I Want to Be Left Behind!

I've been so busy with my little job at the chiropractic office plus ministry trips and teaching that I've had little to no time for my yard. Today was the day to try to catch up on all the yard work that has accumulated. The worst part? Weeds! They had overtaken my flower bed. I have a lovely flower garden filled with lillies, mums, pansies, peonies and iris. But the weeding was tremendously difficult. These particular weeds had tiny slender stems that looked almost the same as the flower stems, and they grew between the flower stems so that I had to very meticulously isolate each stem and pull it. It was painstaking work, separating the flower stems from the weed stems, and as I worked the Lord gave deeper meaning to this parable:

Matthew 13:24-29:
"The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. The owner's servants came to him and said, 'Sir, didn't you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?'


'An enemy did this,' he replied. The servant asked him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up?' 'No,' he answered, 'because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.'"


As in my flower garden, the good seed and bad seed sprouted and grew up together. But it was the weeds I had to pull up and destroy. How long have we been sweeping this parable under a rug, choosing instead to believe in a rapture that would cause all Messiah's "wheat" to be pulled up first, leaving behind the "weeds"? We were taught backwards. The wheat and the weeds have been growing together side by side for a long time - and at times (like my flower garden) it may have been difficult to tell them apart. But harvest time is coming - and at harvest time the Lord Himself will separate the stems. The weeds will be taken out and burned; the wheat will be left behind and then gathered by the Lord and brought in to reign with him in His kingdom for 1000 years on the earth.

O Lord God of Israel - I want to be left behind!

The Bride Wears Combat Boots

The End-Times Campout at Old Paths Assembly in Lucerne Valley, CA was a remarkable week of worship, fellowship, and being immersed in the Scriptures in order to become both spiritually and physically prepared for the days ahead. Yahweh will always, always do again what He has done before. Ecclesiastes 3:15 says, "Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before." He is a God of perfect order; so when we learn to study the lessons He taught the Israelites who went before us, we can hopefully avoid making the mistakes they made, and learn from their journey. The apostle Paul tells us that all these accounts of the first exodus and the Israelites' wandering in the wilderness are given to us as examples, that we might learn from them. And so for five days in the Mojave desert we studied these scriptures, and learned from our teachers about everything from starting fires to identifying edible plants, to the power of our words to bring life or death!


But the thing that touched me the most was a teaching by Mike Clayton which he titled "The Bride Wears Combat Boots." Mike entered the room dressed as a bride that none of us imagined the Bride of Messiah would look like: with a sniper's net for a veil, camouflage for a "gown," and combat boots. His "bouquet" was his Bible in his hands, and on his back was his machine gun. At first it was funny. Then it became a bit shocking. And by the time Mike was finished teaching us, he had effectively jolted us out of our fantasy that as the Bride we are all soaked in perfumes and wearing white satin and dancing with the King to romantic music. If you ever saw the movie, "One Night With the King" you know what I'm talking about. We have romanticized and feminized the image of the bride to the point where men cannot relate to what it truly means to be the Bride of Christ.

Make no mistake, there will be a wedding one day! Even as Yahweh gave His Torah (His katuba or marriage covenant) to His people on Mt. Sinai, so He will solemnize the wedding vows between us and our Bridegroom when He returns. But in order for us to be spotless and white, a Bride made ready for the Lamb, we must not be found waltzing, dreaming, and soaking in perfume. We may be called to look more like the young men and women of the IDF in Israel, who at age 17 all don combat boots and machine guns before they ever walk down the aisle. They are called to defend Israel and to uphold the Torah, the covenant between Yahweh and His people. So are we.


Mike closed his message with these words below and I pass them on to you to ponder. Yeshua wrote many, many words to exhort us to: "Wake up! Watch! Be ready!" Why should we watch if nobody knows the day or the hour anyway? Because as Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:4-6, "You brothers, are not in darkness that this day should surprise you like a thief! So then let us not be like others who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled."


Let us truly be ready to fight for our Bridegroom in the days ahead.
Before the bride wears white, there will be combat boots and fatigues.
Before the chuppa, there will be foxholes.
Before the perfume, blood, sweat and tears.
Before the flowers, a sword.
Before reciting of vows, fighting for Truth.


May Yeshua return soon and find us alert, self-controlled and ready...with our boots on our feet and the Sword of Truth in our hearts.

He Gives and Takes Away

"I'm forty and pregnant!" she wailed, as she filled out her new patient paperwork in the chiropractic office. A few tears escaped as she told us how she and her husband had just received the news of this unplanned pregnancy, and how drastically it would change their lives and all their plans. But then we saw her again two weeks later and her mourning had turned to dancing! She excitedly told us how they had come to believe that God had planned this baby, even if they had not, and what a great blessing it would be to their lives to have a new little one to love and raise. They were now having fun gathering things for the nursery. But today I got the shocking news of her miscarriage.

It leaves one reeling. Who can know the mind of the Lord? Job said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." (Job 1:21)

In the days just ahead both believers and unbelievers will increasingly be asking the age-old question, "Why would a loving God permit such things to happen?" There will be ONE KEY to overcoming in these days: believing and trusting that the Holy One of Israel is sovereign, and not questioning what He allows. Daniel 4:35 says, "His dominion is an eternal dominion; His kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as He pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back His hand or say to Him: 'What have you done?'"

