Free Timely Resource about the Jewish Messiah
Where is the world heading? We need to look back to history, precisely Jewish history, to understand and see what is in front of us . The Jewish Messiah holds the key to understanding times past, present, and future. This is modern news for modern people, for people alive on earth right now.
Please feel free to download this PDF, attach it to emails. refer others to my website so they can get it, post it, blog it — but let’s get the Word about this timely resource about The Jewish Messiah OUT!
Go to https://mmontreuil.wordpress.com/ and you’ll see the link for the free booklet to open and download.
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Fools for God
Sometimes my beliefs seem crazy. What Christians believe have the surface appearance of really farfetched tales of fiction. I sense this sometimes when speaking to one of my grandchildren about heaven and hell, creation, angels and demons, and more. Stranger than that are the people of biblical record. One man built an ark before the world was purposely flooded by the Creator. A reluctant preacher spent three days inside a whale because he refused God’s call to warn the people in a certain city. A donkey talks to a prophet while an angel nearly runs him through with a sword for being uncooperative. Really?
If any of these examples were in headline news today, we’d scoff. What would you think if you heard an undefeated, famous weight lifter with a long ponytail say that he’d lose all his strength from a haircut? We’d call him a nut case for sure.
And, what about the BIGGEST one of all? Jesus, the only man-God to grace our planet. You’ve read the Scripture that forewarns this one as a fool’s Reward, right?
[ Christ Crucified Is God’s Power and Wisdom ] For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18)
Therefore, we “fools” can be ecstatically thankful that God left His throne to live among us before He died on a cross to save us. We claim His shed blood makes us as white as snow. We hear God’s voice and are members of a spiritual family with a King and a Kingdom to belong to. One day we plan to celebrate a wedding feast with the majestic, glorious Bridegroom, the Love of our hearts and lives. Yes, this is what it means to be a fool for Christ.
Praise our wonderful God, the rewarder and Reward of our faith, for He has given us unquestionable proof and EVIDENCE for all we believe.
Earth’s past, present, and future is a book God is writing; it’s a Divine Drama of love, romance, adventure, conflict, sacrifice, complete with a Hero and happy ending.
When I was in third grade I heard my first lesson of faith. The teacher wrote on the chalk board the following:
Question: Why did God make you?
Answer: God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.
I didn’t know at the time that God would pursue me relentlessly the rest of my life. It would be a while before I would learn about His relationship and plans for people on earth, with Israel in particular as a major part of the plot, of the unfolding revelation of Himself and His desires. He wants our hearts.
Faith was never meant to be rules to follow or doctrines and truths to grasp. It’s a crazy, wild love affair. It’s funny how God operates. He confounds those who are wise in their own eyes and gives depth of wisdom to the simple. So, fools rush in!
I tried to upload a document for EVIDENCE of our faith: THE JEWISH MESSIAH- Prophecies of the Bible and How Jesus Fulfilled Them. However, it didn’t work on this blog site. If you go to http://www.mmontreuil.wordpress.com – you’ll see the same blog post “Fools for God” and at the bottom of the page is a link to a pdf file.
Or, send me an email and request it from me. [email protected]
Then pass it along to anyone or everyone you know. It is especially convincing for Jewish people that Jesus (Yeshua) is the long-awaited Messiah.
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Surprise! Unwrapping God’s Presence
God came to us as a stranger. Nobody expected to see the Messiah come in the way He came. God fulfilled the prophecies about Himself but not in ways anyone could grasp. Really, not even those closest to Jesus understood who He really was, not until after the resurrection. Even then the realization came slowly.
God in a manger was a scandal. But, what glory it was in reality. If one could fully grasp the significance of the event, the wonder of it . . . well, of course, we cannot.
He hid Himself for our sakes.
And, today, in our personal lives and stories, it seems the same is true. Jesus can, anytime He decides, unveil His awesome power (that glorious Divinity), to prove His presence with us in similar ways He did during the days He wore sandals. He showed His glory through miracles and loving wonders and still does. We long for those times, don’t we?
