Please Read this FIRST: On this site we prefer to use the actual Name of our loving
Heavenly Father as it was written in the Word, and thus
you will note that we will use the Four Letter “Memorial Name”
of 
- YHVH, which is pronounced as YaHVaH or YaHWaH. In addition
we will also use our Heavenly Father’s attribute/title, which is Elohim
rather than “God,” which sadly is the name of a pagan god. In
addition we also love to use the actual and real Name of our beloved Messiah
which is 
- Yahushua or Yahshua in short, for
this is our Saviours original Hebrew Name as given to Him at birth in
Why
is it that Believer’s so often Suffer
Or “How Dry is Your
Looking at a variety of Scriptures from the “Tanach” and “Brit
Chadashah”
Part Two
Beloved, the
question we asked in Part One is “Why is it that believer’s so
often suffer,” and this has been so often asked of me and there is a valid
answer to this question, which I believe has already been partially answered.
Yet to fully comprehend this we will look further into the blessed Word of
YaHVaH Elohim, blessed be His Sanctified Name, to obtain a full understanding!
I did relate
the powerful story regarding the prophet Eliyahu -
As you
continue to read this study, I ask beloved, that you to spend some time in
prayer and ask our Heavenly Father in Messiah Yahushua’s blessed Name for
guidance and discernment that you may gain much and know what is right when it
comes to what is being taught! For, I firmly believe that we should always pray
before reading anything and seek his guidance if what we are reading comes from
Him or not, and that is regardless who the teacher is and that includes myself!
I pray that Part
One has been a blessing to you and that you will have found something
therein that you can take and apply to your life and turn around those
“Dry brooks” and make the waters flow again, and remember what I
stated at the end of Part One; our loving Saviour Yahushua is always there and
with us, and remember what He said;
“So I say to you, ask, and it will be
given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you, for
everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds and to him who knocks it
will be opened.”
The only thing
we do have to remember is that sometimes our prayers may not be answered right
there and then, and there is always a reason for this. Often, it is we
ourselves that must first make some changes in our own lives and become more
obedient and start reading, understanding the Word and listening, for YaHVaH
Elohim may well be speaking to you one very blessed day, just as He did to me,
back in 1977, but I had to wait a very long time for this, and I had to be
ready to receive and act upon it!
We have been Chosen by Elohim from
Eternity:
If you think
about it carefully and ask the question; if the hardships have been necessary
to prepare us for eternal life, then they should really be looked upon as a
part of
“Behold, I have refined you, but not as
silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.” Yeshayahu - Isaiah 48:10.
What a great
truth this is, for we all in some way have and are being tested, the question
is will we stand the Sanctified test? Therefore just as the Scriptures so
clearly teach us, there should be a great difference in our attitude if we can
only understand suffering as a sign of Elohim’s special love and choice
for us to spend eternity with Him, for we already know that He loved us before
we were born, just as the Apostle Shaul - Paul so clearly said;
“He chose us in Him before the
foundation of the world, that we should be Sanctified and without blame before
Him in love.”
Ephesians 1:4.
Beloved, can
you even fathom the great depth of this exciting and amazing truth? You are
that special single person upon whom Elohim has placed through eternity His
Divine wisdom to perfect a detailed plan in order to receive ultimate
salvation. And as you submit to Him, He will certainly perform only what has
been determined as essential to carry out His plan for your life. If that plan
allows for heartaches here and there and even apparent disasters from time to
time,
Does this sound
like a contrived explanation, for the problems of pain and afflictions in the
faithful lives? I am sure that to those who simply will not believe in the
existence of Elohim the Creator of Heaven and the Earth and all that is
therein, will without doubt ridicule all the aforementioned statements! They
will scoff at the idea that a Loving, Omnipotent Deity would not intervene to
spare His followers from all trouble and pain. There are times that even the
faithful may be hard-pressed to justify the apparent arbitrary manner in which
some suffer whilst others seem to be spared. How can we respond to the
accusation that a just Elohim would protect all His people from all trouble at
all times? Let me commence by saying that it is possible that Elohim could ensure
that nothing painful would ever happen for He has the power to prevent
accidents. Indeed,
“The
Elohim of all grace, who called us to His Eternal Glory by Messiah Yahushua, after you have suffered a while, perfect,
establish, strengthen, and settle you.” 1
If it was true
that a faithful believer could be completely be protected, I could see everyone
rush into the camp of the faithful just to be protected from trouble of the
flesh and all outside influences, in fact the world would literally be
compelled to follow the Messiah only for the physical purpose and certainly not
any Spiritual reasons.
