“and turn, So I should heal them”

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Not me

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Matthew 13:15 (NKJV)
For the hearts of this people have grown dull. [Their] ears are hard of hearing, And their eyes they have closed, Lest they should see with [their] eyes and hear with [their] ears, Lest they should understand with [their] hearts and turn, So that I should heal them.

“and turn, So I should heal them”

There is such promise in these words of life.. A simple turning to God is all that is required...

Regardless of how far one has strayed, or the condition of one’s heart, a simple recognizing that they need help, and than a simple turning, that “I should heal them” says the God of love..

The turning is our part, the healing is His. But before He can do His, we must do ours. But ours, is to be a continual and constant turning. A moment by moment turning....For to the degree of the turning, will be the degree of the healing. One will only be in proportion to the other....

Eyes have to see, ears have to hear, the heart has to understand. But what is it they need to see, hear and understand?

That we are helpless in ourselves to heal ourselves... Which calls for the recognition that we are blind, that we don’t see, that we don’t understand, and that we don’t hear.....But the cure for this state, is the turning to Him...

But to be brought to this state, where we see we are in such a state, is where the tears, the crying, the pain comes in....To be brought so low before God where we, in humility, turn in child like trust and hope to Him to be healed from all that plagues us....

Than it is, He rises with healing in His wings....

Than the blind eyes sees, the deaf ear hears, the heart understands. Love has come in to heal...Because the God of love was allowed to come in on His own terms, in His own way.... For the God of love waits to heal, if only the heart would know it’s need and “turn”...

To the hearts that are willing to turn, may the love of God bless, heal, grow the blessings of the Divine nature in all those that would be willing to turn..

A fellow servant of His, Not me
 
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Invisibilis

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Matthew 13:15 (NKJV)
For the hearts of this people have grown dull. [Their] ears are hard of hearing, And their eyes they have closed, Lest they should see with [their] eyes and hear with [their] ears, Lest they should understand with [their] hearts and turn, So that I should heal them...
Turn from dishonesty (being untrue) to honesty (being true).
Truth restores what is untrue back to true.
Truth is the healer.
 
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Not me

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Turn from dishonesty (being untrue) to honesty (being true).
Truth restores what is untrue back the true.
Truth is the healer.

It is such a blessing to know this Jesus who is, the way, the truth, the life..

Be blessed in the knowing of Him, Not me
 
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Pisteuo

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Another great one Not me. Coming to expect no less from you! Im sorry if the below does not fit in this thread as the OP speaks to seeing, hearing, and turning to God personally. But what a blessing it is to be afforded the privilege to seeing it happen to someone else. What a mighty God we serve.

A known lifelong drug user came in my shop yesterday undoubtedly to try and get a little money for drugs. He and my son began to talk about why he doesn’t have a relationship with God. Turns out years ago the man lost his son to the state and blamed God for this. He turned to drugs and blames God for that too. Lost houses and many jobs along the way. Divorced. Gods fault. As my son explained to this man that God isn’t offended by all this and He never stopped loving him the man started to break. The more he dug to show this mans created value and potential the more the man began to sob. He loved God deep down all this time and didn’t even know it! Hidden under layers of scars from all the things he did to try to avoid God. But they dug through and exposed the truth that was always there. He loved God and knew God loved him. I don’t know if this will be a turning point for him but I do know that he will now have a choice. He will have to go harder in the life he was living to hide what he now knows or turn to God. Jesus is the the only way as we here know. Let’s pray this man hungers for more and we know God will give the increase.
I wish my son could’ve written this as he was there and undoubtedly has more details.
 

Not me

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Another great one Not me. Coming to expect no less from you! Im sorry if the below does not fit in this thread as the OP speaks to seeing, hearing, and turning to God personally. But what a blessing it is to be afforded the privilege to seeing it happen to someone else. What a mighty God we serve.

A known lifelong drug user came in my shop yesterday undoubtedly to try and get a little money for drugs. He and my son began to talk about why he doesn’t have a relationship with God. Turns out years ago the man lost his son to the state and blamed God for this. He turned to drugs and blames God for that too. Lost houses and many jobs along the way. Divorced. Gods fault. As my son explained to this man that God isn’t offended by all this and He never stopped loving him the man started to break. The more he dug to show this mans created value and potential the more the man began to sob. He loved God deep down all this time and didn’t even know it! Hidden under layers of scars from all the things he did to try to avoid God. But they dug through and exposed the truth that was always there. He loved God and knew God loved him. I don’t know if this will be a turning point for him but I do know that he will now have a choice. He will have to go harder in the life he was living to hide what he now knows or turn to God. Jesus is the the only way as we here know. Let’s pray this man hungers for more and we know God will give the increase.
I wish my son could’ve written this as he was there and undoubtedly has more details.

