Welcome to the God's Goodness podcast, where our mission is to encourage and highlight God's
goodness and modern-day miracles. We are your hosts, Josh and Shelley Hinken. We have Yudith
Katan with us, and she and I met through Christian podcasters. It's a group in Facebook,
and the Lord led us to connect with one another, and she's just going to share what the Holy Spirit
laid on our heart. We hope that it's a blessing to somebody out there. We're going to ask you to
open us up with an opening prayer. Heavenly Father, I am so grateful to You, Lord Father,
that when I first came to know You, You invited me to be very close to You. And thank You, Father
God, that, Lord, You are inviting every single one of us throughout Christendom, wherever we are,
wherever we are, whichever stage we are, Heavenly Father, You are asking all of us to come really
near and close to You. And I thank You, Father, for that. I thank You for the opportunity to
reconnect with You wherever we are at. And I thank You for that in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.
It was 1985, so many years ago, and I was visiting Israel. I originally was Israel. I need to say that.
I was born in Israel on a kibbut. I grew up there. I did my military service. And then at the age of
22, I came over to England because I wanted to study English. I met my future husband in Israel,
and then I married and stayed, actually, in the UK. Hence, I am speaking English and not Hebrew
right now. In 1985, it was autumn. Roughly around about this time, I was visiting Israel,
just visiting my family, which I was doing every year. And I was very burdened. I had four years
of teaching in an English school where every month, I don't think, went wrong. And finally,
I decided to let go of my job. And I felt depressed. I felt down. And when I came to visit home,
I discovered that just about every member of my family was having a hard time. So let me begin
with a night when I was lying on my mother's sofa in a living room, really choked up and finding it
really hard to breathe because I was carrying the burden of the whole family. My mother was upset.
My father was in hospital. My brother was upset. My sister was upset. And I was really
burdened, is the word. And I wasn't able to sleep. And then in a flitting moment, I saw a huge
luminous cross hover over the length of my body. It came and then it went. And then I was able to
sleep. I was finally able to also weep. I sat behind my mother's house was a lovely little stream,
one of the streams that come from Mount Hermon. And I was sitting on the bench and I was weeping.
And I remember thinking, what were you thinking you were doing, taking the whole of the family upon
yourself? Father, I believe was beginning to teach me of his coming. The Jesus came to take
our burden away. And this is basically what he did. The cross came over me. The burden was lifted.
I did not become a believer straight away, but it's interesting that these were the thoughts in
my mind. I then left Israel and went back to the UK. And on the flight, I was listening to some
beautiful songs, a Hasidic songs. I don't know if anybody knows what they are. They're very touching,
heartfelt songs of Jewish who believe in God. And I was weeping. As the air started, a whole
series of visitations with the cross that just caused me to weep and weep and weep. And just
once my intellect was not interfering. I could feel, don't touch it, don't analyze. And I would walk,
I came back home to my hometown in England called Reading. And every time I walked by a church and I
saw a cross on a church steeple, I just would weep and weep. The cross would move towards me and I
would weep. And it was like weeks, months of weeping and weeping and not knowing what's going on.
Very, very important moment where it wasn't that I saw a clear cross. And I don't even remember
exactly where I was, but I always have a memory of it as being I was in front of the huge cosmic
sky. And all of a sudden, something opened my mind. And I saw the crucifixion. And I remember
thinking, Oh my goodness me, this must be true. What am I going to do? I am Jewish, I'm Israeli.
But it was very profound. There was no, there's no way I can't really even explain it. Barely
remember it, but it was so significant. It was a beautiful cosmic experience. And the only way I
did, I was able to explain it, I wrote it down as a poem. Is it okay if I read the poem? Sure.
So here it goes. Through a crack in the dawn of time, I saw a daunting paradox. His death on the
cross was the truth. Elusive and awesome, it stood, wrenching my heart with its presence. My tortured
soul was bleeding with an inexplicable yearning to be inside this experience of death.
Thislessly, I was drawn to the towering cross imprinted upon the curtains of my perception.
