I love stories with good endings! This is one of many reasons why we as believers study the Word of God, being always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks us for a reason for the hope that is within us (1Pet.3:15); to show ourselves well equipped and understand Word of God and its relevance for our lives. God states in Jer.9:11-14,
“For I know the plans I have for you, plans for peace, not evil, to give you a future and hope—never forget! 12 At that time, you will call out for Me, and I will hear. You will pray, and I will listen. 13 You will look for Me intently, and you will find Me. 14 Yes, I will be found by you and I will restore your fortunes.”
This beautiful promise was given to Israel during a season of Divine judgment due to their apostasy. Who would have imagined that during such a dark period of exile would be interwoven a message bearing such comfort and encouragement? And who would dare to cling to the hope that the same God who had judged Israel so severely would extend His hand of restorations fully? Their period of waiting was 70 years, but at the right moment God honoured His word and His faithfulness was yet again revealed. And His eternal purposes continue to roll forward amid a battlefield of twists and turns for them as also for each one of us.
God may sometimes appear hidden yet He is present even in the worst catastrophe. It is in these moments that we do well to understand His heart as revealed in His Word: “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Eternal, “plans for peace, not evil, to give you a future and hope.”
Therefore, we collide every negative piece of wretchedness and scatter it to its place of origin knowing that God is infinitely greater than the sum of our imperfections. He has given us His authority and the means by which they can be applied.
God’s grace and favour is available for us at all times because He is faithful to His covenant promises that will be brought to completion in the fullness of time. Every smallest detail in the world in any given moment of time—which involves trillions of details is something God is fully aware of and fully in control! How much more so for each one of us who He loves and cherishes!
In this week’s parasha, we will be reflecting upon the hope that God gives even in the midst of collapse when everything turns inwards upon itself, because God’s eternal plans for never fail. The Jewish people remain as a witness to God’s covenant faithfulness, that extends to every believer redeemed by the Blood of Yeshua. As we shared last Shabbat, “God provides us with the cure before the disease.” As the prophet Jeremiah wrote, “ I know the plans (thoughts) that I have for you, declares the Lord. They are plans for peace and not disaster, plans to give you a future filled with hope.” (29:11).
God did not write these words for people whose lives were going well but for those who felt abandoned by God and had lost all hope. The Hebrew word for ‘plans’ is “macha-shavot” meaning “thoughts”. God never stops thinking about us and has promised never to leave or forsake us.“The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lam.3:22) The sure hope He has bestowed to us is substantial not weak, that has been made possible only through Yeshua. (1Jn 4:10) states, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
Yeshua said in Matt.6:8 “…your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. “ He has revealed one of the most tender revelations here in the Sermon on the Mount: “Your Father knows.” He had just warned His disciples not to pray like the religious hierarchy did, piling up empty words as though prayer becomes powerful by volume, length, or repetition. The issue was not persistence because Scripture honours persistent prayer. The issue was empty spirituality masquerading as piety.
Yeshua cut through this with one sentence: “Your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him.” His words change the whole atmosphere of prayer. In the Hebraic world, to “know” goes far beyond mental awareness. The word “yada” (יָדַע) speaks of intimate, relational knowledge without distant observation, but instead covenant awareness with the knowledge of our sovereign Lord who sees, understands, remembers, and is personally involved. When Yeshua said that the Father knows what we need, He is not saying that He has collected information about our situations but that our need is already held before His heart.
Therefore, our prayers are embedded in trust knowing that before our request is even formed upon our lips, or our tears are articulated into sentences, our Heavenly Father already knows. This transforms them into something relational rather than merely liturgical as we surrender our hearts to His perfect will with this knowledge. Anxiety becomes trust, and our very need is transformed into dependence,. Our desires becomes aligned with His will and we delight ourselves in Him so God grants us the desires of our hearts. (Ps.37:4). Prayer draw us ever near to the One who promises to meet our deepest needs. This is why Yeshua says, “Do not be like the religious hierarchy.” We do not pray like an orphan trying to earn His attention, or a servant who is unsure of his master’s heart. We come before Avinu (אָבִינוּ) — our Father as children who do not need to pretend to hunger in order to be fed by a loving father, or exaggerate our pain to be noticed and held in His everlasting arms of love. His “chesed” precedes our asking – the cure before the disease. Yeshua is transforming us into those who pray from the position of sonship rather than as orphans. And so we persist in asking, seeking, and knocking in quietness and confidence knowing that His timing is always perfect.
There is deep freedom in this because we do not have to make our prayers dramatic in order to be heard, or explain every detail perfectly, or carry the burden of convincing God through debate. God calls us to simply come to Him honestly, simply, reverently, and boldly, because His hand embraces our needs before they ever reach Heaven.
