“That’s the outward form of worship,” he said. “That’s how worship manifests. But what’s the heart of worship?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll give you one definition, a secret. It’s found in the New Covenant Scriptures. It only appears in the Greek. It’s the word proskuneo. And do you know what it means?”
I had no answer.
“It means to kiss. True worship,” said the teacher, “is to kiss. And what does this reveal? What is a kiss? A kiss is the most intimate of acts. Therefore, worship is to be the most intimate thing you can experience.”
“To worship God is to kiss God?”
“In the spiritual realm, yes, to kiss from your heart, from your innermost being. And when you kiss, you don’t do it because you have to. You do it freely from your heart because you want to.”
“So true worship is never done by compulsion, but freely from the overflow of your heart.”
“And why does one kiss?” asked the teacher.
“Because of joy.”
“Yes,” he said, “a kiss is an expression of joy. And kissing brings you joy. So true worship is an expression of joy. You worship out of joy. Your joy becomes worship and your worship becomes joy.”
“Teacher,” I said, “we didn’t say the most obvious.”
“Which is . . . ?”
“One kisses because of love,” I said. “A kiss is an expression of love.”
“It is. So then what is true worship?”
“Worship is an expression of love.”
“Yes,” said the teacher, “It’s as simple as that: It’s the most intimate act of love and joy. Worship is as simple as kissing God.”
The Mission: Today, draw near to God in worship, in love, in joy, in the deepest of intimacy. Learn the secret of kissing God.
Psalm 42:7–8; Song of Solomon 1:2; John 4:24
Yishkeni: The Divine Kiss
DAY 15
THE NIGHT AND DAY PARADIGM
THERE WAS NO lesson that day. But then in the middle of the night he came to my room and woke me.
“Come,” said the teacher. “It’s time for the lesson. We’re going outside.”
I was half asleep and not thrilled at the idea, but, of course, I complied. He led me to a hill where we sat down in the darkness of the night.
“Which comes first,” he asked, “the day or the night?”
“The day,” I answered. “Night comes when the day is over.”
“That’s what most people would say. And that’s how most people in the world see it. Day leads into night. But it’s not how God sees it.”
“What do you mean?”
“If the day leads to night, then everything goes from light to darkness. Everything gets darker. Everything is in the process of darkening. And it would appear to be the way of the world. We go from day to night, from youth to aging, from strength to weakness, and ultimately from life to death. Day to night. It’s the way of the world, but it’s not the way of God. When God created the universe, it was not day and night. It is written, ‘There was evening, and then there was morning.’ The day began with night. There was night and then there was day. It is the night that comes first.”
“So that’s why Jewish holidays always begin at sunset.”
“Yes, and not only Jewish holidays, but every biblical day. Each day begins at sunset. There is evening and then morning. The world moves from day to night. But in God, it is the opposite. It goes from night to day . . . from darkness to light. The children of this world live from day to night. But the children of God live from night to day. They are born again in the darkness and move to the day. And if you belong to God, then that is the order of your life. You are to go from darkness to light, from weakness to strength, from despair to hope, from guilt to innocence, from tears to joy, and from death to life. And every night in your life will lead to the dawn. So live according to God’s sacred order of time . . . that your entire life be always moving away from the darkness and to the light.”
As he said those words, the first light of daybreak appeared and the night began yielding to the day.
The Mission: What darkness is in your life, the darkness of fear, of sin, of problems, of gloom? Today, turn away from it and to the light of day.
Genesis 1:3–5; Psalm 30:5; Ephesians 5:8; 1 Peter 2:9; 2 Peter 1:19
The Night and the Sunrise
DAY 16
THE TALEH
HE TOOK ME through a ravine that opened up into a valley. In the valley, a boy was tending a flock of sheep and lambs. One of the lambs had wandered off in our direction.
“Look,” said the teacher, “a lamb, the most defenseless of creatures, so defenseless it needs a boy to protect it. And yet it is of cosmic importance.”
“How?” I asked.
“The lamb is the master theme of God’s Word. In Genesis, a boy asks his father, ‘Where is the lamb . . . ?’ That’s the question of Scripture. On Passover, it is the lamb that dies to save the firstborn son of each house. The nation of Israel is saved by the blood of the lamb. Then in the Temple of Jerusalem, lambs are offered up in sacrifice every day of every year. And then, in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, it prophesied that a man will give His life as a sacrificial lamb, ‘as a lamb to the slaughter,’ and by His death, we will find healing, forgiveness, and blessing. Do you see the theme?”
“The lamb is the life given to save or bless others.”
“Yes, and to cover our sins. In Hebrew, taleh means lamb. And from taleh also comes the word that means covering. The Lamb will be our covering. So who is the Lamb? In all of world history, is there anyone known above all for giving His life, as an offering, as a sacrifice, that we might be saved?”
“There’s only one I know of,” I replied. “And wasn’t He called ‘the Lamb’?”
“Yes,” said the teacher, “Messiah, the Lamb of God, the Taleh Elohim. It was all about the Lamb from the beginning, the answer was always linked to the Lamb. But why a lamb in the first place?”
