KEHILAT ARIEL MESSIANIC SYNAGOGUE NEWSLETTER
Volume 20, Number 5 May/June 2004
Iyar/SivanN 5764
ADOPTED BY G-D: PHYSICALLY AND SPIRITUALLY
By Tony and Lorri Baker
A mixed family. Well, you could say that, but we prefer to call ourselves a completed family. Like most good stories, ours begins long ago and far away...
Tony grew up in a rural neighborhood just north of Chicago with his younger brother Cliff. His mother sent them to a reform synagogue to learn about their faith and heritage in Judaism. His parents did not attend and it all seemed quite superficial, just something a Jewish kid was supposed to do. When Tony's mother passed away just before Tony reached bar mitzvah age, his father moved the family to Los Angeles where his Jewish education continued with bagels and latkes and not much else. His father remarried, a Catholic woman, and she brought Jesus into their home, however no religion was taught in the home.
Meanwhile, Lorri was growing up in a Christian home in Torrance, California. A typical California kid more interested in surfing than church, I went through the motions of going to church every Sunday with her family. This did give me the life-long faith that Jesus was real and G-d loved me, but I did not think about serving G-d or loving Him in return.
Eph.2:1 "AND YOU WERE MADE ALIVE…"
I left home at 18 to pursue a career in Hollywood. While in Hollywood I dabbled in everything from drugs and nightlife to transcendental meditation and Sikh Darma. I left Hollywood in 1985, running for my life in the middle of the night, leaving everything behind. I just got in my car and drove out of town. I wound up living in a little beach house in Imperial Beach south of San Diego. The Lord was working behind my field of vision all along and looking back I can see He was there protecting and guiding every step of the way.
Tony moved to San Diego in 1983 to attend San Diego State University. Parties and college life filled his days. He did dream of someday having a family and living a more secure lifestyle but was not pursuing it yet. At that time in his life he really had no awareness of how G-d was laying the plans for his life.
Col 1:10 - THE RIGHTEOUS PRAYERS OF OUR FRIENDS
In 1987, Tony began working in video production for a small company that was owned by a Christian couple who were praying for his salvation, although Tony was unaware of it at the time.
GOD'S PURPOSES REVEALED
Tony and I, neither yet aware of G-d's purposes, met through a video dating company. Shortly after their first date, Tony's boss, (remember the Christian couple?) told Tony he had two tickets to a Passover Seder if he wanted to go. Tony and I went together to the Seder. We were both expecting a traditional Jewish service and unaware that it was put on by a Messianic Synagogue by the name of Kehilat Ariel.
THE COMPLETION (or so we thought!)
Tony accepted Yeshua as the Messiah that night at the Seder and my own curiosity was piqued enough to pull her dusty Bible off the shelf. The next evening when we sat down to study some scripture together, a note that I had written as a teenager fell out of the Bible onto the table. It read, "Why do Christians persecute Jews? Why don't Christians keep the Sabbath if it is a commandment? Why don't the Jewish traditions apply to the Christians?"
We just looked at each other and began to realize G-d's hand had been in our lives all along. He was in the process of showing us how the New Testament faith works for Jew and non-Jew alike. We were married on August 25, 1990, started attending Kehilat Ariel, and became members in July of 1993.
KEHILAT ARIEL AND THE "MIXED" COUPLE
The ability to fit in somewhere as a "mixed" married couple was what first drew us to Messianic Judaism and Kehilat Ariel. What kept us coming back was how learning both sides of the Bible completed the story for each of us. At our messianic synagogue, I learned about the Jewish traditions and commandments that Yeshua lived by and how He fulfilled prophecy. Also learning the commandments in the Torah and the biblical holidays, I began to clearly see that G-d is knowable if we just have eyes to see.
Around the same time, I was working for a law firm where my closest friend had just become a believer and was praying for my salvation. Meanwhile, I was praying that my friend would be saved from those wacky Christians at Horizon Christian Fellowship.
Tony, only knowing he was Jewish in a cultural sense, found his completion in the Brit Hadashah (New Covenant). By attending Kehilat Ariel he can practice and learn more about his Jewish heritage, honor his parents by keeping the Jewish traditions, and at the same time learn and study the entire Bible which is our instructional manual on this earth. His belief in Yeshua has given him a place to put his sins and a place to rejoice in the gift of life which were missing from his prior religious experiences.
And we really enjoy Rabbi Barney's jokes. Especially the one about taking the pig to the zoo (don't ask!)
ADDING TO THE MIXTURE
About five years into our marriage we learned that we could not have biological children. We had tried just about everything, including adoption, and, after a lot of arguing with God, had finally decided to put the issue of kids on the back burner and move on with our lives. Shortly after this, in 1999, we received a phone call from Lorri's cousin Walter and wife Camin that they were pregnant with "our child" if we were ready to adopt. We became parents on August 3, 1999 when Katy joined our "mixed" family making the picture "complete". Or so we thought. Much to our surprise, in May 2003 we got another call from Camin (since divorced from Walter) that she was pregnant with a half-sibling she could not afford to raise. Would we consider adopting Katy's sibling? Well, now that Shay has joined our family, we are all mixed up and it is a wonderful blend.
God is good and all things work for the Glory of God in His perfect timing. We look forward to more blessings as we continue the journey with Messiah.