The world became meaningful through the suffering surrender alone. The dark cross upon my veiled
self imprinted the kiss of sorrowing love and summoned me to its rest. So Father showed me even
today that actually me walking in this way of knowing the cross as the first introduction
to faith rather than some marvelous miracle, mind you, this is a marvelous miracle, is actually the
most profound and most meaningful thing that happened to me. And it was very close and it was
very intimate. I then still not believing as such. I then met somebody who came to do a job. It was
a carpenter. He was a Catholic, charismatic, and he spoke to me and he prophesied over me and he
said, the Lord is laid his hand upon you and the whole of your family. That didn't make me a believer
either. He was telling me that he and his wife do prayer counseling in their home. And I didn't
know what prayer counseling was, but I knew Father was drawing me there, you know, and he finished
his job and he went away. And for a long time, for five months, I thought, I'd like to go and see
these people. I'd like to go and see these people. And finally I picked up the phone and I went to
see them. And on the first meeting, he asked me, would you like to receive Jesus into your heart?
For the life of me, you might not know why I said yes. But I said yes. And at that moment,
I saw the luminous cross again, small in front of my face with Jesus on it. And I felt I was
surrounded by darkness. They prayed for me. I left and I dismissed the whole thing. Interestingly,
inside me, deep inside me, there was like a flame of joy surrounding my darkness, but a flame of
joy. And then I shared it with some friends, my poetry class mates. And the minute I shared it,
I think my faith started. So there's something about confessing your faith, yeah.
And then began a very, very close, very rapid as well, very quick and rapid close revelation of
Oh Christ in a whole range of ways. I went to see Tom and Dorin nine times. And they prayed for me
for inner healing, something to do with my memories with my mother. But this appeared to me in those
memories. And he affected those healings. I mean, I mean, I can't exactly go into all the details,
but I can only say that I remember one particular thing. When I always got scared, I felt really
scared of my mom. And I don't know, she probably rebuked me and I went and wept and wept and wept
and just wouldn't come out on my weeping. My father came to get me back. But it wasn't my father I
wanted. It was my mother I wanted. And she never came. So finally I got up and I went back into
from the bedroom to the living room. And my mother was sitting on the sofa. My father welcomed me,
but she wasn't able to look at me. And I stood in my memory. Okay, they're praying for me and I'm
in my memory. And in my memory, I see her and I experience condemnation and rejection feeling
I couldn't come for me. So I thought if she couldn't come to me, I must have done something
terrible. At that point, I saw Jesus and he stood right next to me with his gowns, long gowns, and
he picked me up. And he placed me. So I was about four or five, five maybe placed me on my mother's
lap. And I saw myself going backward and forward on my mother's lap really happy. My mom wasn't
happy, but I was happy. So I knew the Lord healed me of that condemnation. And you know, that was
the one particular memory I remember about nine times as many, there must have been many other
things that happened, which I cannot now remember. But that symbolizes it. Thereafter, the Holy Spirit
must have begun to lead me to the Bible straight away. Holy Spirit lead me and he was teaching me.
I opened up the Bible. I don't know how it happened. It's the Holy Spirit, you know,
I opened it up in so many places. And all of those places were about false religions and false prophets.
So I was teaching me, I had to because one thing that I didn't mention is that I was
practicing transcendental meditation. I don't know if any of you know what that is, but it's
connected to Hinduism. And through the sessions with Tom and Doreen, I was delivered or the mantra
and Hinduism. I knew I was delivered because when they when Tom prayed, I was flung on the floor
and was free of that. And then the Holy Spirit led me into the into the Bible. It was remarkable,
really amazing. And then I felt very cherished and very held, acclaimed. In Christ, it's difficult to
explain even sometimes I even felt his tangible presence around me. Actually, I did. For the first
10 years of my walk of faith, I more than often most of the time felt his tangible presence around me.
His goodness is of his is the presence. There's nothing like it. And I'll never, the Lord said to
me, nothing else will ever satisfy you. And now, all those 38 years later, I feel, Heavenly Father,
I just need that presence again. From that place, right now, Father is really calling me to say to
all these people, come to me, come close to me, seek me. Intimacy with him is a number one priority.
There's a lot of people that chase worldly things and they don't realize the thing they're trying
to fill the hole with is Jesus. He's the one thing that can fill that hole, optimally.
Absolutely. It's absolutely incredible. And I went through thick and thin, loads of things.
I can say, Father's goodness to me in so many different ways. My husband is not a believer,
he was against my faith. So I walked through really hard times with that.
Father showed me that this was my God-given husband and we did everything we can to stay
together and we're still together and he's still not a believer. But all that time ago,
Father showed me that it will take a long time. It will be only the end of my life.
