With God Nothing is Impossible
- Motti Cohen
- 11 hours ago
- 4 min read
- A Story of Transformation
Tiferet Yeshua Congregation
Tel Aviv
© Tel Aviv Pride Parade - by Ted Eytam
We are in Tel Aviv – a city with a large and influential LGBTQ community.
Testimonies of people from the LGBTQ community coming to faith in Yeshua and deciding to leave the homosexual lifestyle are rare. This last year, however, God showed us that nothing is impossible with Him and that He patiently works through people’s fears when they honestly desire to know Him.
I first heard about Anat many years ago from her two sisters, strong believers in our congregation. Anat had been a lesbian for about 30 years and was very antagonistic to faith in Yeshua. Yet, Anat was also a seeker and desired connection with God. Over the years, Anat extensively explored various streams of Orthodox Judaism wanting to experience healing and transformation with emotional issues. But she never felt they offered her lasting spiritual and emotional answers.
About ten years ago, Anat amazingly agreed to come with her sisters to a meeting at Tiferet Yeshua in the middle of the week. Anat had been suddenly struck with extreme pain in her back and stomach. Suspecting it was gall stones, she asked one of her sisters to take her to the hospital. Somehow her sister convinced her to come to Tiferet Yeshua that evening for prayer instead of going to the hospital. Being in such pain, she thought, “Why not?” and told her sister, “If I receive a miraculous healing at the congregation, I will start believing in Yeshua.”
Patricio, one of our members, prayed for her - together with a group of intercessors. Anat said she felt warmth in her back; and, after that, the pain was completely gone. She knew when she left the congregation that evening that she had been supernaturally healed. Nevertheless, she did not give her life to Yeshua right then and there like she had promised, and she told no one what had happened. Even so, the experience began to melt her fierce resistance to Yeshua, and she began considering faith in Him as something positive.
After her healing, Anat continued living the same lifestyle. God, however, had a different plan for her. About five years later, her attraction to women suddenly disappeared. She later told us: “It was not something I was struggling with and asking God to take away from me. It just disappeared as if it had never been, like someone had pushed ‘delete’ on that part of my life.”
To her, this transformation was even more profound and unexplainable than her physical healing. The change was so total, she realized that she had to “get used” to being a completely new person. Anat understood that somehow Yeshua was connected to this transformation, but she was still not ready to commit herself to Him completely.
Anat had gone deep into investigating Judaism and what she was supposed to do in order to get rid of the burden of shame she had always felt. One year, during the Day of Atonement, Anat experienced a moment of crisis with her struggles. She felt that the fasting every year on that day didn’t help, and neither did all of her studying of Orthodox Judaism. On that day, Anat cried out to God – begging Him to show her now what was the right way.
Twenty minutes later, Anat walked to her friend’s house and entered through the front gate. In the back yard, out of view, a neighbor boy was jumping on a trampoline and yelling at the top of his lungs, “Do you believe in Yeshu (the rabbinic name for Jesus)? Do you believe in God?” over and over. Instinctively her first response was to yell out to the boy, who also couldn’t see her, “His name is Yeshua!” She knew then and there that God had given her the answer. It was Yeshua. She knew at that moment that He was the One who would lift that heavy burden she had carried for so long.
Anat decided to receive Yeshua into her life. For a year and a half, Debbie and I discipled her on a regular basis. During those sessions, she brought to us all her questions and fears regarding faith in Yeshua, and rabbinic objections to Yeshua as the Messiah. As we studied together, Anat discovered her identity as a Jewish follower of the Jewish Messiah who, according to the prophet Isaiah, took upon Himself all our burdens, sin and shame – including hers.
Recently, Anat was immersed in water and completely dedicated her life to the Lord. Then, on June 5th, she shared her amazing testimony with the whole congregation.
Not only has God redeemed Anat spiritually, He has redeemed her God-given gifts. Anat is a talented musician, and the Lord has inspired her to write music that incorporates lyrics from the Hebrew scriptures and the New Covenant. She feels that God has called her to be a bridge for the many people she knows in the LGBTQ communities to learn about the freedom, meaning and new life in Messiah Yeshua.
