how did you first become aware of Jewish roots?

[HelenaZF]

Here's my story......



I had no awareness of the concept of our Jewish roots as a new Christian. It was after being baptized in the Holy Spirit for a while that the Lord began to awaken me to the whole realization that the church did not just spring up out of nowhere in Acts. Here's how it happened for me.



I was in a women's bible study that met once a week. One of the song leaders had been impressed by the Lord to pray for Israel when she stumbled on an abandoned Jewish cemetery in one of her prayer walks in the woods. She formed an Israel folk dance group and invited me to participate. I had grown up doing Polish folk dancing, so this seemed like another fun activity, and enthusiastically joined the group. I soon learned that there was more to it...the dances were prayers, and worship, and because of the leaders love for Israel, I wanted to know more and understand more as well.



She was also a bible teacher and would go to various house bible studies and do a presentation of Moses Tabernacle with a scale model that her husband had built for her on a 4x8 piece of plywood. She asked me to go with her and help her lead a music worship time before her teachings. We would load that heavy model into the back of her stationwagon and take it into churches and people's homes. That's when I began to learn messianic songs and learned to love the Tabernacle. It seemed each time the lesson was presented, God revealed something new in it for me. It was the beginning of awareness of all things Hebraic for me.



Interestingly, nearly 20 years later, I found myself involved in a ministry that toured the country presenting an evening of worship called "The Ark of His Presence". For that presentation, I built a traveling set of the <URL url="http://zionfirefriends.com/index.php?showtopic=1624">Tabernacle furniture, and we would recreate the Tabernacle in each venue we visited. I didn't create a menorah, though, because we used the <URL url="http://www.zionfire.com/SevenSpirits.html">Seven Spirits banners as the candlestick of the Tabernacle. The program explained how God fulfilled the prophetic meanings of each furniture piece through Yeshua and even into the Tabernacle of David and the heavenly Tabernacle in Revelation.



It occurred to me during this time, that the last 20 years, God had been preparing me to do this presentation. We had taken banners to the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem to participate in the Feast pageantry several times. Even the building of the Seven Spirits banners was done years previously....but their destiny was for this presentation. It all came together in "The Ark of His Presence." That script and pageantry brought people face to face with the Jewishness of Jesus, and the thread of the Covenant that stretched seamlessly from Moses to the modern believers and even into Eternity. It was an incredible, out-of-time experience to be a part of that. I don't know that I will ever participate in anything again that will have that same sense of eternal significance.

[restorah]

Interestingly, I came to my Roots, through Worship and Dance. It was a wonderful experience where I was immersed into praise and began to understand the significance of worship and the difference between the two. Moreover, YHVH had allowed me to attend a Messianic congregation for about two years, then brought my wife there. At that point, it all came together, as we walked together and learned about Torah and who Yeshua is as the bases of our faith in contrast to what we had been taught prior.



I did study prior to beginning dance, pageantry and worship; but it was not until the worship element was applied that it all made sense and made it from my head to my heart. Thank you Yah!