Rabbi Schneider — Kingdom of God
God bless you, and Shalom, my friends. My name is Rabbi Schneider. Welcome today to Discovering the Jewish Jesus. I'm excited. I've got a very important word for you today. I'm calling it A Parallel Reality. I want to begin just by inviting Father's presence.
Father God, we bless you today. We love you today. I want to thank you, Father God, for your children that you've given me the privilege of ministering to today. Father, I pray that you would give each one of us a conscious awareness of the Holy Spirit, of your presence, and of the love of Jesus. Father, we give you the glory today in Jesus's name and for Yeshua's fame, Amen and Amen.
Beloved ones, I just preached a message at Lion of Judah World Outreach Center, where I minister each week. And we were celebrating our 8th year anniversary for our 24/7 prayer room called the Key of David. Now what I mean by 24/7 prayer room, on February 14th in 2007, we dedicated to the Lord a special room in our building for 24/7 prayer.
And by God's grace, we have had somebody in our prayer room 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for over 8 years. We came up with the name the Key of David because the Scripture says that Jesus holds the key of David. And the key of David was intimacy. David was a man that was after God's own heart. So every year during the anniversary, we bring a special word, and I usually share with people the concept of 24/7 prayer, and I talk about Revelation, chapter 5, verse number 8.
And we see, beloved ones, in Revelation, chapter 5, verse 8, that before the throne of God there is a harp that's playing represented sanctified, vertical worship music. What I mean by vertical worship music, I mean that it's songs that are being sung directly to God, not songs that are being sung about God, which I would call horizontal worship music, but rather vertical music.
So we're actually singing to God, himself. So before the throne of God, in Revelation, 5:8, we have a harp that's playing music that's ascending to the throne of the Lord in worship. And mixed with the music, we read in Revelation, 5:8, is a bowl of incense. And there's smoke coming from the bowl of incense. And the incense, we read in Scripture, represents the prayers of the saints.
So before the throne of God, the atmosphere of heaven contains two things. Number one, it contains sanctified worship music ascending to the Lord, and the prayers of God's people that are ascending to him. And in Revelation, 5:8, where we see the bowl of incense representing the prayers of the saints, and the harp, the worship music being played, it's not like the harp plays and then stops, and then the prayers are said, and then they stop, and then the harp starts again.
It's not like we do often times in typical churches, where we, you know, we, we, we worship in song, and then we stop worshipping in song, and then we pray. No, in Revelation, 5:8, the two are mixed together, so that while the worship music is ascending, while the harp is being played, the incense is also arising at the same time. So the worship music and the incense are intermingled with each other, both ascending to the Lord at the same time.
So what we have in the prayer room, beloved ones, is vertical worship music mixed with prayers at the same time, with the worship music. So again, this has been going on now, by the grace of God, someone's been in our prayer room, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for over 8 years. Our goal is to have somebody in the prayer room when Jesus returns.
Isn't that awesome? And so every year that we've celebrated an anniversary these past 8 years, I've always preached a message on Revelation, chapter 5, verse 8, the principles of, of this type of ministry. But this year I felt the Lord giving me a different type of message. I felt like the Lord was giving me something that would inspire people to sit at the feet of Jesus in the prayer room.
In other words, how could we have kept this prayer room going for 8 years? It's because people believe that by spending time at the feet of Jesus in the prayer room, that God is gonna do something in their lives, that he's gonna change them, that he's gonna reveal himself to them, that he's gonna empower them, that he's gonna impart his glory to them, that he's gonna give them an increase in revelation.
So in other words, for people to make the commitment like they do to come to the prayer room at 2 in the morning, at 4 in the morning, at 5 in the morning, in addition to all the other normal times of the day, in order for people to do that and to do it faithfully and consistently for 8 years, they must believe that they're gonna receive something from being there.
And so this year, I really wanted to focus once again as I preached on the 8th year anniversary of the prayer room, I wanted to preach a message that would inspire people to continue to sit before the Lord, to come to the prayer room so that they would see value in simply sitting at the feet of Jesus in the prayer room. Now we know that we can pray anywhere.
In fact, we're commissioned by Jesus to pray continuously. And yet we also see that there's a place in our lives to go to a lonely place to pray. Do you know that Jesus, before he was about to go to the cross, he brought his disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane, a lonely place to pray. We find that Jesus would often times withdraw to a mountain or to a mountainside to be alone and to pray.
We find that before Jesus selected the disciples, he went alone to a lonely place to pray. So even though we can pray from our own homes and we can pray anywhere, there's value in having a specified place to go and pray prayer room at your home, or wherever it is that God has directed you to.
And so, on our 8th anniversary, I was again wanting to bring a message of inspiration to our people, that they would understand the value and the benefit of remaining disciplined in coming to sit before the Lord in our prayer room. And the message that the Lord gave me, beloved ones, is A Parallel Reality.
In other words, as we understand where we can actually go in God, if we will fully give ourselves to him, that is enough, beloved, to motivate us to seek him and to pray. You see, I believe that there's a place that you and I can ascend to in the spirit that I'm calling a parallel reality. I'm calling it a parallel reality because it's a reality that exists above the reality that we walk in when we're walking in the natural realm. In other words, when men are living in the natural realm, they're conscious of the material world.
They're conscious of circumstances. They're limited in their thoughts. They exist only in time and in space. Their mind is controlled by the paradigm of the world. And men that live in the natural world, beloved, will be trapped in that sphere and never be able to move beyond it. But Jesus came to bring us into a different reality.
I'm calling it a parallel reality. Jesus said, if the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. I'm calling it a parallel reality because it exists right above the natural realm that we live in, hovering just over it. But it exists, beloved, listen now, in space and time just like we do.
When Jesus came from heaven and broke into our world by being born of a Virgin Mary, by growing up and ministering, he broke into our world to bring us, beloved into eternal life, which I'm calling a parallel reality. You see, Jesus exists here and now. There's a parallel reality that exists for us here and now that's outside of our circumstances, outside of the material world, outside of space, outside of your family genetics and family history.
It's outside of the natural known world. It exists here and now. It's a parallel reality and Jesus is that parallel reality. When he came to this world, most people didn't recognize him. The Bible tells us, we're gonna see in a second, that he came into the world and the world was made through him. And yet when he came, the Scripture says, the world did not recognize him.
So here he was, the Son of God, broke into our world. When he cast out the demon he said, if I cast out the demon by the finger of God, know that the kingdom of God has broken in, this parallel reality has now broken into your world, and it exists now among you. We can enter in. We can also break in to this parallel reality called the kingdom of God if we will put certain principles, beloved, into operation in our life.
You see, you need to believe, and I need to believe that we can experience so much more than we're presently experiencing, that there is another dimension, a parallel reality, the reality of the kingdom of God, that we can enter into and which all things will pass away, all things will become new. We'll be walking in the freedom and in the victory that Christ Jesus promised us.
See the Bible tells us, in Messiah Jesus we can reign in life. Jesus said that we've been raised with him and are now seated with him in the heavenly places. I want to talk to you today about how you can break in to this parallel reality, how you can break in to a world that's not limited by the natural. Jesus said, all things are possible for those that believe.
I want to talk to you today about breaking in to this other sphere of reality. I want to talk to you about what you can do, practical steps that you can take, that if you'll give yourself whole-heartedly to breaking in to this freedom that Jesus promised for you, you're gonna enter in to it. And Jesus said, when the Son sets you free, you're going to be free indeed.