What is a Zadokim?

Many years ago, I invented a word, or so I thought. This word meant "sons of righteousness" to me. It was Zadokim. After inventing the word, I looked it up and realized that I hadn't invented it at all. I had discovered a Hebrew word that meant "righteous ones."

In the book of Ezekiel, chapter 44, I read some of the saddest verses in the Bible. Israel had gone astray from Yahweh and the priestly order of the Levites had been barred from entering Yahweh's presence because they had aided in Israel's disobedience. I can think of nothing more awful than being kept away from Yahweh. But then I read verse 15. "But the priests, the Levites, the sons of Zadok, who kept charge of My sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from Me, they shall come near Me to minister to Me; and they shall stand before Me to offer to Me the fat and the blood,” says the Lord God."

This describes the Zadokim. We are the priest of Yahweh Most High and we shall draw near to Him and minister to Him. We shall offer Him our lives and all that is in them. We are priests of the New Covenant, ministering to Yahweh. We are also able to teach His people the difference between the holy and the unholy (vs. 23) and we do it all without sweating, in the rest (vs. 18). 

I am honored to be a Zadokim, a righteous one, a priest of Yahweh Most High, submitted to the High Priesthood of Yahshua--Melchizedek--and we operating in the New Covenant. As we walk with Holy Spirit, each of us can discover our unique Promise and Purpose as His Zadokim in the Earth. We are His representatives. We are His people. We are the Zadokim. 

The Lie within the Lie

So many people struggle with knowing Yahweh's love. Many of the songs on Christian radio are about people who can't seem to grasp that Yahweh loves them no matter what. Perhaps that is why they speak to me so.

The church has confused a lot of people with the constant use of the phrase "unconditional love." They say that Yahweh loves man unconditionally, but then simultaneously preach a doctrine that portrays a God who will smite you if you look cross-eyed at Him or who will not bring your deepest desired blessing to pass unless you manage to get everything perfectly right. One thing wrong, and like dominoes, your blessing falls apart. This dichotomous doctrine has caused many people to overtly or unconsciously doubt that Yahweh truly loves them "unconditionally." The phrase is rendered almost meaningless.

For me, it has been difficult to receive this unconditional love of Yahweh, even when He Himself has been the one telling me that He loves me unconditionally. He is good and patient, though, so He is teaching me.

One thing He has shown me recently is the lie within the lie. This is a devious ploy of the enemy whereby he tells you a lie that we can see outright, but hides another lie within that lie. Thus, when we choose to disbelieve the outright lie, we still have a problem because there is another lie to conquer in our minds before we can truly be free of the enemy's thoughts.

In the Garden of Eden, the overt lie to Eve was that she and Adam would not die if they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but rather they would be like Yahweh. (Genesis 3:5) There were so many covert lies in that statement, though. One of the biggest ones was that Adam and Eve were not one with Yahweh. Basically, the enemy lied to them by implying that they were not close enough to Him to be "like" Him. How much more like Him could they get, walking with Him in the cool of the day and being united with Him in His Spirit?

Holy Spirit has shown me that the enemy does the same trick to us. For example, the overt lie in the issue of Yahweh's love is that "Yahweh does not love us unconditionally." I have walked with Yahweh long enough now to know that He does love us unconditionally, whether or not I feel it. However, trying to make myself believe this has been frustrating. (It's always frustrating when you try to do something yourself, isn't it?)

Today, Holy Spirit revealed to me the covert lie, namely "I do not believe that Yahweh loves me unconditionally." That's right. I can declare that I already believe that Yahweh loves me unconditionally because in reality, I do.

There is a part of me that existed in the Beginning when Yahweh spoke me into being. This part of me remembers Him whispering His Promise to me. That He would always love me. That He would come back for me no matter how far I went from Him. That He had a plan and purpose for my life all laid out. This part of me not only believes, but KNOWS without question that Yahweh loves me unconditionally and what all of His Promises are.

"Bless the LORD oh my soul and forget not His benefits!" Psalm 103:2

Oh that we would remember the Truth that Yahweh spoke from the Beginning. This truth conquers all lies and all lies within lies. Forget not His benefits, His Promises.

Yahweh is faithful. He reveals the lies and the lies within the lies and then, after He has removed all of the layers that were blocking Him, He reveals the Truth underneath that has been there all along. Thank You, Holy Spirit!

Holy Spirit: We Cannot Handle That and It's Ok!