Hi! Absolutely it was ok to post that testimony! My heart leaped for joy as I went through it. You are a blessed man to have a son that knows and loves Jesus. And He is a blessed son to have a Dad with such a living relationship with Christ, for your relationship shines in your post....And yes we will keep that man in prayer that God would complete His work in the man...

You blessed my heart so. May God continue to form Himself in us and in all those that are His.

Many blessings in Christ, Not me
 
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Collin Feener

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Matthew 13:15 (NKJV)
For the hearts of this people have grown dull. [Their] ears are hard of hearing, And their eyes they have closed, Lest they should see with [their] eyes and hear with [their] ears, Lest they should understand with [their] hearts and turn, So that I should heal them.

“and turn, So I should heal them”

There is such promise in these words of life.. A simple turning to God is all that is required...

Regardless of how far one has strayed, or the condition of one’s heart, a simple recognizing that they need help, and than a simple turning, that “I should heal them” says the God of love..

The turning is our part, the healing is His. But before He can do His, we must do ours. But ours, is to be a continual and constant turning. A moment by moment turning....For to the degree of the turning, will be the degree of the healing. One will only be in proportion to the other....

Eyes have to see, ears have to hear, the heart has to understand. But what is it they need to see, hear and understand?

That we are helpless in ourselves to heal ourselves... Which calls for the recognition that we are blind, that we don’t see, that we don’t understand, and that we don’t hear.....But the cure for this state, is the turning to Him...

But to be brought to this state, where we see we are in such a state, is where the tears, the crying, the pain comes in....To be brought so low before God where we, in humility, turn in child like trust and hope to Him to be healed from all that plagues us....

Than it is, He rises with healing in His wings....

Than the blind eyes sees, the deaf ear hears, the heart understands. Love has come in to heal...Because the God of love was allowed to come in on His own terms, in His own way.... For the God of love waits to heal, if only the heart would know it’s need and “turn”...

To the hearts that are willing to turn, may the love of God bless, heal, grow the blessings of the Divine nature in all those that would be willing to turn..

A fellow servant of His, Not me
When we come to the Lord it is threw his word and in for the most part people do not hear what the word is saying Spiritually so not hearing they do not understand and they close their eyes to the truth. Their hearts become hardened to the truth and then filled with deceit. If the would hear what the spirit is saying to the church the would repent ( turn ) and God would heal them.
 
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Not me

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When we come to the Lord it is threw his word and in for the most part people do not hear what the word is saying Spiritually so not hearing they do not understand and they close their eyes to the truth. Their hearts become hardened to the truth and then filled with deceit. If the would hear what the spirit is saying to the church the would repent ( turn ) and God would heal them.

So true! and blessed are the hearts that hear..

And I pray, that God would grant us an increase in our hearing, to the end that His image might be formed in us to a greater and greater degree..

Be blessed Collin, from a fellow believer, Not me
 

Waiting on him

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So true! and blessed are the hearts that hear..

And I pray, that God would grant us an increase in our hearing, to the end that His image might be formed in us to a greater and greater degree..

Be blessed Collin, from a fellow believer, Not me
The wife shared this the other day though you may enjoy.

Love. It is the most powerful of human emotions. We all crave it. We cannot live without it. And yet it is so overwhelming, so all-encompassing, that there is no way to measure it, prove it, define it, or even describe it.

When we speak of the intellect, it is represented by the mind. And when we speak of the emotions, specifically of love, they are represented by the heart. But why?

When our back is turned, we have no idea of the state of the otherThe symbol of the heart is probably one of the most well-known symbols. Spanning continents, cultures, religions, languages, that little red heart means love. It is used to sign letters, to represent the word “love” itself, and has inundated the buyers’ market by being plastered on cards, T-shirts, necklaces, balloons and just about everything else.

How is the image of the heart, as we most commonly know it, the symbol for this passionate experience of love?

The month that we are now in, Elul, is the key to unlocking the inner and most potent meaning of the heart. As is well known, the Hebrew letters that make the word “Elul,” aleph, lamed, vav and lamed, are an acronym for the phrase (from the biblical Song of Songs) ani l’dodi v’dodi li, which means “I am to my beloved and my beloved is to me.”

