Last October my wife and I were blessed with a beautiful little girl. The birth was difficult. She was born at 30 weeks and spent 2.5 months in the NICU. Her name is Victoria.
I won’t go into the details for the sake of my family’s privacy, but that was a gut wrenching pregnancy. She was born in the evening, and I celebrated and gave thanks for the safety of my wife and our new baby. It was a dicey situation. If I told you the story you would probably agree with me that the Almighty provided us with a miracle baby.
The morning after her birth I woke up to the news of the disgusting attacks on the people of Israel. I had a feeling that that was the beginning of something really terrible. It cast a shadow over the birth of our little baby girl.
In the last few years or I’ve become a dad to four children. Nothing has ever had quite the same effect on my behavior. They are a blessing from Yah that I don’t deserve, just like the forgiveness offered by way of Yeshua’s sacrifice. None of us deserve that, least of all me. But He offered it for our sake anyway, if we will just accept it.
So much is going down in the world, including my own state of Texas. By hard experience and the patience of Yeshua’s chastening I’ve learned not to put my opinion out there very quickly. I don’t intend to put any political opinion out regardless. Not about the Middle East, which I never had any business talking about, nor my own home, which I’m fairly acquainted with.
The only thing I can offer to anybody in a public way… for the rest of my life as far as I can tell… is the certain knowledge that you can believe with all your heart you’re doing the right thing and still be wrong.
You can be so wrong that the shame of your actions is debilitating, yet believe you are doing good while you do it.
Yah’s ways are higher than our ways and what we perceive as right and wrong may not be the same as what He says at all. Our ways may, in fact, be polar opposites to His desire.
Simple reading and prayer can clear that up.
People are going to do what they’re going to do, and who am I to try and stop anyone?
What I will say is that I hope that people will make their decisions with Him in mind first, and do so with a zeal for understanding His will. A zeal without knowledge can be utterly devastating for lots of people.
As events unfold and we are all faced with decisions about what to do I encourage you to ask Him and then ask again. Pray and ask and read the Scriptures with the intention of answering your questions according to the Word.
To act in anger won’t get you very far.
You may have to act, and it isn’t my place to encourage anyone to act either way in a natural sense.
I do hope to encourage people to act as though what they do matters to the Father in Heaven. It does, and it’s Him that should be consulted first, before you do something rash.
It’s by His grace that I can write this to you. It’s by His grace that I’m still here. It’s His grace that has given me freedom from a cloud of guilt and shame so thick that I didn’t think I could, or should, ever get out of it. It’s to His glory that I want to share this message.
It isn’t an inspiring speech. It’s a humble request, asked for the sake of whomever is going to read this, if anyone.
It’s not for me to talk politics one way or the other. You will have to do what you have to do.
But put His will before your own as you decide.
It’s so easy for us to be herded against our own knowledge. I have a sick feeling that a civil war in the US has been on the agenda for a long time. I thought it was coming right before covid hit. I was wrong, and I’m grateful for that.
I guess I just don’t see any right moves to make. My feeling is that a conflict between the people in the US isn’t something anyone in power wants to avoid. I’ve thought for years that it was being pushed intentionally, and that a war would weaken the country. If Americans expend all their ammo on each other then someone else could come in from outside more easily and mop up.
That’s how I see it.
I don’t want to move with the herd, really. I want to be an obedient sheep, but only to the Good Shepherd Yeshua. The only moves I want to make are ones that genuinely glorify Him. I mostly just want to behave correctly, and what the world does is what they do. It’s not my place to stop it. It’s my job to be a small part of sharing the Good News, and that’s all. It was my poor understanding of my job description that always let me down.
I don’t know what you should do. I only know what I’ve done in the past. I know how disastrous acting on my own understanding has been for me and for others. I would hope in times like these you would have the wisdom to learn from someone else’s mistakes.
Acting in anger, even if it seems like a righteous anger, is a path to destruction. Acting in your own understanding of right and wrong is a path to disaster.
Your course may be the same, regardless. You may have to do unpleasant things for the sake of protecting your family. That may not change.
But before you act, pray and read and put His will before your own. Search for the answers to your specific questions and do it in the context of the whole Scriptural message. Because you may be wrong, and the reputation of Yah’s Kingdom is more important than whatever people are fighting over today. Knowing you harmed the reputation of His Kingdom isn’t something I’d wish on anyone.
If you pray and read and pray some more and ask for His will to be done and not our own then you can be confident in your decisions, regardless of what they are.
There is forgiveness and salvation offered to us for our sins. Even if we make massive, destructive and incomprehensibly stupid mistakes in life, He is just to cleanse us and forgive us if we repent. That is the goodness of Yahweh. Yeshua has already won the great war, and conquered sin and death.
But if you can avoid the consequences of bad decisions by prayer and putting His will before your own, I would recommend doing so.
