What's Your Story?
Parashat Yitro, Exodus 18:1–20:23
By Rabbi Stuart Dauermann, PhD
Parashat Yitro can aid us in better understanding how people come to faith in the God of Israel and his Messiah. That process is surprising and we have much to learn.
Relationship with people
In this story, as in the stories of many of our lives, relationship precedes faith. Yitro had a strong, trusting, and mutually respectful relationship with his son-in-law Moshe and with the people of Israel prior to his ever coming to faith in the God of Israel. As we shall see, the broad order of Yitro’s faith commitment was relationship with members of God’s community (Moshe, Tzipporah, and their children), faith in the God of Israel, and then ritual reception into that community.
This is a necessary lesson for those religiously zealous people who hold that “unbelievers” must not be given any communal standing or responsibilities until after they have made a faith commitment. This would mean making faith commitment prior to communal relationship. This bears reconsideration.
I am mindful of a couple in their sixties who came to my congregation at the suggestion of their out of state Yeshua-believing daughter. Let’s call them Jack and Jill. Now Jack and Jill knew they were not Yeshua-believers, and we knew that as well. But right off the bat we gave them communal responsibilities. Relationship was built. Spiritual information was exchanged. And in the fullness of time, both came to fully embrace what our community stood for, a condition that persists to this day. Relationship led to faith and that led to membership. That’s how it was for Jack and Jill, and that’s how it was for Yitro too.
People most often come to Yeshua-faith through discovering through the grapevine the story of our own encounters with God in Messiah, or otherwise through their direct relationship with us. Yitro had heard reports of God’s dealings through Tzipporah his daughter, and perhaps through his grandchildren, Gershom and Eliezer. He had also heard the reports of God’s goodness to Israel through travelers in the area. And in today’s parasha we see Moshe telling him his own story—his own experience with God, and the experience of the people of God in general. It ought to be the same way for us. People need to hear about the mighty works of God in our lives and our friends’ lives and connect these stories with the assurances given in Scripture, if they would grasp the reality of the God of Israel and of Yeshua’s claim to be Messiah.
Relationship with God
In coming to Yeshua-faith, people experience three encounters that bring them into a newly vital relationship with the God of Israel. We can see these encounters evident in Yitro’s encounter with Moshe.
A truth encounter – “I now believe this to be essentially true.”
A power encounter – “I now believe that the power of God as revealed in this religious culture is supreme, real, tangible and adequate.”
An allegiance encounter – “Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods” (Exod 18:11).“
I now see something compelling about the character of God as you have encountered him and want to experience the impact of this truth and power in every aspect of my doing and being;”
“I want to know the personal Source behind this narrative, this community dynamic and this power;” and
“I am willing to walk through this doorway of new possibilities and new responsibilities, trusting in God and submitting to his rule in my life.”
“I renounce all other spiritual allegiances in submission to this God.”
These encounters take time to come together. We need to give people:
lots of exposure to our story, and the stories of God-encounters in the Bible and in our own community of faith;
time and opportunity for them to invite God’s engagement with them as best they know how;
prayerful support from ourselves and others.
So the question for us is a relational one. To what extent are we and our community members nurturing a vital relationship with God, and a warm relationship with people who need to seek him and find him more deeply? Do we have time for cultivating relationships, or are we “just too busy”? That says a mouthful. If we are too busy to cultivate real relationships with people and with God, then indeed, we are “too busy.”
And finally, how can we build bridges between our inquiring friends and others who know God in a warm way, who can share their stories with our friends as we also share our own? And how can we best build a bridge between those stories and the stories found in Scripture so that our friends discover that what we have found is grounded there, waiting for them to engage as well with the One who stands ready to engage with us?
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said, “The world we build tomorrow is born in the stories we tell our children today.” The same is true of the world our friends will build. Tell them your story, introduce them to others and their stories, and introduce them to the stories in Scripture, which set the pattern for all of us.
And finally, remember the words of Elie Wiesel, “God created people because he loves stories.”