Love For His People

Sunday, May 31, 2026

“An Angel, or More Proof of God’s Love” by Steve Martin

An Angel…or More Proof of God’s Love

Yesterday after we got home from the Jon Reddick concert, around 7:30pm a knock came at the door. Before I answered it, I looked out the door window (as I normally do in case I don’t want to open it) but this young man standing there saw me. So I opened the door.

He had a Bible in his hand. I thought, “Mormon” but there was not another. (They go out in twos.)

He told me his name, complimented me on the small 12” x 24” flag we have hanging on the porch by the door (“As for me and my house…” which also has our family name), and then without further words or hesitation opened his Bible and started reading from Matthew 6:25-34, the passage of the Lord Jesus speaking about worry and His provision for us.

I wasn’t quite sure where this was going, but he continued reading, looking at me occasionally.

When he finished ready the lengthy passage, he asked if I had any worries. I told him of my upcoming month ministry trip to Texas June 1, my broken shoulder and a few other concerns.

He then asked if he could pray for me. I said, “Yes.”

He took my hand and prayed a very good prayer. Then he looked up and said he liked our home and our faith.

Before he walked away, I asked him if he liked to read. He said, “Well, the Bible.” So I took that as a “yes” and gave him two of my books, “Back To Jerusalem” and “Morning Place To Be”.

And then he walked away.

Laurie, sitting in the other room, heard it all.

To myself I said, “Was that an angel?!” And thanked the Lord for this young man.

Thank You, Lord. You know all our concerns and do whatever it takes to show Your love for us.

True story.

Steve Martin, Charlotte, North Carolina May 31, 2026

Saturday, May 30, 2026

Jon Reddick complete playlist. Starts with “NO FEAR” - in Charlotte, North Carolina night of worship May 30, 2026

Jon Reddick has a night of worship in Charlotte, North Carolina May 30, 2026 at Northside Church.

Complete playlist of 17 songs. I start first with his popular “No Fear” which was the closing song.

Recorded by Steve Martin, Love For His People in Charlotte, NC

Jon Reddick - “NO FEAR!” - night of worship

He is returning soon to sit on His Jerusalem throne.

Jesus (Yeshua) returning soon to take up His throne in Jerusalem and teach us His ways.

“Silence the Noise” Jorge Parrott

“God’s willingness is not in question. Your ability to receive is. You can be surrounded by opportunity and still miss it - not because you are unworthy, but because you are closed off inside.

Receiving demands an open posture. The gate is yours to open. The time to act is now.”

“Silence the Noise”, page 22

Jorge Parrott 2025

Available on Amazon

Steve Martin, Jorge Parrott

Jorge Parrott, CMM School of Theology

Friday, May 29, 2026

Van ride with the Lord in Texas

Upcoming ministry in Texas. Thankful the Lord is riding with us, Christian Friends of Israel, and the angels coming along!

Welcome Shabbat. Welcome Lord!

We welcome Shabbat. We most certainly welcome Jesus (Yeshua) coming to Charlotte, North Carolina.

Steve Martin, Love For His People

What Jethro Saw That Moses Could Not. Israel365 By: Shira Schechter

What Jethro Saw That Moses Could Not

By: Shira Schechter

MAY 28, 2026

For some Jews, that kind of statement is uncomfortable. The idea that Israel — the Jewish state, built on Jewish longing and Jewish blood — needed anyone.

Moses asked the same question — and answered it — in this week’s Torah portion.

Behaalotcha opens at the peak of Israel’s spiritual history. The nation stands at Sinai, Torah in hand, organized in perfect formation, the miraculous cloud of God resting on the Tabernacle. When the cloud lifts, Israel travels. When it rests, Israel camps. They need no map, no compass, no guide. God Himself is leading them every step of the way.

Then Israel prepares to march toward the Land, and Moses does something unexpected. He turns to his father-in-law Hovav — a Midianite, a non-Jew — and pleads with him not to leave:

וַיֹּאמֶר אַל־נָא תַּעֲזֹב אֹתָנוּ כִּי עַל־כֵּן יָדַעְתָּ חֲנֹתֵנוּ בַּמִּדְבָּר וְהָיִיתָ לָּנוּ לְעֵינָיִם׃
He said, “Please do not leave us, inasmuch as you know where we should camp in the wilderness and can be our guide.
Numbers 10:31

The phrase ve-hayita lanu le-einayim, which literally means “and you will be our eyes,” but translated here as “and can be our guide,” puzzled the classical commentators. Moses has the cloud. Moses speaks with God face to face. What could a Midianite possibly see that Moses cannot?

