Naomi and Eddy came to My Home!!! (away from home!)

This is a picture of my daughter Naomi and her son 3 1/2 year oldEddy!!!
They are sitting by one of the beautiful tile signs on the walls of NYC Subway system:

A couple of months ago I learned the Rabbi and his wife, from Beit Simcha, were putting on a Messianic Praise Concert AND hosting a Messianic Passover for their congregation and other local churches in the Allentown, PA area.

I decided I would take 5 days off of work to attend the regular Shabbat Service and the CoffeeHouse concert on Saturday and then the Passover Seder the following Tuesday Eve.   I thought it would be very nice if Naomi could go with me!!!  I could ask, all she could do was say, I'm sorry, I won't be able to come.  BUT she talked to Dan and they decided she and Eddy could come!

Yay! I made arrangements with Nomi to get my car (my great little Subaru Forester) prepared for the trip.
Then we prayed and asked God to please arrange loads for me so we could caravan with my truck and car to Allentown.  God did just that!  I got a load from Kentucky to Chicago on Thursday AM.  That morning Naomi left Eau Claire and met me in Bloomington, IL, I picked up my load and we drove to Pennsylvannia together!  We had 5 amazing days together, everything went as planned and God blessed every aspect of our time together. (Even the weather and where to park my truck!)

On Saturday we attended the morning service, then the "after service fellowship lunch" (an Oneg), then Nomi and Eddy went back to the truck to sleep, and in the evening was the Messianic Praise Concert.

On Sunday, we got up and drove 1 1/2 hours to Hoboken, NJ.  Took The Path train under the Hudson River and spent a day exploring Manhatten!! So fun!!  Looking close, you can see the Statue of Liberty in the background:

On Monday, we did a self guided tour of 7 Covered Bridges in the Allentown area.
In the evening The Blanks, the Rabbi's family invited us to their personal Passover Seder in their home, Passover began on Monday Eve.  It was wonderful, we also learned so much and enjoyed lots of conversation!

On Tuesday, we headed over to a truck stop in New Jersey to relax a bit and get ready for the Community Seder scheduled for the evening.  At both seder's the children are included looking for the Afikomen and checking to see if Elijah is at the door.  Eddy got to do both of these, he loved it!

This is a pic of my pastor Rabbi Glenn and his wife Pam, Naomi, Eddy, and me:

                                                                                 
The next morning (Wed) Nomi packed up and her and Eddy started on their two day journey home. 
It was a perfect visit, eveything went so well, we had a wonderful time!!

How I found Beit Simcha

Last summer I dropped a late load in North Philly and needed a place to park and sleep for the night.  Up the road about 20 miles was a Plaza on the I-476 Turnpike.  Went right to sleep and woke Saturday morning ready for my daily walk.  On my walk I walked passed a church....a Christian Missionary and Alliance Church.  It was Saturday Morning , so I thought I might go to their service the next morning.  Then I saw another sign in their yard that said, "Beit Simcha", "A Messianic Jewish Congregation", my interest was instantly perked, I had been asking God to lead me to a place where I could learn about Him and become involved in serving others.  Thirty-one years before this we had made a trip to Israel, where I fell in love with the country of Israel and the Hebrew language and became interested in Jews finding Jesus, so a Messianic Congregation was very interesting to me.

Long story short - I fell in love with the Jewish way of living in the Messianic way.  As the Rabbi of Beit Simcha said, The Messianics find Yeshua in EVERYTHING in the בתנ"ך‎ Tanach (Old Testament) and
הברית החדשה HaVrit HaChadasha (New Testament).

I have spent the last 6 months getting back to Allentown, PA as often as possible to attend services on Shabbat AM.  I have learned so much about the Lord and the New Testament's heritage in the Jewish Old Testament Scripture. 

Prayer brings Truth (theophostically)

I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior October 25, 1969, I was 17. 
These verses have been the building stones of my Walk with The Lord.

Phillipians 1:6,  'Being confident...that He who has begun a good work in me will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.'
Is 55:8,9,  'For My Thoughts are higher than your thoughts and My Ways are higher than your ways.'
Is 26:3,  'Thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusts in You,'
II Tim 1:7, 'For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.'
II Cor 10:5, 'Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalted itself above God, bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.'
Phil 4:6,7, 'Be anxious for nothing, but everything by prayer and supplication - with thanksgiving - let your requests be known unto God, and the peace that passes understanding will keep your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.'
Romans 12:2, 'And be you transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you might present to God a living sacrifice perfect unto good works.'

These verses kept my sanity through the years although my mind and emotions still crippled and deabilitated me.

In spite of this, God's grace and mercy had poured through our family in wonderful ways. (http://kjontheroad.blogspot.com/2010/10/our-children.html)

In June of 2010, I started praying over the verse in Gen 24:27 paraphrase translation:  
'I being in the way, the Lord led me.' (So said Abraham's anonymous servant when telling how he had found Rebekah at the well) 

On August, 28, 2010, I was parked on the Allentown Service Plaza of I 476 in Pennsylvannia. On my walk the morning of Sept 28, 2010 I came across a sign in the front yard of a church building;
"Beit Simcha ("House of Joy") Shabbat Service 10 AM"
It was 9:50 AM!!
http://kjontheroad.blogspot.com/2010/08/on-walk.html 
I was VERY interested!

In 1979 and 1980 we had made two tours to Israel.
I fell in love with Hebrew, Israel, the Jews, God's chosen people.

