Journey Home - 11-28-2011 - Convert from Judaism - Marcus Grodi with Debbie Herbeck

[Music] [Music] good evening and welcome to the journey home my name is Marcus grodi your host for this weekly program EWTN gives me this wonderful privilege each week to bring before you men and women who because of the work of the holy spirit in their life are drawn to a closer walk with our Lord Jesus Christ and particularly with his church and some of those guests began from a commitment to Jesus Christ into the church others began from a different perspective and our guest tonight Debbie herbeck is a convert from Judaism and she's here to tell her story Debbie welcome to the journey home thanks good to be here now I know the EWTN audience is familiar with your husband Peter yes all right they would know him through crossing the threshold crossing the goal and crossing the choices we face that's right that's right uh but you've been on their programs too right I was on the choices we Face probably maybe three or four years ago all right okay but you but you're not a regular you're kind of no I'm behind the scenes you handle the world while he does his program exactly it's a good partnership well it's good to have you on the journey home U and have you tell your story because I think especially today especially those that come from a Jewish faith we want them to discover the beauty of the fullness right I mean that's that's our goal so what I normally do with the guests is invite you to take a big step back and start at the beginning and where you came from spiritually okay well I always like to tell people that I think every Jewish parent has um specific hopes and dreams for their children and growing up I definitely experienced this in that their child would go to a prestigious University because for many Jews education is so so important and then for their daughters that they would meet um a successful Jewish Jewish man a lawyer or a doctor and get married and live happily ever after well I did some of that I went to a prestigious University and I met um a wonderful Jewish man but he was a carpenter from Lazarus and that's where the story kind of veers off a little bit so a little bit about myself growing up um I before you get there that your little statement there interest me in terms of Jewish parents really wanting and really seeing education as the key and marrying up and I mean is it still fed by the you know the feeling that the way we have we have to do this to become an accepted part of society in these different countries where we live as Jewish there's still that always feeling like you're still not accepted fully in the society um I don't know if I got that message too much growing up I think just the the standards of success were certainly um well educated and very high and shooting High and um so I I didn't necessarily experience it as so much inferiority thing as much as just you know you're going to set your standards really high and I didn't mean inferiority what I meant was just the Prejudice still there it's still there still that battle and sadly you know we still live in a world that uh is I mean to a certain extent you came from one Prejudice to another Prejudice yeah that's right that's right that's right so but I interrupted you you ready to start to beginning um so I grew up in the Chicago area um in in a conservative Jewish Home and in for those who aren't familiar with how Judaism Works um Judaism has kind of a spectrum probably a lot like Catholicism in terms of um where people are and their belief system and how they're living their faith so you'd have the reformed Jews which would be considered more liberal the the conservative Jews which should be more in the middle and then the Orthodox or Ultra Orthodox Jews so the ones with the curls yes right right the hdic Jews so my family fell in the middle which was the conservative Jews which meant we really um tried to keep keep the laws and to live live those out in our daily life my grandparents um both um from Chicago but my family goes back to um Russia and um they were both very involved in the Zionist movement in the ' 40s um and so growing up it was really interesting I'd go down to their we'd go down to their apartment on lakes Shore Drive in Chicago to celebrate the Jewish holidays and lining their walls were the the modern Heroes of the Jewish faith people that they knew and had a lot of contact with from their trips to Israel like gold ofay ear and Yak Rabin people who are considered really the founding um parents of Israel as a state and so that's kind of the the environment I grew up in is when I was younger my parent my grandparents went to Israel a lot they my grandmother was the president of hadassa which is the largest Jewish uh charitable organization in the world and she was a president of the Chicago area and they both together helped raise a lot of money for Israel and so um a lot of our life as Jews really surrounded was surrounded by their involvement with Israel and really being in their home and celebrating the holidays I certainly don't mean this to sound like it being question but was there an active awareness of god good question yeah um I don't think there was an act in terms of an awareness in terms of a personal god um I went through religious education which for a Jew would be going to um Saturday school where you learned about the stories from the Torah um and then um when I got to be 12 my sister and I four of us in the family older brother brother um two two years older my sister and I identical twins and then a younger brother um four years younger um when we were 12 we began our religious education to study for our Bat Mitzvah now Barat Mitzvah is a right of pass passage for Jews and so we studied for a whole year learning how to chant our portion out of the scriptures so that when we turned 13 we could stand up in front of the synagogue my sister and I and chant that portion and then also give a speech and basically say we're now ready to be adult members of this congregation and to step into our role so we did that so we spent a lot of time in synagogue we went to synagogue every Saturday to to observe the sabbath um we learned Hebrew uh we learned from the Old Testament but I would definitely say growing up my life was just like any other kids um I did have the sense our life was very um insulated in a certain way like growing up I thought I that everyone in the world was Jewish and um because