Rabbi Schneider - Achieve Unity with God
Welcome beloved ones. By the way, some people ask what this means, it's the Word of God. The scripture says, "The Word of God is living and active and sharper than a two edged sword". And I'm called, beloved, to release Hashem's Word, God's Word into your life and into my life. I'm excited today to continue a series that I'm calling, "Simple, but Profound Truth". This series, it's not a religious series, beloved. It's about reality. It's about relationship. In fact, when I think of my relationship with God, I like to think of it scientifically. I mean, I like to think of it in terms of reality, rather than religion. In other words, there really is a God. God is spirit. We've been born of Hashem's spirit. We've been born of God's spirit. We've been given His nature.
Now what I want to do, is I want to exercise the Holy Spirit that's within me, that I can be transformed into the likeness of Jesus, be empowered by His power, ascend up into the light through the darkness and walk in supernatural victory. This is not about religion. This is about reality and relationship. I began this series several weeks ago, with the scripture from the book of Genesis, about Enoch. The scripture says there in Genesis chapter 5 verse 24 that, "Enoch walked with God". And then a very mysterious phrase, "And then was no more". Hear it again, "Enoch walked with God and then was no more, for God took him". That scripture speaks to us of the fact that Enoch was walking in such unity with the Creator, that he ascended right off the earth. And I like to use that example and put it in front of me to help me pursue that same type of experience, that same type of victory in my life.
I'm not saying I'm gonna be lifted off the earth and taken like Enoch was, but you know what? Let's not limit God either. God can do anything. Nothing is impossible with God. Let's believe God for His best. What I'm focusing on however, beloved church, in this series are simple, but profound truths that will help us to walk with God even as Enoch walked with God. Now several weeks ago, when I began this series, I gave you the first key. Again, simple, but profound; It begins, listen now, by acknowledging God. I'm not even gonna review that today, because I've taken two episodes to talk about that. You need, please, I urge you, go back and watch the first two episodes. Truly,a God can use them to change your life, to engineer, to rewire you, to get you on His path for your life.
Number one, we need to acknowledge God. Go back and watch the broadcast to see what we're talking about when we say that. Secondly, last week we gave you the second key to walking with God. And that is to understand His presence. Again, I don't have time to go back and review everything. But the point needs to be made that many of us are missing so much of what the Holy Spirit is communicating to us. Church, it's not an automatic thing. We don't automatically hear what the Spirit is speaking to us. That's why Jesus said in the book of Revelation, "He that has an ear to hear, let him hear". Not everybody is hearing. Jesus is speaking to many of His children by His Spirit, but they're not able to understand His presence. They're not able to discern His voice. Last week I talked about understanding His presence through dreams. Go back and get the episode.
Last week I talked about the fact that we needed to be paying attention to our circumstances, because often times God is in the circumstances, even difficult circumstances God is sometimes in. And as I said, your difficulties sometimes are exactly what you need for a soul correction, they're exactly what Father is doing in your life to discipline you to bring you to the place where He can bless you. You need to be watching your circumstances, whatever you're going through every day, ask Father, "Are You in this? Is there a lesson I need to learn here? Is there something that You're saying to me in the circumstance"? Somebody calls you out of the blue on the phone. Don't just take it for granted that they called. Ask Father, "Father are You trying to say something here to me through this individual"? Look for His voice through what other people say to you.
Obviously the scriptures, divine intuition, pay attention to what you're feeling inside. Often times the Holy Spirit's speaking and we have this sense of what's right and wrong, we have this sense of which way to walk, we have a sense that, "Yes you should do that," or "No you shouldn't do that". But too often times we're not in tune enough, we're not abiding deep enough in the Spirit to pay attention, to hear it and to walk in it. We need beloved ones, to understand His presence. I talked about that last week. Let's move on now to new territory. We can walk with God, beloved ones, listen, by clothing ourselves with His nature. When I speak about walking with God. When I say you can walk with God, what I'm actually aiming towards, is unity with Him. Enoch walked with God. He was lifted off the earth supernaturally and taken to be with God, because he had reached a place of such unity with Hashem, the Creator. This is the purpose for our life. We're gonna get to this unity with God.
So when I say you could walk with God, I'm talking about you can come into unity with God, listen now, by clothing yourself with His nature. You see, we have a choice of how we respond. In other words, something happens that frustrates us. We can either be in the flesh and respond to that frustration with immediate anger, or what we can do is we can restrict our frustration, we can subdue that frustration and respond with kindness, compassion and love. And so if we're gonna walk with God, if we're gonna come into unity with our Creator, we need to clothe our self with His nature. Paul told us to put on the Spirit. He said that these are the characteristics of the Spirit. Paul said, "Love, peace, joy, compassion, sound mindedness". And then Paul said, "And these are the deeds of the flesh, division, anger, malice, evil thoughts, suspicions". He listed the difference between the things of the Spirit, the clothing of the Spirit if you will and the nature of the flesh.