He lived 30 years without any sign of being anything but an ordinary man. And, for about 3 years only did He unveil the beauty, the wonder, the mystery, of His presence.
I think He lets us miss Him, lets us yearn for answers, watches us grope in the dark for His will—all for good reason. I think it is so that He can surprise us. The favors come on His timetable, though, not ours. He sets us up in situations and circumstances that make us need Him. It is unavoidable, this dependence we have on Him. Yet, in this way, He is continually changing us and wooing us closer. Our faith grows. We begin to see Him more clearly, in places we hadn’t expected to find Him.
God became a crying baby in diapers, for Heaven’s sake. He was truly the Creator of the universe, don’t forget. This is in keeping with His character.
No doubt about it, Jesus enjoyed shocking His friends. He did it often. His first miracle was in the production of an extravagant amount of wine. Imagine the glee on Jesus’ face as he watched the wedding guests laugh and dance. He healed everyone He came across and showed generosity at every turn. His anger surprised folks, too. He turned to stone occasionally—because He couldn’t surprise the religious leaders with His generosity, with His desire to forgive and dazzle people. No, Jesus wanted people to enjoy His presence, not shun His kindness. He wanted to steal hearts, after all—that’s why He came.
I think Jesus graces us with similar miracles today—ones He often never gets the credit for. I have personally experienced quite a few. Even so, I often feel like my prayers are not being heard because I don’t see immediate results. Or I feel confused and unable to make decisions, with what seems like no direction from above. But, if we ask for guidance and we hear crickets, does it mean God isn’t listening? No, I don’t believe that for a second. I have to remind myself, He answers at the perfect time and in the right way. He has always been this way. Above all, He wants us to know He is truly with us. He is present.
God loves to surprise us.
Read MoreTHE GARDENS OF THE LORD
CHAPTER ONE:
A GARDEN CALLED EDEN
When God created the heavens and the earth, He made an especially beautiful, delightful place. He put a lot of thought into its design, its function, its beauty. He planned and dreamed about it with an expectant, loving heart. It turned out to be a paradise.
It wasn’t elaborate with golden streets smooth as glass; nor were there walls with foundations of precious stones. There were no gates made of pearls. This place wasn’t glorious as heaven’s New Jerusalem is described.
In fact, there wasn’t anything majestic about it: no mountains or valleys with breathtaking views like in other parts of the earth. It had no massive and powerful ocean nearby, no windswept desert landscape, no powerful waterfalls from heights of the earth. Rather, it had an enclosed and private feeling to it. This special place was made with a distinct purpose in mind.
It was a garden. God named it “Eden,” which means “delight.” And that’s the kind of place it was.
The great decorator designed and planted everything in it Himself. It was beautiful, teeming with life so green, full of trees and colorful flowers. It had gentle brooks running over rocks, chirping birds, singing creatures, soft velvet carpeted grass, hidden coves under veils of ferns and vines, and gentle breezes carrying aromatic scents. It was blissful.
His delight in beauty was, of course, expressed everywhere on earth and in the universe all around it, but nowhere was it expressed so romantically, so hopefully, than in this garden.
He planted trees and plants bearing fruit. He created water and gave it to the land, carving out brooks and streams to nurture all the life He brought forth. He gave this new world sunshine lighting and warming it. He thought of air, of wind, and He ordered it to be gentle.
The Creator prepared everything, readying the garden just so. Then the big day arrived. Surrounded by His watchful angels, the Lord God knelt down on the ground in the garden. Bending over the soft, rich earth, He took dirt and formed a man in His own image. Breathing into its nostrils, the man came alive. The Lord called him Adam.
Adam was not like the other earthly creatures God made because he was alone, without a mate. Like God. But God saw that all was not good in this regard. Adam should have a mate.
Romantic love. There is nothing more delightful than being in love. If a male and a female have love that is pure, and if they can be together, there is no finer thing on earth. It can be passionate and stronger than death. This kind of love is sweeter than the love between parents and children. It is better than the love between siblings. It is more precious than the love between good friends. It is the best love.
