The Whole Story

"The altar calls IS THE REASON for the service."

“They never knew what would happen the next day. It was forbidden to leave any bread over for the following day. If they did, what happened was that the worms ate the manna. Naturally, everyone worried. What will happen? What will happen tomorrow? How will we have bread? And the answer is: Trust in God. For forty years, they were trained to believe that the Holy One, blessed be He, ‘opens His hand and satisfies the desire of every living thing.’ He is the Provider. He is the Satisfier. And when this is your faith, everything looks different. Life looks different. True, one must make an effort. True, one must work. But you know that everything comes from Heaven. One’s livelihood comes from the Creator of the Universe. If we believe this, the Holy One, blessed be He, will continue to give us every day, day by day, our bread and our livelihood. ‘And I will pour out for you a blessing until there is more than enough.’” – Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz (westernwall)

A JEW tells the story of a Jew, their lives thousands of years apart, reading words just that old that still today bring Light. “It’s only half the story,” we say. Half the story written and orchestrated by God. The whole story which lives and breathes and inspires today’s Israel. A Jew, a Rebbe, of the western wall. That, in itself, is a picture. The wall historic, the city built by God, its people God’s.

In China, it is common to trade individual pages of the Bible. In Muslim countries, it’s said Jesus appears where no Word can get in. They sometimes leave their country to spend time together worshiping. What do these have to do with the other? What’s my point? That it only takes a paragraph, a verse, to change a life when God is in it. And God is in the Jews.

I’ve made this comparison before, but it bears repeating: God does miracles from the blessings of the Jewish Rebbes. A woman in Los Angelas is healed when her son travels to Jerusalem for the blessing. A child is healed instantly of a speech and breathing problem when a Rebbe says, “She will talk.” A young man is healed of a serious skin disease and returns a year later to testify of it. An older man is healed of stage 4 cancer at the blessing of a Rebbe. Yet, we say they are condemned when there are Gentile churches who don’t believe in healing. One is saved, the other is not?

I’m not trying to rub this raw. I’m going somewhere with it. As my mother would say, We’re headed to California via New York.

God knows the heart of every person on this planet, and His plan for it IS NOT for a few to go to heaven while masses die and go to hell. Not 144,000 Jews “find Jesus”, but the rest of them are sinful. That’s not the meaning of the number in John’s Revelation. There won’t be a massive howl at Jesus’ return either. While we rejoice, billions and trillions will mourn. That’s incorrect of Paul’s words in 1 Thessalonians.

Do you know how much of a man’s heart God needs in order for him to be saved? Just a grain of sand. In converse, how much of a man has to be lost to end up damned? Everything. Do you get it yet? There’s an infinite number of fractions between zero and all. It’s not our job to decide how saved someone is. That’s God’s job. Ours is to be love. On all sides, on all faces, we are to look and sound like Jesus, who died for the evilest men to ever exist.

Who knows the original state of every devil, if you wanna go there.

We’re to preach love, to show love, to talk about love. We’re to offer Jesus to those at any level of commitment. The altar call IS THE REASON for the service. Don’t excuse it because “you’re uncomfortable,” whatever your reason is for that discomfort. Or because “you’re not an evangelist.” We are all of us, every single one of us, evangelists.

There’s a scene in “The Chosen” that depicts Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:41. Jesus said, “And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.” In the scene, Jesus and His disciples were forced to carry Roman armor, but at the end of the distance when they could have stopped, they continued forward, much to the surprise of the Roman soldiers.

Are you aware the greatest faith Jesus had ever seen came from a Centurion? Luke 7:9. And another centurion stood at the foot of His cross, having witnessed all that’d happened, and said, “Truly this was the Son of God (Matthew 27:54).”

A thief died and entered Paradise with Jesus THAT DAY (Luke 23:43). He had no time to “do better.”

And we have no time to waste preaching sermons that satisfy our emotions while ignoring what rescues men’s souls.

In modern time, a man converted to Judaism because when he cried out to their God, he was set free from addiction. And the synagogue rejoiced. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Blessed be He.

Photo by Curated Lifestyle on Unsplash


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com