Join Rabbi Schneider in the vibrant city of Jerusalem as he delves into the spiritual concept of trials as a path to spiritual growth. Through the teachings in the book of James, discover how life’s cycles of challenges and respite are designed to elevate your faith and bring you closer to God’s divine purpose. With practical insights and personal reflections, you’ll learn how to embrace each trial not as an obstacle but as a pathway to receiving the crown of life.
And so there’s a cycle of life that we have. Times of refreshment, and then the Lord brings us into a trial to test us, to bring us up to the next level. Shalom, my beloved brothers and sisters. Here I am again today in Jerusalem. This is my last program that I’m preparing for you for the day. It’s been a great day. The temperature’s fantastic right now. The sun has gone down, and so it’s really beautiful, beautiful day here in Jerusalem, the city of the great king. Some of you have heard me share before that over 20 years ago, the Lord showed me in a vision of the night, a pillar coming off of the top of the earth. And on top of the pillar was Israel. And it was just in the heavens in God’s glory. So somehow, even though there’s still a lot of turmoil here in Israel, I mean, it’s definitely not a perfect country by any means right now. There’s a lot of confusion going on here right now, politically and in many other ways, religiously. So you can hear the sirens behind me right now. It’s not the city of fullness of peace yet, but God is still connected to this place, this geographical location on planet Earth above every place else in the world. And when Yeshua comes back somehow in a way that I can’t fathom, His Lordship is going to extend the circumference from the entire globe from this city. So with that said, let’s continue on now into the Word of God. We’re in the book of James from Jerusalem because James was the pastor, he was the leader of the church in Jerusalem, we read in the book of Acts. That’s why I chose to preach out of the book of James while I’m here in Yerushalayim. Here we go. I’m picking up where I left off last time. I’m in the first chapter. Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial. For once he’s been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love him. Listen again. Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial. For once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love him. Now, when I hear this verse, I am struck by by the fact that God is speaking to me saying that when you go through a trial, you have to pass the test of that trial by remaining faithful to me in the midst of the trial, by continuing to lift up your heart to live in joy, And living in joy doesn’t mean I always feel emotionally joyful because joy is not first an emotion. It’s a decision to praise God. Even in the midst of your trial, you praise God, you thank God, you lift up your heart to be thankful, to stay in faith, to be grateful, to stay in his word. So this is how you walk through a trial successfully. You stay in faith in the trial You rejoice in the midst of the trial, not that you’re feeling emotionally joyful, because again, joy is a choice. Joy is when you choose to praise the Lord and stay in faith, trusting Him in the midst of the trial. And what James reveals here is that if we’ll walk through the trial successfully by keeping our heart right in an attitude of praise, And if we make the right decisions by staying faithful, by staying in faith and in obedience, by continuing to do the right things in the midst of the trial, James says we’ll have passed the test. And as a result of that, going successfully through that trial, James says we’ll receive the crown of life. So he says, Once again, for once you have passed the test of going through the trial, you’ll receive the crown of life. Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, for once he has been approved, So the trial is a proving ground for you in which you’re proving your fidelity to walking in God’s light in the midst of the trial, walking in his joy in the midst of the trial. Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial. It’s like an athlete. If you’re a runner, you don’t give up in the middle because you’re hurting, because you’re losing energy, because you’re losing your breath, but you keep on running even though it’s hard. For once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those who love him. So this is just a word of instruction. It’s an admonition for you and I, beloved. Listen, we know that life is full of difficulties at times. We go through seasons. where God gives us a time of having a respite, a time of refreshment, a time of opening up our wings. Nothing’s weighing us down too much. Nothing’s bothering us too much. We don’t have any real pressing problems or crises. We go through seasons when life is relatively smooth. But it won’t be long