, the lashes of the whip; whatever fell of Him falls on you, for you are yoked with Him.

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

(Isaiah 53:3 KJV)

If they persecuted Him, will they do not persecute you? If they despised Him, they will despise you. If they reject Him, prepare to be rejected. Want to be His disciple? Want to be a Christian (follow of Christ)? Then you must take up your cross, following on behind Him, yoked alongside Him, and bound in Him.

Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets.

(Luke 6:26 KJV)

No, we will no be spoken well off; people will hide their faces from us, we will be despised by men, and not esteemed. We will be little and worthless both in the sight and men and ourselves. We will be utterly cast down, humiliated, and stripped of everything that makes us hold our head up high.

And that the Son of God, to whom belongs all glory and honor, should submit Himself to such a state, humble Himself under the agony of the cross, to take upon Himself all our suffering and shame! It then becomes only reasonable that we who love Him do the same, to follow in His steps, in Him. It becomes remarkably easier for us, because He is the one bearing the burden of the yoke. His grace poured out on us compels us and leads us on. Even the cross is not a work of ourselves, but the only thing required of us is to yield ourselves under the yoke. Then He will drive us, lead us, and His grace carries us, fills us with a hope beyond understanding, a faith beyond reason, and a love beyond bounds that will make us run towards the final eternal goal – the salvation of our souls, the Kingdom of Our Lord and of His Messiah.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

(Isaiah 53:5 KJV)

Are we willing to lay down our lives to Him in total surrender, knowing that wounds, bruises, chastisements, and stripes will be our lot, and yet in those suffering be filled with utmost joy? This then is the glory of the saints, for we suffer with Him.

Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.

(1 Peter 4:19 KJV)

Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.

(1 Peter 4:16 KJV)

See Him, carrying the cross, walking the Way of Suffering, mocked, spit upon, kicked, jeered. He looks back at His disciples. There you stand, you who have followed Him thus far. Yet now you can choose to be identified with Him, or hide your face and disappear in the crowd. Will you stand out? Would you walk forward, and stand with Him. Would You follow Him to the cross, pick up one Yourself, and then continue the rest of the way, led by the Son of God who laid down His life?  Yet is any man suffers are a follower of Messiah, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God on this behalf!

It is easy to declare “O Lord, I will follow you to the death!” But this statement will not validate itself – it is spoken in ignorance, firstly of the implications of the cross and its cost, and secondly of the state of your own heart and your ability.

The disciples learnt a tough lesson at the eve of the Cross, for they had neither counted the cost nor checked their wallet, but out of impulsiveness and immaturity made such a statement.  

The rich young ruler counted the cost of discipleship, for the Lord made him to understand on no uncertain terms its requirement, but did not find in himself the ability. Thus he was heartbroken. That last stronghold in his life, the last barrier between himself and the cross, was not his money or his love but his pride, or self-trust. Finding in himself no such power, he turned away, so near to eternal life that he could almost breathe its everlasting refreshment, but so far away, as to miss it altogether.

We only need fall at His feet in tears and great longing, “Lord, forgive me for I am not able. I have this not in myself. I cannot follow you. But I throw myself onto Thy mercy and avail my soul before Thee.” Then His strength will be made perfect in our weakness.

And thus we shall come to understand the grace of God, for thus it shall be poured out on us.

But and if ye suffer for righteousness' sake, happy are ye: and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled; (1 Peter 3:14 KJV)

For it is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well doing, than for evil doing.

(1 Peter 3:17 KJV)

Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.

(Revelation 2:10 KJV)

By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season;

(Hebrews 11:24-25 KJV)

Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.

(2 Timothy 3:12 KJV)

And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

(Romans 8:17-18 KJV)

Yea, as Christ suffered and died, so if we suffered with Him, we shall be glorified together!

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.

(Isaiah 53:7 KJV)

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

(Isaiah 53:4 KJV)

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

(Isaiah 53:5 KJV)

Are we today willing to bear and carry the sorrows of His people? Are we today willing, in this suffering, to be judged by them as being punished by God for our own sins? Are we today willing be wrongfully accused, yet remain silent. To be right, yet treated as wrong?

God, make us willing to be made willing. Make us willing to yield under Your yoke, to lift up our hands in surrender to the nails and thorns that beflicted our Master Yeshua on the cross?

