Discovering The Jewish Jesus

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: You need to be aware of the energy that surrounds your soul and gain the discernment to learn how to resist that which is coming from the darkness so that you can stay in the light and not yield to the darkness.

Baruch HaShem. I'm excited about this series that we're in that I'm calling The Laws of Resistance. This is the second part in the series, and I encourage you to listen to the first episode as well. I am teaching on something here that I believe can be transformative for so many of you. Once again, I'm calling this the principle or the law of resistance. I want you to consider something with me.

Inside a traditional light bulb, inside the glass, there's a positive and there's a negative pole. In between the positive and the negative pole, there's something that's called a filament. What happens is that energy flows through the filament. The negative is giving, the positive is receiving, but between the positive and negative pole is a filament.

What happens in a light bulb is that when the electrical current is running, the filament is restricting the amount of energy that can flow. It is resisting the electrical flow. As that filament resists the amount of electricity that can flow to the positive pole, as that filament resists the electrical flow, heat is generated, and that heat is what creates the light inside a light bulb. The point that I'm stressing here is resistance creates heat and creates light.

Think about another example here. When you think about a rocket returning from space, when a rocket has gone to the moon, for example, and now is seeking to enter back into the Earth's atmosphere, when the rocket is coming towards the Earth, it's fine temperature-wise. But once that rocket capsule hits the Earth's atmosphere, suddenly it heats up so badly that special measures have to be taken so that rocket capsule doesn't explode because of the intense heat it experiences when it hits the Earth's atmosphere.

Why is that? Because there's no resistance in outer space. But when the rocket hits the Earth's atmosphere, it hits the molecules of resistance that surround the Earth. Hitting the Earth's atmosphere, it heats up, and again, it has to be specially built so that it won't blow up. Once again, we find that resistance has generated heat and light.

The reason I share with you those two examples is because the same thing happens in the realm of the spirit. When we resist false light, when we resist the forces of darkness, we build up internal heat, internal light, internal power in the Holy Spirit that causes us to overcome and be conquerors for God.

Think, for example, about Jesus. Jesus goes to the Jordan River to be baptized by Yochanan, John the Immerser, John the Baptist. The spirit of the Lord appears above his head and the voice comes from heaven, "You are my beloved son, and in you I am well pleased." Immediately after that experience, the scripture tells us that the spirit of God, the spirit of Elohim himself, led Yeshua into the wilderness where the devil came and tried to trap him, tried to seduce him, tried to tempt him by getting him to yield to false light.

Remember, Jesus fasted for 40 days, and what did the devil say to him? The devil said at the end of the fast, "Cause these stones to become bread." He tried to seduce Jesus into taking authority outside of the Father's will. Notice how the devil appealed to Jesus' desire to be fulfilled from his hunger pains, but he did it with a false light. Jesus had to resist the devil's false light.

After Jesus resisted the devil's false light, the Bible says Yeshua came out of the wilderness in the power of the spirit. He was led into the wilderness by the spirit, but it was only after he resisted the law of resistance. It was only after Yeshua resisted the false light, the light that tried to fulfill Yeshua's desires through illicit means, it was only after Yeshua had resisted the energy of the darkness that he was empowered to come out and minister.

The same is true for you and me. We need to learn how to resist the darkness that always disguises itself as an angel of light. I want you to hear me when I say to you, you need to be aware of the energy that surrounds your soul and gain the discernment to learn how to resist that which is coming from the darkness so that you can stay in the light and not yield to the darkness.

Let me give you some examples. How many times have you had a really good day with God? You're praying, you feel really connected, the prayers that are coming from your soul, you know that they're originating from the Holy Spirit. You're confident God's going to answer those prayers because you know that the prayers that you're praying are biblical. You're praying that God would lead you into a deeper experience with him. You're praying that you'd have a deeper recognition of the Holy Spirit's presence in your life. You're just feeling really connected to the Lord.

