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(WALK #103 PRAYER VIGIL COLLAGE MESSAGE) A WELCOME TO OUR “KEHILLAH KEDOSHAH”

 

(INITIAL NOTE OF EXPLANATION:) For those that may scratch their heads in reading the audience this part is directed to, the Lord had me to give a special written message as a part of a collage to greet a group of male participants in a Christian renewal retreat called “A Walk To Emmaus” that happened in July of this year. The message given as a part of this particular collage in light of recent events seems so pertinent to the present overall national and world situation that currently faces all of us that I strongly felt this should be an integral part of our main study today. Please don’t let the specific language directed at these participants throw you off. Instead, please instead focus on eating any real spiritual meat you may see here and spitting the bones that might not be what you might accustomed to. The reason for its inclusion is because this lays a specific foundation for what I’ll be discussing in PART 2. In the meantime, I believe the message I gave these men will somehow also be useful to you...that is, IF you’ll allow it to BE so…

 

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    Shalom alechem, chaverim!! (Hebrew for how I and some others I’ve known in the past might wish to say--”Greetings, friends!”) And all of us here who are associated with this thing called “A Walk To Emmaus” are thanking Him for YOUR decision to make the quality choice to make Him YOUR choice by participating in our Walk this weekend. We all believe that as this weekend progresses, you will be able to see His love and grace in a much greater measure and light than you ever have before.

 

    In light of what’s happened in recent weeks and months with this thing called a pandemic and the many changes (good and bad) that have come with it, it just seems right to me (and maybe even good to the Holy Spirit, too) that above most here I help reintroduce (or maybe even in some cases, NEWLY introduce entirely) a concept that I believe a number of us had so quickly forgotten in previous years. It is a concept that recent events in all of our lives have now forced us all to confront the reality of. To some, this might seem to be a brand-new major paradigm shift. But to me personally, it simply is an old lesson I actually learned 30 years ago the hard way. It was a very painful lesson at the time for me to learn--but now I’m glad I learned it then because it is one of those unique lessons I went through in my past that have helped me personally navigate some of the uncharted waters we’ve all been forced to sail lately.

 

     Let me start to paint the picture on this by pointing out an experience I found in the book “Have A Little Faith” written by New York Times best-selling author Mitch Albom. In “...Faith”, Mitch recalls some of the experiences he went through for several years in preparing to write the eulogy he was asked to give at his childhood rabbi’s funeral. One of those memories was the recounting by that same rabbi of one particular day of his childhood growing up in the Bronx (i.e.--the New York City area).

 

“...One time when I was young, I happened to be standing near an apple cart outside on the street. Those apples looked so delicious that I thought that maybe if I could just look like I had accidentally brushed up against the apple cart that maybe I could get one of those apples so that it wouldn’t look like I was stealing…

“...Just as I was about to do that, a voice from above shouted in Yiddish, “ALBERT, IT IS FORBIDDEN!”

“...Was it God?’ 

“...Not quite God---but a lady shouting from the windows upstairs...But you see, Mitch--we looked out for each other..had each other’s back. In Judaism, we would call it a “kehillah kedoshah’--a SACRED COMMUNITY. If someone was about to stumble, someone would be there to help catch them. But now these days people don’t have time for each other anymore. People rushing to and from and going everywhere in the suburbs--people don’t even have time to sit down together as a family for a meal anymore. How can we expect them to have time for anyone else?”

 

After the events of recent weeks and months, that rabbi’s question seems much more poignant by the day as we find churches dramatically cutting accessibility to their services and operations through either going completely or at least partially to online services and/or outdoor-oriented services (and even in some cases--complete cancellation entirely). Where just even as late as last year people and pastors were scrounging to get people to come INSIDE the doors for a revival or a special event, now such terms as COVID, facial coverings, and social distancing have sadly become a part of the current rules and requirements for operations.