Make us choose the narrow way, to drink the deeply bitter cup of sorrows, griefs, afflictions, and the cross. Let us not only say with our lips that we are willing to drink Your cup, but with our hearts, souls, and minds, bound to the cross. We will not evade the cross, nor run from You in the time of Your affliction, but make us O Master to be willing to be shamed with You.  

There is not in us a desire for the Messiah’s cross, but an inborn distaste and repulsion against it. The Adversary fights against us with might and main, roaring in all the savageness of evil, circling us as wolves, waiting to bite and devour our souls. Yet Messiah ever lives to make intercession for us. The Spirit travails for us with unutterable groaning. Creation moans in restless longing. The Father preserves us to the end.

 Make us O Lord, let us be a vessel of Your making, a sacrifice to Your pleasure! Keep us faithful O Lord, never let our heart grow cold. May we persevere with all the perseverance of hope, through the fires, darkness, turmoil, and wrangling of this present age to be presented a purified, blameless, glorious, comely Bride, the Church and Body of our Messiah.

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.

(1 John 3:2 KJV)

Concerning social and moral issues and the Kingdom of God

The Declaration of Independence states that one of the unalienable rights of man is life. A man has the right to live, and that right to is Endowed upon him by the Creator. The one who gives man life commands that man has a right to live. No man dares to overrule God.

It is The LORD who gives and The LORD who takes away. It is His prerogative.

And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.

(Job 1:21 KJV)

If anyone shed man’s blood, man must recompense it. God hereby gives to man the right to punish fellow man who murder. Why? Man is created in the image of God.

Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.

(Genesis 9:6 KJV)

Is this fair? Is capital punishment right? Our sense of fairness and justness is not the factor in question here, nor will it have any effect. Here is where we must trust the Creator, who is totally just and righteous. He is in supreme authority, and all He does is right. We only need trust Him.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

(Genesis 1:27 KJV)

 Male and Female He created them. Fullstop. If God had wanted any other sort of life He would have created it. He created us in His image. He created us male and female. It is not for our insubordinate mind to connive another sort of order and life. God is the one who had all the rights – the rights of the Creator. He made it like that. Let’s stop questioning Him.

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

(Genesis 2:24 KJV)

This is the order in which God created life and marriage. Since man is in God’s image, and God is unchangeable, then obviously the manner of life which He created us in unchangeable.

Does life begin at conception? No. Life is derived from God the Creator.

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

(Genesis 2:7 KJV)

God predestined us from before the foundation of the world, long before conception!

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,

(Ephesians 1:3-5 KJV)

God knew the destiny of Jacob and Esau from the womb. Babes in the womb can have a calling.  

(Genesis 25:23 KJV)  And the LORD said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.

(Galatians 1:15 KJV)  But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace,

God caused the conception of Samson and willed his life.

Children can be consecrated to God from the womb.

  

(Judges 13:7 KJV)  But he said unto me, Behold, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and now drink no wine nor strong drink, neither eat any unclean thing: for the child shall be a Nazarite to God from the womb to the day of his death.

God fashions children in the womb.

(Jeremiah 1:5 KJV)  Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

(Psalms 22:10 KJV)  I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother's belly.

We are born sinners, yes even in the sin inherited from Adam.

(Isaiah 48:8 KJV)  Yea, thou heardest not; yea, thou knewest not; yea, from that time that thine ear was not opened: for I knew that thou wouldest deal very treacherously, and wast called a transgressor from the womb.

(Psalms 51:5 KJV)

Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

(Isaiah 49:1 KJV)  Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name.

  

God the creator and origin of life is in supreme power and authority. All kings will bow down before Him. And He is coming quickly to do a short work on the earth. He is coming to repay the wicked and bring in the flood of the world of the ungodly.

O LORD God, to whom vengeance belongeth; O God, to whom vengeance belongeth, shew thyself.

(Psalms 94:1 KJV)

And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.

(Ezekiel 25:17 KJV)

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

(Romans 12:19 KJV)

The gospel of Yeshua the Messiah is not a social gospel. It is the gospel of the Kingdom. Remember the incident of Mary's flask broken at His feet? Judas immediately reacted that it was a waste. The flask could have been sold and the money used to feed the poor. But the gospel is not a social gospel. It is the gospel of the Kingdom. It is the gospel of the cross, where I through the Messiah died to the world and the world to me. The world will say that I am wasted on God. The world will regard me as no better than dead, but to me the world is wasted, dead, and dying. Woe to me if men speak well of me. I'd rather they "sit shiva".

What is the gospel of the Kingdom?  