we were just surrounded by Jewish you know Jewish friends Jewish Family our neighborhood our um the place we lived was predominantly Jewish and so I didn't really have any exposure to Christianity now nowadays that's hard to believe with the internet and and the way information is but back then um if you weren't um didn't know other people that had other beliefs you didn't really have that exposure so I knew there was a Catholic church but I didn't really know who Jesus was I didn't know what the church taught I didn't know um what Jesus was there wasn't probably an act of antagonism towards the church all just wasn't a part of your conversation is it right but there was definitely a sense I'd say with like my grandparents and my grandfather definitely a sense that he communicated to us and that you're Jewish it's important to remain Jewish to continue the continuity of our people and so um there wasn't antagonism but there was definitely a sense of trying to protect our identity in a way and our awareness of who we were which would connect with as we said earlier the Prejudice that you are a people you are a people that has preserved these traditions and you live them out and that's why the the rights of Passage and all that and and whether there was an awareness of God in the midst of that is is can be caught someone recently pointed out to me that your experience of the synagogue that has amazing parallels of what we the way we because there's a Tabernacle there's a walking with the with the law you know walking around people touching the the robes I mean it's amazing the parallel of that to Adoration of the bless Sacrament is it is and as I got further down the road which is down my story further when I finally did get into inside a Catholic Church my eyes were open because I thought hey you got that from us you know so you had the fullness of that as a child though you saw that and experienced that yeah the traditions and a very cultural sense as a Jew of what my identity was um I mean this is who I was and I didn't understand everything about it and it didn't necessarily connect me in a deeply personal way with God but it connected me with all the Jews you know throughout history and in my world that this was something that was deeply a part of me well for Christians uh confirmation is often just the right of passage into adulthood and for far too many that's when they quit learning their faith they've arrived any parallels absolutely because with my I remember after my sister and I were B mitzo we we went to my dad and said so we're done right we can start going to the mall on Saturdays and you know playing sports and doing the things we want to be doing and he pretty much said well you're kind of done but um when you're living under my roof and you're still you're still Jewish um we will continue to go to synagogue and continue to learn about our our faith and continue to do the things that make us distinctly Jewish and so you know I'm grateful for that now looking back that that was really a strong part of our identity and um that we had that um in our family life together but I would say in the midst of that as I continue to you know start to grow up and got into early High School um and I'd say there was something there was something specific that happened a family incident that I think really um reoriented um my understanding or I better yet a lack of understanding of my faith that was when I was 15 um it was December early December um right around this time of year and my sister and I were getting ready to go on vacation we had been invited on a um Christmas break vacation with an aunt and uncle and my brother Mark at that time was in college already and the three of us were going to be going together on this vacation and my parents were not going to be going with us and so so my sister and I flew to Florida and the plan was that my brother Mark was going to meet us in Florida and we were going to go on to meet other family members and when we got to Florida some family friends met us at our gate and said your parents just called and your brother Mark's been in a car accident on his way home from college so you're supposed to come back to our house with us and figure out how serious this is so I remember we went back to these um this family's home and I remember um just waiting waiting for any news as to what my brother's condition was and we didn't know if it was serious um we didn't know if we'd be going home soon and so I remember I went out in their yard it was now by this time it was dark and I remember standing by their swimming pool and I remember it's amazing how you can remember an incident that happened many years ago uh as if it happened yesterday but I remember standing by the pool and praying now I had been in synagogue every Saturday of my whole life life almost knew thousands of prayers in Hebrew but I had never really prayed from my heart to God and I remember turning to God and saying God if you're here if you exist if you care about our family save my brother's life and I prayed that prayer and probably five minutes after I prayed the prayer the phone rang inside the house and I could see my mom's friend through the window pick up the phone and answer the phone and put the phone down and I could tell by the expression on her face that my brother had died and so um I remember just thinking okay God where are you where are you now are you really there and really having this I don't even know if I could call it a crisis of Faith because I don't even know how strongly I believed but I threw it out there and it was a horrible result so my sister and I got back on a plane that next morning flew back to Chicago to be with with our family you know my parents grieving the loss of their firstborn son now in Jewish tradition there are many um customs and rights of morning that you go through as a family um you you um gather together and you sit Shiva which is a time when family and friends and members of your congregation come to your home there's a prayer vigil they feed you they comfort you they stay with you and I remember during those days still being in in shock but going around talking to different people teachers and a favorite aunt and then finally everyone directed me to the rabbi CU I had so many questions and I was filled with such anger and I remember sitting with the rabbi he was quite old and saying Rabbi where is my brother what happens when we die where is