God’s love can be all kinds of relational love. He loves with unconditional, sacrificial love. He loves as a perfect parent who loves His children. He loves as a brother through Jesus. He loves as a friend. And. And, with the strongest and best of all types of love, He loves as a lover in the fullest sense. That’s why He revealed Himself as our Bridegroom. It was His idea, not ours.
He wanted to be in love. He wanted “another” to love. Just like Adam wanted a “someone.” God, who created love, who is love, will not miss out. This special kind of love exists for His sake, as well as ours. However, human “eros” love is but a shadow compared to the original.
When God planned the first garden, He had a long-range plan. He knew how Adam would feel and did feel. He had planned to give Adam a mate all along. A part of Adam would be missing, but it would be in his “other” . . . and God smiled at the very thought of her.
God put Adam in a deep sleep and opened his side, removing one of his ribs. From it He formed Eve, his counterpart, who became Adam’s beautiful mate. She was very much like Adam, but almost opposite in some ways. She was smaller, softer, weaker, in a delicate, fragile sort of way, very sensitive, and extremely lovely. Together, they were complete. They were the image of God.
The Creator had in mind a way to someday find a counterpart, someone to fulfill His desires for love. He would, like Adam, have someone, too. He wouldn’t make her just from dirt, alive from His breath alone, she would come “from “ Him. She would take her place beside Him, to join Him, not just in daily life but in eternal life. His bride would come to be much like Eve. She had been formed from Adam’s side. The Creator’s beloved would be formed from His Spirit, since He was spirit.
The Lord God loved Adam and Eve. They loved Him, and they loved each other, as well. This greatly pleased the Lord.
In the midst of the garden, God gave Adam and Eve two special trees that bore fruit. They ate freely from one of the trees, but from the other one, the Lord forbade them to eat.
It was a matter of love—those two trees. For when they chose to obey their Maker, they truly showed Him their love and trust. And the Lord watched them together and enjoyed their love for each other and their love for Him. But when they disobeyed Him and ate fruit from the tree that was forbidden, everything changed.
The Lord God told them that if they ate from the forbidden tree, they would surely die.
God’s enemy, the fallen angel who had rebelled in heaven, tempted Eve telling her that they would not die if they ate the forbidden fruit, but that if they ate of it they would become like God, knowing good and evil.
Both Adam and Eve ate that fruit in spite of what God had told them. Part of what the devil said was true. Knowing good and evil, the next thing they knew after eating the fruit was that they were naked.
God found them hiding from Him, afraid to death of Him. No longer did they know innocence. They had changed. Everything else changed, too.
That’s when they realized they were cold. They’d never been uncomfortable before. They’d never been afraid before. Something very bad was happening to them, they feared.
Their intimacy and openness, their nakedness in the presence of their Maker, was gone. They did not want God to see them like this. They had withdrawn from Him already.
Something terrible, sin, had come between them and the Creator.
They trembled at God’s voice when He called to them, looking for them. “Adam, Eve, where are you?”
The Lord God knew already, knew when He couldn’t find them that they had disobeyed Him. When He found them cowering from Him, He spoke softly yet sternly to them about what He would do to help them.
First, He covered their guilty nakedness with the skins of an animal. This was hard for God to do, for He loved the animal He killed for their sakes. And, He knew, this was only the beginning . . . His children would need to use this bloody ritual of sorts, to be repeated over and over in the days ahead.
Blood sacrifices and offerings would pave the way for something so terrible, and so wonderful, that God kept this part of His plan to save them to Himself.
God came up with a long range plan, a way to cover sin by means of innocent blood. This, He knew, would only cover their shame; one day He would remove it from them. That day would prove His love and faithfulness to them. That day He would enter into death Himself and awake from it, swallowing up death with His life—his innocent blood the price to pay. Afterwards, no longer would anyone die if His life was in them. And, like Adam, who was put into a deep sleep while Eve was formed from him, so, too, God’s holy and innocent Son would be put into “death’s sleep” so that His bride could be formed from Him, made from His very nature and being. This was His secret, His future plan, and the only thing that could comfort Him that sad day when sin and death came to His beloved Adam and Eve.
