588
The Way of
Teshuvah & Yom Kippur
An English Diary
The following are extracts from the letter diary of the Presiding Patriarch to his family while he was away in England during October 2003. All Scripture references, unless otherwise stated, are from the Institute for Scripture Research Version (ISRV) of the Holy Bible (Northriding, South Africa: 2nd Edition, 1998, ISBN 0-620-22490-8).
1. JUDGING RIGHTEOUS JUDGMENT
(Teshuvah, 4 October 2003)
"For we do not presume to count ourselves or compare ourselves with those who commend themselves. But they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise" (2 Cor.10:12).
When man is his own standard, he is a fool. "He who boasts, let him boast to YHWH" (v.17). Therefore let us exalt the Name of YHWH, "for not he who commends himself is approved, but he whom the Master commends" (v.18).
Oh what heavy, profound words. We are back to Jonah, Job and David again. Moreover, we are back primarily to the Personhood of YHWH and not to the principles of Truth He has established by which we are to measure. Torah does not - cannot - exist by itself. Without the giving of the Person, it is dead letter. Odd, isn't it therefore, that Paul should be spoken of by his critics: "His letters are truly weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech amounts to naught" (v.10)? But is it so odd, really? Or perhaps it is the wrong mode of perceiving: "Let such a one take this into account, that what we are in word by letters when absent, such we are also in deed when we are present" (v.11). Aha. We are what we are, but you just can't see it, you blinded people. Same problem with Yah'shua - exactly the same: "For He grew up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or spleandour that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should desire Him" (Is.53:2). Not 'classy' enough, not 'cool', not 'seductive'. But His words - oh my, what a Man they reveal! That hidden, yet not so hidden Persona of Deity! We are not supposed to be desirable by the natural eye but by the spiritual. "Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment" (Jn.7:24, KJV). If you judge by the appearance, your judgment is unrighteous no matter how 'comely' or 'uncomely' you may be. It is beauty of character that the children of Elohim judge by
Time and time again we see that the children of YHWH are "hidden" - they are simply invisible to Babylon. All the children of the world see is an outer form and judge wrongly. And so we suffer. Yah'shua suffered too. The children of YHWH are simply unappreciated by the world because the world can never see them. Making peace with that inevitability goes a long way towards finding internal repose. Then, as with Yah'shua, so with us: "He would see the result of His suffering of His life and be satisfied." Satisfaction and contentment. "Therefore," says YHWH, "I give Him a portion among the great, and He divides the spoil with the strong, because He poured out His being unto death, and He was counted with the transgressors, and He bore the sins of many, and made intercession for the transgressor" (v.12).
The uncomfortable can become comfortable provided you are willing to surrender the wrong perspective. Do not hate yourself because you sometimes fail to make that offering, for that is even worse. YHWH does not hate the one consciously striving to be penitent. When you judge yourself, be as merciful to yourself as you are to others - judge righteous judgment.
2. VISIBILITY: OUR NEED TO BE SEEN
(Yom Kippur, 6 October 2003)
Shabbat Shalom! What a way to start Yom Kippur, fasting and with a cold. I shall have to at least drink water so as not to dehydrate. And the heater in my room is roasting me alive. Drew the children some pictures last night.
The great 'realisation' I had last night - though it is not something new - is that man can never change his heart by his own efforts. The heart is by nature poisoned and the only way it can be detoxified is supernaturally. So my prayer - one that has been on my lips for a long time - has been once again, "YHWH, give me a new heart."
In tonight's dream I confronted an age-old human problem that apparently we all wrestle with, and that is visibility. In the dream, someone was in debt to my mother and had not paid her back. So I sought to collect the debt either from the woman herself or her sister, who in the dream was a Filipino student from my old school (for some reason). The dream was spent looking for her to talk to her - though she was visible I could not approach her. In the end I found myself on the High Street in Oxford, or rather, on a balcony of my College overlooking it. The Filipino was across the street at Queen's College, also high up, though she also seemed to be a little boy - what seemed to be happening was an exercise in attention-getting. The boy leaped from his high position but cheated. I jumped the whole way clutching a sheet that was supposed to act like a parachute but I only managed to grab two ends. I landed with a bump but was not hurt. Next I remember deliberately rolling around in painful stinging nettles outside my old home in Cranleigh as a means of 'atoning' for something - can't remember what. Later there was a snake episode involving a doctor. The dreams are not all clear but one thing stands out: the human soul will go to extraordinary lengths - sometimes very subtle and devious - in order to get attention. And it will seek attention for only one reason: because it wants to be loved! The need is real enough in the vast majority of cases, but the solutions are rarely right, because those trying to fix that need often seek its realisation in sex because of its intensity. Satan knows that, of course, and offers us a cocktail of choices based on the stage at which are morality has grown, itself based on the degree of defilement of our own conscience.
These are painful admissions for us all to make ... I believe there are numerous mechanisms we spontaneously turn to in order to become visible. It may be more sex, dressing oneself up and becoming flirtatious, creating a 'poor little me' alter constantly looking for sympathy, or any other number of devices. All of them stem from a deep-seated need to be unconditionally accepted with Christ-like love.
There was an interesting program on BBC1 (TV) yesterday about a Christian family and one of the teen sons rebelling and starting a rock band, drinking alcohol, and turning to drugs and promiscuous sex. It started when they moved country and the boy lost all his friends. Then all the distancing started and no matter what the parents did they could not reach him inside. They felt as though they had lost a son. Two things broke the spell. First, when the rebel son's hi-fi broke down the father breathed a sigh of relief because the nightmare of loud music in the house was over. But the Ruach (Spirit) told him to go and buy his son a new one. Under protest he did so, and of course the bad music resumed. But the son was deeply touched by his father's gesture and his heart was opened a little. Second, they were due to go abroad, but the mother was told to remain home and fast for a week. She did, prayed for him every day, and by the fifth day the boy's heart was opened and he knew YHWH loved him. He repented, changed his life, and the prodigal returned home. Lovely. Hallelu-Yah!
This page was created on 17 August 2009
Last updated on 17 August 2009
Copyright © 2009 NCCG