And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

(Matthew 3:2 KJV)

And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand. He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still. And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.

(Revelation 22:10-12 KJV)

The God who created the heavens and the earth, YHWH is His name. It is He who rained fire and brimstone on the cities of Sodom and Gommorah, being exceedingly wrathful because of their wickedness. He is angry, very angry. His wrath is burning hot.

The world should be afraid, very afraid.

You can choose to ignore the reality of YHWH, but you cannot avoid the consequences.

And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

(Revelation 21:6-8 KJV)

Free Watchman Wallpaper

Shalom! Here are two designs you can use freely BUT NOT SELL. I pray that you will be encouraged to watch and pray!

Thoughts on How The Law of Love Deals a Death Blow to Religiousity

The focus and daily life of the Disciple is Christ. To be His disciple is to follow in His steps. He fulfilled the Torah. He concluded the Torah. He calls us now to a greater and more demanding Torah than Moses, which included compromises because of the hardness of Israel’s heart – He calls us to the Torah of Love – this Law which is a light to our way, and leads in His paths, all the way to the cross. We bear our cross daily, denying all, deny ourselves. The Torah of love is the cross, because the cross is love. The Torah of love is the only thing that will please the Father, for the only fulfillment of righteousness was in the Cross.

The Torah, the benchmark of all righteousness, concludes at the cross. From then on we are in Christ and He in us. He demands of us love; total surrender. “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.”

It is neither Gentile Christianity or Messianic Judaism in the physical form we know today. It is the body of Christ. It is Discipleship. It is religionless Christianity. It is nothing but following the Messiah. Anything apart from the Messiah and from His Cross is self-righteousness, a work of the flesh and of the soul, pleasing to the self. Anything spiritual, of the cross, is death to the soul, death to the self, death to all selfishness, and only thing pleasing to God.

This is message of the Kingdom, for when the Messiah was immersed He was found pleasing to the Father.

We the body of Messiah has to return to our apostolic foundations, found neither in the “Church” culture nor in “Jewish roots” but in the One New Man, Christ/Messiah! Apart from Him every observance, whether of Sunday service or Saturday Sabbath  is worth nothing more than filthy sh*t to the Father.

Religion- flesh, works, self, carnality- comes to end in Yeshua.

The cross of Yeshua alone transcends culture. The Kingdom of God does not consist in eating and drinking. Our message to the world, our gospel to the world must be Yeshua and Yeshua alone. We must add nothing and subtract nothing from the call to discipleship. We must preach the Word of God, Yeshua, alone!

Jews are Jews in the flesh. The gospel must be go to them. Gentiles are Gentiles in the flesh. The gospel must go to them. Whether to Barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, the gospel must be preached. The gospel must be taught.

We fail to find carnal fulfillment in “loving God” alone. Yet that is the most important commandment. Without love, all our works are nothing. With love, all selfishness is removed and our eyes can see what truly matters.

Die, die, die to all that in the flesh! Be nailed to the cross and buried, O sinful man! Nothing good can be found in physical obedience. Find what is that true and perfect will of God – obedience rather than sacrifice, and obedience which leads to sacrifice. Obedience leads to the cross and nowhere else.

The cross is the conclusion of the Torah. The cross is the final death blow to our affections and lusts. When we preach the cross we have to realize that Yeshua’s yoke is easy and His burden is light. We need to the return to the pure Word of God, Yeshua and Yeshua alone. He has to be the one who calls, choses, and causes us to remain faithful. We need to know the essence of discipleship, the essence of God’s heart.

If there’s any law you want to fulfill, fulfill Shema Yisrael. Circumcise your heart. Try it – and see that Yeshua is the only way to the Father. Yeshua’s cross IS our circumcision. Yeshua’s blood is our atonement. Yeshua’s love must become our love. Then go and love your neighbor. This is righteousness.

What makes you think love is so “easy”? What makes you think love is not enough? Ask God, and see if love is not enough. Love is more demanding, more excruciating, more exacting, than the Torah.

Why did Paul not create specific laws, like concerning eating of meat, wearing headcoverings, - he wasn’t creating a religion of rules, he was creating guidelines to love amongst brethren and live a set-apart life.