If we're going to walk with God, listen now, we need to restrict, we need to subdue the nature of the flesh. We need to put it beneath us, not live out of it, and instead we need to clothe our self or put on now the garment of the spirit. Galatians 3:27 says this, "For all of you who are being baptized into Christ," listen now, "have clothed yourself with Christ". Another scripture says, "Clothe yourself with humility". I want to point out, this is not something that automatically happens. To clothe our self with the nature of the Lord, we need to make a very conscious decision, once again, to restrict our flesh nature, to not yield to the lust of the flesh, to not yield to the ambitions of the world, to not yield to anger, frustration, evil gossip speaking. We restrict that nature, we subdue it. We harness it and instead we choose which is the harder road to take on the nature of Christ. We choose to speak a word of compassion. We choose to speak a word of love. We choose to keep from talking about ourselves, to instead walk in humility.
God's way is always the harder way. If we're gonna walk with God, we need to clothe our self with His nature. And to clothe our self with His nature, beloved, takes great spiritual strength, because we're swimming up stream. We're swimming against the current. We have to resist the flesh to clothe our self with His nature. We have to say no to anger, no to frustration, no to gossip, no to yielding to watching shows on television that our flesh wants to watch and I could go on and on and on and on and on about that. It's a constant battle, every minute of every day, to restrict the flesh, to not yield to the desires of the flesh, to instead choose the straight and narrow way and clothe our self with the Spirit.
Jesus said, "Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for broad and wide is the way that leads to destruction, but straight and narrow is the way that leads to life and few there be that find it". Jesus said, listen, "Strive". You have to strive to enter into it. Jesus said seven times in the first several chapters, in chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation. Jesus said seven times, "He that overcomes will inherit these things". God made it so that we would have a fight. When we go to the book of Bereshit, when we go to the book of Genesis, we read there in verse number 2, that before God created the world, before God created man, there was darkness that was moving. Why is the darkness there? Because God created man to overcome it. He created us to get dominion over it through the Holy Spirit. We're supposed to be in a fight. God put the resistance here.
Think about this, electricity does not form light without going through the process of resistance. Light comes out of electricity by passing through resistance. The same thing is true in our life. We have to pass through the resistance of the flesh in order to clothe our self with the Spirit, in order to clothe our self with light. Beloved, these are deep, but simple truths. They apply to you every second of every day. They'll never deviate. These truths that I'm sharing with you will never be violated. You have to be responsible and I have to be accountable. Hashem, our Creator, has given us a gift and we must overcome. And so we need to clothe ourselves with His nature. There's a spiritual law and I like to call it, The Law of Similarity and Dissimilarity. And what this spiritual law represents is this, that the more similar we become to something the more we can know that thing.
In other words, I could never, ever fully know a dog. I can love my dog. I mean I can have some connection with my dog, but I can't ever fully know my dog, because I'm not a dog. But the point that I'm striving to make with you is this, we can never fully know God until we become like God. I'm not saying we're gonna become God, but I'm saying we're His offspring. This is why the scripture is very explicit in the book of Romans about God's call on our life as it relates to becoming like him, clothing our self with His nature. Hear the Word of God now as I read Romans chapter 8 verse 29. I want you to get this into your spirit. Get this into your soul. Hear God's Word. "For whom He foreknew, He chose in advance. He also predestined," listen now, "to be conformed to the image of His Son".
What's the point? God chose us and predestined us, get it now church, to be conformed to the image of His Son. God's purpose in our life, is He's making us like Jesus. And so He's wanting to clothe us with the nature of King Jesus. The more we become like Jesus, the more we take on His nature, the more we restrict the desires of the flesh and choose the Spirit, choose to clothe ourselves with love and joy and peace and compassion and temperance, etc; The more we restrict the flesh and choose the Spirit, clothing our self with the Spirit, the more we're gonna become like Jesus. And the more we become like Yeshua, the more beloved, we're gonna come into unity with God and the more we're going to know Him. And so we've talked about to walk with God, to come into unity with Him, we need to acknowledge Him. Get the teaching.
We need, beloved, as I just indicated, to clothe our self with His nature. I want to move on to a new point now. We need to, listen now, internalize His love. Until you and I have really internalized His love, I mean we deeply have become convinced that our Creator, that the God of Israel, that Hashem, that the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, that the master of the universe, until we internalize the reality that He really loves us, that His favor is really upon us, until we become convinced that He really wants to bless us, that He really wants us to be happy; Until we become convinced of His unmerited favor and love in our lives and internalize it, we're not gonna be able to walk with Him.
So many people, even in the church, they have religion, but they haven't internalized the reality that the Father loves them, that the Father sent His Son to die for them on the cross, because He loves them. You see the truth is, God has been with you in your worst times and His love for you has never failed. We need to internalize God's unconditional love for us and that He wants the best for us. He wants us to be happy. He wants us even to feel like He feels.
I'll talk more about that next week. He just wants to share Himself with us. Until we become convinced of the fact that God's favor is really towards us, that He wants us to experience His goodness, that He wants us to enjoy life, that He wants to bring us into His reality, until we internalize His love, beloved, we're not gonna be able to walk with Him, because God is love. And in order to function out of God's nature, in order to function in the Spirit, we need to function out of love. And that has to begin by understanding how much He really loves you and me. I've got so much more to share with you. Hashem loves you. Join me next week for another very important episode on Discovering the Jewish Jesus.