God how does God allow this to happen my brother had been driving home on a snowy two-lane Highway had been run off the road by a semi wasn't wearing a seat belt and before my parents could even get to the small hospital that he was at he had died and I remember the rabbi just was quiet for what seemed like an eternity and he looked at me and he said I don't know I don't have answers to those questions but I'll pray that you find the answers that you're looking for and that enraged me even more because I thought if you don't know who does you're supposed to have the answers you're supposed to point the way and that kind of sent me um a little bit more into a downward spiral where I just felt like if my faith or or whoever represents my faith to me doesn't have the answers to the most basic questions in life what's the point yeah and so you know it's all a sham yeah it's all a sham is this all there is and so you know I had the next two years of high school preparing for college which I knew um I was headed off and so I had two conflicting things one was okay um eat drink and be marry you know for tomorrow you die which is a very dangerous Philosophy for a high school student um so a lot of distraction in my life you know partying and kind of just wanting the pain to go away but I was also working toward a goal and that goal was to get to get good grades so I could go to a good University so I could get out of the house so I could in my mind make something of my life because didn't know how long I had and somehow wanted to kind of compensate for my brother's loss so a lot going on there in those high school years and when the time came to make that decision were you still doing your Saturday visits to the synagogue no I stopped kind of stopped going to the synagogue um my ironically and sadly My Brother David um was bar mitzvot um probably 3 weeks after my brother's death and that was very painful um a time that supposed to be the most joyous occasion in a family's life turned into almost like a repeat of the funeral again all the memories and difficulties so just a very very challenging time um in our lives as a family and um during this time at the end of my junior year beginning of my senior year I got this idea in my head that I wanted to go to the University of Michigan and I I didn't know then why but I do now um none of my friends were going it turned out my sister ended up going to a different school and so here for the first time in our lives we were going to be separated identical twins and I got ready to head off to U ofm and she got ready to head off to Indiana University and really for the first time being on my own but I thought hey it's no big deal there's lots of Jewish kids that go to Michigan I'm going to find other Jewish kids and you know everything will be fine I want to say up to this point I didn't really know very much about Catholicism or Christianity the first time I ever was in a Catholic Church was my senior year in high school on a field trip in downtown Chicago and I remember walking in and thinking wow this is really strange it was an old polish Catholic Church that smelled like incense and you know they had the big crucifix hanging out she even had probably more statues and icons than than the sure and I didn't you know at that point it was just weird I didn't know what to make of at all but I thought well you know I'm going to the university I'm going to kind of um broaden my understanding of the world and so I had it off to to Michigan and at that time my roommate um I was rooming blind I didn't know who my roommate was um I just had gotten matched up and I remember my parents dropped me off at the dorm and um before going into my room my roommate was already there I decided I would walk up and down the hallway it was a freshman Hall of all girls to see if there were any other jewi je girls on the floor because they had all the names on the doors of the the girls and I walked up and down and I thought I don't know I don't see any Bernstein or Cohen or none of the names recognizable suspects and you know I mean if you're Jewish you know if a name is Jewish so um I went to my room um my roommate was not Jewish and she had already been there for a day or so and her side of the room was set up and I remember I was quite shy but I remember I was really making an effort to have conversation with her so I went over to her side of the room and she had this picture on her um dresser that was um a frame photo and I remember it was a picture of a guy with um long longish hair this was in the you know the mid 7s and um brown eyes and a beard and I remember asking her if it was her boyfriend and I going to show you this picture here cuz this is a the 70s Jesus that I think a lot of people been a a boy from the 70s of course of course so I remember she gave me this very strange look like probably thinking you got into school here don't you know who this guy is and um she said don't you know who that is and I said well no not really and she said well that's Jesus and then she followed it with an even stranger line something like and he's my boyfriend so I thought okay this girl's a little weird what have I gotten myself into but what I found out later about um this this roommate this young woman Lori was that she was a Catholic and during that summer before she came to to Michigan she had really been um Reen renewed in her Catholic faith and really came to the University of Michigan really wanting to live out her Catholic faith wow and I thought here I am 40,000 students at UFM never been exposed to Christianity and I get put with a Catholic so um so that kind of began you respond to the fact that you were Jewish and that you're actually well I shouldn't say you weren't a practicing Jew at the time well she didn't have a lot of exposure to Jews either Jewish people either okay but she was you know there was she was very wise in a certain way even though her faith I think was really genuinely alive to her she knew that we had to coexist in this tiny little dorm room together and so I think she really did try and live her faith but she certainly didn't sit me down and try and you know talk to me a whole lot about what she believed but at the same time there was another girl that lived on on my floor her name was Sarah and I had never met anyone like her before she talked Non-Stop about her faith she played guitar and I remember this is the 70s so she would walk around with her