He knew all the pain, suffering, sickness, sin, evil—even murder—which would follow them and their children. And He knew they would not know Him intimately, nor live in harmony with Him, as they had. Though His heart was full of pain, He gave the orders. They were forcefully driven out of the garden. An angel was commissioned with a heavenly weapon, a sword of fire, to guard the entrance. They were not allowed near the one special tree that gave life anymore. They couldn’t come back into Eden—not for a long, long, time.
The Lord dreamed of another time—He would make good come from all of this. But it wouldn’t be easy. It would cost Him dearly. The tree of life would be carved into the shape of a cross. He’d see to it. It would be love at its best, and hate at its worst. But to display love at its best, He decided it would be worth it.
He wanted a mate—a counterpart. He wanted to be a devoted lover. Yes, after it was all over, it would be worth it.
He could see His bride even now, in His mind’s eye. She was beautiful, pure and holy, like Him. She would love Him completely. He would buy her costly robes of righteousness and adorn her with precious, rare jewels. Not earthly ones. These would be spiritual: refined, priceless gems. He would forever cherish her, would lay down His life for her—O, how he wanted her! She would be His forever. And she would reign with Him. He would cherish her and give her His life. Passion and love would blaze between them for eternity.
Check back soon for Chapter Two: A Garden in Israel
Read MoreA Man After God’s Own Heart — Brennan Manning’s Passing
A week ago I searched online to see if Brennan Manning had written a new book. I discovered he had died last month (April 12, 2013). I immediately felt the loss and discovered I had really loved him. His words had so often come to me from God’s own heart. I sat under the spell of his teaching an entire day and had felt I’d been sitting on the mount in Israel listening to Jesus teach, and often his eyes had found me in the crowd. I had felt nothing short of awe in the deepest part of my being that day – Brennan was full of the Holy Spirit and his words found their mark dead center.
I took a good while to think about Brennan, how much he’d done for his Lord, and for people like me … I felt sad for the world but, also, I felt joy for him and for God. What a beautiful moment in heaven it must have been when Abba gathered him close and Jesus kissed him, full of smiles. Brennan Manning knew Jesus and Jesus knew him.
Brennan would be the first to tell you he wasn’t perfect. What he boasted to know, though, was God’s favor and grace and he always spoke about the rich and abundant, Divine love that was so full of freedom and wildness. He talked about the furious longing of God … oh, yes, he knew what it was like to really know God. He could write and talk about it in ways that inspired many, many people.
I often thought Brennan was the only man on earth who could describe God’s love worthy to the task. In memory of him, I’d like to quote some of what I think are his best sayings:
♥ God loves who we really are–whether we like it or not, and calls us, as He did Adam, to come out of hiding into a safe place. No amount of spiritual makeup can render us more presentable to Him. “Come to Me now,” Jesus says. “Acknowledge and accept who I want to be for you: a Savior of boundless compassion, infinite patience, unbearable forgiveness, and love that keeps no score of wrongs.”
♥ Faith is the courage to accept acceptance.
♥ God loves you for who you are, not for who you should be.
♥ The truth of faith has little value when it is not also the life of the heart.
♥ Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.
♥ I have been seized by the power of a great affection.
♥ The Christ within who is our hope of glory is not a matter of theological debate or philosophical speculation. He is not a hobby, a part-time project, a good theme for a book, or a last resort when all human effort fails. His is our life, the most real fact about us. He is the power and wisdom of God dwelling within us.
♥ Suffering, failure, loneliness, sorrow, discouragement, and death will be part of your journey, but the Kingdom of God will conquer all these horrors.
