August 21, 2017
Hello brothers and sisters, friends and visitors!
I am at a place in my journey with the Lord that I want to try to describe to you.
I never knew that the Lord would change my ministry radically by telling me to teach and preach through the Old and New Testaments. We are in Judges now on Wednesday nights at Maranatha and in Luke on Sunday nights. He’s made me read everything in order. He hasn’t allowed me to skip any hard parts. I have learned a lot in the process.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I can say honestly that I am seeing that the Scriptures put a tremendous emphasis on God’s covenants with Israel, and that God is not through with Israel, but is going to see them through to the end and rescue them again!
I have learned a lot about Jesus, whose Hebrew name is Yeshua, from the same root word as Joshua in the Old Testament. Jesus was born of a virgin under the Mosaic Covenant and lived as a Jew. We know that His ministry during the Incarnation was primarily rejected by His people, but He is not done with them. Through His death, burial, and resurrection, He reaches out with the New Covenant to His people first, the Jews, to offer them salvation, and then to the Gentiles. When Jews and Gentiles accept His offer of salvation, we become His and are truly “in Christ” never to be cast out. We are the called out assembly, or ekklesia, commonly known as the Church.
The Lord has opened my eyes to the Scriptural picture of what the church is: Jewish and Gentile believers in Jesus. The church did not start with Gentiles, but with the Jews who accepted Jesus as the promised Messiah, and then Gentiles came in later. Through some tragic events in history, the Jewish and Gentile believers parted and travelled in different directions. Many things have happened in Gentile churches to eradicate the Jewish background of our history as believers. We will never see Jesus as He truly is if we do not become familiar with the Jewishness of our Savior!
I am excited to say that I have a much fuller understanding of what the Savior has done for me in salvation and what He is doing in His body, the Church by looking at the Feasts and Covenants.
As I learn more about what has come before, more pieces of the puzzle come together for me. My excitement grows, and I feel the Lord calling me to come closer to Him, to rest in His grace, and let His Spirit guide me and move through me to reach out to others.
One thing that I have noticed is that many times when I feel the Lord calling me closer to Him, I don’t see that same excitement or drive in other people to get closer to Him. I do meet some folks occasionally that are driven by the Spirit to serve the Lord, but many folks just seem to be OK where they are spiritually, and look at you like you’re becoming a fanatic. Am I becoming a fanatic? Or just walking in truth- the truth Jesus promised would set us free?
So I have these times where the Lord is stretching me, drawing me closer to Him, bringing me into situations where I have to trust Him completely because I don’t know the whole picture of what He is doing. And I feel that I am in the boat, and He is calling me out. And others are with me, but no one else is moving toward Him.
I have to go. He has called me to come to Him. I want others to come to Him as I am, but they have to make that decision for themselves. I have to get out of the boat, and go to Him.
You see, He is my High Priest, and I am living in His New Covenant. I want to experience the fullness and the freedom of that. I want to understand His great grace and give it to others. I want to live out His love before others. I wish others could understand the tremendous freedom I feel to live for the Lord, in His service, and for His pleasure.
So He keeps calling me out of the boat, and I keep getting out and going to Him. He hasn’t let me down yet. And each time I learn to trust Him more and more. I am letting go of fear and growing in faith.
There is a great song by Bryan Duncan called “Strolling On The Water” that talks about fear and how a person’s spirit is held down by it, and how freeing it is to come to the Lord when He calls you. This song has always been a blessing to me, and I hope that it is a blessing to you, especially if you can identify to where I am on my journey with the Lord.
May God bless you,
Bro. Beall
“Pastor In Plaid”