guitar knock on people's doors and and sing and talk about Jesus and ironically she and I became friends and um this is a wonderful thing about just getting to know somebody who who's really kind of alive in their faith there was something about her that was very kind of strange to me cuz I'd never seen anybody like her but something that really was attractive to me because she was the genuine article she was the real deal um there's just something very joyful about her and so we began this friendship and we the only thing we really had in common was we were both athletes we both likeed to play sports so we would go to the gym together and and work out and and play on sports teams together and in the cour of that time together she would begin to talk to me about things that she was learning in the Bible she was also a Catholic um recently renewed in her faith and we would have these debates where she'd quote something out of the New Testament and I'd kind of counter with something out of the Old Testament and um neither of us really knew what we were talking about and because she was so new in her faith and um and because she was Catholic unfortunately she wasn't very systematic in her the way she Kindel the two girls you meet are both reborn again in their faith we both Catholics isn't that itself that was very un of the Lord absolutely absolutely so here I am I kind of find find myself surrounded by some of these Christian girls on my floor having never been exposed to Christianity so I went one day um I'm going to you show you my this Bible in a minute because this is very instrumental in the whole story here one day I went to a class that I was taking I was an English major and we were studying um it was called great books and we were studying first and 2 Century literature and one day the professor came to class and he said I want you to read the book of Romans and write an essay on it and I went up to him afterwards and I said well I don't have the book of Romans and he said it's in the New Testament and I said well I'm not allowed to have one of those and he said I don't really care get yourself a new testament and read the book of Romans and I really had the sense that I was not supposed to buy a new Testament um because I knew that was a Christian book but I knew that my friend Sarah had a Bible cuz I had seen it in her room so I went down to her room and I explained the assignment and she said you can borrow my Bible and um she said let me just warn you the book of Romans is very difficult a lot of Christians have a hard time understanding it but so if you need help I'd be glad to help you out so she took the little red ribbon which I learned later was like a little bookmark and she put it in where book of The Book of Romans was and I carried it back to my dorm room and I opened it up and I started to read it and I got about into the first paragraph the first section and I was lost I had no context for understanding what Paul was talking about so I started to kind of just Lea through her Bible because I had actually never met anyone who owned their own Bible you know Jew Jews consider the scripture so sacred that really the only time that you'd hear the scriptures read or discussed would be in in the synagogue and if somebody did have a Bible in their home and the Bible were to fall to the ground you'd have to pick it up and kiss it as a sign of reverence for God's word so here's someone that not only owns their own Bible has her name inscribed on the front not only is she reading it but she's writing in it and not only is she writing in it she's writing in almost the whole thing you can see this is Ephesians she's pretty much underlying the whole new testament and then she's writing in the margins and she's writing in the back notes things that come to her and not only does she have a new testament but she's got my scriptures in here too and as I began to look through her Bible I began to feel like I was reading someone's personal diary and I thought this is the strangest thing because she actually feels like she's speaking to God through these words and then she actually feels like God is speak speaking back to her and it seems like there's a little bit of a dialogue going on here and this for some reason that I didn't really understand made me very very nervous and I remember not even doing the assignment giving her Bible back to her almost like here take it because I had the sense that if I kept this too long and I really um read this that it might have some impact on me and it wasn't until later on in my journey much later that I opened to the book of Hebrews and I read the word of God is living and active it's sharper than any two-edged sword and I felt like I was holding a two-edged sword and that I really needed to give it back before that sword really um pierced my heart so that was really my first exposure to uh an aspect of her relationship with God that I found extremely personable personal but I didn't understand it at all so we're still in freshman year now and you've gotten rid of this Bible I've gotten rid of the Bible and just try to focus on studying Sarah and I are still friends um having occasional conversations and it's probably around February now and this is Lent I didn't know it was lent but looking back now uh it was during Lent and I was studying in my room and Sarah and a couple of girls knocked on my door and they said we're taking a study break we're going to go down to the lounge in the dorm and watch a movie this is back when kids actually left their rooms you know now everyone's got big TVs in the room but people are actually congregating in the lounge to watch a movie so I sat down on the floor with Sarah and this movie came on and it was crowded there were a lot of kids in there and I remember thinking what is this movie and I actually turned her and I said what are we watching and she said oh it's nothing I said Sarah what is this and she said oh it's a movie called Jesus of Nazareth and it was being shown in two parts um for the Lenton season and I remember sitting there and watching it as the story unfolds and I'm watching Jesus as a young boy and Jesus in the synagogue and Jesus being presented um for his circumcision and all the things in his life and I remember turning to Sarah and saying he's Jewish she said yeah I said I never knew Jesus was a Jew no one ever told me that Jesus was a Jew and as I watched just the story of his life unfold I