Today, June 10, the world news holds enough terrifying headlines to cause believers to doubt, and fall away:

• Aftershock in China displaces 5 million
• Floods in Illinois kill 15 and threaten survival of crops
• Denver hospitals conduct drills to prepare for chemical and biological attacks at the Democratic Convention
• Salmonella outbreak in 16 states

When we fully come to understanding that the four horses of Revelation 6 represent wars, famine, disease and death, then we must realize the horses are already riding! Revelation 6:6 says, "A quart of wheat for a day's wages!" Does that not sound pretty close to the truth when you look at the price of a loaf of bread these days?

So, what is my point? My point is that Yeshua (Jesus) has told us ahead of time about all these things, and yet many will hide their heads in the sand, many will do as Job's wife did and yell, "Curse God and die!" and the love of many will grow cold. But when Job went from being a prosperous, supremely happy husband and father of many children to an isolated, penniless old man with terrible disease he dared to ask God the "why" question, and the Sovereign Lord answered him in no uncertain terms: "Brace yourself like a man; I will question you and you shall answer Me. Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place, that it might take the earth by its edges and shake the wicked out of it? Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been shown to you? Which way is the way to the place where lightning is dispersed, or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth? Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm to water a land where no man lives? Who fathers the drops of dew? From whom comes the ice? Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons? Who endowed the heart with wisdom or gave understanding to the mind?" (Job 38)

We do not have the answers to these things because we are not God. We must never aspire to be God or we are in the very place of Satan! And so I say to you, "Be at peace. Trust your Sovereign God. It is the only key to overcoming in the times of great trial and testing ahead. Those who overcome hold onto the Blood of the Lamb, and the word of their testimony (Rev. 12:11).

My first child, a little girl, lived to be just under two weeks old. I got to hold her in my arms and rock and feed her, and then she was gone. Here is my testimony - it is the testimiony of Job and also of the 40-year-old woman who now mourns the loss of her baby. "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

Dancing With Faceless Joy

"Humble yourselves before the LORD and He will lift you up. Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.' As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil." (James 4:10, 13-16)

The temptations of fame and fortune are nothing new - and they come often to those whom God has blessed with particular talents. But those temptations must be fought every single time they rear their ugly heads, lest the talents we've been given become our focus instead of the God who gave them.

Ever since beginning a musical ministry back in 1997 I've been urged to "get the songs on the radio, get on TV, get known, get famous, get rich!" Because I'm teaching and also singing at a wonderful Messianic conference this summer, I received an invitation to enter the "Messianic songwriter's competition" in order to "get signed on with a CD label and promoted." My spirit recoiled. Yet, the problem with all of this is that no one who has received music by grace from the Spirit wants the music to sit in boxes full of CDs in their basement, never to bless anyone! But I have been rebuked and chatised by the Holy Spirit more than once when I checked my motives and found that I desired to get up in front of a congregation so that I might get the praise and recognition.

Whenever I have gone into prayer and fasting, asking the Lord to speak to me about these things, I have always, always heard Him say, "Run! Flee from Babylon! I brought you out of Egypt - do not go back in!" Sometimes I have seen a picture in my mind of a drab, brown cloth slung over my shoulders and am reminded that my Master is telling me, "This is the cloak of humility. This is what I desire you to wear."

So I was touched and comforted tonight when I read a word by Ron & Karen Schwartz strongly warning Christians about the false "revivals" occurring in Lakeland, Florida, false prophet Todd Bentley, and the whole "Elijah List" prophetic movement, all of which has glorified and exalted men rather than God. They write, "Is there a unique Elijah ministry? No! But there are voices, and there is a message. The so-called “Elijah ministry” has no face. It is simply “a voice crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord.’” The Latter Rain movements have failed because they focus on the ministries and the saints instead of on the message and the God who speaks it. There are no “great” evangelists, prophets, and apostles associated with God’s true “end-time” voice. And if there are, those who are would not know it."

God's true prophets and apostles have no "face" because if they did, people would be seeking their faces instead of the Face of God. Tragically this is exactly what's happening in the Church today. It's no different than our secular society that is on a feeding-frenzy of American Idol and every other fame-seeking virtual reality show - the endless parade of those who will do anything just for a moment in the world's spotlight!

I did not respond to the songwriter's talent competition. I didn't write the songs anyway. I think Barry Manilow wrote the songs that make the whole world sing; and he did get rich and famous! His website says :

I hope that I have written songs that make God's heart sing - and these songs are playing over internet radio from Israel to 55 nations. No royalties. No fame. No record contracts. No platinum albums. I am but a mist that appears for a while and then vanishes - but I'm dancing with faceless joy because my music is spreading the message of the Gospel around the world. What greater reward could there be than that?

Wed. night the new moon was sighted. We have begun the month of Sivan and are on the 42nd day of the counting of the omer! Please keep my dear friend Shirley in your prayers as she leaves tomorrow for Afghanistan with a mission team. Shirley is one of God's faceless prophets too. Pray for her protection, and for the Word of the Lord to water that dry land.

Shabbat Shalom!