Welcome to the Mishpochah (the family) of God!
If you have prayed and asked the Lord Jesus (Yeshua) into your life, you have just made the most significant choice you will ever make. You have stepped into a personal relationship with God Himself. There are many blessings and opportunities that He has made available to you.
These pages will help you understand what these blessings and opportunities are and will introduce you to how they can become yours.
If you aren’t sure yet if you’re ready to welcome Jesus (Yeshua) into your life, reading through these pages will help you see what making Him Lord of your life will bring to you so you can make an intelligent and informed decision.
You may be a Jewish person who has just come to realize that Yeshua (Jesus) is the Messiah of Israel, or you may be someone who has known about Him for years but never turned your life over to Him as Lord of your life before. Maybe you never even gave Him a thought before now.
Either way, God has reached out His loving arms to you, wanting to draw you closer to Himself if you are reading this. As you come to know Him more and more, you can look forward to becoming increasingly aware of the goodness of God operating in your life. The best is yet to come!
Welcoming Yeshua (Jesus) into your life is not like switching political parties, like deciding to become a Conservative after being a Liberal (or the other way around) all your life. It’s not only a change in what you believe about God, but you have now entered into a relationship with God who is real and supremely interested in your well-being. Living with God in your life is the most natural thing in the world, because we were created to be in loving relationship with Him. To begin to live your life in concert with God is to return to normal life as God has created you – to be one with Him.
You are a person with a personality, with emotions and with intelligence all of which enable you to make choices in your life. These are qualities that you have because God created you in His image and these qualities are part of His own nature and character. He understands you because He created you with these characteristics of personality, emotions, and intelligence.
The major difference between us and God is that God alone is holy and without sin and all that He does is good and right and just and He is motivated by love in everything He does. Once you come to faith in Yeshua He begins to teach you to be more like Him day by day. Not only will you come to know and love Him more and more, you will find that you also love others – and even yourself more. These pages will reveal to you much about God as well as how His goodness toward you will affect your life in many positive ways. While we cannot address every aspect of knowing God – that will take eternity – meeting Yeshua (Jesus) is the beginning of the wonder of coming to know God for yourself.
You will notice that we call Jesus by the name His family and friends called Him when He was on earth – Yeshua. Yeshua means “God is salvation” or “God saves.” The Hebrew term for salvation means: saves, rescues, helps, heals and frees. Yeshua has accomplished all those things for us. The term “Christ” means “anointed one” which in Hebrew is “Messiah.” When the Bible was translated into other languages the meaning of His name was lost in the translations. Jesus Christ was not His name when He walked the earth. We choose to call Him by His real name – Yeshua, and His real title – Messiah. We will use Hebrew for some other names and words at times as it seems fitting also.
We will occasionally quote a Scripture verse and list its location in the Bible just in case you care to look it up and get the whole picture of what it is saying. For instance, John 3:16 would mean the quote is taken from the book of John, chapter 3, and verse 16. There’s a Table of Contents in the front of your Bible to tell you where each book of the Bible is located.
Each chapter of this book you hold in your hands is followed by a number of questions designed for your own personal edification or for group discussion. If studying it in a group, each person may want to read the chapter and then answer the questions for themselves at home and then come together to discuss your answers. Some chapters have more challenging questions than others. The questions are designed to help you to learn what the Bible says so that you can decide, based on the Scriptures, what you believe. You will also notice that we quote Scripture throughout the book, giving you chapter and verse as to where you can find it, should you care to look it up to see it in context.
Now, come along with us while we introduce you to Messiah Yeshua and the wonderful blessings and the exciting life with God that is ahead for you.
