Restoring the Captives of Zion is Spiritual
Redemption in Yeshua
Photo: Streams in the Desert by Howard Bass | Psalm 126
When the LORD restored the captives of Zion, we
were like dreamers.
Then our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with shouts of joy.
Then it was said among the nations, “The
LORD has done great things for them.”
The LORD has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.
Restore our captives, O LORD, like streams in the Negev.
Those who sow in tears will reap with
shouts of joy.
He who goes out weeping, bearing a trail of seed,
will surely return with shouts of joy, carrying sheaves of grain.
Arrows from Zion
Summarized
from the Weekly
Summary of Prayer Requests Israeli Ministries
Rachel Netanel (“The House that God Gave”) is thankful
for the prayers as her broken ankle has healed just in time for one of the
busiest months of her life. She writes with great joy about two nieces—one
married in the garden of Rachel and Gilad’s home in an openly Messianic
ceremony attended by dozens of mostly unbeliever guests…many who wanted to hear
more about the faith of the hosts of the wedding. The second niece Rachel has been teaching
about the Lord since 2004. Rachel recognized the time of faith had come and
asked Asher Intrater to come talk to her niece which he did explaining the
faith for three hours with her and how she needs to be baptized. “As many of you are aware, for a Jew, the ceremony of
baptism is a huge step and many have fallen away because they are afraid to
make this commitment and the persecution this brings from family and friends.”
The niece said she was ready so a date was set “and made the arrangements for
the baptism to be in our garden in Ein Kerem, the traditional home of John, the
Baptist (how very fitting). You may recall that when I had led an Arab to the
Lord years ago, he build a little pool so that he could be baptized in it,”
Rachel writes.
But here is the best part of the
report, “Asher taught and performed the ceremony, but what touched me most was
how her husband and children all held her hand as she went into the baptismal
waters. The baptism, itself was so very powerful and emotional. First, she
started to cry (and did so for 2 hours), then her even her husband was crying
and her children and her mother (my sister). My eyes could contain the water no
longer as I looked at the tears on many faces. This was a spiritual experience
that no one will ever forget, whether they are believers or not… we were all
touched by the Holy Spirit. She said that in her whole life, she had never
experienced “holiness” like this before. It was better than giving birth to her
children. Her husband hugged her and they cried together. Something had
happened that I had never seen in my life. Now she cannot stop talking about
Yeshua to everyone.”
From Avi Tekle at Tents of Mercy in Kiryat Yam sends a
call for prayers over their ministry family and friends suffering from the
round of Covid that hit so many attending the youth camp a few weeks ago,
including Eitan Shishkoff and Leon Mazin. Leon was in the hospital but has been
released – a little better but still in need of prayer as he is still coughing
and oxygenation is not normal yet. (Read Leon’s article Multiple
Meanings – Prophecies Regarding the Servant of the Lord). Avi asks prayer
over the tension from rocket fire from Hezballah in Lebanon as that nation
teeters on complete economic collapse. Also asking prayers for upcoming Bible-themed
outdoor activity days for our children who have been strongly affected by this season
of insecurity. They want to provide some fun and time together as a community.
Lastly, they are preparing to the city-wide outreach for Rosh HaShanah where
they will be supplying dry goods for 900 needy families. Each bag cost around
$75-80 and your participation, prayer and support can really help. To Donate. Also read Avi’s article Who is
Preparing Your Faith for The Last Hour?
Cody and Liat Archer also
write from Fields of Wheat in the Golan Heights. They too are fighting the
Covid virus from the youth camp – remember it is blazing hot in Israel and the
virus brings fever with it. Plus they have a new baby and 3 other small
children. Please pray for each and every one of the ministry teams, counselors and
youth who tested positive for the virus. BUT THEY WANT YOU TO KNOW “We do
not want this virus to rob the spot light of what God did last week in the
camp. We had an amazing time and want to share more of our experience, but in
the meantime, we encourage you to read this recap written by our teammate Joel,
the director of Katzir who also is sick with COVID right now. Read Here.
Israel Pochtar of Beit Hallel and Voice of Judah Ministries writes, “The
seeds of revival have been sown throughout the years, and we are now seeing the
sparks of revival all across this nation. The fields are white for harvest, and
the workers have been sent out to gather in the harvest. Praise the Lord!”