thought not only is he a Jew he's a good Jew he follows the law he obeys the Commandments he listens to his mother he's a good Jewish boy and immediately now you know this is Hollywood this is you know a Hollywood version but this is the only version of Jesus that I've had so far there was something I felt this incredible kinship to him not only no longer was he like this historical figure in the Christian world but he was a Jewish boy a Jewish man and I felt this connection to him that I couldn't even explain and kind of a being drawn to him in terms of who he was as a man and the way that he carried himself and there was something about him that I thought I wish I could be like that and then the scene unfolds and it was near the end of the evening um near the end of the first segment where Jesus comes to a town it's the town of Bethany and he's met by a woman who falls at his feet and is weeping and she says to him Lord where were you if you had been here our brother would not have died oh wow and I felt like this was a script out of my own life and I thought you've got to be kidding those were almost the words that I had spoken to God just a few years previously when my brother Mark had died and I remember everything in me wanted to just get up and run out of the room I just thought I just cannot deal with this I can't face this again but I sat there and I watched as that story unfolded and I watched as Jesus went to the tomb where Lazarus had been for 4 days and I knew as a Jew that that he was ritually unclean that Jesus had no business going into that tomb and I watched as he called forth Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead and if I could have been looking at myself having an out of- body experience I was probably sitting there like and I watched as this happen and I thought what if he is the Messiah what if this man has power over death what if death isn't the final answer and then all the wh ifs about my brother Mark all the wiffs about my own life all the questions that I thought were closed door with no answers suddenly became what if so I went back to my room that night the scene ended kind of around that time I went back to my room that night and I couldn't sleep and I went down the hall to my friend Sarah's room and I knocked on her door and she opened the door this wide I didn't say anything she didn't say anything and she just handed the Bible to me and I took her Bible back to my room and I opened to where that little uh ribbon was and I read the gospel of Matthew Mark Luke and John and then I got to that scene in John where Jesus um comes to Bethany and I got to those lines where Jesus says to Martha and Mary I am the resurrection and the life the one who believes in me will never die but he who believes in me will have life Everlasting and I didn't know what a lot of that meant I didn't really know what Resurrection meant but I knew there was a promise implicit there about life and death and that night for the second time in my life in my dorm room I got down on my knees and I prayed and I said God I don't know if you're real and if you can hear me and I don't know who this man Jesus is but if he's the one if he's the Messiah the one our people have been waiting for show me and give me the faith to believe and that was another door that opened um why don't we pause yes all right let's pause there and we'll take a little break and then we'll come back because there we have an Awakening of the Lord in your life we'll see what where he took you after that okay okay be back in a [Music] [Music] bit [Music] welcome back to the journey home our guest tonight is Debbie herbeck and we've uh interrupted your journey right at the moment when the Lord used Hollywood that's right to awaken you to I mean as you said it's still kind of amazing today to think about a Jewish girl being brought up in our culture without really knowing Jesus but as you said you're in a in your little culture of Judaism no one brings it up you don't right we not automatically infused with an understanding of Jesus but yet the Lord used this movie to awaken you he did he did and I would say um you know one thing I want to say is during this whole time I never thought about converting like I was just trying to seek truth I was trying to understand was trying to seek the person of Jesus thinking and hoping and praying that he was the Messiah I never thought about converting I never thought about leaving the Jewish faith and so um it was just kind of a gradual movement toward the lord of seeking and really seeking after him and so I had this Bible now and my friend Sarah graciously said why don't you keep it read it and so I began to read the scriptures I began to read the New Testament primarily the gospels because I was hungry to know who this Jesus was and what he was teaching and what he was saying and also trying to read it in light of the Old Testament and some of the um things in Isaiah and things that were being prophesied about had been prophesied about the Messiah and so I began to read things in the New Testament that were shocking me things like um Jesus saying whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy to be my disciple whoever does not hate father mother sister brother who's ever not willing to in some in some way love um me more than their family is not willing and I thought this is what it means this is what modern day Christians are doing but I was going through these and I was doing what the scriptures describes as counting the cost I was seeing what the cost was of being a disciple and I was counting that in my head in terms of what I knew that it would cost me to really be a disciple of Jesus well I went home that summer and uh you know continued to read this um kind of quietly yeah very quietly and was really felt like I was caught between two worlds I was really in the world and the life that I had lived before um praying that prayer and then really living in a world where I was almost had um different Vision about what was possible kind of in the spiritual world and so I was home that summer and continued to correspond with my friend Sarah and went back to school in the fall and I remember saying to Sarah listen if Jesus was a Jew and I believe he was historically he was a Jew why aren't there other Jews that believe he's is the Messiah and I remember she said oh but there are other Jews she said I actually know a girl who believes in Jesus and she's Jewish would