The Unseen Story

Behind TUS | Supernatural Testimonies

Brooke & Adam

Tablets of Testimony

(Listen by clicking the white play button. You can read the transcript of the story below.)

Brooke: 

Happy Wednesday, guys. We’re back and today we have a little something different for you. Adam and I have been on a really, probably 7-8 year journey of learning more about the Lord. We have been listening to this really cool podcast called The Bema Discipleship Podcast that just kind of opens your mind to a new way of reading the Bible, seeing the Bible and experiencing the Bible. It has been really a game changer for us, I think. But today, I asked Adam to sit down with me and share what he has been learning and how that learning has manifested itself into experience. Or maybe it’s been kind-of the other way. So, Adam, with that, I know you’re excited to talk, right?

Adam:

Yeah.

Brooke

Brooke:

It’s his favorite thing y’all! 

Adam:

I’m stoked. 

Brooke:

Yeah. 

Tell us what you’ve been learning. Tell me, tell them what you have shared with me, like every morning and every night, and sometimes at lunch over the last, like week and a half.

Adam:

So I thought, well, we were gonna start with the story first. A testimony. 

Brooke: Yeah. Oh yeah yeah yeah. 

Adam: A literal testimony; like real world testimony before we look into the origins of the word testimony. And they relate. I think. I hope. We’ll see how this goes. 

So my friend Wade, he was out carrying the cross all of October. It’s a 12 foot wooden cross. And he wanted some photos. So I went with him, down to Oak Cliff, and spent the afternoon with him. And then I was like, man, it was amazing. 

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Brooke:

Why was it amazing?

Adam:

I mean, I prayed for a handful people and, and several people were just crying. And it was just refreshing. It was energizing. I mean, there was obviously, we got some sideways looks and people avoided us and didn’t particularly take too kindly to carrying the cross. You know, maybe they’re a little bit offended. But then there were other people that really appreciated that. A lady, a Hispanic lady, we prayed for her and she was saying that she was healed. And just multiple stories of God encountering people, meeting people. So I decided to go back. 

Let’s see, this was two weeks ago now. He was going to the VA, I had never been down to the VA, the Veterans Hospital in South Dallas. So I decided to go down there. I wanted to see it. And so long drive, its way down there, South Dallas. It’s amazing that it’s still Dallas, but it is apparently. I get down there and I call him like, “Hey, where are you at?” And he’s like, “Oh, I’m at SMU,” or whatever. It became clear that I was a day early. 

Brooke: 

Whoops.

Adam:

Well, this is Tuesday. He was at the VA on Wednesday. And I really thought about going home. Because I really don’t want to go to SMU. I had to fight through some adversity and I had to walk like a mile and a half to find them. So I finally catch up to him and the first person we talked to – now we’re at a strip mall, apparently security said that he couldn’t carry the cross on the campus. 

Brooke: Southern Methodist University? 

Adam:

Right. So we ended up at a CVS on Mockingbird and the first person we talked to was this Ethiopian guy. He was the manager of the CVS there and we just prayed for him. He was Christian. Then I turned to my right and there’s a couple in the parking lot. A spanic lady, she’s in scrubs, and an older man. So I say, “Hey, guys. How are you doing? We’re just kind of praying for people. Is there anything that you guys need prayer for?” And they’re like, “Well, yeah, actually, our friend Joanna needs prayer.” We get a little information about Joanna. She’s in a rehab facility. She is struggling with addiction and they’re mutual friends.

Brooke: 

But they had never met before. Right?

Adam:

Yeah, so we prayed for Joanna, prayed for discernment for the friends, and healing for her. And then they were, you could tell that they were kind of skeptical at first. And then we prayed and they sort of opened up. So Anna is the Hispanic lady in scrubs and Mark is the older guy. They had just met for the first time in that parking lot, four minutes prior to when we walked up. Mark had some money that he, cash he wanted to give to Anna to help support their friend. So this kind of comes out and then Anna asked Wade, “How did you decide to carry the cross around? Like, what’s up with that?” And he was like, “I believe I heard from the Holy Spirit and He told me to carry it around Dallas for 30 days.” She was like, “Tell me, what was that like?” And she started getting teary eyed. 