The lines of our set-apartness are not like lines across fields I draw to separate you from me and me from you by my own particular religiousity. Every religion then is "set-apart" and has a human level of "spirituality" and "holiness" The set-apartness to be in disciples is an inherent, spiritual wholly-otherness, above and beyond the physical, carnal, or pseudo-spiritual, a quality which depends not on what we do, but who we are, which of course affects what we do. The disciples vs. the multitudes. (Matthew 5)

How did Abraham fulfil the Torah? Trusting in Elohim, he obeyed, left all, and followed Him. Today the call of discipleship comes to us today. Will we trust Him, obey, leave all and follow Him?  

YESHUA, Yeshua alone. He said, “By this all mens hall know that you are my disciples, that you love one another.” (Not that you go to church on Sunday, tithe, wear crosses, and give out tracts, nor that you wear tallis, keep Shabbat, and preach Torah).

Who says this “justifies sin”? Love (the cross) was the death blow to the shackles of sin! Love God, hear His voice, keep His commandments – and what is His command to the rich young ruler, who kept every tittle of the law since his youth, and who wanted eternal life – “Sell all you have, give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven”. This was the cross. This was a blow in the face of the most “righteous” carnal man. Nothing is more demanding and impossible than the cross.

I can keep it ALL, I can be the most PERFECT Christian who knows all the right terminology, or the most Torah OBSERVANT kid in town, who can quote you tractate after tractate, – but if I am not His sheep and His disciple, if I cannot lay down my life, my  rights, my ambitions at Yeshua’s feet, and die, and meet the needs of His brethren (Matthew 25) at the cost of my own life , I jolly well stink!!

To tell you the truth, I have got distracted many times, tempted to rely on the flesh, and am daily assailed by my greatest opponent, pride, which has to be weeded out painfully by the cross. But remember:

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

(Matthew 7:21 KJV)

The works of the flesh are sh*t. The cross is the original, the perfect. No copy can be produced. No counterfeit can equal its power. Anything outside the path of discipleship is not righteous. We can only follow after Him, in His steps, and submit to His kindly yoke. Paul/Sha’ul understood the power and the demand of the gospel. He did not remain merely a Pharisee.If not he would have been worthless. He died in Christ. Please, he gave his life for the cross, for Yeshua, and for the gospel.

The only commands that matter are the commands impossible to keep and impossible to legislate, like Shema Yisrael, love your neighbor, sell all you have, do not hate, etc. etc. The only commands that matter are the kind that you cannot be praised for before man (Matthew 6).These are the actions birthed out of dying. Only when it costs us severely through the cross of Yeshua can our works count. Only when our actions are birthed by the command of heaven, from apostolic and spiritual being, can they (apostolic doing) be of world impact.

IN other words, don’t focus on what kind of fruit you bear and measure for qualities of good fruit, focus on being a good tree.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

(John 12:24 KJV)

He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.

(John 12:25 KJV)

If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honour.

(John 12:26 KJV)

Love is an action, of course, but the only valid action of love is the cross. That is why it's the focus of Yeshua and must be the focus for His disciples. 

Urgent Repost: God’s Loving Care and Human Suffering by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God’s Loving Care and Human Suffering by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
(Harvest Festival, Berlin) October 4, 1931

TEXT: “Your steadfast love is better than life”(Ps 63:3)

Two and a half millennia have passed since that ancient Jewish saint, far from Jerusalem and his homeland, devoured by misery in body and soul, surrounded by mockers and enemies of his God, pondered the strange and wonderful ways God had led him. It was no easy, peaceful meditation. It was a struggle for God and God’s faithfulness. The pillars of life had crumbled away. Where his hand thought it had found firm support it reached into an empty nothingness. “God, where are you? God, who am I? My life falls crashing down into the bottomless abyss. God, I am afraid, where has Your goodness gone? And yet, You are my God, and Your goodness is better than life,” That is one of the words that does not let you go once you have understood it, a word that seems to shine gently, but is inwardly hard, a word of passion engendered where two worlds clash, that is, a word from the world of the Bible and not from our own.

The words of this text, “Your goodness is better than life”: it is the exultant cry of the wretched and abandoned, of the weary and overburdened; the cry of longing uttered by the sick and the oppressed; the song of praise among the unemployed and the hungry in the great cities; the prayer of thanksgiving by the tax collectors and prostitutes, by sinners known and unknown. Well, is that really their shout of joy? No, it is not, not in our world, at any rate not in our age. It is the shout of joy for the peculiar world of the Bible, which frightens and angers us with its strangeness, at least as far as we still listen to its message and have not become insensitive to the reality of the Bible. Or perhaps the verse does not seem so particularly remarkable after all. Perhaps we think that it is perfectly self-evident. These things have become part of the life of a Christian. If that is how we think, we shall have to discover what the psalmist is really saying here and whether it is really so obvious.