So I'm looking forward to it happening now. Many instances of his goodness.
Well, I have a question.
No, you ask me.
When you were seeing crosses everywhere, did you know what those were connected to?
Like what that ultimately meant or do you have that revealed to you?
I don't even remember. I didn't know anything about the Christian faith.
What I think, even though my marionine law was a Catholic, I don't think I had knowledge.
And I think so much at the level of my emotions and so much, I think Father deliberately masks
my knowledge side of things so that everything was so experiential.
Eventually I understood and I knew and I began to read the New Testament and I understood.
And there was so much more revelation of the meaning of the cross.
But it never came like a dogma. This is what I think. What I marvel at is how the Lord knew.
He knows me well. And he knew me, an emotional person. He worked with my emotions at that time
and almost prevented me from trying to analyze for a period, for a time,
which is really profound when you think of it because my husband wouldn't let me go to church.
I would go to prayer meetings in the daytime, but Father showed me abide by him, don't go to
church on Sunday. But he himself was teaching me, but I found fellowship. Nonetheless, I was
still educated by the church and by scripture and all the rest of it. I was not in the traditional
way. And to me, that really shows his personal goodness, meeting me where I needed to be met,
which is a good. So I don't know if that answers your question.
Yeah, that's good.
How old were you again when you converted?
33. Christ's age. I was 33 years old.
So were you taught a lot of Jewish history, Hebrew history?
Yes, because even though I grew up secular, every Jew, every Israeli has to learn about,
we learned the Old Testament, it's part of the school curricula. And the thing is interesting,
I loved particularly the prophets. And then the Lord has given me a prophetic sort of calling as
well. I come from a family who are real lovers of justice, every single one of us, mother,
father, brother and two other sisters. So it is kind of like in the remit. So of course,
I knew Jewish history. I knew one thing from my dad. My dad was not able to take on anything to do
with Christianity because of the Holocaust and because of the inquisitions. So that was like
a blockage to him. But he met with some Christian people who came and visited the kibbutz and
worked on the kibbutz and they prayed for him a lot, I discovered, on one of my visits. So it's
a mystery. Father shows me that sometimes he works with people in a non-traditional way,
you know, in a non-traditional Christian way. I sat with my father on one occasion, on one of my
visits on the living room sofa again, opened with Isaiah 53. And we were reading it together.
And we were getting excited about it together. Just for a moment. And then it was closed.
He didn't profess faith, but God told me that he belongs to him.
I think it's interesting that you grew up secular and were attracted to the prophets.
You know, the prophets that manifested the Spirit of God in the time before it was
freely given to all. And so I think that's really interesting that even though you weren't,
I guess, a believer of even God, that you were still drawn to his Word and through his miracles,
to his people. Yes, absolutely. That's so beautiful. I think I find that. And I was a seeker. I wanted
to know the truth. When my husband said to me, oh, no, it's just like, you know, that guy,
you know, the carpenter, he's just influenced. I said, no, no, no, you know that I'm not somebody
who gets influenced. If God is not just an idea that I took on an ideology that is interesting,
I said, if this is not true, I don't wish to know. So, you know, for me, I feel I'm passionate
about that. Father God, the Lord is real and is true and is good and is manifested in so many
different ways in my life and the life of so many people in even greater ways. What's unique to my
work with God is the whole issue of intimate closeness, being very, very personal, where there's
no distance, like as if we're soul to soul entwined. As he speaks with a still small voice,
and people only whisper because they're close. Yes. Yes. And any whisper, you can speak loudly.
We went to live in Brussels for a while. Me and my husband immediately in September 1985,
father spoke to me once audibly from heaven, promising me a child in his mother, I remember
trembling, thinking, oh, this is too much. And promising me the salvation of every member
of my Israeli family, mother, father, two sisters and brother. And father, and in one way also saying
to me, Andy, my husband will be with you. So, I know he will be saved. He grew up a Catholic,
but he rejected it. His father was a German Jew. And father promised me a child on the day that I
said to him, okay, Lord, father, if I never have children, that's okay, I just let go. I met you
and that's good enough. And that was after one more month and disappointment, and I was weeping
and weeping. And then I said, okay, I surrender. I let go of it. Never mind. At that moment,
my heart reached the Bible. And at that time, I wasn't versed in reading the Bible so much.