This beautiful and romantic phrase is that which represents our relationship with our Creator, which is often paralleled to that of a husband and wife, a bride and groom, in our individual lives.

The Zohar explains that at the beginning of Elul we are achor el achor, meaning “back to back,” and by the end of Elul we are panim el panim, “face to face.” But how can it be that we are back to back? Wouldn’t that imply that G‑d has His back turned to us as well? How can we say such a thing, when this is the month in which—as chassidic master Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi teaches us—“the King is in the field”? Is it not the month when G‑d is more accessible than ever, when He is waiting for us to greet Him, when He is there for us in the “field” of our everyday lives?

The fact that we are described as “back to back” and then “face to face” is an incredible lesson. Often, when we feel angry, hurt, abandoned, whatever the root of our pain may be, we turn our back. When our back is turned, we have no idea of the state of the other. And it is often easier to believe that we are not the only one with a turned back. It is easier to think the other also turned around, that the other isn’t facing us at all, because if that is the case, then even if we turn around it won’t help, so why bother. Why make that first move only to turn around and see the back of the other?

But this rationalization is the cause of many unsettled arguments, hurt feelings, and broken relationships. How classic is the scene, played out endlessly in movies, of the couple who walk away from one another. At some point the man turns around, wanting to call her name, ask for another chance, beg for forgiveness. He is about to speak, but realizes that her back is turned. She is walking away. He tells himself that it is too late, she just doesn’t care. So he turns back around. Seconds later, she turns to look at him. She doesn’t want this to end. She wants to say something, but can’t garner the courage, doesn’t have the strength. And why, why should she, when his back is turned? The month of Elul teaches us the necessity of being willing to turn aroundShe looks at him longingly, but it just doesn’t matter—she assumes he couldn’t care less as he continues to walk away from her. And we, the viewers, sit on the edge of our seats, hoping that maybe they will both turn around at the same second, that they will finally realize that the other does care, that even though they appear to be back to back, they really want to be face to face. Sometimes that fairytale ending does happen; other times they simply continue to walk in opposite directions, right out of each other’s lives.

It is the month of Elul that teaches us the necessity of being willing to turn around. The King is in the field, our Creator is there, and no matter how we may feel, He has never had His back turned. All we need to do is turn ourselves around to realize that He is there and waiting for us. The “back to back” that we experience in the beginning of the month is based on our misperceptions, our fears, our assumptions. Only when we turn around do we realize the truth, the inner essence, and then we are “face to face,” which does not only mean that we can finally look at each other, but more so, that we can look in each other—for the root of the word for face, panim, is the same as pnimiyut, which means “innerness.”

So now the question is how this lesson is taught to us, not only in the month of Elul, but through the name “Elul” itself. A Hebrew name is not a mere way of referring to something, but actually represents its soul. Chassidut teaches that every parent is gifted with divine inspiration when he or she names a child. It is the name that represents the deepest aspects of this person. Kabbalahand Chassidut teach us that to uncover the essential meaning of a Hebrew word, we need to analyze the letters that comprise it, their numerical value, their form and their meaning.

As we said above, the word “Elul” is comprised of an aleph, followed by a lamed, followed by a vav, followed by the final letter, another lamed. The first letter in “Elul” is also the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet. The letter aleph is numerically equivalent to one, which represents the idea of G‑d’s total unity.
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So now we must answer how all of this is related to the heart. Here is where our lameds are once again defined. At this point it is important to think again about the symbol of the heart and to question its origin. And so it should come as no surprise that the meaning of this symbol will once again be found in the word for “heart” itself.

In Hebrew, the word for heart is lev, which is spelled lamed-beit. Rabbi Abraham Abulafia, in the year 1291, wrote a manuscript by the name of Imrei Shefer, in which he defines the meaning of the heart.

Rabbi Abulafia teaches that the word lev, lamed–beit, needs to be understood as two lameds. This is because the letter beit is the second letter in the alphabet, and is numerically equivalent to two. So he explains that the word needs to be read and understood as “two lameds.”

But it is not enough to have two lameds. As Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh explains, in order for their to be a relationship, the two lameds need to be connected. They need to be face to face. When we turn around the second lamed to face the first, we form the image of the Jewish Heart (as seen in the picture at the beginning of this article). While the heart, as we are used to seeing it, is quite clear in this form, an entirely new part of the heart is also revealed.


