Investing your trust in Yeshua as messiah is not unlike school loan consolidation, when you think about it. Instead of attempting to keep track of numerous debts, you are taking the opportunity to pull them all in one big pile that can be dealt with all in one act.

Where the analogy breaks down, of course, is that while student loans can seem insurmountable, the debt for our sins is not something we can ever satisfy on our own. There is only one payment that can balance the scales between haShem and humanity, and only Y’shua was qualified to pay it.

If you commit a crime with a friend, you cannot serve your friend’s sentence for him, because you are guilty as well; only an innocent man can take the place of a guilty man and still have the debt considered paid in full. And only Yeshua qualified for that job. He is the spotless Pesach Lamb.

It’s a place I’ve been in life, a state of being many have been or can at least empathize with.

“I believe in Adonai,” we sometimes say. “I love him and I believe him. But I’m just finding it hard to trust.”

There are many things that can sap us of our ability to trust. Disappointments are the most common. Perhaps we thought, in our desperation to connect with an attractive member of the opposite gender while we were single, that haShem was “calling us” to coupledom with a certain someone, and when that relationship did not work out as hoped, we felt disappointed, even betrayed.

Or perhaps we grew up believing G-d would let no harm befall us, which worked fine until living through a tragedy like a fire, a devastating storm, a personal assault or whatever other ills tend to befall unsuspecting people in this fallen world. As a result, our trust can be affected in haShem’s ability to keep us safe.

These are deep, personal, painful issues that cannot be resolved in a single blog post, but they are worth exploring in greater detail than a term life insurance policy.

For now, let this be said: the Torah makes little distinction between faith and trust. To some translators, the two terms are interchangeable. Was Noach inspired to build an arc in the middle of nowhere, with no water around, by a distant, mental-state concept like faith? Or did it require an action-inspiring trust?

Food for thought.

While most folks understand that there are 613 points in the written laws of Moshe, not all people understand that no one could possibly keep all 613 points of the Torah faithfully. Even many messianic Web sites and synagogues don’t grasp this.

No one can keep all 613 point of the written Torah for one very simple reason: not all of the points are for everyone.

Some can be observed only by women. Some can be observed only by men. Some can be observed only by the priests. Get the idea? No one person can observe all 613 points of the written Torah because there are plenty you cannot fulfill personally depending on your gender, depending on whether or now you are a priest and so forth.

The Torah is extremely detailed because it is setting up all the rules for holy living for an entire people in the promised land. Sure, it stops just short of endorsing a particular brand of organic dog food, but otherwise it’s pretty comprehensive. It’s also there to cover folks of every stripe.

Being Torah-observant isn’t the overwhelming task the 613 points of written Torah would make it seem. And when Yeshua takes his place as messiah of your life, the hardest part is already done for you.

These days, we don’t think much of careless talk, gossip or other forms of evil speech. Hollywood thrives on it. Sports news is filled with it. Politics gets its lifeblood from it. And too often, even our churches and synagogues are infected with it.

How often have you heard someone disguise gossip in the form of a prayer request? Or justify their mumbling complaints and jealousies against someone else with the simply rationalization, “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”

If a hair fell out of our head every time we engaged in careless talk, we’d soon all be bald and in need of the services of Dr. Larry Shapiro.

B’midbar (Numbers) 12:1-16 shows us what haShem thinks of careless talk and gossip. There was nothing false in anything Miryam said to Aharon about their brother, Moshe. But she said it out of jealousy, out of disapproval of Moshe’s marriage to an Ethiopian woman, and her heart’s intent was not pure.

Adonai afflicted her, turning her skin and hair ashen white and banning her from the camp of the house of Israel for seven days before being allowed back in. It was a harsh, though apparently harmless, example of just how much haShem cares about careless talk.

One has to wonder how long TV gossip shows would have young, attractive starlets hosting them, how long most newspapers would be held together, and just long long most churches and synagogues would last if Adonai always afflicted those who engage in evil speech in such a manner, every time they did it.

I get the feeling, at the minimum, that the market for “color-safe bleach” would plummet.

While this is unrelated to anything overtly religious, I do feel like mentioning how much skinceuticals have helped my wife with her skin. The ones that work best for her are actually a product of Israel itself, formulas made from Dead Sea salts.

There are few skin products my wife can even use, due to her allergies and sensitivities, but the Secrets from the Dea Sea line of products have not only avoided triggering her allergies, but have actually been the best thing for her skin that she’s used in recent years, from the time of our courtship to present.

It makes me wonder, sometimes, how folks got by in the past when they had such sensitivities. Did they care less about outward appearance? Did they have similarly effective home remedies? Were they shunned because they were not as clear-skinned as others?

But I digress. Back to our regularly-scheduled Torah and Yeshua related postings…

Finally, our newest “advanced study class” has begun in my training to possibly someday become ordained in the messianic ministry. This class focuses on apologetics, specifically on answering Jewish objections to Yeshua. My feeling is this will be one of the most important classes I take in preparation for the messianic ministry.

Objections to the gospel are not trivial matters like finding the proper portable water filters. It’s absolutely key to a person’s potential ability to see truth in the good news of Yeshua’s messiah-ship, and must be approached with caution, respect, and a deep understanding of the Jewish mindset.

That’s why I’m glad the author of this particular series of books is himself a Jew who has discovered Messiah Yeshua. He has devoted much of his life to communicating with, debating and seeking to reconcile his recognition of messiah in the person of Yeshua, and the very real and meaningful questions thoughtful Jews have about the good news of the B’rit haDasha.

I’ll have to read closely, come back, and re-read it again and again. I look forward to the journey.

This week, I indulged in a rare break away from everything: my job, my family, everything. It’s not that I went running off by myself to leave my wife home alone. Instead, I took nearly a full week off to attend a retreat sponsored by my messianic temple, Kehilat Sar Shalom.

The week was a great break away from everything. No job to go to, no responsibilities, just a great chance to do some fishing, read some Torah and Torah-related study materials, eat some great food, bond with other men in my congregation, and even spend some time in prayer (though not nearly enough.)

I decided to come home a day early. My wife couldn’t understand why, at least initially. But when I woke up Thursday morning, it was with a distinct and clear impression that G-d was telling me, “Enough is enough. Go home and provide for your family.”

In talking with another guy who decided to leave a day early, on the drive back, I discovered he had encountered much the same impression. This raised a debate between the two of us that had nothing to do with discount furniture.

Are retreats a selfish endeavor? Is withdrawing from one’s responsibility for a time a sound practice or self-centered?

On the one hand, one sees figures such as Moshe enjoying no such respite from their responsibilities. From the moment he first went before Pharoah to deliver haShem’s message – Let my people go! – to his death, he never really had a break or a vacation. It seems to be a foreign concept in his time.

Unless you count the time he spent in solitude on Mount Sinai in the presence of Adonai, of course. But I doubt he spent much of that time fishing.

On the other hand, Yeshua did withdraw from the crowds who swarmed to see him at times, retreating up a mountain or sailing across a lake, in order to spend time in communion with haShem. A bit of “recharging his batteries” seems not to be entirely out of line with Yeshua’s example.

My friend was of a different opinion, stating that if one would simply listen to and rely on Adonai more, one would not need to retreat and recharge.

Upon further discussion, my friend revealed that he spent almost all of his waking hours fishing, rather than dividing his time to include Torah and Torah-related study, prayer time, and rest.

“I made fishing my G-d this week,” he confessed.

Perhaps that’s the basis for our difference of opinion in whether a retreat is a selfish practice. I still have no easy answer to the question, but I suspect how one spends their time on retreat plays a major role.