Then you go to sleep. You wake up the next day and all of a sudden you wake up the next day and you feel totally disconnected for no reason at all. Have you ever had this experience? You went to sleep feeling connected to God, and for no reason at all that you're aware of, you wake up the next day feeling disconnected. All of a sudden God feels far away from you. It seems like he's not near. You feel discouraged. You don't know why. You feel depressed. You don't know why. You feel hopeless. You don't know why.

What are you feeling? You're feeling the darkness. You're feeling the darkness. What we need to do is to resist the darkness. Whether the darkness comes to us in a way that's trying to falsely fulfill our desire or whether the darkness just comes to us in the form of darkness itself, either way, we need to practice the law of resistance.

If I wake up the next day after feeling really connected to God and then I wake up the next day and God feels far away, what do I do? I have to resist feeling hopeless. I have to resist doubt. I have to resist feeling sad. I have to resist the concept that God is far away. Instead, what I do is what I always do. I do my devotional in the morning. I pray. I talk to God. Though I feel nothing, I put one foot in front of the other.

I still seek to control the thoughts that I think about. I still seek to control my attitude. I still seek to show love and serve people, even though I feel nothing. What am I doing? I'm resisting the force of darkness that is trying to make me feel that I'm alone, separated from God. I resist that rather than yielding to it, and I keep on pressing on in the light in the spirit of God, doing what's right.

Through resisting the darkness and continuing to do what's right, though I feel nothing, you know what happens? Our spirit is then built up. Our spiritual muscle, you could say, is built up. When we get strong, we'll be happy, even as Jesus resisted the force of darkness when he was in the wilderness. So too, we need to learn how to resist the negative energy of the devil.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Discovering the Jewish Jesus with Rabbi Schneider, and he'll be right back. You might be aware that America celebrates the 250th anniversary of its birth as a nation this year, and Rabbi has a special message that he wants to share with you for this historic event. Join us on YouTube, Wednesday, July 1st at noon Eastern Time. He's going to talk about America's founding, why it matters, and how to respond as we look to the future. Just search for Discovering the Jewish Jesus on YouTube, July the 1st.

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Rabbi K.A. Schneider: I just talked about resisting the darkness when you can feel that it's dark, when you feel sad, when you feel alone, when you're tempted to be short with somebody, when you're tempted to show anger when it's not right to show anger. You have to resist that energy. You have to resist that impulse, and you have to instead do what's right, not because you feel like doing what's right, because you're rather choosing to do what's right.

God never said whosoever feels. He said whosoever will. We can't always control how we feel, just like we can't control whether it's sunny outside or whether it's cloudy outside. We can't control that. What we can control is what we do, what we choose.

First of all, we said we need to reject and resist the negative energy, the types that I've just described: anger, lust, being selfish. We resist, and we choose to do what's right though we don't feel like it. But the other point that I want to make is we need to resist when the enemy, when the powers of darkness come to us making us believe if we do what they are enticing us to do, we will somehow be fulfilled and be happy.

Every single person is born in this world with a desire to be happy, with a desire to be fulfilled. We were born this way. Even as in the physical world, you think about energy, you think about electricity. There's a positive pole in electricity. If you look, for example, at your car battery, you notice there was a positive pole where there was a plus on it and there was a negative pole where there was a minus on it. You had to connect the wires right so you didn't get a big spark and blow your battery up.

If you think about electricity, there's a positive and then there's a negative. This same truth or parallel exists in the spiritual world and in creation. We see electricity in the physical world, but remember, that which we see in the physical world is a shadow or a type of what exists in the invisible realm.

In the invisible realm, there's also a positive. The positive in the invisible realm is, first of all, God. He's the creator. He's the plus factor. From him and through him and to him are all things. God is the giver. In him is life. God is the giver. He created mankind to be the receivers. That's why the church is called the bride of Christ. We're called the bride of Christ why? Because we're the receivers.

