I know many are interested in why we talk about so much Jewish stuff and now attend a Jewish congregation. So I'm going to try to explain. :)
So it started about 3 and a half years ago. Now that we look back we can see how the Lord was starting to birth into us a passion for the Jewish roots of our faith. I will tell you about some of the situation's that happened. The first thing that happened 3 1/2 years ago. I was attending a Bible study and there was a lady in my class that would always have this intensely deep understanding of the Word of God. It would always leave me thinking "I want to know what the lady does". You could tell she had a Jewish background by what she said. I don't know her background for sure, because in that class we couldn't tell our denomination etc, because they didn't want any negativity because someone had a different background. 2nd thing that happened was out of no where my husband starting teaching himself Hebrew and had a passion to learn the original language of the Bible. 3rd thing that happened is we were trying to get a membership to the YMCA and ended up at the JCC (Jewish Community Center). It really happened randomly. There's at least 3 other stories, but I'll share just one more. We had ask around to find a class we could take to learn Hebrew and the Jewish roots of our faith. My grandmother told us she knew of a Messianic church up in Rochester. So we looked it up and then soon forgot all about it. So then God made a louder statement. He sent my brother to that church and he came home that weekend and brought the church pamphlet home to us. It was the congregation we had look up online.
So we saw there was a Jewish class on Tues night taught by the Rabbi. We decided to check it out. Almost immediately we knew we were where God wanted us to be. The Rabbi invited us to check out their service on Saturday. We thought we just want to come to this class, but we could check it out, because it wouldn't interfere with our church service at Elim on Sunday. Anyway we went to the service and knew right away we would have to attend there. So we decided to attend there and our current church, but it began to be too much. I know that I just didn't want to give up Elim. It was hard since we LOVED our church and had so much of who we were come from what that church poured into us. But we knew God was leading us in a new direction. So we told the pastor we had to go and now attend Shema Yisrael and our working on becoming members there.
It's amazing how God worked this out. I would never had chosen this path on my own, but am so happy we are here. God is teaching us his word in such amazing power. I feel like we are in Bible college going to Shema. The people are amazing! We felt like we were joined into a family right away. I so much enjoy seeing how the old testament God is the same in the new testament. I enjoy learning a deeper understanding of the Bible by understanding the Jewishness of the Bible. I enjoy seeing how God fulfilled the Law on the times and season's most Holidays (festivals) are celebrated in the old testament and Jewish people still celebrate. I've enjoyed learning the VERY customs of God's people in the Bible. What a joy! I've enjoyed partaking in the Jewish festivals not in a religious ritual but in the richness of why God told them to do them in the first place!
I hope to continue to tell of what God is doing in our lives through our messianic congregation on here. Thanks for listening. Shalom to you all!