after going through that time of relative comfort that God’s going to bring a trial. In fact, the Lord showed me, you can take it for whatever you want to take it for, I’m just telling you my own experience. But the Lord showed me a number of years ago, he supernaturally revealed to me in a dream, and it was like a circle he was showing me. And the circle, there was motion going around the circle. And what the Lord was showing me as the motion rotated around the circle is that life is a cycle. Like the circle, the moving cycle around the circle, the Lord showed me life is a cycle that’s circling. And you go from trial to being released from the trial, a spirit of being released from the trial, when there’s a spirit of just freedom and experiencing God’s pleasantness and feeling good, you come out of the trial, you have some freedom that you’re experiencing emotionally, and then after a while of experiencing that freedom emotionally, the Lord will bring you back into another trial. Why? Because every time you go through a trial, and you go through that trial faithfully, you endure it, James told us earlier in the book, you get strengthened. So God will bring you into a difficulty. It’s like you’re being trained in the military And as you’re being trained in the military, or as you’re being trained as an athlete, you get stronger as you’re being trained. Your muscles get stronger. Your spiritual muscle expands. Your spirit expands in the strength and the love of God. As you walk through the trial, clinging to God, because His power is perfected in your weakness as you cling to him going through the trial. His power is being perfected in your weakness. So you’re getting stronger. So God brings you through the trial. Then he releases you from the trial. Now your heart is open. You’re at a brand new level. You’re at a brand new place in the spirit. You’re walking in a deeper place. you’re walking in a higher place, and the Lord lets you stay at that level place for a while, where you’re experiencing relative freedom, and then a little bit after that, he’s gonna bring you and I into another trial. Why? Because he wants to bring us up to the next level. It’s like going up a staircase. Every time you go up a step, you go to the next level. And so there’s a cycle of life that we have, times of refreshment where we’re just enjoying the Lord’s presence, and then the Lord brings us into a trial to test us, not to see what we’re gonna do all the time, but to test us to bring us up to the next level. Testing produces strength. And so I just love this word that James says, listen, when you walk through a trial, and you endure it and you’re faithful in it, God is gonna bless you by giving you the crown of life. So obviously, this is a lesson for us to remember that when we’re in trials, whether it’s now, next week, or a year from now, it’s a test to bring you up to the next level. Stay faithful, realize you’re in a trial. It’s not gonna last forever. This too shall pass. There’s a time and season for everything. Stay faithful in the difficulty and God’s gonna bring you out and you’re gonna receive a blessing. You’re gonna receive an impartation from the spirit of life. Praise the Lord, Baruch Hashem. Bless the name of the Lord. Baruch means bless. Ha means the. Shem means name. So when we say Baruch Hashem, we’re saying bless the name. Bless the name of the Lord. His name is so beautiful, so glorious that we just say bless the name. You’re too awesome, God. It’s like addressing the king. You know, long live the king. You know, the epistle tells us honor the king. And so when we’re saying bless the name, we’re saying bless the name above all names. That God has given Yeshua a name above every name, amen? And so we’re blessing the name of Yeshua Hamashiach, amen, amen. And Father God, Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh, Yahweh, God’s sacred covenant name that’s used almost 7,000 times in the Hebrew Bible from everybody from Moses on.
SPEAKER 03 :
You’re listening to Discovering the Jewish Jesus, and Rabbi Schneider will be right back. But first, I want to invite you to take Rabbi’s teachings with you wherever you go. With the Discovering the Jewish Jesus podcast available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and many more, you can listen to all of Rabbi’s powerful messages anytime. Stay rooted in God’s Word. Just search for Discovering the Jewish Jesus on your favorite podcasting platform today. you Do you want to be an instrument for God’s work on the earth? Well, join us as a new monthly partner and receive a handcrafted shofar that’s made in Israel. This instrument will announce Jesus’ second coming one day. And by supporting these teachings, you’re helping prepare the way for His return. So would you prayerfully consider joining us? Visit DiscoveringTheJewishJesus.com or partner with us by calling 800-777-7000. And now back to Rabbi.
