When I was a child in the 1950's there were very few Messianic Jews in the country. As children we felt like two solitary bushes in a vast desert, without other believing children to identify and play with. We came from a family of Holocaust survivors; normally such families cling to each other, due to their massive losses. However, when our extended family discovered that my parents had become believers in Jesus, we were cut off, and we children were kept away from the only three cousins we had in the world, deepening our isolation.
What is more, we were the only children in a small congregation full of adults, most of them over fifty years old.
Amazingly, our hometown held a potential solution to our problem: it was home to another, larger Israeli believing family – a great rarity in those days. Sadly, we could have nothing to do with that family. The reason? Ten years before, the pastor of our fellowship and their pastor had a personal falling out . . . and so, we two children spent our childhood in total isolation from believing peers.
This stronghold of the enemy - offended and estranged brothers - is not new in the land. Rabbinic tradition says that the Second Temple was destroyed because of baseless hatred among brothers. But even though the body of Christ has grown amazingly since my childhood - not only in numbers but also in quality-unforgiveness is a stronghold we have yet to overthrow. The land is full of hurting brothers and sisters, people who once were building the kingdom of heaven together, but are no longer walking together.
It is Satan's ancient strategy to "divide and conquer," because he knows a divided army is a weak army. But the body of Christ has mighty spiritual weapons to meet the challenge: prayer and fasting, love, and the great power of unconditional forgiveness. Forgiveness is costly, as I had personally discovered, but the Lord is committed to that process, because he is preparing a bride "without stain or wrinkle." He knows that it is hard for us, and he will pay the price of forgiveness within us if we will let him, if we will include him in the process. Forgiveness bears the highest priority in God's eyes, more than any ministry we may serve in: "Be tolerant with one another and forgive one another whenever any of you has a complaint against someone else. You must forgive one another just as the Lord has forgiven you. And to all these qualities add love, which binds all things together in perfect unity." (Colossians 3:13-14).