During my trip to Israel in late March, I ran into a group of Jewish kids on a field trip in Jerusalem’s tourist area. They were giggling and chatting like a brood of cackling hens, when two of them jumped in front of my camera and asked me to take a picture of them. I did and they skipped off.

With backpacks in tow and ponytail dangling, those kids looked like the kids in my neighborhood; they looked normal to me. But their chaperone did not.

The 21-year-old wore a pair of blue jeans with a dark-colored jacket; a bracelet and something else–a high-powered assault rifle strapped to her shoulder. The weapon was longer than the arms that carried it.

My tour guide, Tsion Ben David, told me that it is a law in Israel that when students in groups of 20 or more go on a field trip or tour they must be accompanied by an armed escort. The young woman I saw was once a soldier in the Israeli army.

He also told me that when Israeli children turn 18, they are required to join the army. Boys must serve their country for a minimum of three years, and girls are required to put in two years.

When I looked into my viewfinder to take a picture of the young woman, it became clear to me why I was there. As a believer in the Lord Jesus, I have an obligation to pray for Israel and stand with its people in any way I can. That’s why I am the editor of Standing With Israel. I want the record in heaven to reflect my commitment to God’s chosen people.

I didn’t feel the least bit afraid during my pilgrimage in the Holy Land, but Israel is under the constant threat of attack. We Christians may not wield semi-automatic weapons, but we can pray. I believe prayer is one of the believer’s most powerful weapons and when we use it for God’s purposes, He responds.

When we cover Israel in prayer, we cover ourselves too, and God promises to bless us for our efforts. Genesis 12:3 says, “I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (NKJV).

Let’s pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

Valerie G. Lowe is the editor of Standing With Israel e-newsletter. Below are photos of children she met who were on a field trip with their armed escort.

This week, moms across the country will be showered with gifts and heart-felt words from their loved ones in recognition of Mother’s Day. I’m glad someone thought to set aside the second Sunday in May to honor the faithful women who love and care for their families.

Decades ago gospel singer Shirley Caesar penned a song that I believe characterizes the depth of a mother’s love—and God’s love for us. No Charge is a song about a young boy who charges his mom a fee every time he completes his chores or helps out around the house.

For mowing the lawn, $5
Taking out the trash, $1

Running errands, 50 cents
Making his own bed, $1
“Playing” with his brother, 25 cents

The boy includes a few more chores to the list, adds it up, and hands his mother a bill for $14.75. Had that been my mother and me, she would have told me to sit down and be quiet—or else!

But the woman responds to her son the way I believe Jesus responds to us.

“For the nine months I carried you, growing inside me, no charge / For the nights I sat up with you, doctored you, prayed for you, no charge / For the time and the tears and the cost through the years, there is no charge … / For the nights filled with dread and the worries ahead, no charge / For advice and the knowledge and the cost of your college, no charge / … When you add it all up / The full cost of my love is no charge.”

The Bible says for God so loved the world that He gave His only Son (see John 3:16). The Son, in turn, gave His life for us and paid the price for sin. So be encouraged as you render selfless service to your family. Jesus is your role model, and He is pleased to know you are following in His footsteps.

Happy Mother’s Day!

This week, moms across the country will be showered with gifts and heart-felt words from their loved ones in recognition of Mother’s Day. I’m glad someone thought to set aside the second Sunday in May to honor the faithful women who love and care for their families.

Decades ago gospel singer Shirley Caesar penned a song that I believe characterizes the depth of a mother’s love—and God’s love for us. No Charge is a song about a young boy who charges his mom a fee every time he completes his chores or helps out around the house.

For mowing the lawn, $5
Taking out the trash, $1
Running errands, 50 cents
Making his own bed, $1
“Playing” with his brother, 25 cents

The boy includes a few more chores to the list, adds it up, and hands his mother a bill for $14.75. Had that been my mother and me, she would have told me to sit down and be quiet—or else!

But the woman responds to her son the way I believe Jesus responds to us.

“For the nine months I carried you, growing inside me, no charge / For the nights I sat up with you, doctored you, prayed for you, no charge / For the time and the tears and the cost through the years, there is no charge … / For the nights filled with dread and the worries ahead, no charge / For advice and the knowledge and the cost of your college, no charge / … When you add it all up / The full cost of my love is no charge.”

The Bible says for God so loved the world that He gave His only Son (see John 3:16). The Son, in turn, gave His life for us and paid the price for sin. So be encouraged as you render selfless service to your family. Jesus is your role model, and He is pleased to know you are following in His footsteps.

Happy Mother’s Day!

British Midland Airways Limited (BMI) reportedly omitted Israel from in-flight charts on flights bound for the Holy Land, according toTimes Online.

