From Eliyahu

Hello friends,

Have you ever wondered why our Father's plan always looks so impossible? We have those cases that hang directly on Him, like the Red Sea deliverance. To His enemies this looked like a chance to kill Israel like fish in a barrel, but in reality, they were being baited into their own demise. The mighty victory was His and His alone, and really never was in any real jeopardy.

I love to consider these miracles where He alone has manifested His mighty power, but that is not what I am focusing on here.

This commentary is really about how He works through His people - ordinary, weak and vulnerable human beings like you and me. He seems to pin everything on His people, sometimes just one person, like Noah or Jacob or Ester or Mary ...so many others at different times. How can He do that? How can He trust so much - everything really - into the hands of flawed human beings?

And lets face it, His people have often failed Him. Look at the awesome mission of Israel in the world. He has not withdrawn that mission - even though we have miserably failed to break through in victory after millennia of failures. Contrary to all indications, He still believes in His nation, and will not stop until we finally step up and give Him what He always knew we could. Even when we don't believe in ourselves He still believes in us.

The truth is, as I see it, this is the most scary thing He does, because, with few exceptions, I don't trust people to anywhere near the same extent that He does. Putting too much trust in the wrong person can be a lethal mistake - hence, very scary indeed. From a certain point of view, His trust in individuals seems to place His plan at constant risk - all of the time. Don't get me wrong here. I am not complaining against God. I know that His ways are higher than our ways. This is all to marvel at one amazing aspect of how that is true, and why.

At this point I think I need to back up a little bit to explain why I'm thinking about this right now. You might remember that in my last Tsiyon News I wrote about the Solar Eclipse of  August 21,2017 and the new dark age it seemed to be signaling. [To the left is a picture Mike took of the eclipse from here at Tsiyon.]

Here we are, 9 days later, and I'm writing this Tsiyon News from a federal disaster area. This entire region of Texas, almost 60 counties including ours, has been declared a federal disaster area due to the devastation still underway from the massive flooding of Hurricane Harvey. This has been a terrible time for many of our Texas neighbors and we continue to pray for them all.

Actually, even before the eclipse Tsiyon began a time of emergency, and these emergencies are what has prompted this commentary.

We will take this story back to August 19. Around 5 pm that evening we got a call telling us we would need to evacuate due to a fire in the neighborhood. In a short time this was followed up by police coming through the area in person. There has been little rain through the summer and everything has been very dry. This has been good for our Tsiyon building project (more about that in a minute) but not so good otherwise. This dryness has increased fire risk in the area. Anyway, our response was to have a meeting of all of our Tsiyon folks on the property. We remembered that after the 2011 fire that left our Tsiyon Headquarters in ashes, YHWH told us the property would not be destroyed again by another fire, and we believed that. However, we needed to be responsible to cooperate with authorities, so we determined to prepare to evacuate. We prepared. However, no one wanted to leave until we were forced to do so. We all had vehicles all packed up and ready to go - but we didn't go. We had a meeting singing praises and playing Bible games while we waited - we all had a lot of peace. The fire was burning over 35 acres one block from us, but it never crossed over into our block. About 8 pm or so the evacuation order was reversed and the threat was over. We praised YHWH for remembering His word.

The day after the fire one of our beloved Tsiyon members, Cheryl, arrived and was immersed the next day!

 Don't you love how that works? Trust Him, and then a blessing.

So often, that's how it works.

Now lets talk about the Tsiyon building project.

Late afternoon of August 24th we started hearing that Harvey was a likely threat. To the right is about how the Tsiyon building project looked before Harvey was identified as a threat.

Our own volunteers had already worked months to get the building to this point. Notice that there was no roof yet, and no siding on more than half of the walls!

By then we had just received a delivery of supplies for building the roof and other things, all of these supplies were now threatened too!

In other words, no protection at all from the projected rain and winds of Hurricane Harvey!

We were completely vulnerable to destruction!

A worse case scenario was possible for this building that could set us behind for years and possibly even devastate this modest ministry!

YHWH had already been speaking to me about the threat when some of the leaders of the project met with me to talk about what we could do. We had put on some of the roof joists that day - but any plan to secure the building would require them all to be in place. Every able bodied person jumped in to help get those joists up, working late into the night. Amazingly, that job got done - but there was not time to actually finish the roof. The next day we would move all the materials, supplies and tools inside the building and would cover the roof joists and the open walls with plastic! No, plastic would not be much of a defense, but it was the best we could do on the notice we had. 

August 25th at the end of the day the rain had already started. Everyone had done an amazing job to get to this point in such a short time - but it is only a plastic covering. Would it hold - or would the hurricane rip it to shreds, exposing everything inside to destruction?

We had done all we could do.

Now we would trust YHWH, and we would see what He would do with our strenuous, but oh-so-fragile, efforts.

As usual, everything was tested.

We had gusts of wind and lots of rain for what seemed like endless days. We had a power outage that lasted about 24 hours. Our county was declared a disaster area. Not surprisingly, we had some leaks in various places. We did get some water in the building and as yet we don't know about water damage, we probably have some.

However, after all of that here is what the building project looks like after the hurricane is over:

That's right. The flimsy plastic held and the building is secure. It is, for me, a picture of how Yah's Plan is always so tenuous because of the human factor. And yet, He works with the little we can do in faith, to display his abiding power.  

And I am struck by these words that describe the amazing connection between YHWH and His people:

But we have this treasure in clay vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of Elohim, and not from ourselves. We are pressed on every side, yet not crushed; perplexed, yet not to despair; pursued, yet not forsaken; struck down, yet not destroyed; always carrying in the body the putting to death of Adonai Yeshua, that the life of Yeshua may also be revealed in our body. 2 Corinthians 4:10-11

It is such a humbling privilege to serve the awesome living Elohim.

Now, about our meeting tonight.      

Messiah is facing down the religious leaders who are plotting to kill Him! Instead of cowering in silence He does what only the King could do - He indicts them for their crimes! Join us for tonight's live online Tsiyon meeting and consider how relevant this is for us today.  

Join us at 8 PM CST at Tsiyon.Net. You will be glad you did!

Shalom,

Eliyahu ben David
Tsiyon.Org

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