you like to meet her and I remember saying no absolutely not and so Sarah kind of left it at that and because again I was not wanting to be convinced to be converted and um so that um about a week later I was going to synagogue um actually services that were being held on campus it was the holiest day of the year for Jews it was Yom Kapur the day of atonement and I was going to synagogue like I had gone all my life and when I walked um was leaving there walked out and literally bumped into this young woman another Jewish girl who was there at the services and we began to talk as we were walking through campus and as we were parting ways there um she said do you mind if I introduce myself so she said hi my name is so and so and I just want to tell you a little bit about myself and she said I grew up in a Jewish Home my grandfather was a rabbi and when I was 16 um I came to know Jesus as the Messiah and so here it was my first Jewish believer in Jesus and she and I became fast friends and um she was also at Michigan and so we spent the next few years together and so you know here's another window that's opening another question that's getting answered for me well this is now my sophomore year I'm living in the dorms um my friend Sarah's moved out of the dorms but we're continuing our friendship and our relationship and a lot of different things happen but if I can kind of cut to the chase here um I was getting ready to go home for Thanksgiving that fall and um I've been reading as I said a lot of the Old Testament and New Testament I remember sitting down with my parents I was home before my sister and we were having dinner in a Chinese restaurant I remember this very clearly you know it's the typical college kid who wants to go home and tell their parents what they've been learning so I said you know I've been reading a lot of the scriptures and to say that to a Jew meant that I was reading the Old Testament and I said do you think anything in Isaiah could really be pointing to Jesus that's the Messiah I remember looking over and my mother's like choking on her egg roll at this point and my dad has this panck look on his face and they said we need to we need to go home right now so he went back to their home and they called some friend of friends of theirs it turns out my dad had some good friends who were business associates and they were catholic and they said we're really nervous we think our daughters thinking about converting please come over to the house and being the good Catholics they invited the Catholics over they invited the Catholics over for that and uh you know unfortunately I think the Catholics weren't very well catechized and so they came over and kind of said to me what are you thinking don't do this you know you're Jewish stay Jewish don't don't convert don't think about doing anything that's going to hurt your family but what I can say about that weekend was it was kind of like God was giving me like a sneak preview again counting the cost and in that weekend I had a tremendous of experience of what this decision might cost me was very difficult for my parents U very emotional um I definitely experienced some kind of um distancing themselves a little bit because they didn't really know how to handle it and um so I went back to school um and continued to read the scriptures and two days after I was back in school I had a dream and in the dream I was standing in this long dark Corridor and I heard this voice call out to me who do you say that I am and in the dream it was dark and I couldn't see anyone and I said I don't know who you are and a second time this voice called out to me who do you say that I am and I looked down the hall and I could just see like the outline of a person but I couldn't see their face and I was frustrated and I said I don't know who you are but I want to know and then a third time who do you say that I am and I looked up and Jesus was standing before me in this dream and I said you're Jesus you're Jesus you're Jesus and I woke up from the dream it's very clear dream and was very disturbed by it in a certain way and I was going to meet my friend Sarah at the gym that morning and I told her I Saidi had this dream and Jesus appeared to me do you think there's anything to it and she was like yeah I think so she's probably like wow this is amazing and I said it's too hard I knew it was Jesus but I don't have the faith to put my whole life into his hands and she said something I thought was very wise at the time and I knew came right out of the scripture she said keep asking keep seeking keep knocking and God will reveal himself to you and so I did that I continued to take this script the Bible and every night on my bed I would pray that prayer Jesus if you're real if you're the Messiah show me and now I started to pray for Faith and give me the faith to believe so probably a week after that I was in my dorm room it was night time my roommate was sleeping I was sitting at my bed um at the University of Michigan one of the most secular universities in the country and I prayed that prayer and in that moment as I prayed that prayer I had this sense of the room filling with this incredible presence and light and warmth and I knew that I was in the presence of God and I was um instantly struck by my unworthiness and my sinfulness and I didn't really know how to phrase it um I guess Christians now would call it the sinner's prayer or whatever but I basically just said to God I've messed up I've broken or bent most of your Commandments and if you um with your help I can do it better if you give me a second chance and in that moment when I when I prayed that and express that to God I experienced Jesus being with me there in the room and he was standing there like this saying here it's for you and I had this wasn't an audible voice but a sense in my heart that Jesus was really speaking to me me and saying and I remember thinking what what is it and he said it's Faith you prayed for it you asked for it it's a gift you did nothing to earn it or deserve it but it's here it's for you and honestly Marcus in all those years of never knowing Jesus and all those months of questioning and doubting when he held out his hand to me in one Split Second I knew it was all true I just knew I knew because I knew because I knew and I knew that no one could could take that Knowledge from me that it was true that Jesus was a messiah so I always say what do you do when Jesus comes