At some point in our psalmist’s life something quite decisive happened: God came into his life. From that moment his life was changed. I don’t mean that he suddenly became very good and pious – it may well be that he was that before God came. But now none other than God had come and had drawn near to him. What made his life remarkable was simply that God was always there with him and he could no longer get away from God. It completely tore his life apart. We so often hear and say that religion makes people happy and harmonious and peaceful and content. Maybe that’s true of religion; but it is not true of God and dealings with humankind. It is utterly wrong. That is what the psalmist discovered. Something had burst open inside of him. He felt as if he were split in two. A struggle flared up within him, which every day became more heated and more terrible. He experienced hour by hour how his old beliefs were being torn out of his inner being. He struggled desperately to hold on to them; but God, standing ever before him, had taken them from him and would never give them back. And the more he loses, the more firmly and eagerly he grabs at what is left; but the more firmly he holds to what he has, the harder must God strike to break it free and the most it hurts when it is torn away. And the breathless struggle goes on, with God the victor and the person defeated; he no longer knows where it all will lead to an he sees that he is lost; he does not know whether he hates or loves the One who has forced his way so violently into his life and destroyed his peace. He struggles for every inch and in despair yields to the weapons of God. And his position would not be quite so hopeless if it not were for the fact that God’s weapons are so strange and wonderful, that they cast down and lift up, that they wound and yet heal, that they kill and yet bring life; God speaks; “If you want my mercy, then let me gain victory over you; if you want my life, then let me hate and destroy that which is evil in you; if you want my goodness, then let me take your life.” And now it has come to the final struggle. Everything has been surrendered up and only one thing has been left to the person, which he is determined to hold on to: his life. Still God will not call a halt, but storms this last citadel of all. And so the battle rages on for the last thing which he has; the individual defends himself like a mad person. God cannot want this; God is not cruel; God is good and kind. And yet the answer comes back: “If you want my goodness, then give me the last thing that you have, give me your life. Now choose!”

Such heights terrify us; it is as if someone le us to the limits of the world and as if we looked down into an abyss and he said, “Now jump!” We feel as if we had been torn apart. How can we choose between God’s goodness and our life? What is our life? Everything we see, touch, hear, taste, feel; everything which surrounds us, which we possess, which we are used to, which we love. What is God’s goodness? In any case everything which we cannot see, cannot touch, cannot comprehend, and indeed cannot believe; something which we do not possess; something quite improbable, something outside this world, standing above and behind all events, and yet which speaks to us so directly. Who would venture to make a free choice here? It is God who gains the victory, and it seems so humanly impossible that we should now hear from the psalmist’s lips the words: “God, You are my God. Your goodness is better than life.”

Some of you will now be indignant and you will begin to object: What sort of exaggerated and wild talk is this? You can’t talk about the goodness of God in that way. That I’m in good health, that I’ve still got food and drink to share with my family, that I’ve got work and a house, that’s what God’s goodness means to me and that’s what I should thank God for. But I neither know nor understand anything of this struggle with God’s goodness.

My friends, today is harvest festival and a very proper time for us to reflect seriously about what God’s goodness means to us. Unmoved by the bitter worries and unrest of our time, nature goes about its work in the world. It produces food for the people of the earth. When it withholds its gifts; millions die; when it bestows them lavishly humankind flourishes. No persons have control over it an when they are confronted by its power, they grow silent and are reminded of God who has power over nature. Today we celebrate the harvest festival in particular circumstances and with specific thoughts in mind. The harvest has not brought us what we hoped what we hoped for. This has already caused us great sorrow. But on top of this comes one of the worst plagues which can ever be inflicted on a people, and which is now spreading across the world, unemployment. We must be prepared for the fact that this winter seven million people in Germany will find no work, which means hunger for fifteen to twenty million people next winter. Another twelve million or more in England, twenty or more in America, while at this moment sixteen million are starving in China and situation is not much better in India. These are the cold statistics behind which stands a terrible reality. Should we overlook these millions of people when we celebrate our harvest festival in church? We dare not. Rather we want to measure our Christian thinking and intentions by how well we respond to these facts.

