Some years ago, while recalling everything that YHWH has done for me, I asked Him what He wanted from me.
He answered, “What I want from you is what I had with Adam, to walk with you in the Garden, and to have you know Me and love Me as I know and love you.”
What an answer! He wants an honest, loving, two-way relationship. The challenge was learning HOW to know Him and love Him.
I said to YHWH, “I need for You to teach me how to love You.” Within a week YHWH sent someone to ask me the significance of the rulings in Acts 15. This started me on a path that completely changed me, my ideas, my beliefs and my walk. I was bombarded by these passages:
John 14:15
15 "If you love Me, keep My commandments.
John 14:23-24
23 Yahshua answered and said to him, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.
24 "He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father's who sent Me.
I saw these words from a somewhat different angle. Yahshua was not saying “Prove your love by keeping Torah”. He was saying, “Keep Torah and you will learn Who I am and Who My Father is.”
Torah is the path to the heart of YHWH. It is the “how” to our relationship. Through Torah, we learn HOW TO LOVE Father and Son, because we learn WHO they are. YHWH is not interested in having us jump through hoops, He is interested in relationship. The instruction of His Word, both written and as made full in Yahshua, is for our benefit. His Torah is a gift, not a set of rules for our bondage.
I know that people say, “We understand the lesson, so we don’t need to take the class”, and, “If we have the real thing, why should we practice types and shadows?”
My answer is baseball. You can read all about baseball. You can go to games every day. You can interview the best players and have friends that play religiously. You can know all there is to know about baseball, but if you don’t ever actually play the game, you don’t know baseball at all.
You must FEEL the crack of the bat and the sting of the catch. You must HEAR the grunts when sliding into base. You must SMELL the sweat and TASTE the dust. This is baseball, not the rules. Yet there is no way to properly experience baseball without the rules.
YHWH is the same. We EXPERIENCE YHWH through Torah. It is in keeping His commandments that we feel, taste, smell, hear and see His Heart. This goes from the blood and pain of circumcision to the beauty and wonder of eating in a Sukkah.
Yes, I know, we can’t fully keep Torah as there is no Temple and we don’t live in the Land, but we don’t have to play a perfect game of baseball in order to experience the game either. Our coach, Yahshua, has played a perfect game, so we play our best, and the more we play, the better we get.
One day we will walk fully in Torah. In that day we will also realize the fullness of walking with YHWH in His Garden. For now, we have a choice to make: receive His gift or reject it.