Without trying to give away too much, I recently was a listener to my friend's heart. I heard many things, but one of them struck me in an odd way. She had just been through a rough time in making decisions (I can relate), and expressed that she found it frustrating and confusing that someone else saw 'signs' and heard 'messages', while she hadn't. First, I want to say that Yah chooses to whom He will speak, and that even if He speaks to us, we may not hear it. That wasn't new to me. What she said that bothered me and brought up some questions was, "I just don't understand why, when I'm so much closer to God, he heard Him and I didn't." My friend is a Christian while this person who ended up making a tough choice isn't religious at all. No heart connection, just head knowledge, is how my friend puts it. Now, in thinking yourself 'close', you think of yourself as 'higher'. She just couldn't understand, then, how and why the Father would speak to someone 'beneath' her.
So, my question: what makes one close to the Father and another not?
I'm not arguing religions here, different codes and laws and rulings. There are people I know that don't really know what they believe, yet they live better lives that those who would assume themselves to be 'closer' because of what they profess. If you are close to Yah, shouldn't you be able to see how you should live? Or do you content yourself with the knowledge that you're close, and don't take the time to look? How does one know that they are, in fact, 'above' the other? What so clearly distinguishes this?
Puzzling over this the other day, I asked a good friend of mine... (what did I call him last... Rejad?) what he thought. He is a thinker of deep thoughts, so I felt I was bound to get somewhere with him. I put the question to him without context, and he answered immediately: choice. I asked him to explain, and these are his words, "Sometimes Yahweh chooses us to be close to Him, and sometimes we choose to be close to Yahweh." This led to discussions of faith and love and, again, choice. I am agreed with most in my circle that faith and love are not feelings, they are actions, they are choices. The word that faith originated from is emunah (I'm not sure how to spell it, I'm going by how it sounds), Hebrew, meaning 'Trust'. The definition of 'faith' is "Belief that is not based on proof:" Trust: "Confidence in a certainty." The big difference here is emotion. A lot of religions today get all hyped up about how emotional you get, about how much you feel, about the passion. This is daunting to a lot of people. The young man with head knowledge and no 'connection'... he doesn't know what to do because he doesn't 'feel' like they do, the people at this huge church, crying, falling to their faces, and dancing. Now, I am NOT bashing that at all. I grew up in a charismatic church with people speaking in tongues. Whatever works, it's not my problem, not my concern. For the people that get that, go ahead. For the people that don't... now what are they supposed to do? The ones that act out of logic, reasoning. The ones that weigh the pros and cons. The ones that decide; the ones that choose.
Back to my question. How can you judge yourself and another correctly? And if you are religious, isn't it a sin to assume you're 'closer'? You know the saying, 'Judge not lest ye shall be judged.' Here is another quote, one of my favorites, "You never know what's going on in the heart of another human being, and, unless you love them the most, you'll never know." (Shlomo Carlebach) You can't fully understand, and you definitely cannot judge someone's heart. Least of all Yahweh's. The heart will choose whether or not it will allow the closeness of the Father. He will judge your heart and deem it wise when to draw you near.
We are not to think of ourselves as higher, closer, better. Prov. 11:2, 29:23. We are not to compare ourselves to others to know where we should be. Our walk is not theirs, their walk is not ours. Luke 18:9-14. There is no physical appearance, there is no certain belief, there isn't a best way of how to pronounce something or profess it. There is only the heart, the choice of the heart. Contrary to popular opinion, it is not one mess of emotions bound in a chocolate box and ribbons.You don't have to get all excited and wound up to know something, to choose something (though it's fine if you get excited about your choice). In all, shouldn't it be enough to know you are close, without thinking of those closer or not as close?
We are not to build ourselves up.Yahweh will lift us. In our eyes, we should all be as equals. We dare not assume or even question what Yah sees as differences. We are all in search of the same thing, we just take different roads or walk different ways. Who's to say which is best?
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