“I don’t know.”
“What the lamb means is this: There will be One who is entirely pure, innocent, without blemish, without evil . . . and this One will give His life to save those who are not innocent. But what is without blemish, what is entirely pure and good? What is the mystery of the lamb?”
“Tell me.”
“The mystery of the lamb is God. The mystery is that God will give His life to save us. For God is love. And the nature of love is to give of itself. The Taleh, the Lamb . . . is God.”
The Mission: Today, live in the spirit of the Lamb. Let everything you do be done in love. And live to make your life a blessing to others.
Genesis 22:1–18; Isaiah 53:7; 1 Peter 1:18–19; Revelation 5:6–13
The Lamb Mysteries I–VI
DAY 17
HOW TO ALTER YOUR PAST
WE WERE SITTING in his study. He was holding a scarlet cord.
“I dyed it myself,” said the teacher. “I left it in the solution for several days to make sure the dye soaked into every fiber. Do you think it’s possible to undye the cord, to make it white again?”
“I doubt it.”
“It is written: ‘Though your sins are as scarlet, I will make them white as snow.’ It would be like undyeing the cord.”
“Which would be impossible,” I said.
“But it’s even more impossible than that. How do you make sins go from scarlet to white? Sins are sins because they’re already committed. They’re done. They’re part of the past, and the past is finished.”
“Then the only way to alter a sin would be to change the past.”
“Yes, and yet the Scriptures are filled with the promise that God will one day wipe away sin and wash away our guilt. You can’t wipe away sin or cleanse guilt without changing the past.”
“But it’s impossible to change the past.”
“The first recorded miracle of Messiah was the changing of water into wine. But wine is only wine if it
’s aged. But the wine of the miracle had no past to be aged. It had to, in a sense, be given a new past. If God can give a past where there was no past, then He can remove a past where there was one.”
“So salvation is the undyeing of the scarlet cord,” I said.
“Exactly. God doesn’t just forgive the scarlet cord or pretend it isn’t scarlet. He changes its past and, by that, changes its reality. He undyes it.”
“He can do that?” I asked.
“God brought time into existence. God can bring it out of existence.”
“So it’s not simply that everything is the same and we’re forgiven in spite of it. It’s as if we never sinned in the first place.”
“And even more amazing than that. It’s not just as if we never sinned but, in His redemption, it has become that we’ve never sinned. In salvation, the impossible becomes the reality, the guilty become innocent, the tainted become pure, the rejected become those who were always beloved children, and our sins, which were as scarlet, become . . . as white as snow.”
The Mission: Soak in the undyeing. Receive from heaven your changed, innocent, pure, and beloved past, a past as beautiful and as white as snow.
Isaiah 1:18; Luke 7:37–47; 2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 John 1:8–9
As Beloved Children
DAY 18
YESHUA
AMOST IMPORTANT WORD,” said the teacher, “the word yasha. In Hebrew, it means to rescue, to help, to defend, to preserve, to make free, to attain victory, to bring to safety, to heal, and to save . . . one word and the answer to everything.”
“How is it the answer to everything?” I asked.
“Yasha is what we spend our lives seeking for, whether we realize it or not. We all need help, we all need freedom, we all need victory, and we all, in one way or another, seek for salvation. And in Hebrew, salvation comes from yasha. From the word yasha comes the Hebrew word yeshua. Yeshua means salvation. So in the Hebrew Scriptures, it is written, ‘He has become my salvation.’”
“Who has become salvation?”
“God,” he said. “God has become salvation. In other words, God would not only be the Creator of the universe, He would become our salvation. In other words, God would become our help, our defense, our preserving, our freedom, our victory, our salvation. God would become the answer to our greatest and deepest needs. In Hebrew, God would become yeshua.”
“But if the word yeshua means salvation, what’s the difference between saying ‘God would become salvation’ or ‘God would become yeshua’?”
“From the Hebrew word yeshua comes the name Yeshua. And when the name Yeshua was translated into Greek, it became Iesous. And when Iesous was translated into English, it became Jesus. Jesus is Yeshua . . . or Yeshua is Jesus. Yeshua is the real name of the one the world knows as Jesus.”
“So then God will become Yeshua. God will become Jesus.”
“And that’s exactly what the name Yeshua reveals. It means, God is my salvation. The ancient hope was that one day God would become our Yeshua. And so He has. And so what does Yeshua actually mean?”
“It means God has become our rescue, our help, our freedom, our healing, our victory, and our salvation.”
“Yes,” said the teacher. “God became Yeshua to become the answer to every need. So the key is to take every need in your life and join it to that name, to Yeshua, one word . . . and the answer to everything.”
The Mission: God has become your Yeshua, the specific answer to your deepest needs. Let that get inside your heart and live accordingly.
Exodus 15:2; Psalm 118:14; Isaiah 12:2; Matthew 1:21
Yeshua: The Name
DAY 19
ALIYAH
COME,” SAID THE teacher.
“Where?” I asked.
“Up,” he answered. “Up a mountain.”
He then took me on a half-hour journey through the desert to a particularly high mountain.