Read
(and/or Watch) these: “By the end of the
course, her heart was ready and open; that last night of the course she invited
Yeshua into her heart” Discipleship
Course Testimony | Israel’s
Vulnerable Borders — Praying for Lebanon | Reaching
Hearing-Impaired Arabs in Bethlehem | Worship from
Beit Hallel | Back-to-School
Project: Helping a Child in Need | God Carries
You Through It All | The Garden
Tomb - Message from Pastor Israel | Gabriel's
Testimony - Shining the Light as an Israeli Soldier | Awake Youth
Conference: Investing in the Next Generation
Tikkun Global sends out an update of the Katzir Youth camp where 54 of the 90
in attendance contracted the Delta variant of Covid. “They did everything right. Every participant had to
bring a negative test with him. But you never know what is going to happen from
the time you get the test until the time you arrive at the retreat. Apparently
one participant, through no fault of his own, arrived with the virus.” The good
news is that God moved powerfully at the conference and “As a result of the
corona outbreak, the youth and counselors are continuing the summer camp on
Zoom and WhatsApp, sharing words of encouragement with each other, praising the
Lord together, spending time in prayer and hearing the word of God. Many young
people returned to the Lord during the conference and are now continuing to
connect with the Lord in such a powerful way. Please keep them in your prayers.”
Also Israel’s
Restoration August Edition | Our August
edition for the Israel's Restoration magazine is available now! Click here to
download the PDF from our website. Including: an excerpt from Eitan Shishkoff's
new book, "With All
Your Heart" which is on sale now at Amazon
Chuck Cohen of Intercessors for Israel Jerusalem sends his Friday Prayer Points August 6, 2021. One excerpt on “Salvation | The Jewish month of Ellul, the month of repentance
in preparation for the High Holydays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, starts
early next week. During this month, the shofar is sounded every morning and
many Jews go to synagogue, asking for forgiveness, repenting of whatever
misdeeds they can think of, trying to get themselves right with both God and
man. What an awesome time to pray that God would reveal Messiah Yeshua to them.”
Two of the prayer points: “Give
unsaved Jews both courage and a great curiosity to ask Messianic Jews about
what they believe and anoint those believers with a Holy Spirit anointed answer
(Matt. 10:19; 1 Pet. 3:15). Turn some radical Jewish anti-missionaries just
like You did with the Apostle Paul (Acts. 26:9-19).”
From the Tiferet Yeshua congregation in Tel Aviv read this “one new man”
article about how the congregation is putting this goal into practice with Tearing Down
the Dividing Wall of Hostility. Arab pastor Maroon recently spoke at
the congregation. His testimony goes from homeless, drug user who hated the
Jews to faith in the Jewish Messiah.
Also meet pastor Moti Cohen who they call “the heart of Tiferet Yeshua”
because of his generous and kindly character. “In
addition to leading
outreach to the homeless in south Tel Aviv, Moti prepares the youth for
their bar and bat mitzvas, disciples new believers and devotes time counseling
and supporting believers who are dealing with difficulties in their lives. If
someone is sick, Moti is there with homemade food. If someone is in prison,
Moti visits. Moti also has a special gift for supporting believers suffering
from psychological disorders.” The ‘mean streets’ of Tel Aviv are scary, if you
have never seen them first hand, and it does take people with a special
anointing from God to minister in such place of the world.
Lastly they are seeing with the new
rise of covid restrictions that “the Lord has been teaching us NOT to make
plans, and our sense is that this period of uncertainty will continue…. we
will have to remain flexible and readjust to the changing situation. God is
sovereign and we just keep clinging to Him more than ever! Help us reach Tel Aviv: Donate now
Ron Cantor writing for Shelanu TV says “A Great Door has Opened Up – Can You Help?” It’s all about an opportunity to purchase a Jerusalem Studio that would “enable us to film in Jerusalem…. The total cost is $1.45 million. We need $200,000 by the middle of September. We have about $30,000 in our ministry general fund. So please consider partnering with us so that we can bring you not only productions from Jerusalem but continue to make high-quality, powerful Hebrew content about the Jewish Messiah for Shelanu TV. ” Because of Shelanu TV over 100,000 Israelis have seen “their fellow countrymen sharing their stories of meeting the Messiah.” For many Israelis, people from all over the world can tell them their stories of coming to faith, but none will home the way as hearing from a fellow Israeli. Ron writes, “You are crucial partners in this effort to reach the physical brothers of Yeshua with his message! Thank you. Click here to support.”
Out of Zion Ministries invites you to join David
Silver via YouTube for his Midweek
Update Video for August 6 and August 10. Also
in David’s commentary The Truth Will Set Us Free but How to
Find It?
he writes about
the difficulty of getting to the truth in the days that we are living
currently. The pithy version is: “it takes a lot of time and effort, but it is
possible. The first thing we should do is ask the Holy Spirit to give us that
inner witness as to whether we are hearing truth or not. Secondly, almost all
unclassified information is posted on the internet. All you need to do is type
the question into your browser and an unending trail of information will open
up for you. Now comes the difficult and time consuming part - checking who is
the source of the information that was posted, the background of the person or
organization who posted it, and then to double check the validity of the facts
they are presenting.. . . to repeat the words of Yeshua, please be very careful
what you watch, read or listen to - CHECK IT OUT before accepting it as truth,
even if it fits with what you already believe.” For the full commentaries, you can subscribe
to the Out of Zion Mailing List.