 

We’ve been forced as the Body of Christ to struggle with new definitions and methods on how a “sacred community”/”kehillah kedoshah” should operate in a time of unprecedented disease epidemics, financial and employment uncertainty, and racial strife and friction....definitions and methods that I now strongly believe WERE NOT HIS original intention to start with. And before we start thinking that this is a new thing that no one else has experienced before, let me remind you of something that the writer of Ecclesiastes wrote about situations such as this. (And FYI--I absolutely LOVE how the New Living Translation really frames this in a modern-day vernacular that we can quickly and readily understand--)

 

Ecclesiastes 1:9-11 New Living Translation:  9 History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. 10 Sometimes people say, “Here is something new!” But actually it is old; nothing is ever truly new. 11 We don’t remember what happened in the past, and in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing now.

 

Allow me to put even more of a theological foundation to the major points I plan to make here by going to the last part of Hebrews chapter 10:

22 Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.23 Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;) 24 And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works:

25 Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching. 26 For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, 27 But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. 28 He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses:

29 Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people. 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. 32 But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions; 33 Partly, whilst ye were made a gazingstock both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly, whilst ye became companions of them that were so used. 34 For ye had compassion of me in my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance.

35 Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward. 36 For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. 37 For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry. 38 Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. 39 But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.

 

      I know personally the hard way how it is when you can’t be a part of a certain community of individuals that you personally above all else want so band to be with. And I have had a little taste of the pain involved when certain things around you actually limit your ability to take part in those things that community might deem important to all. Having been (and also STILL in some way) a member of a church organization once called the Worldwide Church of God (now called Grace Communion International), I as a member along with others personally experienced the heartbreak, frustration, and other junk that came with the trinkets and T-shirts that came with massive changes in the way things used to be done at one time in that particular international church fellowship.

    I could almost go through a complete laundry list of things about Worldwide on this subject (including how many years it used to be considered a “cult” by most of orthodox evangelical Christianity at one time in its history). But I think instead that you would benefit the most here by seeing what it truly was through my eyes one particular WCG experience that best illustrates what it’s like when what was once YOUR “sacred community” seems to be falling apart at the seams around you.

   To set up the stage for this, maybe I should ask you to imagine what would happen if YOUR own church (that is, if you have one at all) were involved in a church split. According to some studies I heard about one time, church splits and divisions were apparently at least in the top 10 list of major psychological events that cause the most personal trauma and/or major physical ailments people have these days. Heated arguments over the color of the sanctuary carpet and also whether the songs sung in your worship services should either be sung directly out of a hymnal or praise songs and choruses put on a large projector screen are the norm now at every business meeting your church may have. Then suddenly, your pastor announces his resignation and his intention to start a competing church just down the street from your current one. Before you know it, half the congregation leaves with him--some of them your very best friends and/or family members WITHOUT even a decent chance to say a decent goodbye to them before they walk out the door. How would YOU react after all this came down the pike on you ALL AT ONCE???

    Sadly (with different and much more bigger and complex issues and scenarios involved that I don’t have the time or space to get into here) in 1995, this WAS NOT my imagination when I attended a Feast of Tabernacles convention in Fort Worth. In ways you probably can’t fathom or imagine right now, THIS was the sort of nightmare that actually came with massive doctrinal changes to all of us within Worldwide. Within the course of just ONE YEAR, mind you--AN ABSOLUTE MINIMUM of AT LEAST half of my own local congregation AND the pastor AND one of our elders formally left to form another competing church that opposed those doctrinal changes. Around this time, I was ALSO personally stuck at home at the time in Lockney due to unemployment, transportation, and other issues not even able for several MONTHS to go to ANY Worldwide church service (whether in my nearest congregation of Lubbock or ANYWHERE else). And just as things COULDN’T get worse, the Pastor General (i.e.--what we called the international administrative head of Worldwide at the time) died of colon cancer just a few weeks shy of this particular convention. To say that we were about to go through what I called a “Feast of funerals” would have been a MASSIVE understatement at the time.

