My Life of Faith in the Lord is a Journey — BAN@S6K

[This was first posted April 6, 2012 when we had just started this website and the Core Community contributed articles regarding our individual pilgrimage to seeking God, usually in religions. This one is by BAN@S6K. When we finally got out of religion, our collective mindset was that our individual search for God was a journey that took a lifetime, since some of us shifted to our final pathway to YHWH, the Revelator on Sinai, in the autumn of our lives; some in the winter of their earth-years.

Other posts under JOURNEYS, if you care to check them out:

—Admin1.]

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My life of faith in the LORD is a journey. God leads me to a path when I am ready to walk on it.

My journey began as a young girl in my school where the nuns taught me that the sole reason for life is to glorify God and to be happy with HIM forever in the next. To achieve this, it meant to obey God and to obey all the commandments of the Church. This I did to the utmost.

Many years later, as a young married woman, I became a “born again Christian”. In my enthusiasm to serve the LORD, I took another step. I enrolled in a Christian seminary where I got my Masters Degree in Church Studies. Studying the Word of God, a question in my mind would always crop up: ”Why did Jesus have to die for my sins?” And always the answer was: Jesus is the only way of salvation, God has provided for us to take. As taught by my professors, the New Testament attests to this, backed by Old Testament prophecies. This answer, though it did not satisfy me, kept me quiet.

Then, another path opened up for me. A missionary friend and teacher introduced me to a more thorough study of the Old Testament scriptures, emphasizing that the scriptures should be studied with a Hebrew mindset because the Hebrew Scriptures were given to the Jews, for the Jews, and written by Jews, as inspired by the Spirit of God. This, I realized, was true so that I embraced the Hebrew Scriptures with all of my mind, heart, and soul. The Hebrew Scriptures contain all the Truths that YAHWEH our God, has revealed for mankind to know and to follow.

The Word of God says,

“You will seek me and find me,

when you search for me with all of your heart.”

In my search for Truth and in my desire to know more about the GOD I worship, the LORD allowed me to take another journey. Confined for seven weeks on my bed, with only the Bible, books and the internet for companions, the LORD, through His Spirit led me to the Truth: that there is only ONE TRUE GOD, the GOD of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as He revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Why I now do not acknowledge Jesus as my savior and Lord is because of knowing this truth. I believe, trust, and submit myself to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I will know Him and follow Him through how He has revealed Himself in the Tanach. I am thankful that my faith in Him is justified by knowledge in the veracity and witness of His revealed Word throughout the ages. This faith gives me the subjective trust that gives me eyes to see and a heart to believe that YAHWEH guides me in believing that what He says in the Tanach is true.

What about eternal consequences? I will claim Psalm 51, specially verses 16-17:

“For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it.

You do not delight in burnt offering.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit.
A broken spirit and a contrite heart,
These, O God, You will not despise.”

I believe these words were true then and is still true now. And if true that Jesus points everyone to the Father, then He would be most happy that I go to the Father, for I believe He would never compete with the Father, if he is a true son.

So, this is where I am now. My full devotion is to the One True God, of both Jews and Gentiles. I am and will always be a God-fearer.

BAN@S6K

Source: Exodus/Shemoth 24 – "the sight of the Glory of YHVH (was) like a consuming fire" -- We gentiles living in this 21st century are able to experience that climactic moment [God appearing on Sinai] by reading and studying this portion of the TORAH. Indeed, we see YHWH not quite as dramatically as the mixed multitude did, but perhaps even better through these accounts recorded in Exodus. There is a saying that hindsight is 20/20 vision, i.e., we begin to see and understand the question marks in our past only later in our lives, as we mature and hopefully become wiser and more introspective about the meaning or seeming meaninglessness of happenings in history, whether personal, national, or universal. Søren Kierkegaard adds a twist to this: “Only 20:20 vision is hindsight. Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” As we endeavor to understand each portion in the TORAH of YHWH, much of it will seem irrelevant to our current situation but if we see beyond the time-bound cultural and religious situations and begin to understand what truly has not change—human nature and the Great Revelator who designed the perfect blueprint for living in peace, happily and contentedly with family, community, country and the nations, the unquestionable conclusion is: TORAH is relevant to ALL humankind, not just to Israel, to this very day.

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