I love the picture accompanying Revive Israel’s article by Asher Intrater, Three Goals of Teamwork because it hits close to home. It will take all of us to fulfill all that God is calling us to. “God was calling us to be involved, we had to work together as a team. If we could not develop teamwork, we could not fulfill our destiny. It’s never easy to work in a team. A team involves people, and people have problems. They bring their weaknesses, their differences of opinions, their pride, fears, stubbornness, frustrations, etc. People come with their “baggage” and their “garbage.” | Also the Global Broadcast, Praise, Prophecy, Prayer, and Asher Intrater ministered a message on Isaiah 22: "The Stake". | VIDEO teaching by Asher Intrater, Honor and Humility. | Israel’s Restoration August Edition | Our August edition for the Israel's Restoration magazine is available now! Click here to download the PDF from our website. Including: Do You Want to be Shot? by Guy Cohen and What’s in front of you right now? by Tal Haroni
My friend Sally Shiff at the HaMaayan
congregation in Kfar Saba writes with news of her 95-year old mother passing
away last week. She was blessed with an ability to go see her for a final time
in June, which is a thing one treasures, and so does Sally. She writes, “Mom left a
legacy of loving Israel. For it was her father, my grandfather who has family
here for over 100 years and would come here every year for the last 10 years of
his life for at least 6 weeks to be with our family. It was through him that my desire to make Aliyah
was born. I am honored to be the first one in our American family to make the
trip and have made room for the rest to come when God sends them.” My
condolences to you Sally.
The next thing up is Avner Boskey’s Nine
blind Indians and the Israeli elephant which I believe is a must read
because it not only delves into the great number of viewpoints of people on the
Covid viruses, but also the thought control
forces at work in the current state. If you read Boskey, you know that
he deep dives into research before putting pen to paper, that’s why when he
writes, “My wife Rachel began to monitor the rise in Israel of verified harmful
medical side-effects of the vaccines collected by The Israeli Public Emergency
Council for the Covid19 Crisis. These are headed up by some of the country’s
top doctors, professors and researchers. Whereas I had originally cast a
critical eye on any of this, I soon came face to face with sufficient and
convincing evidence. My own original cynicism had caused me to disqualify real
people who had suffered real damage. I came to the realization that I myself
was in some ways acting similar to one of our nine blind Indians. It is not
enough merely to say, “I’ve heard nothing about side-effects; therefore nothing
exists!” Continue
reading more about the Covid Virus online click title
From Marianna Gol, whose Afikim BaNegev is a ministry serving “widows and
orphans,” a great follow up report on their recent youth camp. “The messages
brought by our wonderful speaker Michael were relevant and thought provoking
and impactful for our kids, but probably none of us expected that over half of
the campers and some of the counselors would raise their hands to give or
recommit their lives to Yeshua after the powerful message in club time of the
final evening. The next morning when asked to stand and declare that "I
have begun my life anew in Yeshua" most of those same kids stood up and
declared this one by one. It was clear throughout the camp even from what we
could see with our eyes and hear with our ears that kids were engaging with the
word of God, and that they were being lifted up, encouraged, strengthened,
convicted of sin, renewed, and transformed.
How much more was going on within them that we could not perceive! We are so grateful for God's faithfulness. Of
course the uplifting camp environment and home are worlds apart. The delicate
new growth is fragile when being bombarded by the world all around, by peers,
by the media, and by dysfunctional families and challenging circumstances. Please join us in praying for all those that
committed and recommitted their lives to the Lord….pray for those who are
particularly burdened at this time including one young person “from his own
admission, somewhat suicidal.”
Norma in Jerusalem has a blog post Stand as
One about our coming together as one for the battles ahead.