     One instance especially jogs my memory now as I write this. One day as we were going to one of the services of this particular Feast in Fort Worth, we passed by this trailer and van that was set up as an outdoor stage for a group who spewed out the most despicable and hateful rhetoric and who particularly said some of the most disparaging things about Worldwide founder Herbert W. Armstrong. While I and others were passing by this trailer to go to the Convention Center for the service, those in our group either tried not to pay much attention to it and/or laughed it off and made a sort of joke of it amongst ourselves. But as I heard this nasty group pontificate the religious rhetoric of what they considered “...the Gospel”, I wanted SO BAD to scream through my tears, “...IF YOU ONLY KNEW WHAT EXACTLY WE’RE ALL GOING THROUGH RIGHT NOW, YOU WOULDN’T BE SAYING SUCH HATEFUL STUFF TO US!”

     As I hit the stop button on that particular Fort Worth experience, I can also maybe stick a portion of Hebrews chapter 10 back in your face and even shove a megaphone in front of it for good measure to emphasize an important point:

22 Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;) 24 And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: 25 Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

      In otherwards, we WERE NOT meant to serve before our God as Lone Rangers! That IN NO WAY was His original intention or desire by any means! “Social distancing” from others in the Lord, “worshipping God in nature and His creation”, and other excuses and hindrances--those CANNOT replace His Divine COMMAND to “...assemble ourselves TOGETHER--and even more so as you see the Day [meaning the time of our Lord’s return--regardless of whether or not you might believe in the Rapture] approaching.” (YES, I SAID IT AND EVEN BY ITS WRITING AND CREATION APPROVED THIS MESSAGE--it’s a COMMAND from the Master Himself, NOT merely a suggestion!!!) And THAT is part of the purpose of we call the LIVING WATER EMMAUS COMMUNITY! 

    In the word of God, you might find references to how when our God prescribed people in the Old Covenant the way they were to build altars, He tended to specify that they be built out of stones INSTEAD of bricks. WHY SO? According to the Jewish sages, when the Tower of Babel was built, some of the ancient writings specify that the Tower was made of man-made bricks in which each brick was made into the exact same shape and basically in a cookie-cutter, assembly-line industrial style. The Sages even go so far to suggest that absolutely NO regard was made for the concern of anyone that might be injured or possibly killed helping to build the Tower and that the efforts to build the Tower completely superseded any sense of possible compassion or concern for anyone directly affected by it. BUT in contrast--when a wall or altar was built in Ancient Israel, the children of Israel were actually required to build them out of hewn stones--in which was individually cut, fitted, and shaped...and in which WITHOUT each UNIQUELY fitted stone the project could not be truly considered complete.

In similar fashion, this is, as I might wish to call it, a “kehillah kedoshah”--a SACRED COMMUNITY that in just a short time YOU will be able to join....a SACRED COMMUNITY of diverse individuals from many different churches, denominations, races, cities, towns, professions, etc. who periodically come together for ONE common purpose--to proclaim what in Hebrew would be called the “mayim hayim” (i.e.--LIVING WATER) of our Lord and Savior and of His blessed Holy Spirit AND help YOU begin to experience a small taste of what the overall universal ‘kehillah kedoshah” of the God we all serve truly is for yourself. And most of all--to assist YOU in helping you play the role that our God might have you to play in all of the “kehillah kedoshahs” and spheres of influence that you may be a part of. 

     As you start the process of becoming a part of our particular “kehillah kedoshah”, I urge you pilgrims to be aware of the following: (1.) IT MAY COST YOU SOMETHING TO BE A PART OF THIS! Now I don’t mean to say that to scare or discourage you--but simply encourage you to realistically understand the type of DEEPER commitment our Lord and Savior may require of you. There’s one thing I remember most about what it originally took for me years ago to become a Worldwide Church of God member in the first place--the fact that doing so was going to require COMMITMENT and that it would cost me something to do it. I couldn't go into something like that halfheartedly. It HAD to be ALL OR NOTHING AT ALL!

