My Roots – From Christianity to Hebrew

July 27, 2012

My Story

I was blessed to have grown up in a church where the “traditions of questionable origins” of the holidays were not promoted… we never had a Christmas tree in the church nor did we have Easter egg hunts on church grounds…Halloween was always spoken against although individuals at church did all these things at their homes, these things were never church sponsored. So to me that part was always thought of as “secular”.

I was looking into the origins of the holidays for a homeschool project I was planning with my kids probably around 2003-2004…when I came across the fact that all the stuff I thought was “Holy holidays” had pagan roots. I was shocked …and part of me didn’t want to believe it but something smote my heart about it so I couldn’t dismiss it… I looked even deeper and saw how much paganism was intertwined with our life. I was upset.. hurt…and mad that I had been deceived into thinking all these holidays I loved were not as holy unto God as I had once thought but actually began as pagan worship. For a while I denied it and put it out of my head. But YHWH (God) doesn’t give up on us when He is trying to get our attention and show us something… I run from it for about 2 yrs… thinking as many do… well that isn’t what it means to me and not wanting to rock the boat or give up my traditions. June of 2005 I went in to surgery to have a hernia fixed and came out of surgery with new of found knowledge that I a 20 LB tumor had been growing in me and I didn’t know it nor could I have done anything about it but I knew I was no longer in control…(When YHWH wants to get your attention HE does) I went thru the “is it cancer” scare but thankfully it wasn’t, although they did give me a hysterectomy to “make sure” but this was all in HIS plan to get my attention.

After that moment I gave my life to YHWH I started going back to church and seeking Him the best I knew how. I tried to play along in the church scene and fit in, and for a few years I did but that gnawing truth didn’t let me forget. I knew better than to keep dabbling in the pagan rooted stuff because HE had called me out from it. I compared my walk to the walk of my fellow church members. I wanted to justify my actions against theirs. I thought things like, “These people do all the pagan stuff and are leaders in a church, so surely it isn’t bad for me to do.” I felt I must have been mislead, or misguided in my new found “revelation“. I didn’t feel like an “important” enough person in the church for God to give me information that He hasn’t gave them. But still that nudging persisted, “Come out from among them and be separate.” I was sad, thinking that I had to give up all holidays, …I thought (prayed) to God saying, “But God I have little kids and I want them to have something to celebrate and enjoy.“…A still small voice came over me and He said, “Look to MY people.” so I thought… “My people??” OH! The Jews!! So I started searching again but as I looked, I realized that the holidays the Jews celebrated came right out of Leviticus 23 of my KJV Bible!! I was excited!! More study and research …more battling over what to do and how to do it… was I right … was I wrong… does to matter… does it not…more anger over having to make this choice, more tears than I knew what to do with and finally I surrendered gave in to Him. I celebrated our first Hanukkah in 2008 and my first Passover in my home “winging it” the best I could in 2009. Feeling weird and awkward, I invited my family (mom and sisters and their families) to join us for that first Passover. It was (is) a learning process I had to go through. At first I tried to do everything “Jewish” but the more I studied the more I saw these feasts were not Jewish feasts they were God’s feasts and so I let go of most tradition unless I could use it for the purpose of a teaching tool.

I stayed in church and began feeling accepted by the church. In 2009 I offered to be their video tech and record the church videos and put them on the web site. I finally felt accepted. People that normally didn’t have much to do with me found a common ground to talk to me about by asking about video stuff and for about six months everything went smoothly. I was happy doing stuff for my church and finally finding what I thought was my “nitch”, all the while holding onto my new found beliefs. Spring of 2010 came around and the word got out that I was having a Passover meal in my home and with my family. At this point I had a church member approach me about me doing the feast days. He told me that it was wrong for me to do them, that I was coming “under law” and that I was basically denying what Jesus had done for me on the cross by clinging to the “Old Testament” ways. He even went so far as to discuss my Passover plans with the Sunday school teachers and the pastor and basically everyone else that would hear him. At this point I was the center of persecution from the very people who a few months earlier made me finally feel at home in a church I had went two since I was 13, (all that time never feeling as if I belonged.) I was so crushed, I would come home from church each week and lay in bed and cry pouring my heart out to my God, begging Him to turn me from this path if it was as wrong as they said it was. Feeling totally alone and distraught I looked more into the Bible, desperately hunting answers, anything that would release me from the deep burden I felt to go back to the ways of “old” but each time I looked into the Word all the scriptures showed me was I was on the right path. All in the Old Testament was page after page of how Israel went against God’s law and they were punished each time, over and over again. I looked to the New Testament and saw scripture after scripture that Jesus stated that was from the Old Testament. Statements like “If you love me you would keep my commandments.” “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” I just kept praying and looking for a “catch 22” that would released me from the “law” that was being written on my heart. I loved being part of my church. I loved being accepted (finally after so long). I loved having a job (videos). I loved having friends that prayed for me and I prayed for them. Now I was being ostracized… excommunicated… shunned. Heartbroken, I finally pulled my family out of church. On occasion I would go back to test the waters but still felt people held me “at arms length” The main thing I could not understand was. “Why was I being punished for trying to get closer to God?”

Now, officially out of church, I jumped right into finding others to accept me, more people who believed as I did. I had one person other than myself, that I knew believed in Messiah and yet kept Torah. He was my history teacher from high school and so I started bugging him with a few questions and he helped me add a few new Facebook friends that were local, which called themselves Messianic Jews. I started looking on Facebook group pages for people nearby that believed this way. I tried to embrace the Judaism part of my faith and although I learn a lot of beautiful things from the Jewish traditions I ended up jumping out of one man made tradition into another. For a while I just went through the motions of the Jewish rituals not really “feeling it.” I went into super research mode and ate up knowledge like crazy. I stopped trying to be Jewish and realized I just wanted to serve YHWH purely, without traditions that cloud and clutter up the movement of the spirit.

I feel like those who worship YHWH must worship Him in spirit and in truth… the remnant will be those who have the testimony of Yeshua AND keep His commandments. I feel like I am a part of the ties that bind those aspects together. I am one of the ones who will stand in the gap and help pull the two sides together somehow. Of course I have not been shown how to accomplish this great feat because Christians feel like Torah keepers are throwing away salvation of Yeshua and Torah Keepers feel that Christians all are pagans. My friends let it not be so, we are all brothers and sisters we have all gone astray in one way or another. Help us bridge the chasm and see things through each others eyes. Torah keepers, you too were blind but now you see, the scales have been lifted from your eyes. Be kind to your Christian brothers and sister and help them see clearly too, with love. Christians please know that we very much love our Messiah and we know we are saved by grace through faith and that it is a gift we accept. But we serve Him in His way because we love to please Him and we desire to be obedient. We take our beliefs and walks very seriously and passionately. We do not mean to put down your traditions and beliefs we just have been shown a better way and we want to show you too. It is very fulfilling to serve YHWH the way HE intended.

There is much that I didn’t share in this post. I could add all the details of how I was hurt by people… How I lost friends… How I was treated by family but I really do not want to reopen all of my scars. I cried my way through this reading it to my husband because all the feelings came back as I remembered the hurt, the pain, the grief, the fight, the loneliness.

Forgive my grammar and spelling and such, when your heart pours out one does not take time to make sure it is edited correctly.

~Becky

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