Rashi suggests Moses was not speaking about navigation at all. He was making a personal promise: Hovav would be ‘beloved to us like the pupil of our eye.’Hovav, a former pagan priest, an outsider by every measure, might naturally have worried about his place among Israel. Moses answered that worry before it was spoken: you will not merely be tolerated. You will be cherished.

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch reads the verse more practically. The cloud showed Israel where to go. But Hovav knew the wilderness itself — its terrain, its resources, what could be found and used at each encampment. Divine guidance and human knowledge were not in competition. The Almighty directed their path; a Midianite helped them make the most of where they landed.

But the most penetrating interpretation belongs to the twelfth-century French commentator Rabbi Yosef Bekhor Shor. In his reading, Moses was not speaking about what Hovav could do for Israel. He was speaking about what Hovav’s presence would communicate to the world.

When the surrounding nations saw Hovav — a Midianite priest who had voluntarily left his homeland to walk with Israel — they would ask themselves an unavoidable question: why would he do that? And they would reach an unavoidable answer. As Bekhor Shor writes: “Those who see you with us will say — he did not abandon his land and his birthplace for nothing, unless he saw that God is with them.”

That recognition, once reached, changes everything. A nation that concludes God is with Israel thinks carefully before raising a sword against her.

But Bekhor Shor’s premise points even further than his conclusion. If the fearful response to recognizing God’s presence with Israel is to stand down, the wiseresponse is to step forward — to align with Israel rather than merely avoid her. The same moment of recognition that deters an enemy can inspire a friend. Both responses flow from the same realization: lo l’chinam — this man did not leave his home for nothing. Something real is happening here.

Moses understood this before Israel had marched a single step toward the Land. The nation had the Torah, the Ark, and the cloud. And Moses still looked at a Midianite and said: your presence alongside us changes what the nations see. What you represent — a respected outsider who looked at our story and chose to stay — is something we cannot provide for ourselves.

The answer is not that Israel is weak or incomplete. It is something more ambitious. Israel’s mission was never simply to survive, or even to thrive. It was to be, in the words of Isaiah, a light unto the nations — and a light that shines in an empty room illuminates nothing. The nations are not a concession to Israel’s limitations. They are the audience, the partners, and ultimately the purpose. A Jewish state that exists only for Jews has fulfilled only half its calling. When Hovav walks alongside Israel, he is not filling a gap. He is completing a picture. Moses understood that an Israel marching alone toward its land would be a diminished Israel — not because it lacked military strength or divine favor, but because it had not yet become what it was always meant to be: a nation whose story the world could see, recognize, and be changed by.

This is the vision at the heart of Universal Zionism. Not the conversion of the nations — Hovav remained a Midianite, and Moses asked nothing else of him — but their recognition. When the world sees that righteous gentiles, people with no obligation to do so, freely choose to stand with the Jewish people, it sends a signal more powerful than any diplomatic statement: God is with them. And nations that are paying attention draw their own conclusions from that signal.

Moses closed his plea to Hovav with two things: a promise and a guarantee. The promise: “Whatever good God does for us, we will do for you” (Numbers 10:32). The guarantee came earlier, in Rashi’s reading of the very same verse — that Hovav would be “beloved to us like the pupil of our eye.” Not useful. Not tolerated. Beloved.

That is Israel’s complete offer to its allies across the generations. Not absorption. Not transformation. A shared journey, with distinct roles — and a guarantee that those who recognize what God is doing with Israel, and choose to walk alongside her, will be cherished by the Jewish people in return.

Netanyahu’s words in Florida were not diplomatic courtesy. They were the echo of something ancient. Today, tens of millions of Christians around the world have looked at Israel’s story — the return from exile, the rebuilt cities, the nation that survived what should have destroyed it — and reached the same conclusion Hovav’s presence once announced to the wilderness nations: they didn’t rebuild that land for nothing. God is with them. And to those who recognize that, and choose to walk alongside Israel rather than look away, Moses’s promise still stands. You will not merely be useful to us. You will be beloved to us — like the pupil of our eye.

Shira Schechter

Shira Schechter is the content editor for TheIsraelBible.com and Israel365 Publications. She earned master’s degrees in both Jewish Education and Bible from Yeshiva University. She taught the Hebrew Bible at a high school in New Jersey for eight years before making Aliyah with her family in 2013. Shira joined the Israel365 staff shortly after moving to Israel and contributed significantly to the development and publication of The Israel Bible.

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