But beloved,
as we know well Elohim does not build His kingdom upon appeals based on those
selfish, being the “I, Me, and My-Self” type motives, just to be
protected from harm.
“YHVH knows how to deliver the godly out
of temptations and to reserve the unjust under
punishment for the Day of Judgment and especially
those who walk according to the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and despise
authority. They are presumptuous and self-willed.” 2
Nature of His Love:
Physically,
then, is the physical life of the faithful in Him does not alter and thus they
are able to suffer, and they do in the same way a non-believer in Messiah
Yahushua suffers? Of course, the answer to that question should be carefully
qualified. Elohim reveals no partiality in the way He permits the natural law
to affect all mankind. Any difference that enters the picture must be based
upon the individual’s response rather than any difference Elohim makes
between categories or classes. This is another way of saying that no one in the
world can prevent troubles coming into his life, but he can decide what those
troubles do to his life after they happen. The Believer meets trouble by
surrendering to the will of Elohim; however, we are called on to pray for the
sick for healing in the Name of Yahushua the Messiah, blessed is He!
Such a
trusting faith cannot only bring power to bear the suffering with fewer
traumas, but also, in certain cases to be healed of the affliction, Praise Him!
This response of Elohim to the faith of an individual has nothing to do with
favouring a class of people. Elohim is still operating within the framework of
law, but this time Spiritual law instead of the natural. That law is not
limited to any nationality or race, but is based on your
faith in Yahushua the Messiah and not in any other!
All who
approach Him in faith will tap into the same reservoir of Divine power. Even
though
The Question is, Can Hardships Help
Us?
The amazing
truth is that there those who simply cannot mature until they have been
buffeted by some hardships and opposition? There is no doubt, when we think of
Moshe - Moses spending forty years in the wilderness before Elohim could use
him for leading Israel out of bondage, now that would have been a very hard
time for a man who was once a great prince of Egypt! We also marvel at the
years Yochanan -
“Godliness
with contentment is great gain” 1 Timotheos - 1
I believe
Shaul - Paul was being prepared for the Kingdom during those seasons of
solitary confinement, and I believe that he also required a much needed rest
from his long journeys and his wearying oversight of the churches. It is almost
impossible for human beings to recognise the limits of their physical
endurance. Thus they seldom stop in time to prevent collapse due to exhaustion.
A story I read said that a
There are
times that
“Be
still, and know that I am Elohim.” Tehillim - Psalm 46:10.
During days of
slow recovery from surgery, there may have been times when some who discovered
that our blessed Saviour had been closer to us than we ever thought, whilst we
were praying asking for answers, and there may well have been those very
special times when a Divine Appointment may have taken place, and you may not
even have known it!
Perhaps only
Elohim understands why pain is often the only thing that can get the attention
of human beings. Never should we blame Elohim when there is something in our
lives that happens that will ultimately draw us to Him. Strange as it may seem
to us, but prosperity, good health, and the smooth sailing of our lives
generally do not attract the soul to Elohim.
There is a
well known story of a man who was imprisoned in a castle tower and as he was
attempting to alert passers by of his dilemma, but people just could not hear
him. Thus he decided that whenever someone was about to pass, he would drop a
gold coin from his pocket to attract their attention. But although they
scrambled about to recover the falling coin, no one ever looked up to see the
plight of the prisoner on the tower. Finally, he managed to break off a piece
of mortar from a wall and he dropped it. As he did this, it hit a man and it
injured him. It was only then, did the man and those who came to help him look
up and they received the alert from the tower above.
Beloved, in
the same way all manner of blessings are taken for granted. Thus, instead of
looking towards the source, we are far too busy gathering more and more from
the world around us. And tragically, all too often it is only when so many are
hurt that they look up and begin to listen to the message, which Elohim has
been trying to communicate with them!
Lets Look for the Reason:
There are so
many things that we can learn from this study, and I pray that you will gain
much from it. Although it has been written in general terms and it may well
apply to you, but also it may apply just in part to all of us, thus we need to
be prayerful and take from it what we need to gain from this work!
After a period
of test,
The faithful
in Him should look for the reason when trials appear. Usually, a new door will
open when one brook dries up. But if the years bring no satisfactory
explanation of tragic loss, then we should always continue to trust Him still.
Someday He will make it plain to us. In the meantime, we are sustained by the
comfort of the One who fully understands our grief’s and sorrows, for
Yahushua became one of us in order that He could experience the very pain that
we suffer, and be a faithful Intercessor for us. Only those who have passed
through that kind of suffering can truly sympathize and communicate with our
hearts. When a grief-stricken mother cried out, “Where was the Almighty
when my daughter died in that car crash?” the answer quietly came back,
“He was at the very same place when YaHVaH Elohim’s Son was
brutally tortured and nailed to the that stake and killed on the stake (cross).”