I continue to be impressed by the importance of Holy Spirit. Without Him, we are powerless and we are not who Yahweh called us to be when He envisioned us in His mind before He created us.

Without Holy Spirit, I am nothing.

Holy Spirit is the Christ anointing that Yahshua left for us when He ascended into Heaven. Holy Spirit is the Person of the Godhead who was supposed to empower us to do all of the things Yahshua said we would do. We cannot do the "greater things than these" that Yahshua spoke of without the empowerment of Holy Spirit.

This is why Yahshua told the Apostles to wait in Jerusalem until we received the "Promise of the Father." He is the Promise to us, and He enables us to fulfill our promise and purpose in the Earth.

In Acts 1:8, Yahshua says that we "...shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you..." linking power with Holy Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 1:24, it says that Christ is the "wisdom and power of Yahweh." Again, if Holy Spirit is the Christ anointing that Yahshua left for us, then Christ in this instance is Holy Spirit and again, Holy Spirit is linked with power, but also wisdom.

Thus, without Holy Spirit we cannot fulfill our purpose because we will lack the wisdom or revelation to know what that purpose is and we will lack the power to carry on to completion what that purpose is.

Holy Spirit allows us access to the deeper things of Yahweh. Yahweh is infinite, and there have been many times I have gotten just a small glimpse of His Infinity and been utterly overwhelmed.

Consider the depths of an ocean. There is only so far down a human body can go without dying. Partially because we need oxygen and the tank that is supplied for SCUBA diving is limited and finite. However, there is also the weight of the water itself to consider. If a human body were to go past a certain depth in the ocean, it would be utterly crushed and overwhelmed by the weight of the water.

Yahweh is much deeper than an ocean. It is only through the Holy Spirit that we can safely explore Him at all. Holy Spirit empowers us to explore Yahweh because--if we submit to Him and His Lordship--He will make us beings capable of withstanding the overwhelming power of Infinity. We can then receive the blessings and assignments that Yahweh has for us in these places in Him.

We can never fulfill our purpose until we become who Yahweh meant us to be in the beginning. He desired a people who would be capable of having a relationship with Him without being overwhelmed by His glory and splendor even as we honor and worship Him as glorious and splendid. Therefore, He sent Holy Spirit to make us into such beings.

Once we have access to the deeper regions of Yahweh to learn His heart and His mind for His creation, we can receive the blessings, power, and assignments to bring His heart and His mind into the Earth that He created and is rightfully His in the first place.

There is so much insanity going on in the Earth right now as people replace their ideas of what seems "good" and "right" for Yahweh's heart and mind. It is happening in the secular world. It is happening in the church. This is only possible because the enemy told us that we didn't need Holy Spirit.

I think part of the reason it was so easy for Holy Spirit to be removed from the church and made the "third wheel" of the Trinity is because it is hard for the human mind to understand Him. We cannot humanize Holy Spirit.

It is easy to anthropomorphize Yahweh. He is not a man, but we can make Him into the image of man so that we can understand Him and put Him in a box. He is a creator. Ok, man creates. We know what creating means. We can handle that. He is a Father. Ok, we've seen fathers. We know what those look like. We can handle that. He loves people. We like to be loved. We can redefine "love" to mean a good feeling. Ok, we can handle that. Many people even picture Him as an old man in a white robe with a long white beard. There is no reason to picture Him this way. It's definitely not how He is described in the Bible. Yet, our minds need some image to hold on to when we consider Yahweh so we put this picture of Him there so we can handle that.

Yahshua actually was a man, so it is easy to humanize Him. We conveniently forget the "Christ" part of Yahshua the Christ and focus on the "Yahshua" part. He was a nice guy! He healed people! He gave people food and fulfilled their basic needs. We want someone to take care of us in that way. Ok, we can handle that. He had long brown hair and brown eyes. He had a nose and mouth. He wore clothes. We understand that. Humanity.

Then there is Holy Spirit. Uhh... He causes you to be empowered to explore the spiritual things of Yahweh. What does that mean? He is a Spirit. What do spirits even look like? Normally we picture ghosts as faded images of the human who has died, but Holy Spirit was never a human and He has never died. We cannot handle that! In fact, one of the very reasons Holy Spirit comes into our lives is to take us to places we cannot handle without Him. Remember the ocean analogy?