This last quote is a long one but my favorite of all quotations; it is from his book: The Rabbi’s Heartbeat:
♥
On a recent five-day silent retreat, I spent the entire time in John’s gospel. Whenever a sentence caused my heart to stir I wrote it out longhand in a journal. The first of many entries was also the last: “The disciple Jesus loved was reclining next to Jesus. He leaned back on Jesus’ breast” (John 13:23, 25). We must not hurry past this scene in search of deeper revelation, or we will miss a magnificent insight. John lays his head on the heart of God, on the breast of the Man whom the council of Nicea defined as “being coequal and consubstantial to the Father . . . God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God.”
This can be a personal encounter, radically affecting our understanding of who God is and what our relationship with Jesus is meant to be. God allows a young Jew, reclining on the rags of his twenty-odd years, to listen to his heartbeat!
Have we ever seen the human Jesus at closer range?
Clearly, John was not intimidated by Jesus. He was not afraid of his Lord and Master. John was deeply affected by this sacred Man.
Fearing that I would miss the divinity of Jesus, I distanced myself from His humanity, like an ancient worshiper shielding his eyes from the Holy of Holies. But as John leans back on the breast of Jesus and listens to the heartbeat of the Great Rabbi, he comes to know Him in a way that surpasses mere cognitive knowledge. What a world of difference lies between knowing about someone and knowing Him.
In a flash of intuitive understanding, John experiences Jesus as the human face of God who is love. And in coming to know who the Great Rabbi is, John discovers who he is–“the disciple Jesus loved.” For John the heart of Christianity was not an inherited doctrine but a message born of his own experience. And the message he declared was, “God is love” (I John 4:16).
The recovery of passion begins with the recovery of my true self as the beloved. If I find Christ I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find Him . . . the goal and purpose of our lives. John did not believe that Jesus was the most important thing; he believed that Jesus was the ONLY thing.
If John were to be asked, “What is your primary identity, your most coherent sense of yourself?” he would not reply, “I am a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist,” but “I am the one Jesus loves.”
To read John 13:23-25 without faith is to read it without profit. To risk the passionate life, we must be “affected by” Jesus as John was; we must engage His experience with our lives rather than our memories. Until I lay my head on Jesus’ breast, listen to His heartbeat, and personally appropriate the Christ-experience of John’s eyewitness, I have only a derivative spirituality. The Christ of faith is no less accessible to us in His present risenness than was the Christ of history in His human flesh to the beloved disciple. To see Jesus in the flesh was an extraordinary privilege but “more blessed are they who have not seen and yet believed” (John 20:29).
Looking at Jesus through the prism of John’s values offers unique insight into the priorities of discipleship. One’s personal relationship towers over every other consideration. What establishes preeminence in the Christian community is not office, title, or territory, not the charismatic gifts of tongues, healing, or inspired preaching, but only our response to Jesus’ question, “Do you love Me?
♥♥♥
Brennan Manning knew Jesus, loved Jesus, and spent a good part of his life proclaiming the Good News — that God’s love is real, all-powerful, particular, unconditional, and crazy. (God is crazy in love with us. )
The following links are samples of Brennan Manning’s amazing gift of telling the world about God’s great love.
Read Morehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKSofu9YlyQ&feature=player_embedded#!
Why God Came
This is a love story.
The answer to why God came to earth is at once simple and profound. Simple because it takes eyes of faith to see the truth. Profound because it takes eyes of love to see the depths of the matter. God came to earth to save us. But the manner and way He came is what won our hearts to His.
What desire spurred Him on in Creation? What planning and plotting? What sprang to life in God’s own heart the moment He gave Eve to Adam in a garden called Paradise? The seed of His big idea began in that act of love so very long ago. Soon, God will have His own beloved. And, it is us. You and me, each one of us.
He wanted us to be free to choose Him, but how could we choose to love the One we most feared? The Creator and King of the Universe came disguised as a lowly human so that we could see His true reality — the personality and love of God shone through Jesus.
He came to be discovered.
God let us touch Him. See Him. Learn from Him.
He came to give Himself up for us. He gave everything He had for us. He gave everything He was for us.
He came to steal our hearts.
This love story isn’t over … we’re caught up in the midst of it still.
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