I want to tell you a story.
God created people
because he loves stories.
So I'll tell you my story.
My name is Stuart
and I'm a New York Jew.
I'm proud to say I'm born in Flatbush
which next being born in Israel
is the second best thing.
I grew up at the intersection of
the Christian and Jewish worlds
because my father was from
a very Orthodox family,
my mother was
the sixth child in a Sicilian family,
and his family was just plain thrilled
as you can well imagine.
Even though my mother
converted to Judaism, she was always
considered to be second best.
So I grew up in the midst of
this dissonance between
the Christian and Jewish worlds.
And my whole religious mentality
at that time was
When we all drop dead,
we'll find out who was right.
My first career was in music
I went to a place called
Manhattan School of Music
and one day a friend of mine
invited me to a discussion group.
She said,
"Look, It's about the New Testament."
"I know you're Jewish, but..."
"you might have some interesting opinions."
When I cracked open the New Testament
I kept on bumping into Passover,
which was rather surprising.
I did not expect to find
anything Jewish in this book
but I did.
I assumed that it was
one of those books that
I saw nuns reading on the subway
Something written in Latin...
It was none of those things.
But besides its native Jewishness,
I remember reading when Yeshua said
that it's not what goes into a man
that defiles him
It's what comes out of the man's heart
that defiles him, because out of the heart
comes fornication, incest, murder, wickedness
etc etc, these come from within
and they defile a man.
And I remember when I read that,
it makes so much sense to me
That the problem of evil in the world
is not out there in the air
in the ozone, in the system...
The problem of evil comes from
the heart of man.
Eventually,
in the course of my reading this book,
Yeshua said this:
"I have come that you might have life"
"and have it more abundantly."
That blew me away.
And it was extraordinary to me
that Yeshua's words
directly addressed
my own felt need.
When you pop open the scriptures,
you pop open our Torah
or the Tenach, the Jewish Bible
On every page you find people
who are interacting with God
in the context of a living relationship.
What do I mean when I talk about
having a relationship with God
a relationship with God through Yeshua?
What is this relationship stuff?
I've got to use a word that many people
don't like to use
and that word is experience.
That's what I mean by relationship.
It's an experiential linkage
with the Living God.
So I would ask people, where is
the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob?
Where is the God to whom the patriarchs
and the matriarchs talked?
Who had this this two-way relationship?
Are you interested in
pursuing the possibility
of this two-way relationship
Being a reality in your life?
in my experience
and experience of many people I know
to our astonishment
when we encountered Yeshua of Nazareth
and began to think of Him at a different way
than we have been brought up to think of Him,
we all have discovered that
this two-way relationship came alive
Yeshua said of himself something.
He said, "I am the door".
Now many people treat Yeshua
like he's the exit from Jewish life.
I think that's wrong.
He is the door for me into a more
passionate engagement with Jewish life
and also, a total passionate engagement
with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Don't imagine that people like me
who come to believe in Yeshua
that somebody gave us some kind of a
fancy dancy presentation and explanation
And we signed on the dotted line
because we were gullible
and we were easy to persuade
that's not the way it goes.
What's missing from that scenario
is the element of encounter
Moses had his burning bush
Abraham had God saying, "Lech lecha!"
Leave the land of your birth and go
to the land I will show you
These great patriarchs and matriarchs of Israel
of Israel had experiences with God
sometimes spaced apart by many years.
But they kept on following God because
they could not deny their experience.
Each of us in the context of our own lives
has encountered God in a way
that we didn't encounter Him before,
in a way that we cannot ignore
without denying ourselves.
I'm talking about
Transformational experiences
that move our lives forward.
I'm not telling you to make
my experience your experience.
I'm telling you that God will give you
experiences of Himself
that are sufficient for your belief.
I can't really explain it to you
in a way that your experience can but
if you can come to the point
where you can say,
"What if it is true?"
Then just maybe you will taste and see.
But when the most remarkable person
who ever lived says,
"I've come that you might have life"
"and have it more abundantly"
Then you got to take a second look.
I did, and I'm finding that that
life is more abundant.
It's life with a capital 'L'.
And it's very different from life without Him.
Trust me - better yet, trust Him!
Don't trust me - taste and see.