Digging with Darren

This past week was an emotional roller coaster. We had the sudden & unexpected passing of a loved one, the birth of a nephew and a bar mitzvah all within just a few days. These are the times I am thankful for family & friends. Thank you to everyone who has sent their condolences by email or  through Facebook (btw – if you’re on Facebook, please look me up). Although the death was difficult, I believe this may be a catalyst to bring about some long term fruit for the glory of the Father. I’ll try to post photos of my new nephew and of the bar mitzvah later today or tomorrow. Blessings & thanks for your prayers…

Invariably, no matter how hard and long we clean in preparation for Chag HaMatzot (the Feast of Unleavened Bread), somewhere around the middle of the week, we open a cabinet or the freezer and there’s a whole package of hamburger buns or something ridiculous like that. This year things are already a little different.

We’ve found a couple of small things that we had forgotten contained vinegar (a type of chametz/leavened food that we have chosen to remove during this time), such as our Ranch dressing that we had mixed up before we had started purging our home. Since it wasn’t labeled, all we thought about was what was in the mix contents. We didn’t think about the mayo that was added to it!

But there was something that was even larger that I, personally found. The actual day of Pesach, I found about three loaves of puffy, white bread in my heart. I allowed my zeal for observing the feast at a higher level than those around me spoil the spirit of the feast. The entire daylight hours of Pesach for my family ended up being a burden, and not a joy. I allowed a conflict of observance to get under my skin and sour our Pesach experience. Fortunately, I was able to work through this with my family prior to our second seder, confessing my sin and asking forgiveness from my family & friends. 

I am admitting this publicly, because we need to confess our faults in order to get rid of them, and I also need a reminder for the following years so that I don’t allow it to happen again. I need to remember that we must continually look into the “Law/Torah of Liberty” (James 1:25;2:12), not falling prey to the “leaven of the Pharisees”—hypocrisy. I wanted to be strict in the minor areas, while allowing the larger, more weightier matters of the Torah (love, compassion, etc.) to fall by the wayside. May Hashem use this as a life lesson to draw me (and hopefully others) to the heart of His commandments. I am thankful for a loving and gracious family. Truly love does cover a multitude of sins.

I was privileged to speak at a small, Pentecostal church in Oklahoma over the weekend. I was given total freedom as to the teaching topic and three speaking sessions (two on Shabbat and their Sunday morning service). My topic was “Becoming and Making Disciples of Jesus.” I spoke on the necessity of making disciples, rather than converts and emphasized the importance of knowing our rabbi. I introduced them to this person in the illustration, using it as a springboard for looking into the Jewishness of our Master and his teachings. It was a really good weekend, filled with positive feedback and interaction. The members of this church were warm, loving and accepting and hungry for the Word of G-d. Please pray for our brothers and sisters who have just been exposed to this life-long journey of rediscovering our master.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply…”
(Genesis 1:28)

This passage gives us what the sages identify as the very first commandment in the Torah: And although we do not negate the literal meaning of the commandment, our Master gave us a similar commandment just before he departed this earthly existence, saying:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:19,20, ESV)

Making disciples of the Master is a means of bearing fruit and multiplying. In order to be a fruit-tree, the tree must produce fruit, which is capable of producing other fruit-bearing trees. A disciple is not a true disciple, unless he is giving birth to other disciples, who in turn will give birth to other disciples. Disciples do not bear sterile fruit. Disciples bear other disciples who have the ability to reproduce exponentially.

There are several reasons my posts have been lacking over the last few months. However, one of them has been that I have been investing my time into trying to figure out a plan of how to make disciples for the Master in my local community. As a means of starting to fulfilling this mitzvah, I thought about starting a weekly study of the parasha at an introductory level, gearing it towards people who didn’t know anything about Torah, and were still plugged into their local churches. I immediately thought of Torah Club, Volume 1 from First Fruits of Zion as the perfect methodology to facilitate this. It’s organized, well-written, thought-provoking and intentionally geared towards those newly coming to an understanding of Torah. Although this won’t necessarily “make” disciples, this will prepare people to become disciples as they study the Scriptures with a fresh understanding.