So the enemy came and said, "I'll let you keep your God and your Jesus, but I'll take away Holy Spirit! Then you won't have any power. In fact, your God and your Jesus will be powerless because I have taken the wisdom and the power away!" As Yahweh and Yahshua are certainly not powerless, then we are not even really worshipping Yahweh and Yahshua without Holy Spirit because we cannot know Them without Holy Spirit. Instead, we worship false, faded images of Them, but we think it's ok because we think we are really worshipping Yahweh and Yahshua!

Insidious. How dare the enemy let us think we are worshipping our God when all along we are really worshipping idols!?!

We must accept and submit to Holy Spirit as the body of Christ. It is essential for the Kingdom expansion in the Earth and for the fulfillment of Yahweh's original intent for the world. If we do not let Holy Spirit be the Lord of our lives, we will die in the wilderness like those in Israel who refused to hear Yahweh on Mt. Sinai because He was too big and too powerful and too scary and they could not handle that! 

Holy Spirit

Today I am impressed by the importance of the Holy Spirit. He is unique to each of us as He resides in us and we allow Him to lead us and be Lord of our lives.

I was saved for as long as I can remember. I can not recall a time when I didn't know that Baby Jesus came and died for me on the cross. When I was a very little girl and had no concept of geography, I remember thinking that Israel was in the field behind our house. On the horizon, I saw a telephone pole and thought it was the cross. I grew up and learned history and geography and read the Bible and grew in knowledge of Jesus and God, and that kept me holding on until I met Holy Spirit. However, I did not have the power to free myself from depression or fear or the lies that the enemy told me about myself.

I met Holy Spirit when I was 19. As I grew in Him, He introduced me to myself and to a deeper relationship with Yahweh. As I grew in Holy Spirit, I received the power to break free of depression and the lies of the enemy and now I am learning to be fearless.

So many people in the society we live in have been introduced to the concepts of God and Jesus, but they have not met Holy Spirit. Without Holy Spirit, we only have part of the trinity and therefore cannot know Yahweh fully nor can we know ourselves and our purpose fully.

Holy Spirit is not just the tag-along, impotent third-wheel in the triune Godhead. He is, in fact, the One who empowers us to be all that Yahweh called us to be from the beginning. How insidious of the enemy to take Him out of our churches and society! Nobody complains that he's siphoned all the gas out of the car because hey, they still have a car and they can shine it up and make it pretty and point to it and say, "See my car?"

But a car without gas cannot fulfill its purpose and a Christian without Holy Spirit cannot fulfill his or her purpose. We cannot know Yahweh to the depths of who He is. We cannot even know ourselves. So many people walk away from the church because they see the lack of power even while being promised the power that is inherent in Holy Spirit! They become disheartened looking at a car that just sits in the driveway all day. They think that maybe if they sell the car, they can get something more useful, so they do.

If only they knew that the car just needs a little gas, the Christian just needs Holy Spirit, and then we can get going!

There is a reason Holy Spirit is called the Promise of the Father (Acts 1:4). Receiving the promise will change your life. I promise! ;)

Oh, thank You, Holy Spirit, for choosing to dwell inside of me!

Engage

When I teach, there are times when a concept just doesn't click in a student's mind. They often become frustrated at this point, which is understandable. It is very frustrating when a concept is just beyond reach, when all of the pieces of a puzzle are in front of you but you just can't figure out how to put the pieces together. It is even more frustrating when it is something you know you should know, you know you should be able to understand, but it's just not working.

It is at this point that a student has a choice to make. They can keep working at understanding a concept, maybe attempting to fit the puzzle pieces together in different ways or spending extra time on the problem, or they can give up. I feel like many students have given up as early as kindergarten that that is why, when they get to me in middle school and high school, they are so far behind.

Of course, if you don't give up, that's where I, the teacher, can come in and help you and encourage you to get the concept. I might try presenting the concept in a different way or giving you extension activities to help you practice the concept. Of course, if I do these things and you do not engage in them, you will never understand the concept I am presenting to you because, even though you seem to be trying, you've really given up on the inside.

I think that the Kingdom walk is often like this. We try to remember a concept--a Truth, a Word--that Yahweh spoke to us before time but it just doesn't click in our minds. Often that is because it is so contrary to everything we've ever experienced before and everything we've seen out there in the world. It's like we have to unlearn the false concepts before we can even begin to assimilate Yahweh's Truth.

