[by Amber Pierce, living in Israel with her husband, Daniel and daughter, Lily.

Daniel is the adopted son of Dr. Chuck and Pam Pierce, Glory of Zion Ministries,

Denton and Global Spheres Center, Corinth, Texas.

note: in Scripture, leaven/yeast is symbolic of sin.]

Friday, April 6, 2012

Our lives won't ever be the same after this Passover! I feel I've been turned upside down with intensity of what the Lord is doing in us. Here's a little history from our week. Last week I was reading in Exodus 12 about the Passover. I felt the scripture jumping out at me and more real than ever before. If you read Exodus 12:17 it says, "Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. In the first month you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day. For seven days no yeast is to be found in your houses. And whoever eats anything with yeast in it must be cut from the community of Israel, whether he is an alien or native-born. Eat nothing made with yeast. Wherever you live, you must eat unleavened bread." We are not held captive to the law, but I felt the Lord really wanted us to honor this request this year.

The Lord is requiring more of us this season because He is equipping us like never before! The scripture above talks about being cut off from Israel, and more than anything we want to be connected to Him, His Plan, and His Land! My mother-in-law, Pam, always says faith takes action, and for Daniel and me, we have walked in those words like never before! We entered in and are honoring a traditional Passover as much as I think we can. In Exodus 12:21, God gives us a command that in modern day times seems impossible. "Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover Lamb." 

If you haven't recently read this, I encourage you to read through Exodus 12-20. It's amazing and filled with revelation for this time! All of the Miracles that God did for the Israelites, the way He opened the way, and led them with a pillar by night and a cloud by day! Then He parted the Red Sea! The Passover Seder was actually an act of faith. The Israelites still had some time before they were delivered. But my favorite thing that Moses tells the people in Exodus 14:14 as the war intensifies and it looks impossible by natural circumstances that they will cross over is this, "Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today will never see you again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still."

Exodus 12:3-12 tells us that the head of every family was to take a lamb for their house hold. They were to keep it in their homes for fourteen days, slaughter it and put the blood on their door post. On Wednesday, Daniel went to a Bedouin farm and selected our very precious little lamb.

                                                                                                                                                                                     A Time for the Lamb
We made a bed for him, and fed him apples and lettuce. We fell in love with him and played with him for a short time. He would have made a wonderful pet. He was so innocent. He didn't deserve what was in store for him. 

As hard as it was for us to slaughter that lamb, Daniel cut him at the neck and we watched as his life blood was released. Several believing friends along with some of our Jewish neighbors congregated in the back yard to honor the event and help with the work that followed.

Agnus Dei, qui tolis peccata mundi

Oh Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us!

Grant us your peace.

I had never seen anything like this but I felt the Lord wanted me to walk through it. The disciples were with Jesus until His final moment and I feel the Lord wanted us to encounter, on even a small level, what it must have been like to lose the One they loved so much! And what a sacrifice of the Father to see His own Son slain. I see so much more clearly how true it is that we are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. I am now cooking my very first lamb with a family recipe from my wonderful and very missed mother-in-law (Pam).