As the story unfolds, about Anna, she was really interested in hearing from God. She had been to Hari Krishna temple, which was close to her house. She had talked to some Mormons. I don’t know if she’d been in the Mormon church, but she didn’t feel comfortable about the Hari Krishnas. She didn’t feel comfortable with the Mormons. And so she was looking for God. She had a nine month old son, and was really concerned about him and how she was going to raise him. I guess there were some issues with her and her husband, her husband wasn’t leading. So she had a lot of anxiety and a lot of fear, you could see it. As we’re talking and telling her about Jesus and how we didn’t think it was a mistake that we were there, and I feel like it was an answer to her searching, this was not a coincidence. She just started crying and bawling. She was very touched. 

So then we hear from Mark. So again, they had just met, the two of them have just met. Mark was a single dad who had met a higher power 25 years prior in a sobriety program, and gotten clean, and had been to some churches and had some not great experiences in those churches. He sort of left the church and gotten very involved in his work. He said he worked 60-70 hour weeks and had two daughters and became very focused on raising and supporting his daughters. Both daughters are now out of the house. They’re, I think 24 and 19 and he realized he was unfulfilled. His life had no purpose and he was a workaholic. So he had taken that day off to find balance. 

So here are two people who just met in the parking lot. We have the cross. They’re the first people we pray for, and they both asked Jesus into their heart that day. 

Brooke:

Wow. Right there with you guys?

Adam:

Right there with us. 

Brooke:

Wow, come on. 

Adam:

We prayed and they said, “Yeah, we want to change and we want to follow Jesus and we’re ready.” And so independently, they’re on the same journey and they both, right there in that moment, they both met with God. That day, in that moment and it was awesome. It was incredible. So for me, it was just, I think, a reminder of the noise of the everyday and everything that’s going on. I think sometimes we forget there are people out there looking for God. They want to meet with God. They want something real. And I almost didn’t go. I was close to just saying no, I’m just, I’m not, I’m not gonna make it. I’m so thankful that I decided to push through that. And the encouragement to me was just being aware, when I’m out and about. Like, you never know where somebody is and how close they are to Jesus already. 

Brooke:

Yeah. 

Adam:

And you’re just there to connect the dots for them. I think that’s what priesthood is about. I think that’s what being a Royal Priesthood is. It’s, we are advocating for people. Yeah, we’re inviting people into this radical life, you know. It’s pretty bizarre, it’s pretty insane. When you think about the vastness of this God that we’re talking about, He created everything and yet He wants to meet with us. 

Brooke:

Yeah, that’s amazing. 

Adam:

It’s, it’s hard to comprehend. It’s hard to believe, and it sounds crazy, unless you’ve experienced it. So that ties into what I’ve been learning in the Old Testament, which started through Bema. And then my friend Richard, who’s part of our discussion group, sent me a link to Rabbi Foreman, who is a Rabbi, and they unpack the Old Testament on a podcast, and they have a website and one guy kind of asks Rabbi Foreman questions, and they were talking about the the tablets, and the importance of the tablets. 

Brooke:

Okay, what are the tablets? 

Adam:

So the tablets are the, when Moses goes up onto the mountain to meet with God, it’s 40 days, he’s getting the law, he receives two stone tablets. They are, it says that they’re written on the front and the back of both tablets by the finger of God. These are 10 commandments or 10 laws. So what would you think that the tablets would be called? How would you refer to these, these two stone tablets?

Brooke:

Well, I think we mostly refer to them as the law.

Adam:

Right. So maybe you’d call them, in the Bible, you would think that they would be called the Tablets of the Law.

Brooke:

Or tablets of the Covenant, even. I don’t know.

Adam:

Tablets of the Covenant, yeah. So what is actually written in Exodus is the first reference of the word testimony, and these tablets are actually called, “The Tablets of the Testimony.” Why would you call the tablets written with the finger of God, why would you call them The Tablets of Testimony? 

Brooke:

Yeah.