“Let us go up,” he said.
So we did. There was nothing easy about it. I had to rest several times, just to catch my breath. Finally we made it to the top.
“Look at that,” he said, pointing to the majestic panorama before us. “It’s something you can only see from up here, from the heights. It was worth the climb. Do you know what it’s called in Hebrew, what we just did?”
“Torture?”
“No,” he said, “it’s called aliyah. It means the going up, the ascent. When you read in the Scriptures of Messiah going to Jerusalem, you’ll find the word up used over and over again. Why is that? Jerusalem is a city set on the mountains. So to get there, you have to go up. So the journey to Jerusalem is called Aliyah. . . the ascending. And it was not only because of the physical terrain but because Jerusalem is the Holy City. So to go to Jerusalem is to make Aliyah. In the modern age, when the Jewish people began to return to the land of Israel, the return was called Aliyah. Going to the Promised Land was known as ‘making Aliyah,’ ‘the upward journey.’ The children of Israel were commanded to make Aliyah. But those who are of Messiah are the spiritual children of Israel. So what would that mean?”
“They also have an Aliyah to make?”
“Yes,” said the teacher, “but a spiritual people must make a spiritual journey.”
“So what’s the journey?” I asked. “What’s the Aliyah?”
“Your life,” said the teacher. “Your entire life is the Aliyah. Your life is a journey, but in God it is to be an upward journey . . . an ever higher ascending. How do you do that? The same way you ascended the mountain. Every day you will be given choices. Every choice will give you the chance to go lower, to stay the same, or to go higher. Choose the higher path, even if it’s harder, take the higher step . . . let each of your steps be higher than the step before it, each of your days be higher than the day before it. And you will end up walking on mountain heights . . . and your life will be an Aliyah.”
The Mission: Today, choose the higher step, the higher act, the higher ground, the higher path in every decision. Start making your life an Aliyah.
Psalm 121; Mark 10:32
The Aliyah Mystery
DAY 20
THE FOOTSTOOL WORLD
HE TOOK ME into his study and motioned me to sit down in his chair. In front of the chair was a cushioned stool.
“Relax,” he said, “put your feet up.”
So I did. He was quiet. Finally I broke the silence.
“And what’s today’s mystery?” I asked.
“That,” he said. “That,” he said again, pointing to the stool.
“The footstool?”
“Yes, the footstool. And within it lies a cosmic revelation.”
“A cosmic revelation? I never would have thought.”
“Cosmic enough to be spoken of by God. ‘Heaven is My throne,’ He said, ‘and the earth is My footstool.’ What do you think it means?”
“The earth is the place where God puts His feet?”
“That’s exactly right. Heaven is His throne. In other words, heaven is God’s dwelling place, the center of His presence, and where He rests His weight. And the word for weight in Hebrew is kavode. Kavode also means glory. Heaven in which rests God’s weight and glory.”
“And the earth?”
“The earth is not His throne. So it can’t bear the weight of His glory.”
“But it’s His footstool.”
“Yes. So He rests His feet on it. It bears the imprint of His feet, but never His full weight. And what does this reveal?”
“What?”
“You live in a footstool world. The earth is just a footstool. It means it isn’t the place on which you can rest all your weight or your well-being. Its possessions are only footstool possessions. Its issues are only footstool issues. Its problems are only footstool problems. And its glory is only a footstool glory. You don’t sit on a footstool; you just place your feet on top of it . . . on top of its problems, on top of its issues, on top of its glories. You rest your feet on it . . . lightly. That’s
the way one must live in a footstool world.”
“Then where do you rest your weight?”
“In the heavenlies,” he said. “But that’s another mystery. For now, enjoy the footstool.”
The Mission: Today, see the world and everything in it in a new way, as the footstool world, with only footstool issues, and live accordingly.
Isaiah 66:1; Ephesians 2:6; Colossians 3:1–2
The Footstool World
DAY 21
THE HEARTBEAT OF THE MIRACLE
WE WERE SITTING on two large stones at the base of a small mountain. The teacher leaned down to the ground, picked up a rock, and handed it to me.
“What do you feel?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I replied. “A rock.”
Now put your hand on your neck. Do you feel anything?”
“My heartbeat.”
“But the rock had no heartbeat,” he said.
“Of course not.”
“The rock exists as a rock with no heartbeat. It retains its shape, its size, its consistency, with no need of a heartbeat. But you have a heartbeat. Every moment of your existence hangs on a heartbeat. The moment it stops, your existence is over. That’s the difference between a rock and your life. God ordained it. Rocks just exist. But life never just exists. It must strive to exist, fight to exist. Your heart must keep beating, every moment of your life. Even if you do nothing, your heart beats. Even when you sleep, it keeps beating every moment so that you can remain alive. If you waste your moments on earth, still it beats that you can waste your time. When you sin, when you gossip, when you covet and hate, still it beats while you do so. When you weep, when you give up hope, still it beats so that even in your tears and despair, it still fights for you to live and to be able to cry.”
“So the difference between my existence and that of a rock is . . . ”
The Book of Mysteries Page 4