Rick Ridings at Succat Hallel writes about their youth ministry, called Dor
Haba which is Hebrew for “Rising
Generation”. Dor Haba seeks to
develop a rising generation of young Jews and Arabs who: draw close to Yeshua, pray for their people,
and use the creativity He’s given them to spread His message of love, forgiveness,
and salvation in the Middle East. Follow
this link to read an exciting update about what God is doing with Dor Haba
Urgent HEALING Needs: Life and Death is
in the power of the tongue
Please keep in prayer
the Israeli believers who are fighting for their lives or other urgent health
needs:
Please pray for Eitan Shishkoff, Leon Mazin (hospitalized)
& family, Cody & Liat Archer & family,
several in the Acco youth, Joel Jelski (Fields
of Wheat), and OrEl,
married daughter of Avi and Chaya
Mizrachi, plus others who were infected with Covid at the Youth Katzir Camp
last week. Pray for each to recover fully and quickly with no harm and no
spreading to families and others. | Claude Ezagouri of the Morning Star
Fellowship who has started a treatment that is due to last at least 6 months
for a medical problem he has been suffering from. Believe in prayer with them as they look to
the Lord for complete healing and for
prompt recovery from some other ailments. Hallel Goldman, daughter of Yariv Goldman, Hallel ministers to young
people coming out of an Orthodox life. Hallel appears to have some kind
of heart infection. Pray for her healing. Also pray for her dad, Yariv,
unspoken prayer. | Ronit Bender finally
has seen a new cardiologist she likes because he is caring, she’s taking new
meds, feels better but still asks for our prayers | Pray for Carolyn Hyde whose left hand is so
pained she can no longer play guitar and it is also sometimes painful to play
piano | Silvers: David's knees and Josie's back pain | Rachel Netanel is still recovering
from a broken ankle. She asks for healing & for the pain to subside. Her
ankles were weak already, so the process is slow and painful| A prayer request
for Naomi, for a dear
family that is a part of Israel Pochtar's pastoral team, who was diagnosed with
colon cancer. "Despite what this battle entails, we are confident in God’s
unfailing Word and promises." Read in her
own words| Please continue to pray for Jacob Damkani for the LORD's mercies over Jacob and his dear wife, Elisheva | Dov Bikas
– I have been very
tired these days: probably as a result of a combination of factors: my age,
stress of the days of running to the bomb shelter, work load in the ministry,
etc. Olga is getting better slowly, but
still has a long way before her, so please keep praying.
Dust-busting | by Donna Diorio | Tony and I are in the midst of major changes around our house. We finally got our waterbed out of the bedroom and a new bed moved in. We started sleeping on a waterbed in 1981 and loved the comfort level for decades, but as we have aged, it has become a real pain to our bodies. Finally we are rid of it, but in taking it down was a two-day, extreme physical process. Both of our computer rooms were turned into utter chaos with all the overflow furniture and miscellaneous stuff from the bedroom. To do one bedroom makeover we had to wreck all three rooms.
Now things are going back into place and we are all - our two little old dogs included - happy now that things are coming back together. Especially me! I feel so good because the changes have allowed me (okay, I confess: have motivated me) to do the deep-deep cleaning that was so needed. Dust be gone! Our house produces an incredible amount of dust and I had years ago let it get away from me. Now it is undergoing a major dust-busting and I am amazed at how much dust is being removed from our house.
Yesterday I saw a Facebook meme about the Genesis 3:13-15 curse on the Serpent, how the Serpent would devour dust all the days of his life because of beguiling the woman. Of course, dealing with all this physical dust in my house, made me think about what the spiritual dust means to me too.
By "beguiling" it simply means the Serpent told the woman a lie and she believed it. That's the Serpent's M.O. lie-telling. Every thought that goes wandering across our minds is not our own reasoning but many times it is the lie-telling of the serpent. The "dust" in our lives that the Serpent feeds on are the lies we believe that are counter to what God's Word tells us.
Do you remember that old saying, "Repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it." We see that happening at fever pitch in our days on a macro-level, because the days are short. But the truth is, the Serpent has been devouring us at micro-level since Eve in the garden of Eden. Whether we realize it fully or not, our minds are the battlefield where the enemy of our souls wins or loses the battle for our lives. That is where the enemy eats our lunch.
That is why the apostle Paul told us in 2 Corinthians 10:5 that we MUST "throw down thoughts (or the walls or embankments raised as a defensive fortification against/in opposition to) the deeper more perfect and enlarged knowledge of God, and we capture the thoughts of our own mind to come into compliance and submission to Messiah."
That was my translation take on what the original language words were communicating to us in verse 5. I was especially struck with the options for "and every pretension" because as I read the options, what I got was "defense mechanism." Because defense mechanisms are that we ourselves throw up as walls to self-protect. This too is based on a lie because the walls we erect are always in opposition to the knowledge of God. Plus self-protection itself is a Serpent’s lie that we believe will protect us but instead is meant to harm us.
I think all of this is the spiritual parallel to "cleaning the dust out of my house" and that I must look at where the dust bunnies are collecting in my own thought life. Our thought lives must undergo some spiritual dust-busting too, so our minds are clean and set on the LORD as the only source of truth in life. If the Serpent feeds on dust, let him not find it in the dust collecting in our thought life.
For we are both the "dust of the earth" and the very breath of God
Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being. Genesis 2:7
By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Genesis 3:19
As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him. For He knows how we are formed; He remembers that we are dust. Psalm 103:134-14
Remember Him (your Creator) before the silver cord is snapped and the golden bowl is crushed, before the pitcher is shattered at the spring and the wheel is broken at the well, before the dust returns to the ground from which it came and the spirit returns to God who gave it. Ecclesiastes 12:6-7
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