you in your dorm room well if you're smart you say yes and so that night I told the Lord I believe that you're Jesus the Messiah I believe in what you teach and I want to give my whole life to you and I want to walk in faith with you no matter what the cost um and I had a tremendous sense of peace that God was with me that he was caring for me that he would take care of the future that he would take care of all the unknowns all the family and all my concerns and so that night I walked through that door of faith and said yes to Jesus I'm not sure that this question touches what you'd experienced dur that time but did you have a sense of Mark's intercession of Mark's smiling on you during that time was that it ever did you ever think about I did later not in that moment but really like the weeks and months that followed as I really kind of dove into prayer now not just not just seeking the Lord out there but really him beside me and within me walking me through my grief and my questions I had a a very strong sense of um you know that Romans 8th passage all things work together for the good and kind of getting a little bit of a glimpse of God's Eternal perspective on what we call problems right so right and giving a little more hopeful absolutely feeling for your your brother who had had been taken and really was a spark that started you on this big part of the journey yeah absolutely so at this point are you you're a believer in Jesus Christ a disciple of Jesus Christ are you anything I mean did did your Messianic Jewish friend bring you into a particular group yes at that point well I decided to stay in an arbor um okay where I was in school school for the summer because I knew that I needed to be surrounded by other believers to really help me grow more and you know in that moment when I said yes to Jesus I was really saying yes to the person that I was encountering of Jesus I didn't even I hadn't even gotten to the Book of Revelation yet I didn't know all of the the teaching and the doctrine and I knew that that would come it's a little bit like falling in love and then then then you discover really more about the person that you've fallen in love with so I stayed in an arbor I was baptized at summer in a swimming pool and joined a Messianic congregation kind of like a free Church where a lot of um wasn't really a Messianic congregation but there were a lot of Messianic Jews that were part of it and I felt um very much at home because it wasn't as much of a cultural leap you know um we were still kind of discussing and learning about the scriptures through um a Jewish lens and a Jewish context and that was a great place for me to be for a number of years because I was really able to grow in my faith in a way that was comfortable so I graduated from the University of Michigan and had some decisions to make and I knew that I wanted to stay in an arbor um and I decided really um I was just really set my heart was set on fire to really live in a radical way for Jesus um this was you know in the the early 80s and um I really wanted to just give him everything and so I really set aside um a year to really um do Direct Ministry and I was working at the University of Michigan doing campus ministry um talking to anybody and everybody I could about Jesus um helping others college students come to know him I was doing some writing and working for um a Catholic publishing company at that time and um me you weren't Catholic at I wasn't Catholic at the time so I was around other Catholics but I was really in a more I guess you could say ecumenical um environment so I wasn't even really learning that much about the Catholic faith so to speak um so after a while I decided that I thought well I you know was starting to discern my vocation now that that's a very Catholic term I wasn't saying it in those terms but I knew that now that I'd given my whole life to Jesus I wanted to give him every part of it and if he was that's is very much an Evangelical what do you want me to do with your life Lord exactly and you knew you're going to stand before God accountable for the life he's given you so what do you want it to be Lord exactly and I knew knew that he was probably calling me to be in some you know kind of full-time Ministry um but I thought are you calling me to be married are you calling me to be single you know and fortunately I was around other people that were really trying to live out those Lifestyles and so I I spent some time really living with um a group of women who are really pursuing the the single lifestyle some of them were catholic and some of them were Protestant and after doing that for about three or 4 years I I definitely had a sense that God was calling me um to marriage and um I remember at this point I was now doing um campus ministry full-time and I had met a young man um who was also doing campus ministry who had moved to ant Arbor from Minnesota and his name was Peter and this is where he comes into the equation um he had just um was Discerning the priesthood and had decided not to become a priest and but was still kind of in the process of discerning his vocation and we became friends and it became clear to me that God was calling be me to be married and he had the same sense and so we get to this point in our relationship where Peter says I really want to I really like you I want to marry a Catholic I'd like to pursue a relationship with you and I said to Peter I really like you I'd like to pursue a relationship with you but I don't want to become Catholic just you know just out of convenience you know i' had made too many decisions that were really difficult for me and whatever I wanted to do I wanted to do out of conviction so we cut a deal and here's the deal I said I will investigate the Catholic Church on my own you cannot talk to me about it I will meet with a priest um and we'll see where this comes out and so he was very agreeable to that and I began to meet with um a priest who also happened to be a friend um that I had met through other people and we began to have these weekly meetings and he just said come and let's discuss now um for most Evangel IAL who are coming into the Catholic Church they've probably got a list of probably five or six and you can probably name them along with me I don't think I had all any of those biases but I certainly was pretty ignorant about the Catholic church so we began to discuss things like um the communion of saints and purgatory and um