Father is the giver. We're the bride. We're the receiver. Yeshua is the giver. The church is the receiver. It doesn't have to do with sexuality. It simply has to do with the fact that God is the giver and we're the receivers. Human beings have been created in his own image to receive. That's why God created us, so that we could receive him because he wants to share himself with us.

God is bliss. He feels so good. He's love, and his desire is to share himself with us so that we can partake of him and feel like he does. God created us to be receivers. He created us to be people that desire. We want to be fulfilled. We have deep desire, this inner longing, this pining, this great desire from the bottom of our soul to be fulfilled. We have a longing. We're the negative pole in the electrical current.

What we have to do is we have to learn how to resist trying to have our desire, our craving fulfilled by yielding to false light. God is the true light. We have to resist trying to have this deep need we have, this deep desire, we have to resist trying to fulfill it by yielding to false light.

Isn't that how Satan deceived even the Garden of Eden? He appealed to her through the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She looked at it. It looked good to the eyes. She thought it would be good to her taste buds. She desired it. She thought it would fulfill her. Satan appealed to her pride. She thought it would make her wise. The reason that she ate of the tree was because she was trying to have desire fulfilled. When she tried to fulfill her desires by yielding to a false light, she ended up falling into darkness, and obviously, it's had an effect on humankind ever since.

The truth is you and I are in the same battle today. We have a deep desire to be fulfilled. What we have to do is practice resisting the forces of darkness and the false light so that we don't try to fulfill ourselves with false light. False light is very powerful. False light is so powerful that upon first tasting it, it feels more satisfactory than the true light.

That's why people get hooked on drugs because the experience they have on drugs feels better to them than being sober. But the after-effect of the drug is a wasted life, families destroyed, children ending up being dysfunctional because the parent was a drug addict or an alcoholic. The key to understanding how to resist the false light is to be able to have the spiritual discernment to recognize that it is false.

Although it might feel better in the beginning, an illicit relationship, an experience on drugs or alcohol, trying to get rich quick, although at first it seems more fulfilling, it feels more intense, it's like a light bulb that gives out a big shout of light right before it goes out. Right before it's done, it gets out a big bam of light and then it's over. That's what false light does. It's really powerful at first, but it ends in death.

As I begin to close, I want to really bring this home. This concept of resisting false light applies even to the way we release our emotions and our words. A lot of times, for example, things happen that we feel angry about. Sometimes the anger feels so strong, it feels so intense that every part of us is screaming we just want to release the anger. We just want to let it all out.

We want to scream. We want to cuss. We want to take out the anger on the person that made us feel angry. We feel that it's going to make us feel better. We feel like we've got to release the anger, we've got to vent it, and if we vent it and release it, we're going to feel better. Let me ask you this question. After you vent the anger, do you feel better?

Five minutes later, we don't feel better. Maybe for a second. Maybe for a second when we gave in to the false light that made us feel that we just have to say it, we just have to get it out, we just say the person deserves it. We feel it too strong, it has to be said. We think it's going to make us feel better by venting it, but we feel death afterwards. We feel remorse afterwards.

The principle of resistance has to do with resisting giving ourselves over to false energy, energy that's coming to us as false light, energy like anger, energy that makes us want to speak things that shouldn't be spoken. We have to practice resistance. We resist releasing anger. We resist speaking words of anger.

We resist speaking words that you might want to say that would make you closely intimate with somebody that you shouldn't be closely intimate with. You may be dying to say something to someone because you feel so close to that person. You want to be close to that person, but you know what? That person isn't yours. They're not meant to be yours. They're not meant for you to be close with. You have to resist saying something. You have to resist the energy, and we have to remain in the word of God and abiding in Jesus.

I've found in my own life that through resisting anger, my soul was transformed. I'm a very driven person, and so when things get in the way of me going where I want to go, it frustrates me. I just feel anger inside. When I was younger, I didn't have the discernment to recognize you need to resist that feeling. You need to resist releasing words of anger.

