A Gift for God | Rabbi David Sutton

We're all familiar with the concept of מסירות נפש, which literally means to give up your soul. The term is used when someone dies על קידוש השם. They are given the choice of life or death, and they give up their life for God. But our Rabbis explain that the word מסירות נפש has another meaning. The word נפש does not always mean Soul, it could also mean Your Will. When Avraham Avinu tells the בני חת, when he's looking for a burial plot for Sara, he says, which Rashi says, Do you have a desire? Do you have a will? So מסירות נפש means to give up your will. How do we fulfill that? Whenever we desire or will something, and don't do it, we're giving it up. The question is: Who are you giving it to? And the שפת אמת explains something very interesting. He says: When a person breaks their desire, they're actually giving a gift to God. They're giving up that desire to God. And when you give God a gift, he gives it back to you. The example he uses is Yosef HaTzaddik, where the Midrash delineates, For everything that Yosef gave up God gave him a gift. Because his hands didn't touch his boss’s wife, he got a ring on his fingers. Because he didn't touch a neck, he had a necklace around his neck. and every gift that Yosef got, his silk clothing, everything came, because what he gave up. When you give a gift to God, you get back. And the ultimate that Yosef HaTzaddik got is because he didn't look at his boss's wife, he got the blessing of עולי עין, above the עין הרע. Eyes cannot affect Yosef in a negative way. Because Yosef gave the gift to God of not looking, he received a gift back. I'd like to illustrate this with a story that Rabbi Tauber tells over. He was once walking and he saw a boy, לא עלינו, smoking on Shabbat. And this boy was obviously distanced from God. And he asked the boy, You know, sometimes your friends ask you for a cigarette. Do you give them a cigarette? -Of course, I'm a generous guy. I’ll give my friends a cigarette. If God asked you for a cigarette, would you give Him a cigarette? Of course, if God asked me for a cigarette, I’d give Him a cigarette. He says: But God's not going to ask you for a cigarette. The way you give God the gift of a cigarette is by not smoking that cigarette. Because when you give of your will and you don't do something, you're giving a gift to God. So realize that every time you have a situation where you want to look at something and you're not, you're not just doing an act of self-sacrifice, you're actually giving a gift to God. מסירות נפש You're giving God the gift of the one thing he doesn't have, your will. Your will is in your control. You're going to give that gift to God. And when you give a gift to God, God reciprocates and gives a gift back to you.