A presentation by Joel Havian on Sunday, December 4th, 2022, in a Discipleship Class, at Living Hope Church of the Nazarene, Beverly, Massachusetts
It was probably about 1965 (I was 6 years old that year). From time to time, my "Nana" (maternal grandmother), who seemed to be a highly observant Jew, would light two candles (as I look back, this supposedly took place when it was Friday night). Then she would turn to me on such occasions with kisses ("juicy" ones as I tend to remember) and say to me "Good Shabbos" (Good Sabbath). At some point, I noticed that she did this in some kind of ritual way, as if some kind of magic (or supernatural force) was involved. One time when I brought up with her the idea of my blowing out these candles, she mentioned (if I remember correctly) that someone called "God" would come and take me away. It was this incident, when my grandmother (not my mom or dad) turned me on the concept of "God". For some reason that is probably too hard for me to explain, inner conviction somehow set in me (could God's Holy Spirit have done something to me then, even though my grandma did not exhibit any belief in Jesus?).
Personally speaking, my beliefs these days are upheld in large part by inner conviction. But the fact that I believe in, of all various so-called "gods", the God of Israel in particular—as opposed to some other god—is upheld significantly by Israel itself. How come the tiny state of Israel is not easily squished by its huge hostile neighbors? In fact, despite a number of attacks against it, this little nation prevails onward. Hard as Israel's large enemies try, they fail to destroy this small nation. Why? My best answer is: Because, ultimately, there is a pro-Israel, supernatural force involved, specifically the God of Israel—the LORD, Jehovah, Yahweh, Adonai, HaShem, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of the 66-book "Protestant" Bible.
My grandmother (Nana) made mention about us going to Heaven after we die, but I still did not fully grasp the concept of what Heaven is like.
On with Jesus, as I was told about Him in Sunday morning services in the gymnasium at an elementary boarding school I attended! I would hear about the "Son of God" (but I thought of Jesus as separate from God at that point)—by a spiritual visitor (Dr. Henry, perhaps a youth/Sunday School pastor), who visited my campus "every other" Sunday (if I remember correctly).
At some point I would hear or read references about "Hell", but I still did not fully grasp that concept either.
But as I grew, I went through rebellious phases against God, supposedly out of frustrations over misfortunes, primarily late 1960's to early 1972.
My grandmother encouraged me to pray, which I did on an every-night basis, starting likely in late summer 1970. But by 1971, I was taking a "Santa Claus" approach to God, asking Him for this, asking Him for that. Around then, I probably hardly referenced Jesus in my prayers or considered His significance. Rather, I perceived God as an absolutely "single-personed" being, i.e., as a Father, and nothing more. But I was taken by surprise around late November of 1970, when my dad and/or brother told me "We do not believe in Jesus Christ". Despite this, I took the stance in favor of Jesus' existence (which I likely thought my dad and/or brother were alluding to), and acknowledged this belief to God. But, I still was unaware about Jesus Himself being God. I was praying during these years leading up to and including the beginning of 1972 as a "non-Jesus-believing Jew" (nonbelief in Jesus' Lordship, Messiahship, divinity etc.).
But in 1971, my demands towards God were becoming hostile/covetous. To start off 1972, I took an ultimatum stance that if God did not answer an unusually lofty prayer request, I was going to end my every-night prayer to Him. As I strongly suspected (and likely anticipated), I ended up not getting this excessive wish, so I discontinued my praying at that point. What I look back on as a "bad luck" winter of 1972 would follow.
However, I was preparing during that 1971-1972 school year—I was now at a middle boarding school then—for my Bar Mitzvah, which I had in May of 1972 (I was a 13-year-old at that time). Earlier, for much of the school year, I still had too little respect for God, my being highly demanding and covetous towards Him. What this Bar Mitzvah thing had meant to me was likely an exceptionally festive celebration of my rite of passage from boyhood to manhood. To be in the center of the will of God probably meant almost nothing at all to me. At times—especially around late 1972—I furthermore seemed to flee belief even in Jesus' existence. My knowledge about God's Holy Spirit? Nothing, from what I best recall. I was more or less an "Americanized" Jewish teenager without belief in Jesus.
However, when I was home for my spring (March/April) vacation of 1972, it was likely at this point that some things began to turn around—for the better! Someone prepared a speech for me to speak at my Bar Mitzvah ceremony, and my mom coached me on this. It was likely around this point (if not before) that I began to consider a Bar Mitzvah as more than just a festive passage into Jewish "adulthood". Somehow, I started taking the importance of honoring God more seriously. This crucial turning would somehow take hold of me from about early spring 1972 up until close to February of 1973.
