From Rabbi Jack...
After I became a Believer, the hardest lesson for me to learn was that I am not in control of my life, God is. And that is one of the lessons I'm still learning over and over! My life is not my own, and I am now a servant of the Lord Most High. God wants to be in the centre of my life and not on the fringes. Our Creator does not want to be an afterthought, He does not want to be a hobby or someone we dust off and contact each Shabbat and only on Shabbat, in fact, anything short of that is unacceptable to Him. Being the centre means He makes all decisions, and our lives function at His command. God is a loving, kind, merciful and gentle commander, but there is no mistaking it, He is in command. God is all powerful but He is also kind and gentle, however, niceness has nothing to do with power. God uses His authority nicely, but He has the power to do whatever it is He wants and He has the power to do it how and when He wants to.
Some may think there is fatalism in this kind of thinking, that we resign ourselves to receive whatever happens in life, a kind of, "I'm not in charge so why try" attitude, but that's wrong! Knowing that God is actively in control of everything that takes place in our lives is not fatalism; rather it is an active trust in a God that only wants the best for us. It is a trust that God has everything in control despite outside circumstances and appearances and of course despite the outcome. He loves us so much and proved it by incarnating and dying for us as Messiah Yeshua so we can trust, without a doubt, that He will do only what is right and best for us.
Let us all commit ourselves to learning the lesson that we are not in control, putting Him in the center of our lives. We need to learn this today and learn it each day and every day of our lives. That way, we will be encouraged that no matter what state we are in we can be content, calm and confident knowing God is in command!!
Hi Ellen here…
I trust you all made it through Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur renewed and are continuing to anticipate our Lord's return. Remember no one knows the day or the hour but this is a comment for another time. What I want to share with you is something that came to my mind and heart prior to Yom Kippur. I honestly do not mind housework. In fact, I am so happy when I see clean floors and dusted furniture, by the way I have a great prescription for dusting…Israel is so dusty and it works! There is one item, however, that I do not do well and really do not enjoy, and that is ironing. But as this Feast Day was upon us, where we wear white, I had to iron Jack's shirts. As I waited for the iron to heat and poured water into it for steam, I asked the Lord to iron for me because of my dislike for the chore. As I waited, I believe the Holy Spirit spoke into my spirit that our Lord wants us to be wrinkle free because it hurts His heart to apply steam and hot irons to our wrinkles as well! No, I do not mean the wrinkle on our foreheads or around our mouths and do not get me started on the upper batwing arm condition but the wrinkles in our attitudes, the wrinkles in our responses to comments or angry words, the wrinkles in our unforgiving hearts and rebellious thoughts…I could go on! I am using this today to tell you that our God Most High is here for us in the small things and in the big things that put wrinkles into our spirits and He does not tire in ironing out our sin as long as we repent and cry ABBA, help. So, as we begin a new cycle, get ready to be steam ironed to perfection as we continue to look to the Lord for all things.
Rabbi Jack & Ellen
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