Welcome back, friends! If you read yesterday’s post, you know One for Israel is doing amazing things for the Kingdom of God in Israel!

The only Messianic seminary in Israel, Israel College of the Bible (operated by OFI) recently equipped and sent out a new class of trained ministers (pastors, women’s ministry leaders, youth leaders, etc) to go out into the land of Israel and beyond to share the Good News of Jesus! Here is the report I received a few days ago:

READY TO SERVE

Israel is a complicated country, and life on this earth is full of great challenges. It’s no picnic: we are in a spiritual battle. We seek to prepare all those who come to study with us with the tools to read and apply the Bible in all the hard realities of life—the good and the bad. Dr. Seth Postell writes about the graduation address given by the only Arab pastor of a Messianic congregation in Israel, Shmuel Aweida:

And now, Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in You (Ps 39:7[8 in the Hebrew]).

“My dear friend Shmuel Aweida is a gifted pastor, and I have always enjoyed listening to him preach. The other day, however, I heard him preach a sermon on Psalm 39:8: Our hope is in the Lord and in absolutely nothing else. There was something qualitatively different about this sermon. It was… well… incredibly real. And because it was so real, it was incredibly powerful. Why? Because God allowed Shmuel to experience one of the most difficult years of his life this past year. But as a consequence, Shmuel not only dove extraordinarily deep into the unfathomable depths of this verse, he was also able to bring others (including me) with him. We can never mine the riches of God’s Word by analyzing it in a laboratory. God’s Word only becomes real to us when we study and apply it in the crucible of life. I’m sorry my dear friend has had to suffer so much this past year. But yesterday in Shmuel’s sermon, I was privileged to feast on the fruit.”

How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! (Ps 139:17)

Shmuel Aweida himself graduated from our Bible college after taking part in our MA program for senior pastors several years ago. We were privileged to have him come to share his wisdom and experience with us, and encourage our graduates that no matter what comes to us in this life, we can lean heavily on God and His Word—it is faithful and true.