“Passengers were shocked to discover that Israel had been wiped off the map by Britain’s BMI airline, which omitted the Jewish state from its digital charts on flights from London to Tel Aviv. Neither Jerusalem nor Tel Aviv itself, which is Israel’s largest city, were shown on the airline’s in-flight map.” To read more, click here.

The path to the higher realms of the Spirit has always led through the barren wilderness. It is there we realize the desperate hunger and thirst within that only God can satisfy.

Read Ps. 42, Ps. 63:1-5, Is. 43:16-21, Jer. 29:11-13, Acts 2

Heart Issue

Greater revelation brings a greater desire to please God. Are you contented with what He has revealed to you about Himself? Do you fear the responsibilities that will come with more knowledge? Can God trust you to trust Him?

Prayer Focus

Father, where there is little hunger for You, provoke us. Shake us out of our complacency and into the reality of our dire need for more of Your presence, power and anointing. To every trembling heart, Lord, manifest Your comfort and peace.

Bring an assurance of Your strength and Your enabling, which will undergird us in every calling and test. Help us not to shrink back from fear or give in to weariness. Empower us to press on and possess all that You have for us. Amen.

Brenda J. Davis is acquisitions editor for Creation House.

Vowing that it will “never forget,” a California church is today unveiling an interactive exhibit honoring the 6 million Jews who died during the Holocaust.

Built by Cornerstone Church in Fresno, the Holocaust Experience will guide visitors through scenes of 12 major events that took place between 1933 and 1945. The scenes span from the rise of Adolf Hitler to Kristallnacht, or “the Night of Broken Glass,” when nearly 1,000 synagogues were set on fire across Germany, to Hitler’s decision to execute genocide as “the final solution to the Jewish question.”

The exhibit, which will be on display until Sunday, is housed in the church’s 10,000-square-foot educational facility and cost nearly $10,000 to build.

“What we want people to come away with is, hopefully, to experience something emotionally after seeing these depictions,” said Jim Franklin, pastor of 3,000-member Cornerstone Church.

“People need to be aware of what happened so we will not repeat it,” he said.

Franklin, a longtime supporter of Israel and Fresno director of Christians United for Israel, said he was inspired to build the memorial after hearing Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad call for Israel to be “wiped off the map.”

“I said, ‘I’ve heard these types of rantings before,'” Franklin told Charisma. “They were reminiscent of Adolf Hitler and his desire to extinguish the Jews.”

After talking with his teenage son, Franklin said he realized that younger generations may not be fully aware of what took place during the Holocaust. “If we’re not aware of [the atrocities], then we, especially with what we’re hearing in the world climate today, we could possibly repeat those,” Franklin said.

Using nearly 100 actors from the church, which is housed in a historic Fresno theater, the Holocaust Experience begins at an induction center, complete with Nazi soldiers stationed at guard towers.

Visitors then view a documentary showing how Hitler rose to power and move through a series of scenes, including a depiction of the Warsaw Ghetto that features actual video footage and a reconstructed prison train car featuring the recorded account of a Jewish rabbi who at age 8 rode one of the trains to Auschwitz.

The exhibit also includes scenes depicting the gas chambers and ovens where mass murders and cremations took place, as well as a timeline of the Holocaust that adorns a long hallway. The exhibit ends in an auditorium displaying a memorial and a video with survivors’ testimonies.

“They have done an absolutely extraordinary job,” said Rabbi Robert Ourach of Temple Beth Israel in Fresno, who toured the exhibit with another rabbi earlier this week. “It’s not just a series of pictures. There are people, there is audio, there is all kinds of extraordinary information they’ve made available. I think it’s going to be an extraordinarily important thing for the community as well as for those of us in the Jewish community who have the opportunity to see this.”

Ourach said for a church to create a presentation remembering the Holocaust is “an extraordinary thing for the Fresno community.” He noted that as Holocaust survivors die, it becomes easier for some to say the atrocities never took place.

“While the focus really of this exhibit is mostly on what happened on the Jewish community, certainly if we do not stand up against genocide in this day and age in a meaningful way and remember to tell the story of what happened to these people, it would be as if they had died in vain,” Ourach said.

Before building the memorial, which took two years to plan and two months to build, Franklin visited the Holocaust Memorial in Washington, D.C., consulted with Jewish leaders and was assisted by the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

He said the church, which frequently puts on theatrical productions, was fully supportive of the undertaking. “We have torn up an entire wing of our church, built walls in it, brought dirt,” Franklin said. “I know a lot of churches where there would have already been three deacons meetings and four congregational meetings and the pastor would be gone. Our church has embraced this with a passion and has really recognized that buildings are for people not people for buildings.”

The Holocaust Experience is part of a weeklong commemoration that concludes with A Night to Honor Israel event on Sunday. Tonight the church will premier Janka, a play that writer Oscar Speace adapted from a journal his mother kept while imprisoned in a concentration camp.

