Tag Archives: Gifts of the Spirit

Once again, it’s time to hear from our sister in Jerusalem about what she is witnessing there as a believer in Yeshua.  Put your prayer shawls on and pray for Israel and Sister J. Now here she is …

He is precious and to be glorified and blessed, and as His Blood-bought body, how very precious are each of you!  … for you are the temple of the living God; as God has said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people…” (2 Corin 6:16)  WOW!   May you be blessed and encouraged, as I am today with a fresh ‘glimpse’ of the fact that He is ‘enough’…He is ALL!

I had to giggle as I watched the news brief last night.  In very serious tones it was reported that a ‘caucus’ on the USA has been formed in our Knesset (Parliament – Congress) to ‘study and teach about the United States, it’s government system, history, geography, social systems and culture.’  I always wondered what a ‘caucus’ was but had never pursued it.

In this case I understood it to be a committee formed to study the USA and report back and teach the other Knesset members.  They all looked so serious as they sat around learning like students in a 6^th grade class, absorbing new information and ideas.  The reporter explained that everyone thought there already HAD been such a thing for years, but there hasn’t been, and it was high time that we began to understand ‘where America was coming from’.

Of course, as a ‘former American’ this seemed funny to me…studying American culture in particular …but then I realized that it isn’t.  As I wrote in my last email, we are still a third world country dressed up as a first world one. But we are a third world country with a passion for learning and searching out truth (yea!) and I suspect that our policy makers are puzzled at America’s approach to dealing with the current problems in the Middle East.  This has been brought to a head by the situation in Syria and the current ‘policy’ to ‘arm the rebels’.  Everyone here is scratching their heads and so our politicians are now going to study ‘what makes them tick over there?’  Perhaps someone would find this food for prayer.

I want to thank you for your prayers for me personally.  I am walking free in Yeshua today by the power of The Blood and The Spirit, thanks to the help of a dear sister whom He used to pray with me.  How thankful I am for people who pay the price to be spot on (silver bullet prayers I call it…if any of you remember the Lone Ranger) through obedience on their knees.  I see now more clearly how to stand against the occasion that the enemy took to chain me up through the stress that The Lord is exercising me with these days. I am truly flooded with joy, peace AND better health today, in spite of the fact that the stress remains and increases.  He is so very good!  I love the way He uses His body as we walk according to His ways.

I find that I have less and less opportunities on the bus and train these days to talk with people, as iphones and ipods have literally taken over.  Everybody seems to be plugged in and fewer people are talking…or even looking up :-\  in this electronic age.  At work today, however, I had an encounter that perhaps contains a window that is both common to all man and also unique in some ways.

The part of my job that I dislike the most concerns a list that we receive every 3 months from the health fund. The job falls to me to call some 80 or so patients who received services during the past quarter but did not pass their plastic card.  (the Doctor gets paid by the card being passed) Now…this entails me disturbing people who may live cross town and to explain to them as patiently as I can in my best Hebrew that, yes they DID order something and that even if they DIDN’T pick it up, we DID do the work, print it out, etc, and that it is all recorded in the perfectly accurate computer (‘No…It didn’t make a mistake…no…I am not lying…No…it was really you…’) and that even though it is inconvenient for them to travel across town, wouldn’t it be nice to pay the doctor (since it isn’t from their pocket anyway).

Sometimes people argue and yell at me and I find that the most distressing part of my work.  This month I approached it with a good and cheerful attitude…until I came to Shlomo Alkalai!  I LIKE Shlomo.  He is a gentle man of about 60 who has had a really tough time.  I called him and asked him to please bring in his card.  I was totally unprepared for the abusive yelling that followed.  I finally said ‘Shlomo…I won’t listen to this.  I am hanging up the phone’ which I did, and promptly folded my list and stuffed it into a corner, heart pounding in my ears.  ‘That’s it for phone calls.  I’m NOT up to this!’ I decided. That was last week.

Just as I was getting ready to leave today Shlomo appeared at the door with his card.  Again he began to yell at me and I simply didn’t answer him.  I didn’t even look at him.  This was hard as I always liked Shlomo and he always liked me…what had happened?  Dr. Meshulam appeared and told him to stop yelling at the secretary ‘Zeh lo na’aim!’ (literally ‘that is not nice’) he said sternly.  Shlomo yelled ‘I am NOT yelling’.  We looked at each other and he began to share with me some things that I already knew, and others that I didn’t.  Shlomo is (I think) an accountant.  He is a kind and gentle man but his wife, Ruthie, suffers for many years from extreme depression for which she has been hospitalized often and remains heavily medicated.  Then she passed through several severe bouts of cancer requiring chemo and radiation that affected her legs (how they don’t know) and she is now in a wheel chair as well.  She has gained about 100 pounds during this time.  They have one lovely daughter who has succeeded in becoming a lawyer in the midst of all of this.  She lives in Tel Aviv.

Shlomo has had to move his office into his home since Ruthie must be watched 24 hours a day.  Their daughter, who works until 8 at night comes home once a week, cooks all night and spends the night so that Shlomo can go out the next day (one day a week) to buy groceries, run errands (like this one that I was imposing on him), pay bills etc.  The bills have piled up and as I listened the tears began to roll down my face.  I was thinking what a burden it was for him to have to come across town to run his card through.  We spoke at great length, both apologizing, of course.  I kept praying for access to The Holy Spirit to speak words of encouragement, but as the words kept pouring out of him I realized that what he needed to do he was doing.

Sometimes when we go through too much ‘trauma’ in our life, we sort of have to ‘recite’ it to ‘validate’ that all of this is really happening.  I learned that through my own experience, particularly when you are walking a lonely path.  All that I could do was listen and trust that as he saw my tears he would receive some comfort.

And now to take him to prayer. He and his family need prayer.  I make a distinction between a ‘religious’ man and a ‘God fearing’ man.  Here, the ‘religious’ fit certain criteria…dress a certain way, eat a certain way, pray a certain way.  Shlomo is a ‘God fearing man’.  A man who prays, goes to synagogue, keeps the kosher laws.

Perhaps someone will be given a burden to pray for this family, and that is why I share.  I want to thank you for allowing The Lord to lay whomever He does upon your heart.  I am always blessed to humility when one of you writes and asks how ‘Molly’ is or tells me that you are praying for ‘Rivka’ or ‘Amos’ or  ‘the taxi driver’.  It only needs to be one…but whom The Lord burdens, He also empowers.  Thank you!

And thank you again for praying for me and my family and for our nation and people. These emails have been a bit anemic lately, and I apologize for that, but I offer it to Him and am thankful for a moment to fellowship with you.  I would ask particularly for prayer for our younger daughter and her husband right now.  Thank you so much.  May we all draw ever closer and ever deeper to His Heart and may we let Him strip away all that hinders, for His kingdom and for His glory,