One of my closest friends was Scott, and I noticed his getting into Jesus-related matters, something I myself had not done. Then one evening in roughly February of 1973, at snack time, he started telling me a number of Gospel essentials. These included sin, Heaven, hell and—of course—Jesus. I began to learn how overwhelmingly terrific Heaven was and how overwhelmingly terrible hell was. When I learned about these descriptions and differences, I sensed an offer I could not refuse. I definitely did not want to be cast forever into a "lake of fire". So that is what hell is like? Hey, that's too painful, too unbearable! So Heaven is incredibly superb, overwhelmingly better than I likely ever thought beforehand? Hey, I want that! I badly gotta have it! And so I was told about the importance of Jesus Christ if wanted to avoid hell and instead end up in Heaven.
But I hesitated, likely primarily over a qualification concern at that point. I was Jewish, and I was somewhat equating and/or confusing "religion" with things like family background, "race" or some other "inborn" characteristic. To qualify for this salvation that my friend Scott was telling me about, I thought that I had to be "born" Catholic, or Protestant, or Baptist, or Wesleyan, or Nazarene, or Unitarian, or Episcopalian, or Presbyterian, or some other "religion" that meets in a "church", as opposed to a synagogue or temple (furthermore, I thought that "Gentile" simply meant just another religion, as opposed to "non-Jewish"). Hence, my Jewish background somehow caused me to doubt my eligibility for accepting Jesus Christ—yes, this seems to be some kind of inverse scenario to what happened back in the first century AD—and I hardly knew about this issue until years later—when many back in the early church era thought that one had to be Jewish in order to be eligible for receiving Jesus! Go figure!
Despite this, I starting attending prayer meetings at my school. Ultimately, Steve, who seemed to be the main student leader of this group, exhorted me to not keep putting off accepting Jesus. So I finally made a decision for Christ, likely sometime in late March of 1973. This was not long before I headed home for my spring vacation.
Near the end of this vacation, I finally got around to telling my grandmother—the very person who turned me on the concept of God in the first place—about Jesus. I ended up greatly underestimating her severely negative reaction. My own parents would quickly find out, supposedly from my grandmother, about my newfound faith. So about a few days before I was to travel back to school, my dad, a relatively calm person, gently spoke to me about the matter. But my emotionally-troubled mother, as I largely expected, came down hard on me. I still remember that evening when I locked myself in the bathroom so I could read my New Testament, and she—being outside the door—demanded that I hand over that book (which I likely suspected she was going to destroy in the fireplace!), but I held on, supposedly in tears and fear. Later, my calm dad approached the door, and I let him in, because I trusted him. We had a calm talk and at some point headed to bed.
The next day, my mom approached me more calmly. She told me about the bad history of the church, antisemitism and all (my dad's brand new car, reportedly parked on the street in front of his family synagogue, was vandalized just a few days or weeks earlier!).
Inasmuch as I made a decision at my school roughly a few weeks earlier to receive Christ, I likely did so with still some hesitancy. It may have been this, combined with my mother's urging, that ultimately led to my discontinuing my being a follower of Jesus Christ shortly before my spring vacation ended. However, my sincere desire to spend eternity in Heaven, not in hell, remained with me. I was now going into some kind of wavering phase, probably in some respects resembling what I went through back around the later part of the preceding winter from the time Scott initially preached to me to Steve exhorting me to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior.
In my getting back to school for the rest of the school year, I continued with daily prayer, but only to (supposedly) God the Father. And I was still reading scripture as well, but only the Old Testament. But I was going through the spring with various degrees of wavering, and—to some extent—emptiness.
In June, I went to summer camp, with many of the same students and staff that I was with during the preceding school year. My wavering continued. I likely felt more and more empty as I would see many of my friends pursue Jesus. I somewhat felt like I was "missing the boat". I had been grappling with the idea of returning to Christ. Finally, at some point in July, after seeing a particularly close friend receive Jesus, I made a decision to turn back myself to Jesus Christ. I picked up on the New Testament again, and Jesus was back in my prayers (and, of course, among other things, I would learn about the concept of the Trinity, the composite, "uni-plurality" of God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit).
However, this time around, I kept a very low profile when I was with my family. I would tend to keep this secrecy until around early 1987—close to 14 years later.
During that period, it was a time of various ups and downs. My enthusiasm about my Christian faith seemed to flourish throughout the fall of 1973 at my boarding school. Although I did not attend a church at that time (except for a single visit), I had some kind of limited fellowship with a number of fellow Christian students. After reading (predominantly sequentially) through the New Testament, typically about three chapters per day, I cut down to one per day as I started in the Old Testament.
Unfortunately, my Bible reading habits were becoming rather a bit of an unhealthy compulsion. In early 1974, when I was about 15 years old and about half way through 9th grade, I moved on to another boarding school for the remainder of my high school era. I wasn't as much outwardly Christian as I was at the previous school. Whatever Christian fellowship lifestyle I had at my old school dropped out at my new one. Finally, around late May or early June of that year, I gave up on my daily Bible reading (after finishing the book of Judges)—because the unhealthy reading compulsion was getting to me badly. Later in that June, I sensed a substantial backslide spiritually, even though I continued with my daily prayers, somehow still (at least intellectually) acknowledged Jesus as my Savior and lived a lifestyle that at least partially reflected that. But I had become distant from my "first love", and at least some of my spiritual fruit slipped. In all this, my eternity still mattered to me. But my devotion to God's ways was no longer nearly as good as it used to be.