As God began to teach me and show me that I needed to take responsibility for my anger, that I couldn't blame it on circumstances, that I couldn't blame it on people, when I started resisting the anger, my soul was elevated and transformed.

I want to close with this illustration. Consider a rocket that takes off from NASA towards the moon. As the rocket takes off, it gets closer and closer to the sun. It's going towards the moon, but as it's heading towards the moon, it eventually gets closer to the sun. Yet once that rocket gets past the Earth's atmosphere, it doesn't see the sun's light anymore. In other words, it can see the sun, but outer space is black.

Have you ever seen a picture of outer space? It's black. It doesn't make sense. Why would a rocket have light on Earth and the Earth is farther away from the sun, but yet when that rocket gets closer to the sun past the Earth's atmosphere, space is just black? Why is that? Closer to the sun but it's black.

It's because the rays of the sun have no resistance in outer space. In order for the rays of the sun to be seen, they have to hit something that resists them. When the rays of the sun hit the Earth's atmosphere, the atmosphere that surrounds the Earth has molecules in it, and when the rays of the sun hit those molecules which are resistance, light then can be seen.

The same thing is true in our lives. God has ordained it to be that for the Holy Spirit to radiate light through our lives, we must resist. We must resist the forces of darkness, thereby strengthening the power of the Holy Spirit operating through our lives. Through resisting, the power of the Holy Spirit is built into our soul, and we shine as the lights of Jesus in this world, ascending into his strength, his power, and his victory. Jesus said he that overcomes will inherit the paradise of God. This world is not meant to fulfill our needs. This world is meant to fight in. You and I are soldiers of God. Let's resist this false light and let's overcome in Yeshua's name.

Guest (Male): There's no breakthrough in life without breakthrough in our relationship with the Lord. Listen what Father said to us in the book of Malachi chapter three, verse number seven. "Return to me and I will return to you," says the Lord. And then the hearers asked, "Well, how are we going to return?" And then the Lord said in the next verse, "In tithes and offerings."

You see, when we surrender our hearts to Father, we open up in a way that his power and light and life can be poured into us. But if we don't trust him and honor him, then we close ourselves off from receiving the power that leads to breakthrough. This is one of the reasons honoring the Lord with our tithes and offerings is so important. Beloved, let's not short-circuit our relationship with HaShem by refusing to trust him and honor him with our tithes and offerings. It's important. Let's be obedient. We'll be blessed for it.

Amen. And if the Lord is leading you to give to Discovering the Jewish Jesus, a gift of any amount today, would you call us at 800-777-7835? And here's something also worth keeping in mind. This ministry is fulfilling the Bible's mandate to bring the gospel to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. Right now, we're reaching Jewish people around the globe with the good news of their Messiah and our Messiah.

Your faithfulness helps create the spiritual climate for the Lord's return. Jesus said he won't come back until the Jewish people say, "Baruch Haba B'shem Adonai." That means, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." So would you join with us, encourage Jewish men and women to take that step of faith by giving online? Go to discoveringthejewishjesus.com. Or if you'd like to give through text message, just text the keyword GIVE to the phone number 88777. When you do, you'll get a text right back with an easy link to click where you can give right there easily on your mobile phone. Now, here's Rabbi Schneider to close today's program with God's sacred and special blessing.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: In the book of Numbers chapter 6, we find a personal blessing from God our Father. This blessing should touch our hearts because it's so personal. Father God wants to intimately bless you, so receive his blessing into your life today with gladness and an open heart.

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 ones, his peace. And now in Hebrew.

Yevarekhekha Yahweh veyishmerekha. Yaer Yahweh panav eleykha vikhunekha. Yissa Yahweh panav eleykha veyasem lekha shalom.

God bless you and Shalom.

Dustin Roberts: I'm your host Dustin Roberts, and this program is produced and sponsored by Discovering the Jewish Jesus. Join us again when Rabbi Schneider takes us to the Old Testament to explain the Abrahamic covenant and how it reveals the security of God's promises. That's Friday on Discovering the Jewish Jesus.