“Hear, O Israel”: The Shema’s call to hear the words of the LORD and obey them resonates with both the ancient Israelites and modern believers in Messiah Yeshua (Christ Jesus). This study of Torah reading עקב Ekev/Eykev (“because,” Deuteronomy 7:12–11:25) underscores the need for humility, reverence and trust in God’s promises over assuming Heaven is blessing based on our righteousness.
In Luke 18:8, Yeshua said that before the Son of Man’s return that “the faith” would be scarce on Earth. From the Greek word for “faith,” pistis, we learn that we need to seek God’s strengthening of the “pillars” that supporting our role as “temples” for God on Earth: trust in God’s promises and justice.
Prayer is one of the ways we communicate with God and this communication is a two-way street. We check what we hear from God and what we say to God via what He’s already said to us through His recorded words in Scripture.
In the secular world, when we send emails to each other, the servers that route these messages around the world have error-checking methods to make sure that the pieces of information received make up the same message that was sent.
On other hand, we are to be persistent in humility, asking the Lord to give us good things and not treating Him like a safe with a stubborn lock to be picked.