“The difference between you and me is that you have answers and I do not,” he said. And I wondered if he felt as hopeless as he sounded. It was well after midnight and Carissa, our teammate Niko, our new Israeli friend, Yosef, and I were talking about the questions of life. Who is God? Why does He allow pain? Why is there so much hate and evil in the world? And on everything we had agreed… except on the issue of the messiahship of Yeshua.
But his primary argument was not what you might think. Yosef’s biggest objection to Christianity is how many Christians have killed and persecuted Jewish people throughout the centuries, and even in modern times, in the name of Jesus. “They said they represent Jesus and you say you represent Jesus,” Yosef asked, “how do I know which of you is right?” Sobered by the harsh reality of his words, there was really only one way we could respond. So, Carissa gave him a New Testament in Hebrew and challenged him to read the book of John to find out for himself who Jesus is and what He is really like, and decide for himself which representation of Jesus is true. It’s such a good thing, isn’t it, that the truth about Jesus doesn’t depend on how well we, as Christians, represent him?
This conversation, and many others during our winter outreach, fueled our desire to spend this summer in Israel to continue these friendships and conversations, and equip ourselves to have many more in the future. And after years of dreaming and praying, the day is finally almost here! We fly into Tel Aviv on May 29th and will spend our first two and a half weeks based in Jerusalem with our wonderful coworker and leader Robin, and a team of other young adults, doing service projects, outreach and touring.
Halfway through June, we will depart from the team and go back to Tel Aviv where we will start an intensive course in Modern Hebrew at Tel Aviv University. We’re so excited to continue this incredible journey of learning culture and language and can’t wait to start reconnecting with the friends we made during our winter outreach in South America.
Please continue praying for our time here – productivity, health (enough sleep!), safety, wisdom, evangelism, and for our personal spiritual lives and our relationship, as we will be in separate rooms and closely sharing space with a team for the first weeks and spending very full and active days with little down time throughout the trip. As always, please pray against spiritual warfare for us and for the team and for our days and steps to be directed by the Lord!
We are so blessed by your continued partnership with this work and look forward to sending our love and updates to you from the Land!