This is what in Hebrew we call “ashrei” — the blessed life of those who come to God with childlike trust irrespective of anything we are surrounded by. We learn in everything to give thanks to Him in Messiah Yeshua knowing that His mercies are new every morning – great is His faithfulness! He knows the provision, the wisdom, the healing, strength and comfort we need — He knows the hidden place no one else can see.
Our worship is an expression of our love for Him that’s transformed into a lifestyle which directly effects how we respond to evil when we encounter it, The manner in which we respond to attacks orchestrated by evil forces is the measure by which our battles are waged. Countless people over the ages who Satan sought to destroy in a single moment by calculated acts of evil overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony – people like Corrie Ten Boom who was arrested, sent to concentration camp and lost all their family during the Holocaust. Her victory was through worship of God even within the pit of hell in Ravensbruk concentration camp and as a consequence it brought light and hope within impenetrable darkness. By forgiving her enemies and blessing those who persecuted her contrary to every instinct, brought transformation and life and hope and victory that evil had no answer for. What Satan intended for evil, God used for good that cascaded into the hearts of so many people whose lives she surrounded.
Each one of us has stood symbolically in some form beside the thief being crucified alongside Yeshua at His crucifixion — guilty, needy, unable to undo the past, dependent entirely on His love and mercy.
Blessed are those who never forget how great Yeshua’s sacrifice was, how deep His forgiveness runs, and how fully His blood covers every sin. Such people are blessed because Divine mercy has not been reduced to a theological doctrine, but transformed into a living memory. They remember the weight of the debt Yeshua carried, the cost of His blood poured out, and the love that reached us when we could not save ourselves.
And because we have been forgiven much, we love much, reflecting an overflow of hearts amazed by our eternal debt owing to the King of Kings who first loved us. It is this strength displayed in the face of evil and every demonic attack that crushes the enemy underfoot that Satan has no answer for.
Forgiveness is not an optional extra but a biblical imperative for every believer and is something that never comes cheap. In the Lord’s Prayer, Yeshua does not teach us how we can purchase God’s forgiveness by forgiving others — He is revealing whether we have understood the forgiveness we are asking for. Divine mercy cannot remain a private possession, it must be transferable. We easily accept the half of forgiveness where our debt is canceled but just as easily resist the command to release someone else. God’s Kingdom will not allow us to rejoice over a canceled debt while keeping our hands around the throat of someone who owes us.
Forgiveness does not mean the wrong committed against us was harmless or that betrayal did not wound, or that injustice is acceptable. Biblical forgiveness is not denial but release. It places the debt into the hands of the righteous King instead of letting it govern the soul. Some wounds are real and still call for truth but we simply refuse to let evil become Lord over our lives because true forgiveness of others provides the evidence of our own forgiveness from God.
Our greatest revenge against those who persecute or attempt to harm us in any way is to forgive and bless. (“Bless those who persecute you…”) We have no right to be vengeful, but God does because He is much better at it than we are. He is perfect as opposed to us who are flawed. He knows every smallest detail in our lives unto those things we are unaware of that can prejudice and colour our own views and responses.
And so we choose to rejoice and worship God in every situation. The greater the challenge, the sweeter our victory and the greater is Satan’s defeat. So we confidently proclaim alongside the apostle Paul, “I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Messiah Yeshua our Lord.” (Rom. 8:38-39)
Ps.91 is a beautiful psalm that speaks of God’s complete covering over those who trust in Him and walk in His ways. “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High (Elion) will abide in the shadow of the Almighty (Shaddai). I will say of Adonai, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” That is when our prayers become the most powerful since, “…if God is for us who can be against us? (Rom.8:31)
Ps.91 is one of only a few places in Scripture that speaks of “guardian angels” (Ex 23:20; Ps 43:3) who God commissions and assigns to actively protect us and also commands an army of angels on our behalf demonstrating how important we are to Him. Yeshua told His disciples, “See that you do not despise one of these little ones (i.e., us), for I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of the Father who is in heaven.”
Scripture states that we are overseen by a God who is not just omnipotent but also compassionate who cares for our smallest needs. The One who sent His only Son to die for us due to our helplessness to escape the consequences of sin – He is the same God who extends His arm of protection for those who are His own.
Yeshua left the 99 sheep to find and retrieve the one that went astray. He is always in active pursuit of us. Everything God allows in our lives is with the intention to bring us closer to Him, to remind us who He is and who we are. His meticulous care and protection is an overflow of His everlasting love that embraces us. Sometimes this may appear like a contradiction – things that happen in our lives that are puzzling and vexing and appear randomly without human reason or sense. Yet whatever God allows or purposes in our lives is planned by One who loves us more deeply than we can ever imagine.
