Blessings, Family, and L’shanah tovah (Good Year)!
The first shofar has sounded, closing out our Year of Jubilee, and announcing the Hebrew New Year of 5777!
Wake up, children of the Living God! The end of the harvest is at hand! Finish up your work and prepare for the return of the King of Kings!
Now come the Days of Awe, when take a long, hard look at our hearts. Are we right with our Heavenly Father or are we harboring unforgiveness or hidden sin? Are we right with our brothers and sisters or are there unresolved contentions, roots of bitterness, causing trouble and defiling others? Have we been fair and honest in our business dealings and personal relationships?
“Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.” James 4:8-10
As the year, 5777, suggests, 5 being the number of grace, 7 being the number of Spiritual completion and perfection, and three 7s consecutively speaking of Divine perfection, I believe we are looking at the fullness of God’s grace through Divine revelation. A move of the Holy Spirit like the world has never seen. Now, more than ever, we need to be fully submitted to the Lord and His leading.
What a blessed time of celebration we had last night, ushering in Rosh Hashanah!
I was asked to speak at our first (as far as I know) community Rosh Hashanah (Yom Teruah) celebration and lead the blessings and festivities. My first public speaking assignment since my release from my season of prayer.
We truly had a wonderful time doing Hebrew dances and worshiping with Hebrew songs, and the Holy Spirit’s presence was very evident to everyone there. We had a wonderful Spirit-led prayer time for Israel and Ishmael, for restoration and healing of the people and the land, and in the nations as well.
The Lord has really been impressing on me and my fellow prophetic prayer warriors the importance of sharing with the church the true nature and purpose of His Appointed Times, and healing the rift between Jew and Gentile. This is the season of restoration, a time of fulfillment of the One New Man.
“For He Himself is our peace, who has made both [Jews and Gentiles] one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.” Ephesians 2:14-18
As I shared with our group, the enemy has worked tirelessly planting lies in the church to cause division, distrust, and even violence between Gentiles and Jews. Jesus prayed that the Father would make us one, but that is the last thing the enemy wants because he knows that unity in the Spirit brings the tangible Glory of God, as it did at the dedication of Solomon’s Temple and again at Pentecost.
One of these lies is that the Lord’s appointed times, including Sabbath, were just for Old Testament Israel, and have no meaning for today’s church. They have been dismissed as “the feasts of the Jews.”
In fact, the word translated “feast” in the Bible is the Hebrew word moed, and is rightly translated “appointed time” or “season.” They were not celebrations invented by men, but appointments made by God to meet with His children.
God never cancelled His appointments.
“And it shall come to pass that everyone who is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. And it shall be that whichever of the families of the earth do not come up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, on them there will be no rain. If the family of Egypt will not come up and enter in, they shall have no rain; they shall receive the plague with which the Lord strikes the nations who do not come up to keep the Feast of Tabernacles.” Zechariah 14:16-18
God takes His appointments very seriously. But, what the enemy doesn’t want you to know is that these appointments are not about legalism or ethnicity, but about relationship. About drawing closer to the heart of our Father, acknowledging Him for what He has done, is doing, and is going to do for us. They are about celebrating the God of Redemption. And no one deserves to be celebrated more.
What the enemy doesn’t want you to know is that these appointed times of the Lord hold great blessing for those who observe them. Personally, I need all the blessing I can get.
We are the children of God, and our Father is calling us into the fullness of our inheritance. “He has blessed us with every Spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ .” (Eph. 1:3).
It is time to receive those gifts. In fact, it is vital that we receive those gifts if we are to be ready for that last trump. The Day of Atonement.
“Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” 1 Corinthians 15:51, 52
Are you ready?
L’shanah tovah!
God’s grace and peace be yours,
Rebecca
Addition resources about God’s Appointed Times:
Appointed Times, by James A. Durham
Appointed Times, 10 CD set, by James A. Durham
The Messianic Church Arising!, by Dr. Robert D. Heidler