Mary we kind of checked off the list Mary was actually kind of down here and I began to go to mass to sit in the back and to observe and as I said before I felt like oh my gosh they got that from us they got that from us they stand when God's word is read we do that in the synagogue you know the whole sense of the the Tabernacle and um the Ark of the Covenant and and I began to to read and study um about the Eucharist and how that connects with the Passover and just a lot of things were beginning to connect in in my head and in my heart and um and then an amazing thing happened on a more personal level as I began to to meet Mary in the scriptures and understand her role in the church and as I always say there's nothing like a good Jewish mother to make a home for you and I think that's really what Mary did for me in the Catholic faith was she really began to make the church Feel Like Home to me and what I sensed when I went to mass just even observing was the things that were so important to me as a Jew the timelessness the um the whole sense of liturgy and um being connected you know as a Jew when you when you go to synagogue and you hear the readings that's what's being read all over the world in every single synagogue and that's what's happening in the mass so a deep sense of connection there of of a real sense of kind of coming home and um so um with a very joyful heart I came into the church on Palm Sunday and then um just a month after that Peter and I were married um my family um agreed to come to the wedding wonder how they responding this they said we'll come um but not if you get married in a church and so we got permission from our Bishop to be married in a hotel and um we had a rabbi and a priest our priest friend can celebrating and uh it was very interesting um my parents brought a couple hundred Jewish friends and family from Chicago and um we really uh celebrated it we were married under a HOA um we set our Catholic and our Hebrew vows under the HOA we broke the glass um and you know did all the the Jewish traditions and really tried to merge those Traditions so um so that was really the beginning of all that and the whole time I felt like God was saying I'm not taking away I've added something here and so it was a real sense of completion for me in coming home and a real sense of being able to express my identity as a um a Messianic Jewish Catholic and in marrying Peter you certainly did indeed end up with an Apostolic life yes we certainly did we certainly did and you know honestly that's one of the things that Drew us together I think was that real sense of calling to to go out and do that together for the Lord that's right and you're doing it to this day I've got an email J Jenny from Canada how can I best convey to my Jewish friend the fullness of the Christian faith I don't want to uh strain our friendship but would love for him to experience all that Christianity has to to give yeah that's that's a tough one it's a question I get a lot I think you know as you listen to my story there was a lot of relational evangelism going on I really trusted the people who began to to teach me about who Jesus was I think for any Jew understanding the the the Jewish roots of Christianity really helps because to see it as a real continuation of what the Jewish faith um taught and what God promised so I think you know you have to really understand it and a lot of Jews don't even understand their own faith and understand the scriptures that's a good point the first step for for reaching out to a Jew friend is Jewish friend is to get them to know their own faith absolutely and then there's a lot of com commonality um that you can find in that so I think just to get them hungry to learn more about who Jesus was as a Jew and even take Jesus out of the equation for a minute and just about their own faith and really seeking after God um both from a Jewish and a Catholic perspective the bar Bat Mitzvah and Confirmation can be misunderstood how about a word on that helping people appreciate what this is really all about confirmation as well as B Mitzvah it's well I think um you know when we Peter and I had our children we have four children and we we had a very strong um sense that we wanted to give them um the gift of their identity as both Jews and Catholics and so we celebrated all the holidays and the feasts and we talked about Jesus being the Fulfillment and even though my kids weren't Barat Mitzvah they were confirmed and we talked about that in light of you know what the bar mitzvah means and and the right of passage and Confirmation is all of that and so much more because not only is in the bar mitzvah is it you standing up as a human and saying this is what I give to God but in the confirmation it's God saying I back that my own promise and I'm giving you what you need to live it and so it's really a beautiful thing in terms of the Holy Spirit really um being empowering us to live the life that's right I mean that I mean there are many things of course but really that that aspect of the Holy Spirit coming within us at baptism being empowered in confirmation living out the gifts that's really a key thing that again just as in the Jewish faith you can take your bat mitzah for granted we can take the confirmation for granted yeah and really what it's all about in our faith life right it becomes just a humanistic thing that we do you know one of the ceremonial things we do as as opposed to saying this is really going to empower me to live you know live my faith well Debbie thanks for sharing your witness the journey glad to do it if they want to connect somehow with the website is there one we ought to mention yes renewal ministries.net all right and they'll have seen that on all the other programs with Ralph and Peter but also they can connect with them as well as you all right thank you so much you're welcome Debbie and thank you for joining us on this episode of the journey home uh you know as she said uh we've all got Jewish friends let's invite them relationally to get to know their faith because we believe it's a stepping stone for the fullness and so do that in obedience to our Lord God bless you see you [Music] soon [Music] in [Music] [Music] in [Music]

Channel: EWTN

Views: 114,144

Keywords: EWTN, Marcus Grodi, Debbie Herbeck, Convert from Judaism, Journey Home, Catholic, JHT01336

Id: 9F1m9bnv1ks

Length: 56min 1sec (3361 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 29 2011