I get frustrated sometimes because I know I should know this! Sometimes I thought I had it, only to have a more advanced problem presented to me and I feel like I'm starting all over again with this concept. Like my students, I have a choice. Do I engage and allow Yahweh to teach me with extension activities and new presentations of the Word or do I give up, walk away, and decide that there really wasn't any truth to this to begin with?

Frustration is not a good reason to walk away, especially when you know that Yahweh is a faithful and capable teacher and He is able to present His truths in a way that you will be able to understand it. I am a firm believer that anyone can learn anything if they put forth the time and effort to doing so. Yes, in public school situations, we don't have an infinite amount of time to devote to one concept for one student in a class of 25 when we have so much to cover before the school year ends. However, Yahweh is the master of time! He is eternal and He literally has all the time in the world to teach you something if you are willing to put forth the effort.

If you keep going, you will get it. In fact, the more you engage, the faster you will get it. Sometimes, we just have to remember Whose we are and that He has already put everything in place for us to have what we need.

Misjudged

1 Corinthians 2:15 reads thus, "But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one."

Tonight, I finally realized something that has been bothering me about my interactions with people out in the world. People treat me as someone who is not me. They treat me as if I do not have clean hands and a pure heart. It has been frustrating me how they react to some of the things that I say or do, or the mistakes that I make.

I feel like I should be treated as a good-hearted person who very rarely does anything intentionally malicious. No, I'm not perfect and I make mistakes and I have bad days, but overall my heart is pure and I am pro- everybody. I want people to succeed, to be happy, to find Yahweh, even if I snap at them occasionally or they frustrate me. It has confused the ever loving daylights out of me why anyone would be otherwise. Why would you NOT want that for all people? It has confused me as to why someone would treat me like I am otherwise.

I suppose that's all they know. If they assume that everyone is malicious and attempting to find ways to undermine people, they will see that in me. Never mind that they don't know me at all if that is how they see me. This is why the verse above applies here. People cannot judge me if they can't even see me. If they think I am being malicious, they have no vision about me. Yet, people with eyes of the spirit can see the truth.

It is also possible, I think, that some people care more about the result than the intention. I am not that way at all. To me, it is all about the heart. Did you do something with a good heart and not have the best results? Yeah, I may be frustrated if I have to clean up your mess, but I am not at all angry with you or against you. Other people might be. This still confuses me. There is another verse that says "man looks at the outward appearance, but Yahweh looks at the heart." To me, that could also read "man looks at the results, but Yahweh looks at the motivation." I have endless grace for people with good hearts and attitudes... Why can't everybody?

The question becomes: How do we respond in these situations?

I spent over a decade hiding from society because I was tired of being misjudged, maligned, and bullied. We are not called to hide from the world, but to affect change in it. Clearly, this is not the right response for this season.

Yet, how do we interact with the world and protect our hearts at the same time? I mean, I don't necessarily care if people misjudge me, but they often do negative things to me because of this mis-judging. Whether that is gossiping about me or trying to cause me problems with other people, I want to avoid these negative responses that come from the blindness of others.

My goal is to both keep myself safe and show people that there are good and honest hearts out there. If I respond in kind to their actions, I have not fulfilled the latter goal. However, if I let people walk all over me, I have not fulfilled the former goal. I suppose if I continue to be myself, the purity of Yahweh will shine through and people can either accept it or not.

Still, I am frustrated, though I am happy to have learned something. Interacting with people is probably the most confusing thing, but I am starting to be excited about figuring out pieces of the puzzle like tonight. I love how Yahweh teaches us new things!

Respect

I can't believe I didn't see it before. The part of the word "spect" clearly has to do with the root word of vision or looking.

Yes, respect means look again. It comes from latin. "Re-" back and "specere" look at.

That gives a whole new meaning to the word, doesn't it. People say they want respect. I guess they mean they want to be looked at as worth something and estimable. They want to be looked at again and again so that they feel valuable.

To me, there is no point in looking again until you look deeper. Why look at something another time if you're not going to see more than you did the first time you saw it?

To me, respect means "see with the eyes of Christ." Look again at a situation, person, fear, circumstance, until you see it with Yahweh's eyes.

Respect your fears and you will see they are not worth fearing.
Respect your elders and you will learn something from them each time.
Respect your situations and circumstances and you will see why you're really in them.
Respect your fellow man and you will see the Promise of Yahweh that they embody.
Respect yourself and you will learn who you really are and how valuable you have been created to be.
Respect your God and He will teach you all things, give you all things... even Himself.