Many years later—in 1981—when I was attending UMass Boston, I dropped by a "pop-up" campus ministry table. Despite my backslidden state, there were still some things there that interested me, including a "cartoon" (comic) Gospel tract. As I afterward started walking away from this table, Todd—who seemed to be the leader of this student ministry—tried to lure me back. This was a very critical moment. Would I continue walking away (was I too shy at that moment)? Or would I give in to Todd's beckoning at that moment?
I came back!
We got introduced to each other. I mentioned my Jewish background. At some point I would get together through this ministry with other students. Through at least one of them, Melissa, I would learn about a group that mixed Jesus and Jewishness—together! (About a few years before that, I learned about the existence of another organization, based out of San Francisco, with a similar makeup—Jews for Jesus.) The name of this Boston area group was Ruach Israel (or Spirit of Israel). Not long afterward I started attending this congregation. And at least one person in the UMass Boston ministry encouraged me to get back into Bible reading. However, I would certainly take a much better approach to reading God's Word. I did not want to get back into unhealthy sequential compulsions again. I decided to take a rather random approach (still better than not reading the Scriptures at all). And my prayer lifestyle improved too—I became hopefully "less rigid" about it. My Christian faith was now on the rebound! Also, not long after I started attending Ruach Israel, I became fully resolved that Jews are indeed eligible for receiving Jesus as their Lord and personal Savior (and, ultimately, that all humans are eligible).
As my spiritual growth progressed, Ruach Israel gathered at a few rented venues before finally settling into its permanent home in Needham, in late spring of 1992.
But what about my family? My mom started to wonder what I was up to during a number of Friday nights around the mid-1980's. "What's the big mystery?" she asked. Finally, in early 1987, I composed a very long confession letter. I first gave it to my dad to read. And I probably prayed "like crazy" over the outcome of his reaction. My dad, per his usual calmness, indicated his respect for my embracing this Jewish-oriented Christian faith. He may have not been in agreement with it. But he was gentle about the matter. However, he felt that I should edit it somewhat (including leaving out some "Jews for Jesus"-related content) before presenting it to my mom.
My mother's initial reaction to this edited letter was, at first, surprisingly favorable. That was likely because she sensed my being with Ruach Israel as a social asset for me (she was concerned about my lack of friends locally). She even signaled an openness to join with me to attend a service at this congregation!
However, not long afterward, she was speaking with her peers, and at least one of them brought up some negative stuff, at least money solicitation issues—and this was close to when some kind of PTL scandal was taking place. My mom's initial favor fell away not long afterward. Although she was now no longer interested in a visit to Ruach Israel, she did not come down hard on me like she did in 1973. At some later point, my grandmother also would learn about my faith in Yeshua HaMashiach (that's Jesus the Christ, in Hebrew!), but my mother and my Nana somehow learned to live with my embracing this faith.
I had at least a couple of opportunities to showcase this Messianic Judaism among my relatives. One of them was when I played a video called "Messianic Revival" at my Aunt Elaine's house after one of our family get-together dinners (likely Passover or Rosh HaShanah). Nearly everyone there watched it, except my Nana, who declined and sat this one out. Another chance I had was when my dad invited me to conduct a Messianic Passover Seder at my Aunt Sally's and Uncle Donny's place (there were just the four of us at that time, including my dad and myself).
As Ruach Israel matured and shifted directions over the years, I left there and moved on to another Messianic Jewish congregation in the west suburban Boston area, Sar Shalom (Prince of Peace), doing so in early 2003. As Sar Shalom cut back its meeting frequencies, likely around 2006, I started to regularly attend services on the North Shore, at what used to be called Beverly Church of the Nazarene, but renamed to Living Hope Church of the Nazarene. Close to that year, this church acquired a facility near the Danvers/Beverly line (this building was later on sold to another church). I had already become friendly with this Nazarene church as far back as probably about 1990. My attendance at Living Hope took me from the Danvers/Beverly line to the Beverly Cabot Street location, then to its Peabody location, and—in late 2010—back to Beverly, where I have been up to the present time.
Throughout all these years, I have continued in my daily Bible reading (I try to get in at least about half an hour each day—I am currently using the King James Study Bible as my primary source, but I at times I look at other translations as well, including a Hebrew Old Testament and a Hebrew New Testament, even though I am still close to a "beginner" level in this language). My prayers have gone from "once per day, bedtime only" to various multiple times each day. All this...as I continue on the road to Heaven, which is not only narrow—but for me it is long as well—as I continue my quest in being a fully-devoted follower of Yeshua HaMashiach—Jesus Christ—the Lord, Israel's (and the rest of the world's) true Messiah. He is the only way for me (and the rest of this world) to come to God the Father—and, of course, avoid hell and instead spend eternity in Heaven.