So this is why and how Elul is the month that begins back to back and ends face to face. At the beginning of the month we are unaware of the reality that “I am to my beloved and my beloved is to me.” However, by working on ourselves during this month, by being willing to turn around and make changes, we come to realize that our Creator has never had His back turned. He has always been facing us, and just waiting for us to turn around. And once we do, we are then like two lameds that are face to face, which form the Jewish heart and which are the essence of the month of Elul.

Elul then must be understood as an aleph, representing G‑d, followed by a lamed, vav, lamed—a lamed that is connected (vav) to the other lamed.

And the Jewish heart, this idea of love as a totality of connection, is not merely the work for the month of Elul, but is the entire purpose of our creation. This Jewish heart is a symbol for why we were created and what we are meant to accomplish. For the Torah is the blueprint of creation, and the guidebook of how we connect to the divine. And it is not a book that has a beginning, middle and end, but rather a scroll, since we are taught that the “end is wedged in the beginning, and the beginning in the end.”

So what do we find when the Torah scroll’s end rolls into the beginning? How does the Torah end and begin? The last word of the Torah is Yisrael, Israel, which ends with the letter lamed; and the first word is bereishit, meaning “in the beginning,” which begins with a beit. When we join the first and last letters of the Torah, we have lev, the Hebrew word for heart.

May we be blessed with the ability to tap into the powers of the month of Elul, to recognize and reveal our ability to both learn and teach, and through that, to come face to face with ourselves, with our loved ones and with our Creator, as we are taught through the Jewish heart.
 

Collin Feener

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That was very nice. The simple truth is, The giving of truth to another is love and the sharing of truth is to love one another.The believing of the truth is faith and to love one another as Jesus loved his own is to teach each other. Je4sus loved his disciples by teaching them about the kingdom and threw the Spirit of truth. All besides this love is vanity when it comes too the church.
 

Not me

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That was very nice. The simple truth is, The giving of truth to another is love and the sharing of truth is to love one another.The believing of the truth is faith and to love one another as Jesus loved his own is to teach each other. Je4sus loved his disciples by teaching them about the kingdom and threw the Spirit of truth. All besides this love is vanity when it comes too the church.

Yes, love for one another is what we are all called to.....

As He becomes more, and we less....to the end that our love for one another would abound in all things...

To the praise of His Glory, be blessed in Him, Not me
 
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VictoryinJesus

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@Waiting on him;

A very interesting, informative and enlightening read..May our personal relationships with Christ always, and I do mean always, be;

“Face to Face”

Be blessed as our hearts cry after the reality of this being made real in our lives..

A fellow servant of His, Not me

A quote from the article: The next letter in “Elul” is a vav. In Hebrew, the vav
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serves as a conjuctive “and.” As a word, vav means “hook,” and in its form it looks like a hook. So in this case the vav is the hook which is connecting the yud, the mind, with the bottom letter, the chaf,
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which represents the body. Physically speaking, it symbolizes the neck, which transports the flow of blood from the brain to the heart.
Considering the not to remain “stiff neck” ...

the chaf, : The eleventh letter of the alef-beis is the kaf.5
The design of the kaf can perhaps be described as a pipe bent in two places. The concept of bending oneself represents submission to a greater force and entity—the King of all kings, A-lmighty G‑d.

One of the meanings of the letter kaf is “spoon.” The root of the word “spoon” is kafaf—to bend. As we discussed earlier, the kaf is a letter that is bent. It represents the aspect of submitting oneself to a greater power.

The bent kaf therefore represents the introverted or inverted king—who remains isolated within his internalized world. The straight kaf (similar to the vav) represents the king who descends from his high level and reaches down to others in order to communicate with and rule his people.

Interestingly enough, we observe that when you affix the straight kaf as the suffix to a word, it adds the word “you” to the root. As it says:16 “I will exalt You (ארוממך) my G‑d the King.” When you speak directly to a person, you say “you”: lecha, לך, or becha, בך—spelled with a straight kaf: The final kaf thus literallyunfolds to include the person to whom you are speaking. It represents the fact that the king has appeared to us and we are able to speak to him face to face.

The Meaning of Kaf: The word Kaf means "palm" of a hand and also what might be contained within the palm of the hand.( Isaiah 49:16)The word "spoon" in Hebrew is the word Kaf, which is a natural extension of the palm as a container. The gematria for the letter Kaf is 20, the same value for the word Yod (hand), and twice the value of the letter Yod. Kaf comes from a root word (shoresh) kafah meaning to bend or bow down, suggesting the concave shape of the body or the shape of a crown on a king's head.

Curious if anyone knows if chaf and chaff are connected in any way? Luke 3:17 Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable.
 
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