SPEAKER 01 :
James says this in the first chapter, you know, my beloved brethren, he said this, you know, my beloved brethren, everyone must be quick to hear. Listen now, please. Everyone must be quick to hear. slow to speak, and slow to anger. So there’s really three parts, right? Number one is being quick to hear, so we’re gonna cover that. Part number two, slow to speak, we’re gonna cover that. And then part number three, slow to anger. So let’s first of all tell you about being quick to hear. Occasionally I’ll come across people and they are just so nervous and they’re so insecure, they’re so defensive, they can’t hear a word you say. You greet them and as soon as you open your mouth, they start talking and they can’t even stop talking. It’s a defense mechanism a lot of times. It’s like they’re protecting themselves. They’re so anxious and afraid inside that they use their constant talking to try to cover up their anxiety. So maybe that describes you a little bit. Maybe I’m kind of putting my finger on something in some of you right now that you realize you’re a person that’s nervous and you cover up your nervousness by incessantly talking. God wants us to be quick to hear and slow to speak. And so we’re pointing out about being quick to hear. There’s a time for everything. There’s a time to speak. But God is stressing, first of all, that we should listen. Many of us have heard this saying before, God’s given us two ears and one mouth. Why two ears and one mouth? Because it’s more important to hear two ears than one mouth and to speak. Now they’re both important, obviously. But we’re making the point that we need to develop the habit of being still enough and attentive enough to listen. To first of all, listen to what the Spirit is saying. In the book of Revelation, chapters two and three, Yeshua, Jesus said seven times in just two chapters, he that has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches. What’s the implication? That not everybody’s hearing. But for those that have an ear to hear, let them hear. We need to develop a hearing ear. How do we do that? By making it a point to recognize that Father God, beloved, wants you and I to listen. And it takes peace to listen. We have to like force ourselves to be still in our heart. And it’s a great practice to just spend time every day just being still before the Lord. The Psalmist tells us, be still. and know the Lord is speaking to the Psalmist. Be still and know that I am God. How do you know that God’s God? You be still. It’s one way that we come to recognize God’s presence. by forcing ourselves to just sit before him and be still, to not be on some device or, you know, looking at something, talking to people, looking outside ourselves, just being still like Mary that was just sitting at Yeshua’s feet, right? Just listening to what he had to say. We know the story, Mary and Martha. And Mary, Mary had chosen the one most important thing, and that was just to listen. How do we listen to the Lord? First of all, we spend time just taking in the Word, reading the Word, listening to the Word. But there’s another form of listening. Let every man be quick to hear. Jesus said, let every man that has an ear to hear, hear what the Spirit, and the Spirit and the Word are one. Jesus says, the words that I speak to you are Spirit. So how do we hear? We develop a sensitivity We develop a sensitivity to the Ruach HaKadosh who is speaking to us. Every day, the Spirit of the Lord is hovering over our lives as well as in dwelling our hearts. And he’s endeavoring, beloved sons and daughters of God, to speak to you and I. The Spirit of God speaks. is given to us to reveal to us or to speak to us the things and the mysteries of God. The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, And he comes down to earth as a tongue, a speaking oracle of God. We see it in Acts chapter two. He came as a tongue of fire. And why a tongue? Because he came to reveal or to speak into our inner man, our souls, the things from the kingdom of heaven. And so we need to be paying attention. We need to stop being so busy speaking and running around and develop and cultivate the ability to hear. And one of the ways that we do that is we still ourselves and then we expect that we’re gonna hear. Now, the hearing that I’m talking about and describing is not the type of hearing where as soon as you sit still, that you’re gonna hear an audible voice saying something like in an English sentence or whatever country you’re in and language you speak. Because the Spirit of the Lord will sometimes speak that way, but more often than not, I have found that the voice of the Spirit is a impression, that sometime comes in a second and is very distinct about a given situation, whether you should do this or do that. And oftentimes the way that the Spirit speaks to you is just giving you a gentle impression of yes, you can feel the witness. Like it’s yes, you feel the witness. You feel whether it’s right or not. You have either