I believe
beloved, that there is a huge lesson in that answer, for if Elohim would not
intervene to save Yahushua’s life because He saw that great good would
result, then His life and death will have touched others in so many different
ways. I know, I have lost much and I suggest you read my book Dutch Tzedakah,
which is now online in English for it tells the story of how many of Dutch
faithful believers rescued Dutch Jews from the Holocaust, and I am here because
of these wonderful faithful ones. Sadly many of these godly servants in Messiah
were brutally murdered by the Nazis! And as we will know, tragically some six
million Hebrew’s (Children of Israel) were slaughtered by the Nazis.
Yet the
Scriptures very clearly provided us with prophecy, that speak that Israel in
part would reject the Messiah and that they would be dispersed to the four
corners of the earth and the land, of their, what - their “enemies.”
However, even when our Heavenly Father speaks
of punishment, there frequently is a redemptive element for in Vayikra -
Leviticus 26 and Davarim - Deuteronomy 28 and after a certain time
“‘I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste, and your cities will lie in ruins. Then the land will enjoy its Sabbath years all the time that it lies desolate and you are in the country of your enemies; then the land will rest and enjoy its Sabbaths. All the time that it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not have during the Sabbaths you lived in it.’”
“‘You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will devour you.’”
“‘Yet in spite of this, when they are
in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to
destroy them completely, breaking my covenant with them. I am YHVH their
Elohim. But for their sake I will remember the covenant with their ancestors
whom I brought out of
Whilst the prophet Yehechel - Ezekiel
prophesied the resurrection of
And is that
not the reason I could feel the sweet, personal touch of the Father upon my
life during those dark hours of grief? He knew exactly how I felt. He could
minister to me as no human friend could do. Has not my own ability to provide
healing comfort been greatly strengthened because I have shared a similar
sorrow with those who have lost children? Read Yehechel
- Ezekiel chapter37, verses 1 to 5 and 11 to 13, which will clarify what is
stated above. But it is amazing that punishment, in this case being the
punishment of sin of the unfaithful of
A special Note:
I recall when I as a Jewish man had come to know our loving Saviour and so many
christians kept telling me that the Jews had either; “rejected
Thus beloved,
there is much to learn from the Children of Israel and their suffering, yet
Elohim brought them back to their own land after the Holocaust, just as is so
clearly revealed in the many prophecies!
Beloved, the
faithful should have no illusions about the source of afflictions. Sin is the
cause of all suffering in the world today. Elohim is often blamed for doing the
devil’s work. Not one cancer has ever been caused by Elohim. In the
experience of Job we have a perfect picture of
“The righteous cry out, and YHVH hears,
and delivers them out of all their afflictions … YHVH redeems the soul of His
servants: and none of those who trust in Him shall be condemned.”
Tehillim - Psalms 34:19 & 22.
There could be
many reasons why Elohim allows
Can we not see
in this study and its many details therein a possible reason for our own
harassment by that evil one? Does our Heavenly Father allow
In the
meantime, what is the solution? The solution, my friend, is simply to trust the
promise of One who has never failed us yet.
“And we
know that all things work together for good to them that love Elohim, to them
who are the called according to his purpose” Romans 8:28.
The Blessings at Zarephath:
As I already
indicated earlier, there were real blessings at the woman at the well at
Zarephath, for it was amazingly manifold, and far greater and more wonderful
than the brook and ravens at Cherith could ever have been. But it took Elohim
to dry up Cherith before He revealed to Eliyahu for him to go to Zarephath, for this town was also a place of
preparation as Eliyahu -
There is
always the time when everything looks absolutely hopeless. And that happened
with Eliyahu and it will happen to us at some point of time and I suggest that
you read the complete study on Eliyahu - Elijah, which is far more
comprehensive than what I have been able to reveal here in these two pages and
it contains some of the most wonderful and the amazing details of what is about
to occur in Zarephath and believe me, it is simply beyond amazing! Thus it is
really worth reading and I know that you will be richly blessed by it! The LINK is located below.
“Now may YHVH direct your hearts into
the love of Elohim and into the patience of Messiah.” 2 Thessalonians
3:5.
Read the following relevant
studies:
Return to Page One
“Teach me
Your way, O YHVH. I will walk in Your truth.
UNITE MY HEART TO FEAR YOUR NAME!”
Yahushua’s loving
Name!
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