Elul 26
Prepare Your Heart
“For He raised a witness in Yaʽaqoḇ,
And set a Torah in Yisra’ĕl,
Which He commanded our fathers, To teach them to their children; That
it might be known to a generation to come, To children who would be born, To
rise up and relate them to
their children, And place their trust in Elohim, And not forget the works of Ěl, But watch over His commands,
“And NOT be like their fathers, A
stubborn and rebellious generation, A GENERATION WHICH DID NOT PREPARE ITS
HEART, WHOSE SPIRIT WAS NOT STEADFAST TO ĚL.” (Ps 78:5-8 ISR, emphasis mine)
The first
of Tishri begins in just a few days, which is also the same day as Yom Teruah, also known as Rosh HaShanah, or the Feast of
Trumpets. This time marks the beginning
of the fall feasts set apart by our Creator as those we must observe and adhere
to. I will not be teaching on what these
feasts are, together with their meaning; there are some excellent teachings available
– online - to those who are diligently searching, and are uncertain as to what
to do.
That
being said, the totality of the fall feasts will mean nothing and have little
importance to us if we do not first
prepare our hearts. The heart was
mentioned briefly in yesterday’s “Daily Slice”; we learned that the Hebrew word
translated as ‘heart’ is the word lêb
(Strong’s H3820), and most generally relates to the inner person, a combination
of the mind, will, emotions, together with all of the knowledge and
understanding that has been accumulated.
It is from the heart that we are to love our Creator (Deu 6:5); we are
to praise Him with all of our heart (Ps 9:1); Torah is to be in our hearts (Ps
37:31; Ps 119:11; Pro 3:3); and we are to guard our hearts very carefully (Pro
4:23).
The Scriptures
also inform us that “The heart is crooked above all, and desperately sick” – some translations
read deceitful or wicked (Jer 17:9). We
learn that our hearts can be divided (Hos 10:2) and ‘doubled’ (Ps 12:2); they
can be filled with perversity and evil (Pro 6:14; 12:8); all manner of
deception can be found within our hearts (Pro 12:20), and what comes out of our
mouths is ultimately from the heart, be it words of life, or words of evil and
death (Mat 15:18-20).
How, then, do we prepare
our hearts? With the assistance of the Ruach haKodesh, the Spirit of Elohim, we
‘house clean’. We place everything in
our minds, our will, and our emotions under the microscope, and hold it up
against the standard set for us through the pages of Torah. What does not measure up, what we know to be
in violation, including those areas of compromise, we must apply a cleanser,
allowing the ‘washing of the water of the Word’ (Eph 5:26) to purge those
patches and parcels that do not find favor with our Elohim. And we prayerfully ask, with humility,
recognizing all of our sins, transgressions and iniquities …
“Put me
in the scales, O Lord, so that I may be tested; let the fire make clean my
thoughts and my heart.” (Ps 26:2 BBE)
©2018
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