A couple of months back, Boaz Michael shared with me his vision of beginning to share Torah with non-messianics on a local level. He had a plan to develop local Bible studies across the country called “Torah Portions,” based off of the weekly Torah portion. This immediately sparked within me, and I knew this was an affirmation of what I had in my heart.

This past week, I started this weekly Torah study, introducing people to the Torah, some for the first time. We meet at an office building in the middle of town, making it accessible to everyone and keeping it from having any sort of denominational association. Tonight will be our second meeting. I’m finding out that this is a great way to fulfill a deep desire within me to share Torah with others, and help to nurture disciples of the Master.

I want to encourage you to do the same and share Torah with your community. Start a Torah Club group and teach from your heart the things the Father has been showing you in your studies, gently allowing the eyes of others to be opened to the wondrous things of the Torah. Don’t wait for the “right time” or for someone else to do it. Step out and begin cultivating an environment for discipleship within your city, community or church.

I don’t have a lot of time to post, but I wanted to share a quick thought…

In this week’s parasha (Re’eh) we find the following:

You shall not do like everything we do here today, every man what is proper in his eyes. For you will not yet have come to the resting place or to the heritage that Hashem, your G-d gives you (Devarim 12:8-9)

According to a midrashic approach to this passage, when we are all approaching the Scriptures and living out Torah through our own interpretations and traditions, we are not entering into the resting place of Hashem, nor the heritage that Hashem wants to give us. Not only are we causing confusion and anarchy among our family and brethren, we are being “wise in our own eyes.”

My family is constantly working to make slow, calculated steps towards greater observance of the mitzvot as spelled out by greater Judaism in order to do exactly this. No, we are not swallowing anything blindly, but neither are we presumptuously trying to reinvent the wheel in areas that have long been defined within historic Judaism. Please keep in mind that steps such as these have to be done with great humility and showing of grace to others. This is not a message of condemnation to those who are outside of this paradigm. I would love to see the greater Messianic community one day reach the place of becoming somewhat homogeneous in our approach to living out Torah, b’ezrat Hashem (with the help of Hashem). However, we must be gracious to those who are not on this particular fork of the road on which we are traveling. We must all work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. Just as Boaz shared this past weekend at the The Commandment to Bless seminar, we have to set a high personal standard for our families, while at the same time being gracious to others as they progress in their journey. There is no room for elitism or intolerance. Let’s raise the bar as well as help people to get over it, rather than beating them with it.

Let us seek to enter into the resting place of Hashem, and into the heritage that He wants to give us.

I have intended on posting this for several days, but haven’t been able to find the time…

A little over a month ago I posted a note about my eldest son (age seven) who has been suffering for the last two years with breathing difficulties. I had rejoiced that he had actually made it through one night without having to use his inhaler (although he ended up having to use it the next morning). After that he fell back into the same pattern of having to use it at least once a night and sometimes during the day. We were finally able to get into the allergy / asthma clinic and he was finally able to get some relief.

He appears to have severe asthma, complicated by severe allergies. They did a prick test (where they put all of the different allergens on your back) and out of the 45 items for which he was tested, he was allergic to 33 of them. They prescribed 5 different medications in an attempt to get his breathing and bronchial inflammation/spasms under control and want to see him again next month (at which time he will also see a respiratory therapist). We have been giving him only three of the prescriptions, and only half the dosage of the main one (an inhaled steroid – yuk).

This past Monday night marked one full week that he has been able to go without his inhaler. Not during the night, not after playing hard out in the yard, not at all. It has been a night and day experience, for which we are very thankful to our Heavenly Father. Although we are not excited about the medications he is taking, we are very thankful for the results. We will be looking into alternative methods of keeping this under control long term, but for now, this is a quick fix that is working amazingly well.

Thank you, again, for your prayers! I can’t wait until we reach the one month mark, rather than just the one week mark! Please continue to keep him in your prayers for complete healing, and us for wisdom. Baruch Hashem for His blessings, and for friends like you.

-Darren

Today is my fourteenth wedding anniversary to the most wonderful woman on the face of Hashem’s earth. Thank you, Sweetheart, for being such a wonderful wife and an incredible mother to our four children. You are Hashem’s best gift to me ever. I love you and want all the world to know it! Happy Anniversary!