Personal Voyage

Brent Ward

I was taken to a Southern Baptist church by my grandfather. My parents were good moral people that did not practice religion and avoided church contact due to past hurts and bad church experience.

As a teen, I stopped going to church after experiencing my own hurt from a local church. I gave up on church thinking my parents were right.

At about 14 I met a girl and she went to church so I followed her there. Bingo Bongo...I'm a Nazarene .   In a couple of years I met another girl...Now I'm American Baptist. However, as a result of good solid youth leadership I made a commitment to Christ that was real. I continued to attend that church even after that relationship ended and the pastor of this church eventually officiated my wedding.

My bride and I served the Lord in many churches in youth leadership and where always very active in our local church.   We moved around a lot and were never committed to any one denomination  and had four beautiful children. We didn't take them to church and depend on Sunday morning for their discipleship. We discipled our children and took them to church to reinforce how they were being trained up at home. (This is one of my soap box sermons lol.)

I always felt that protestant faith fell short.  Many of the traditional methods of worship/holidays didn't make sense with what I read in the bible.   When I would question pastors on these things I was always told the same answer, "Jesus did away with that".  I figured, this guy went to seminary he must know more than me right?   So I went with the flow always feeling uneasy with many things.

I always felt like I was called to some kind of ministry.  I bounced around trying to find a "full time" ministry position for years. To make a long story short, I ended up quitting my very good job and my wife, very willingly, entered the workforce full time for a season while I took some time to study and pray for an answer to what God wanted from me. This was a very difficult decision as she had always been a stay at home mom and this was a real exercise in humility for me.

Every day, I would get her off to work, the kids off to school, and would dig into the word of YHVH for hours beginning in Matthew as I had always been taught "the old testament was no longer relevant" . This went on for months.

Then I got to Acts...2:42 to be exact.

What I read looked nothing like the American Church.   Furthermore, they were all Jewish, even Jesus whom I now know as Yeshua. Everything was written from a Hebrew perspective not from an American perspective.

So...Christmas was coming, and I had always struggled with this Holliday even though my actions didn't show it.   I am an actor at heart and I became a very popular Santa Clause at parties and shopping mall's and made some good extra "Christmas Cash" doing so.

I told my wife that I wanted to celebrate Hanukkah and learn more about it.  She knew this was coming for years and begrudgingly agreed. As I studies the origins of Hanukkah, it just made sense to look into the origins of Christmas and...well...need I say more?

My wife was always Mrs Claus when it came to Christmas and when we discussed the origins of christmas, she was the typical "That's not what it means to me" and I am not the type of husband to lord my God given authority over her. I don't believe that works in a healthy relationship. I am more of a lead by example type of guy.

Hanukkah was well before Christmas this particular year so we agreed to do both.

A few weeks went by and one night, my wife woke me up in the middle of the night and told me that YHVH woke her up and scolded her. She said that I was right and that YHVH told her that she needed to submit to her husbands. He told her that she had prayed for me to become a stronger spiritual head of the household and that he answered her prayer.

We were not sure how the kids would react but they were COMPLETELY okay with it and were actually excited. After Hanukkah was over the entire family wanted me to find out what the next biblical feast was. Once we celebrated Passover, the real  transition was on!   We were all united in our quest to unlearn American Christianity and do biblical things in biblical ways.

It has been quite a ride but none of us have any regret and are not turning back.

We all know Yeshua much more intimately than we ever have because He is the Torah become flesh.

I could go on and on about my personal voyage and will answer any questions anyone has. I love to talk about my faith and over the years I have learned how NOT to be a "Torah Terrorist".

I hope this testimony brings edification to the body of Messiah.

Shalom!