Franklin said the memorial will be part of an annual event in support of Israel. He hopes to one day find a building to house the exhibit permanently.

My trip to Israel took me to many interesting and fascinating places. On the second day of my travels, I toured Caesarea, an ancient port built by King Herod. There I saw ruins of an ancient vomitoruim (my tour guide, Tison Ben David, explains the meaning of the name in the clip) and a reconstructed Roman theater. When biblical history meets archeology, the Bible truly comes to life.

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Israelis shifted gears on Tuesday evening from mourning its fallen soldiers to celebrating the nation’s 61st Independence Day.

Opening the official ceremony at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin said, “We have come once again to this hill—on one side the grave of the prophet [of Zionism], on the other the graves of our children—to remind ourselves once again from where we came, and where, with the grace of God, with the blood of our children and with the sweat of our brow, we have succeeded in reaching so far.

Rivlin said that moving directly from Remembrance Day to Independence Day is the “purest preparation” for the subsequent joy. Earlier in the week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a memorial gathering to honor slain Israeli soldiers and that the global threat of terror was greater than ever. “We have no choice but to fight terror until it is obliterated and to defend our lives,” he said.

Addressing bereaved families gathered for the official state ceremony at the Mount Herzl military ceremony, Netanyahu continued: “The price we have paid and are still paying is unbearable, I know. My family has also been struck by bereavement; your sorrow is my sorrow. I feel the pain deep in my heart and carry with me the memory, the yearning and the burden of the loss.”

The prime minister’s brother Jonathan was killed during the 1976 IDF raid on Entebbe to free Israeli hostages.

For more information about this story, go to icej.org.

What do you do when you’re struggling with feelings of fear? Do you face your emotions and come up with ways to combat the problem? Or do you concede defeat and allow the assaults to continually rob you of your joy?

Fear is a powerful emotion and when left unchecked, it metastasizes like a cancer cell. It spreads quickly through your mind destroying your creativity, confidence and the godly authority you once wielded as a servant of the Lord. The result is paralysis of the will.

Several years ago I was ministering to a woman in her 70s who told me she didn’t go to college because she had been retained in sixth grade. She was afraid and thought she would never be good enough to be a college student. She managed to graduate high school, but low self-esteem gave way to fear and she stopped living life to the fullest.

Today, with the help of the Holy Spirit, she is facing her fears head on. She enrolled in a community college and is pursuing a degree in business.

What’s holding you back from fulfilling your godly purpose? Have you fallen prey to some sin and now you’re afraid God doesn’t love you? Do you listen to the enemy’s lies about who you are? Whatever the cause, fear is keeping you from your destiny.

When you see fear coming or sense its presence, face it. Fear is oftentimes rooted in deception. But when you discover the truth of God’s Word, you begin to see yourself as God sees you. How freeing! Let the Holy Spirit transform your thinking today (see Romans 12: 1-2).

We don’t have to live our lives characterized by fear. We can live confidently and carry out His will in the earth. God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound, well-disciplined mind (see 2 Tim. 1:7).

Valerie G. Lowe is editor of SpiritLed Woman eMagazine.

Read other articles from SpiritLed Woman eMagazine.

What do you do when you’re struggling with feelings of fear? Do you face your emotions and come up with ways to combat the problem? Or do you concede defeat and allow the assaults to continually rob you of your joy?

Fear is a powerful emotion and when left unchecked, it metastasizes like a cancer cell. It spreads quickly through your mind destroying your creativity, confidence and the godly authority you once wielded as a servant of the Lord. The result is paralysis of the will.

Several years ago I was ministering to a woman in her 70s who told me she didn’t go to college because she had been retained in sixth grade. She was afraid and thought she would never be good enough to be a college student. She managed to graduate high school, but low self-esteem gave way to fear and she stopped living life to the fullest.

Today, with the help of the Holy Spirit, she is facing her fears head on. She enrolled in a community college and is pursuing a degree in business.

What’s holding you back from fulfilling your godly purpose? Have you fallen prey to some sin and now you’re afraid God doesn’t love you? Do you listen to the enemy’s lies about who you are? Whatever the cause, fear is keeping you from your destiny.

When you see fear coming or sense its presence, face it. Fear is oftentimes rooted in deception. But when you discover the truth of God’s Word, you begin to see yourself as God sees you. How freeing! Let the Holy Spirit transform your thinking today (see Romans 12: 1-2). 

We don’t have to live our lives characterized by fear. We can live confidently and carry out His will in the earth. God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound, well-disciplined mind (see 2 Tim. 1:7).

Valerie G. Lowe is editor of SpiritLed Woman eMagazine.