that sense of peace and God’s pleasure in what you’re contemplating about doing, where the Spirit is leading you to do it or just say something. Or as you look to the Spirit, you’ll have that check, that feeling that it’s not right. And so we need to be listening, we need to be quick to hear. Rather than just running about, doing, doing, doing, speaking, speaking, we’re looking up and we’re listening. What do you want me to do? And then we sense in our spirit, it’s intuitive listening, it’s intuition. We sense in our spirit whether the spirit is leading us to go forward, to make this decision to go forward, or whether we feel that check, like don’t do it. And too often, You may be like me and at times you go forward because you’re not paying enough attention and minding the check in your spirit. We need to be quick to hear, intuitive listening. And again, I want to say that some of you will sit before the Lord and you’ll be waiting for the Spirit to speak and you won’t hear anything. So you think it doesn’t work and you give up. But if you just will keep the discipline of spending time every day, even if it’s just 15 minutes, just waiting on the Lord. The scripture says, wait upon the Lord. wait upon the lord wait upon the lord yes wait upon the lord and what happens is without you even knowing it you’re able to discern the leading of the spirit not coming to you as a bolt of lightning but coming to you as a soft gentle sense of what to do how to speak and how to act. It’s just a knowing. It’s a knowing that’s as big as the sky, not coming to you as a precise point, but coming to you as an overall sky over you, where you just more and more and more know how to live. And so James says, let every man be quick to hear, to hear the voice of the Spirit and beloved, to be able to hear each other. Let’s pay attention, beloved, to the voice of God and the voice of our brothers and our sisters. Have you ever heard the statement, if ifs and buts were candies and nuts, we’d all have a Merry Christmas? In other words, a lot of times we procrastinate and make excuses. I would have but, or if this happened then. But the fact is, beloved, at the end of the day, we’re responsible. We’re responsible to the Lord and we’re responsible to ourselves. So I want to talk today about the fact that some of us have been wanting to honor the Lord more fully with our finances, but we haven’t yet followed through and done it. The fact is, we only have a few days left. If deep in your heart, you know that you should be honoring the Lord in a fuller way with that which He’s blessed you with, This is the time to take action. This is the time to do it. I want to thank you for all that you’ve done for this ministry over the last year, those of you that have blessed us, and God bless you as you go forward into next year.
SPEAKER 03 :
Amen, and you can take a step of faith right now and join this mission by giving online at discoveringthejewishjesus.com. You can also support this nonprofit ministry by calling us. Our number is 800-777-7835. And as a token of appreciation for your gifts, we want to send you our latest newsletter in the mail. You’ll be able to see the impact that your giving is having through the testimonies that our listeners send in, and they’re really something special. You’ll also receive Rabbi’s monthly teaching booklet. It’s full of additional points and insights, and I believe it’ll help you grow in your faith each and every day. So if you’d like to receive these resources, I want to encourage you to give. It’s also a great time to send in a special end of year gift. Send your check in the mail to us at Discovering the Jewish Jesus, P.O. Box 777 Blissfield, Michigan 49228. Or you can also give online at our website, DiscoveringtheJewishJesus.com. I want to thank you so much for your faithfulness and your support over this past year. You’ve helped us make a difference in thousands upon thousands of lives. All you have to do is read the comments section of any of our social medias and all of you share how God is touching you. I want you to know it’s been an honor to share the gospel of Jesus with you. Thank you so much for listening. And now here’s Rabbi to speak God’s sacred and special blessing over our life.
SPEAKER 01 :
The Aaronic blessing in the book of Numbers chapter 6 is not a blessing that comes from an impersonal being out there somewhere in the heavens. This special blessing comes from a person, Yahweh God Almighty, our Creator and Maker. So receive God’s blessing into your life right now.
The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift you up with his countenance. And the Lord give you, beloved one, his peace. God bless you and shalom.
SPEAKER 03 :
I’m your host, Dustin Roberts, and this program is produced and sponsored by Discovering the Jewish Jesus. Be sure to join us next time when Rabbi Schneider explains God’s desire for dedication and how Christians can approach Hanukkah. That’s Wednesday on Discovering the Jewish Jesus.