Now the thing is this. Spiritual truth only becomes substantial when it is applied. In the opening verses of this week’s Torah portion (Deut.7:12-11:25), we read several things that are related to this. It opens with the words, “Because [eikev] you listen to these rules and keep them, the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and steadfast love that He swore to your fathers. He will love you, bless you, and multiply you.” (v11).
The word, ‘eikev’ (because) refers to God’s conditional blessings. Good provides us with choices which hold consequences. It’s derived from the verb “akav” which means, ‘to take or grasp’ and is first used in Gen. 3:15 providing us with the first prophecy regarding the Divine Redeemer who would be manifested in the fullness of time: “And I will put enmity between you [the serpent] and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel.” Satan attempted to strike the heel (destroy) of the Messiah) but instead the Messiah crushed the Devil’s head and broke the curse of sin by becoming a curse for us that we might be reconciled to God.
We must also make the good choice to allow God to fulfil our destinies – to replace a life that’s lacking to one that is overflowing – this is what God offered the Israelites and in turn offers each one of us.
In Jewish tradition, the last generation is described as “the heels of Mashiach, with feet of bronze” (representing judgement) since that particular generation is expected to hear His footsteps. Those who refuse to hear will be judged. In the world today our ears can be easily cluttered with ‘voices’ that seek to crowd out our ability to ‘hear’ as we await Yeshua’s imminent return, so God calls us to remain ever vigilant and steadfast – to “Shema”, to “hear and do.”
And alongside this, Scripture calls our attention to the importance of showing our gratitude to God (‘hakarat ha-tov’) for His immeasurable love amid every encounter we experience in life. Paul writes: “In everything give thanks…” He didn’t say “for everything.” Some things are evil, hurtful, harmful, or tragic. But, God has given us the capacity to triumph in every circumstance through His death and resurrection, And so we “…rejoice in the Lord always: and are careful for nothing, but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving make our requests known to God. (Phil. 4)
This was not a strong point of the Israelites during their 40 years in the desert. They frequently rebelled against God and were quick to remind Him of His promises yet easily forgot the ones they had made to Him. May we never forget the goodness of God and the everlasting debt we owe Him.
Never feel helpless because nothing is impossible with God and no wall is unscalable who goes before us. But He is not only a God of miracles – had it been so it would have been “dayenu” – but He is so much more – infinitely bigger than all our problems, our anxieties, every obstacle, bigger than all our questions, dilemmas, crises, – in all things God is altogether “dayenu!”
And though we in ourselves are weak, He is strong and, therefore, we operate from a position of strength with authority over every demonic spirit through His shed blood! “The weapons of our warfare are not physical [weapons of flesh and blood]. Our weapons are divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. 5 We are destroying sophisticated arguments and every exalted and proud thing that sets itself up against the [true] knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought and purpose captive to the obedience of Yeshua,” (2Cor.10:4-5)
The world is today saturated in darkness and reflects the despair and bankruptcy of every person who resides outside of the Kingdom of God. But, God has filled with us with His Holy Spirit dwelling within us and promises never to leave nor forsake us. Yeshua said, “Can a woman forget her nursing baby or lack compassion for a child of her womb? Even if these forget, I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of My hands. (Isa.49:15-16)
So, as we lead into a time of prayer, let’s remember Scripture commands us to “Pray for the shalom of Yerushalayim” (Ps.122:6) and by doing this we facilitate Yeshua’s return since this event will only occur when He takes His rightful throne in Jerusalem. But knowing the reward is not the primary reason for blessing the Jewish people – it is God’s love that motivates us to pray. This is the reason why true believers love the Jewish people, the nation of Israel and the city of Jerusalem is because they love the God who created the nation of Israel and the city whose owner is the Lord. You cannot love Yeshua and not love His chosen people and we can do no less than pray for them and bless them. And when we bless them we bless the Lord and consequently His blessings cascade within our lives!
What a staggering and inestimable privilege it is to bless Him! When we examine the ancient Hebrew word for ‘bless’ we discover that it literally means, ‘to kneel.’ We bless God when we bring Him a gift on bended knees in humility without concealment – the greatest gift – to simply surrender our lives unconditionally to Him. There is nothing greater or more substantial than this from which the sum total of our lives will be evaluated. The greatest in the Kingdom of God are those who follow on bended knee in the footsteps of the Master. Yeshua told His disciples, “He who wishes to be the greatest amongst you should be the servant of all” and He demonstrated it perfectly throughout His earthly ministry when He went on bended knee and washed His disciple’s feet at His last Passover. First love is the well-spring that nourishes our walk with the Lord and spurs us on to go beyond what is possible as we enter the realm of the impossible and overcome every obstacle against all odds!