When we sit down this evening to a full table and say grace and thank God for God’s goodness, we shall not be able to avoid a strange feeling of uneasiness. It will seem incomprehensible to us that we should be the ones to receive such gifts and we will be overwhelmed by such thoughts and will think that we have not in any way deserved these gifts more than our hungry brothers and sisters in our town. What if, precisely at the moment when we are thanking God for God’s goodness toward us, there is a ring at the door, as so often happens these days, and we find someone standing there who also would like to thank God for some small gift, but to whom such a gift has been denied and who is starving with starving children and who will go to bed in bitterness? What becomes of our grace in such moments? Will we really feel like saying that God is merciful to us and angry with them, or the fact that we still have something to eat proves that we have won a special favor in God’s sight, that God feeds the favorite children and lets the unworthy go hungry? May the merciful God protect us from the temptation of such gratitude. May God lead us to a true understanding of God’s goodness. Don’t we see that the gifts of God’s goodness become a curse for us if we have such thoughts about them and act in such a way; if we look upon ourselves as models of virtue, instead of growing humble as we look at the incomprehensibility of God and the worry and anxiety our wealth creates in us and if we thank God only for God’s goodness to us instead of becoming conscious of the immeasurable responsibility which is laid upon us by God’s goodness? If we want to understand God’s goodness in God’s gifts, then we must think of them as a responsibility we bear for our brothers and sisters. Let none say: God has blessed us with money and possessions and then live as if they and their God were alone in the world. For the time will come when they realize that they have been worshipping the idols of their good fortune and selfishness. Possessions are not God’s blessing and goodness, but the opportunities of service which God entrusts to us.

This has already brought us some distance along the way toward understanding what God’s goodness is. Whoever has tasks laid upon them by God see themselves set between two worlds:”If you want my goodness to stay with you, then serve your neighbors, for in them God comes to you”; such people see in their neighbors the material and spiritual need for which they are now called to account. And now the struggle is played out of which the psalmist speaks. “If you want my mercy, then give your neighbor a share of your possessions. If you want my love, then give your neighbor your soul. If you want my goodness then stake your life for your neighbor. And if you don’t do all this, then that which was God’s goodness to you, the gifts which God showered on your body and soul, will turn into a curse on you.”
Which of us would care to say that we had done all this, that in our thoughts and particularly our actions we had really understood that God’s goodness leads us into a struggle, that it is not something which we receive and then simply possess, so that we live on, somewhat happier, somewhat richer, but essentially unaltered. But how miserably we enter on this struggle; with so little passion and with so much fear, weakness, trembling, and sadness; and how little does it really take hold of the roots of our being. Yet we shall not understand this struggle at all until we understand how radical and basic it is. “Your goodness is better than life” does not just mean better than your house, than your food, than your work, than your reputation, than your honor, than your physical, artistic, and spiritual pleasures, than your wife or husband or children, but it means more than all that; it means that it is better than the one thing you still have when you have lost everything, better than your life. Which of us has already come to know that God’s goodness leads us into a conflict, which involves the physical side of our life, and not only that but also our work, our honor, and even our family? Who would allow themselves to be drawn into such a conflict and who would see in such a conflict God’s goodness? And above all, who sees that we have not grasped the meaning of God’s goodness until the conflict goes much deeper and seizes hold of our life and reaches out beyond even that?...

But now comes the greatest wonder the world has ever known. In the very place we have fallen away from God, where we have become dead and unreceptive to God, in our guilt, God’s goodness searches us out, and is revealed to us again as the eternal promise of God, in Jesus Christ, which far surpasses all guilt and all life. Only the person who, in the darkness of guilt, of unfaithfulness, of enmity towards God, has felt himself or herself touched by the love which never ceases, which forgives everything and which points beyond all misery to the world of God, only such a person really knows what God’s goodness means.

But of course we are not lifted out of life. Our task still remains with us and we are continually asked by God: “What is my love worth to you?” But the more deeply we recognize what God’s goodness is, the more lively our answer will be, and again we shall be led by God’s goodness to assume our responsibility and will be brought to God again through our acknowledged guilt. When will the time come that, at least in the Christian community, the world of our psalmist will break in, and in happiness or in misery, in hunger or in sickness, in fear or trouble, in sadness or guilt, in good or bad harvest we can make a truly joyful thanksgiving:

And though they take our life,
Goods, honor, children, wife,
Yet is their profit small;
These things shall vanish all;
The City of God remaineth!

O God, You goodness is better than life – Amen. [NRS, pp. 125-32]