And again, it opened up in Therian Abram, Hannah and Samuel, Elizabeth and John the Baptist,
and Isaiah 54, Rejoice and Be Glad, O barren woman. So I said, are you promising me a child?
I felt, Lord, I don't understand the Isaiah 54. I understood it later. And after that,
he also spoke to me audibly. It was amazing. I've got it all written down. I took a pen and
paper and wrote down and regarding my father, when he got to my father, he showed me each one.
When he got to my father, I saw him sitting on an easy chair. I felt the Lord showing me that
denoting that my father was already belonged to him. My father was very special, but he was the
one person who did not ask Jesus into his heart that I know of. All the others did. But my father
was a very loving man, very compassionate, very generous, very generous spirit, a very Christlike
he was in all his dealings. And when father spoke to me about my father, he said, Eliyahu is Elijah,
that was my father's name, Eliyahu my son. He spoke of him as a very special person.
So I believe he was saved. So let me emphasize the fact of that personal meeting. And let me
emphasize the fact that father says, that's how I wanted all my children, very close, very personal.
According to your character, obviously he meets everybody according to who they are and their
purpose. And that's to me, that's so beautiful. And I feel passionate about it. He's actually
called me now to coach, oh, I quarreled with him enough about this. I said, Lord, you can't,
that's what he called me to do. He wants me to reach out to people and for people if they need,
if they have problems. He showed me all the problems. I went through all the problems. I went
into, I've been in the desert now for about 20 years. So the marvel of that constant presence
is not quite in the same place. But father said to me, I'm putting you in the desert.
My body is in the desert. You need to feel how it, what it feels like. And he's been teaching me
about the obstacles, the unbelief, the doubt, the feeling of distance from God that different people
are going through. And he taught me how to hear his voice in the desert. So, you know, there's a
certain way in which we can connect with God even when we feel things are dry and in hard times. So
there's, there's been a lot of training like that in my life, in my life in God. And now he says,
I'd love you to guide and coach individuals or willing to be coached in that way of coming near
me. And the way he does it is that's not what I do. In my sessions, what normally happens is the
intervenes. So we'll come in by spirit, the Holy Spirit will come in with a word for the person,
personally. My way with people I am working with is very personal. It's just, you know, it's part
of my background as well. And it's beautiful. Or you'll come up with a song, you know, all of a
sudden there's a song coming up. And it's wonderful. It's just the way the Holy Spirit works is amazing
to meet each person's need. I would have blessing for God to come to you when you weren't expecting
it. And he kept, he kept knocking and knocking, which is what we're supposed to do. We're going to
seek him and knock. Matthew 633 says, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,
and all these things shall be added to you. God wants us to have that relationship with him
and get to know him, not just pray and then be done with it. He wants you to get to know him
and be like Jesus. And clearly he pursues us, right? We love him because he first loved us.
Yes. And he clearly, clearly pursues us. And you saw it firsthand that he was pursuing you.
Yes. Yes. And Father also led it to my heart. I usually go after people as well. I'm a bit more
mature now and sort of like I'm less, I'm less ferocious, you know, I'm a bit gentler, you know.
And he taught me how to be gentle as well, because Israelis are not pikes and ones gentle.
But yeah, no, to say the least, but I'm honed by the British, you know, I've been here 40 years.
But the Lord gave me the definitive scripture relating to the whole coaching thing is,
come unto me, all ye who are burdened and heavy laden, and I shall give you rest. It's beautiful,
you know. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Judith. I appreciate your time and your stories
and your testimony. And I love how God chased you down and then he's still chasing after your husband
as well. Absolutely. And both the daughters are believers, which is beautiful. All they had to do
is ask Jesus to come and live in their heart. And Father God took care of the rest because I
couldn't take him to church. That's so good. So listen, if you haven't asked Jesus into your heart,
today's the day, make it today and just say, Jesus, come into my heart. You know, I don't
understand everything, but I believe that you died for my sins and he rose again and he is the only
way to heaven. We just ask that you build that relationship with him, get to know him, be open,
look for him in the little things because he will show up. And let me tell you, he's not going to
disappoint. And then once you do invite him into your heart, we encourage you to get plugged in
with the body of believers. You know, it doesn't have to be church, church, but just let the Holy
Spirit guide you to fellowship with other believers. And God will direct all your steps and the way
that he weaves everything together is just a really cool story that you'll be able to tell.
And also, we have a fundraising campaign that we are using the funds to keep the podcast going.
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