Good Morning Yamon Ki Yesepar;

Proverbs 23:7: “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee, but his heart is not with thee.”

The word “think” (sh’ar) really has translators scrambling.  Does your heart think?  Is this thinking process and the heart the same?     Actually the word heart here is not “lev” but “nephesh” or soul.  Nehesh in it’s primitive state simply means to breath.  Now back to the word “sh’ar” or think.   In it’s primitive state sh’ar has the idea of horror, shudder, to determine a value, make a decision as to what door to enter.   Hence to think or make a decision. The horror or fear aspect comes from not being sure if you made the right decision.  Note that this is a decision based upon your soul or breath, a decision made in the natural.  Eat and drink saith he to thee.  Some people tell you how to worship or the proper way to worship, but that advice could be in the natural, nephesh.

I remember a pastor said he was offered a church which paid twice as much as the church he was serving in.  He said: “There are some things so obviously God’s will you don’t even have to pray about it.”  This was a very Godly man and he was joking, but also trying to make a point.  If he were to make the decision in the natural to leave his present ministry, it would be to go where he could make more money, hands down.  That is thinking or making a decision in your soul or heart.   The verse further says: “Eat and drink, saith he to thee, but his heart is not with thee.”    Here the word heart is “lev.”   Lev is the resting place of your passions, it is where you passion’s reside.  If you make a decision based upon your soul, it is this world and earthly concerns where your passions lie and not with God. That happens in worship, some decide to worship in a way that will give you the thrill or excitement, a way that “worked” in the past.

In the Likutim Yekarim , p. 17c we learn:  “All words begin in thought.  The great rule is that before you speak any word, it begins in thoughts (sh’ar);  for thoughts are all formed through the combinations of letters.”  Just as a side note; many of your mystic Jews will think on the letters of the Hebrew alphabet as they are considered sacred and allow God to organize those letters into words, or consider the representation of the letters to be their “sh’ar” or doorway to a decision.   This is why the Oracle of Kabbalah (cards like playing cards only each contain a certain letter of the Hebrew alphabet with it’s numerical value) or the Urim and Thummim or the casting of lots (dice with letters of the Hebrew alphabet) were considered a source in the decision making process.

But let’s look further into this verse.  “eat and drink says he but his heart is not with thee.”   The Talumd gives an explanation for this verse in Tractate Menachoth 99b. “All thinks yearn to return to their source.  Therefore, when one eats, drinks, or is otherwise involved in mundane affairs, his spirit has a chance to rest from its enthusiasm, and it gathers new strength to return to an ever higher level of closeness to God.  There are two reasons why this must be so.  First if one were not to periodically “cool down” from intense spiritual experiences, one might reach a stage where one’s soul would become so united with God that it would completely lose its separateness, at which point it would not be able to return to the physical body (as with Enoch).  Another reason is because perpetual pleasure loses its glamour, and becomes boredom.  Thus, if one were constantly experiencing peak spiritual pleasures, they would no longer be pleasurable experiences.   And regarding why one then rises to even more intense experiences, this is because the anguish of separation intensifies with the pleasure of return.”  Translated by Rabbi Eliezer Shore.

In other words, there needs to be times when we deal with the mundane things of this world as eating and drinking, and working to pay for it. This time away from our spiritual  enthusiasm only helps to create a more intense experience when we return to our worship. However, note that the experience is more intense.  If we return to the same form or type of worship each time, that too can get mundane and boreing.  We must continually seek new ways to experience worship.  God is an infinite God, there are infinite ways to worship Him.  You sing the same song every day, it will loose it’s punch, God wants to continually move you closer and closer to Him. We stay with what is comfortable and we will never more forward with Him.   Our spiritual “eating and drinking” would  not be with Him. We would be making our worship decisions from the soul (nephesh) and not the heart (lev).  If our decisions on how we worship come from our heart motivated by the Holy Spirit, we will enter into new levels of worship.  There are those who may not agree with your “style” of worship or chastise you for “your style” or not staying with the way “it has been done in the past.”  However, if it is of the Holy Spirit and not in violation of Scripture, then that is a matter between you and Him and not what someone thinks is a proper form of worship.

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