      You’ll probably find yourself going through similar conditions as you go through the rest of this Walk. I know for sure this--that my Lord from here on out is now going to expect you to step up your game a little bit. What once you thought was truly important will soon instead need to be subservient to what HE may want you to do.

(2.)  There will be NO promises of rose gardens and/or easy solutions or shortcuts as you go through this process. I WILL assure and almost guarantee you that some of the tough sledding and other things you left behind at home to get here might also be some of the very first things that will greet you at your front door when you leave here and head back into what we call around here your “4th Days” ahead.

BUT--MAY I ASK YOU TO ALSO TAKE HEART AND NOTE THE FOLLOWING?

(#3.) You WILL (IF you’ll allow Him to do so) have the opportunity to much more experience His peace, joy, and love this weekend as you never have before. YOU WILL have an opportunity to obtain some clarity and direction of some things you may have been seeking the Lord about for years. YOU WILL get to meet along your journey here during this Walk some interesting people that will assist you along the way in getting to REALLY know and experience Him for what He truly IS--NOT what you might have previously imagined him to be. And YOU WILL learn for yourself the real benefits of what being a part of a “sacred community” like this can truly be--SO THAT YOU in turn can take what you’ve learned here and then teach those things to others in your world. 

      It’s in talking about this “sacred community” that I need to go back to the Mitch Albom book I talked about earlier and refer to another incident about our rabbi friend we discussed here. Later on in “Have A Little Faith”, Mitch recounts the occasion of that rabbi’s 60th anniversary of leadership over the particular New Jersey congregation he personally founded and led. For that rabbi, it actually WASN’T the party itself that made the occasion special. 

     “...Mitch--when I saw all of those people there...old friends who hadn’t seen each other in years, hugging each other like long lost friends...to me, it was a little slice of heaven.” 

      Even if our Saviour hasn’t quite brought down heaven to earth for all of us just yet, I do know this--that our rabbi friend might be on to something. Regardless of rules dictating how many feet apart we have to stand away from each other AND/OR who has to stay and help clean and sanitize the ARC afterwards, one thing is for sure this weekend--that there’s a LOT of people here in what I would call the “Kehillah Kedoshah b’shem Mayim Hayim” (that is--the “sacred community of Living Water Emmaus” that are chomping at the bit to give you a good ol’ West Texas welcome, shake hands, fist or elbow bump, etc. (...you get the idea…) when they finally get to see and meet you in person. And maybe when you do, you might also get a chance to see a small snippet of the coming attractions reel of His Glorious Kingdom ahead--not only now, but also in the many 4th Days ahead of you...just like our rabbi friend did with his congregation. I urge you NOT to let THIS “kehillah kedoshah” slip away--but keep close to your heart always. All the best to you as you do just that from my end and my ranch/homestead--even as I hope that you’ll personally allow ME to be one of the first to formally welcome you to OUR “kehillah kedoshah”---

Shalom rubakah and DeColores in the Name of Him who gives us THAT “mayim hayim”/LIVING WATER and who Himself created OUR particular “kehillah kedoshah” (i.e.--Yeshua Ha’Meshiach/the Lord Jesus Christ),

Coy Reece Holley

 (Men’s Walk #51)

Kehillah Kedoshah b’shem Mayim Hayim Emmaus (i.e.--the Sacred Community of Living Water Emmaus)

PART I can be found here at http://coyrhseatcbspm.wixsite.com/walking/2020-fall-newsletter-part-i ...

PART II at http://coyrhseatcbspm.wixsite.com/walking/2020-fall-newsletter-part-2

Collage Message-- http://coyrhseatcbspm.wixsite.com/walking/men-s-walk-103-collage-message ...

Game Summary-- http://coyrhseatcbspm.wixsite.com/golden-calves-golden-mummies-game-s ...

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