I went in, thus beginning my introduction to the Messianic Jewish Movement.

It is at Beit Simcha God got ahold of my heart through the people there, that have such joy and genuineness WITH HEBREW.  Why is the Hebrew so important? I really don't know, I just know God put a deep love for the language and therefore the people and their land and the need of their salvation. 

I "vetted" the Rabbi with scores of questions.  I went online and read and read.  I found the Messianic Synaguoge sound in all of the ways I had learned in Scripture: The Gospel, church goverment, discipleship and evangelism, etc, etc.  EVERYTHING in me wanted to "plug-in" to this Messianic Synagogue, BUT I was still crippled mentally and emotionally.  All of my old sadness and depression and not trusting people and fears and self-hate and worthlessness started to arise.  I had never wanted to work through these as much as I wanted to now.

So when Theophostic Prayer was mentioned as something I needed I was interested.
http://www.theophostic.com/ 
(Simply meaning Theo:God  Phostic:Light - truth)
I asked one of the couples in leadership if they would lead me through a Theophostic Prayer Session.  They said Of Course! =)  They had seen it help so many others and themselves. 

It is so profound and yet so simple, a process of recognizing the painful parts of your heart, asking God to bring up a memory when that pain started, when the memory has been located, FEEL the pain and ask God to give you light and truth. Simply HE DOES! Right then and there.  That pain is GONE.

My mind and emotions are now STRONG. I do NOT hate myself, I do NOT feel worthless, I do NOT have fears, I do NOT think everyone I talk to hates me or judges me or looks down on me. I have God's truths in my heart regarding all of these and I am FREE. I feel the power of God in my heart and mind, it is sooo wonderful!!!

A phone call

Recently my love of Israel and Hebrew led me to visit a Shabbat (Saturday) Service of a Messianic Church in eastern, PA.   It was amazing, I have a recent blog post about Beit Simcha (House of Joy).  

As I was perusing their website, I got on the web and found out about The Messianic Bible project.
I found it very exciting to hear about a Bible specifically being written as a tool to win Jewish people to Christ.   With the Messianic prophecies pointing to the fulfillment of Jesus.  So I made a donation.

Tonight, just a few days later, the phone rang.  I thought it was a telemarketer, but I answered anyway.

I am soooo glad I did.  The call was from a lady in Israel!  Her name is Elieza.  She is with the Messianic Bible project, they make a practice of calling their donors!  We talked for quite awhile.  She grew up in New York City, but moved to Israel 33 years ago.  Her grandson was born in California, then his parents moved to Israel when he was 2.  He is not a believer.  Presently he is in the Israeli army and is stationed on the Syrian/Lebanon border.  Elieza asked me to pray for him. 

She said she will call again in a month or so.....=)

OT Messianic prophecies prove that Jesus IS the promised Messiah

I want to tell you about Ahava.


Ahava went to her parent’s house on Friday and during the Shabbat dinner she told her parents
that she discovered in the Scriptures that Yeshua (Jesus) is the Messiah.
There was dead silence at the dinner table. . .


“What do you mean by that?” her father asked. Ahava told him that she had been studying
the Messianic prophecies for the past year and that God revealed to her that Yeshua is the
Messiah who took away her sins. Her father just stared at her with disbelief.


Then her father put his face in his hands and wept (not with joy), but with tears of anger and sadness.
He then took Ahava to the local rabbi to convince her that Yeshua (Jesus) was not the Messiah,
and for her to understand that she is now worshiping an idol (a man-god).


Ahava was strong in her faith, and after she went to the rabbi with her father, that was
the last contact she had with him or her mother, who are very religious Jews as her father
told her that she is not welcome in the family house until she recants her faith in Yeshua (Jesus).
Ahava was devastated.


A few days later a friend of the family called her to find out if this was true, and during the conversation she told Ahava that her father was sitting shiva (when a Jew mourns for 7 days after someone dies),and that the family considers her dead. All of her cousins see her as a traitor to the Jewish faith.


Ahava who is 24 years old and recently accepted Yeshua (Jesus) as her Messiah after reading the Messianic Prophecies is now very lonely.


She does have many other Messianic Jewish friends who "stick closer than a brother." 
As for her family, it is very sad that the Jewish community as a whole rejects Jesus as the Messiah.  As much as 55% of Jews who do become believers do so by studying the Messianic prophecies of the OT and realizing Jesus is the Messiah.  Click on the title link to this post and find out more about this project.  A Messianic Bible will be a great tool for Ahava and other Jewish believers to give to their families.

On a Walk

This morning on Google Maps I chose the direction I wanted to walk my 4 miles for the day. After about 1/2 mile of walking I saw a sign, it said:

Beit Simcha ("House of Joy") Shabbat Service 10 AM

It was 9:50 AM

I have studied modern Hebrew for 2 years and have always been very interested in Israel and Messianic Jewish Christians. This would be my first opportunity to visit a congregation of Jewish believers!

The people were very friendly and greeted me with joy, just like the name of their church.

The songs and prayers were all in Hebrew with the English alongside, it was wonderful.

Today they had a quest speaker. He came with his 6 SHOFARS, all in different keys.

(side note, he did not have a SHOFAR in the key of C, because he hasn't found a 62" horn yet!)

He taught about the different sounds of the SHOFAR and when they are used. The fourth sound is the LOOONG blow, that we will hear when Jesus returns in the clouds. There are several members in this congregation who have and blow them during the worship service. They are very loud, penetrating, and beautiful.