Adam:

It doesn’t really make sense. So it gets a little bit more confusing because now these two stone tablets, what Moses does with them is he takes them down off the mountain. It’s kind of a long story, but he sees the Israelites worshipping the golden calf because he’s been gone for a long time and he actually breaks those tablets. He spends another 40 days on the mountain and then actually, God tells Moses to carve out two stone tablets, just like He had already had. So I think it’s interesting that the first stone tablets just show up, ‘Here you go.’ The second stone tablets are Moses’s, where he’s carved them out of the rock and then given them to God, and then the finger of God writes out these commandments. So these two stone tablets are what end up in the Ark of the Covenant before they had a tabernacle, which is where God’s presence dwelled, where they had this ark. Moses had his own tent of meeting. He just put a tent out in the desert and whenever he needed some help, he would go and talk to God in this tent. So the idea of “tent of meeting” starts with Moses needing to speak with God face to face, it says.

Brooke:

Yeah. Just this deep desire and needing to know and needing to hear from the Lord.

Adam:

What Rabbi Foreman suggests is that the reason they’re called “tablets of testimony” is because of the incomprehensibility of a God actually interacting with humanity. These stone tablets testify of God and our interaction with God.

Brooke:

It’s a visible image of an invisible God.

Adam:

Absolutely.

Brooke:

What I hear you saying at this point is, Moses goes up to meet with God face to face on the mountain. God meets with him and gives him the 10 commandments on these two stone tablets. The very finger of God came down, wrote on these tablets, these commandments, and that is a visible expression or sign that Moses met face to face with the Creator of the heavens and the earth.

Adam: 

Correct. Which I think is really powerful.

Brooke:

Why do you think that’s so powerful? How does that hit you?

Adam:

Moses was modeling, and actually invited, the Israelites into ‘Hey, you can go meet with Him.’ And they’re like, ‘No, you do it for us. We’re scared, we’re terrified.’ And to me, what this does, understanding that it was God’s desire to meet with us from the get go, and that this interplay between heaven and earth is the testimony of what God’s about, then when you start kind of unpacking the connection… I just find that it breathes new life into some of these scriptures. 

So Ezekiel 36:26 says, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” Jeremiah 31:33, “I will put my law in their minds and I will write it on their hearts.” I think that’s again, a reference to the finger of God touching our hearts. That verse is referenced in Hebrews 10 and 8. Paul references it in 2 Corinthians 3, “You are a letter of Christ delivered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the Living God. Not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of flesh, which is the human heart.” 

Brooke:

Wow. 

Adam:

And by the way, we are the tabernacle. The Holy of Holies dwells inside of us.

Brooke:

Yeah, now we are the meeting place. Holy moly. Yeah. 

Adam:

So what we have, what we carry is really powerful and it starts with a belief. I believe that there’s a God bigger than we can imagine that we should be terrified of. But that’s the beginning of wisdom. That perfect love casts out fear. He wants to be with us. He wants to protect us, to provide for us, to empower us. He knows every hair on your head. He has a plan and a purpose for your life. He’s equipped you for every good work. I mean, when that is on your mind, your whole worldview changes. 

Brooke:

Yeah. 

Adam:

And I think that’s what we’re invited into. That’s the gospel.

Brooke: That’s some serious hope and some serious encouragement. So thank you. I think you did a good job. Well, we’ll see. Tell us if Adam did a good job. (laughing)

Adam:

Yeah, I had to get some of this stuff out. We’ll see how it goes. 

Brooke: We’ll see how it lands. (laughing)

Adam:

Thanks for listening.

Brooke: All of that to say, like Adam said, thanks for listening. And if this even interested you a little bit, dive into the scripture that Adam referenced. We’ll put it in the show notes too, as well as a link to the Bema Discipleship Podcast. I don’t know if you have a link to Rabbi Foreman’s deal. So have fun with that you guys and remember, what God has done for our storytellers, He lives to do for you. Each one of us has a story. So go get more chapters to that story. He’s waiting.

Adam:

Love you guys.

Brooke:

Love you.

“You are a letter of Christ delivered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the Living God. Not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of flesh, which is the human heart.” 

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