621 - Transform Your Bitachon! (Part-58)

Guys, what an amazing privilege we have to be continuing this journey about Bitachon. We've just wrapped up part three where we've been discussing exactly how important Bitachon is and we saw from many commentaries the tremendous extent Hashem places on Bitachon. But just before we move further to the next section in our Bitachon journey, I would like to elaborate a little bit more on something that we've discussed briefly previously.

 

In many ways if we think of Judaism, we think of Torah learning and the performance of the mitzvahs and in many circles this is what's ultimately focused on. Now there's no question that Emunah and Bitachon should lead me to treating Torah learning as of highest priority. Just for a little bit of inspiration, imagine you're on your way home and suddenly you encounter a situation where you save somebody's life. They literally were about to drown and you save them from drowning. That certainly would be a big highlight of something that happened in your day and probably in your life. The Gemara teaches us that when you learn a word of Torah that is even greater than that. Now that is just something to digest, our belief in the words of the Gemara that Torah learning is so so so powerful.

 

And at the same time when it comes to the value of mitzvos there are countless passages in Torah literature which explain the tremendous value to all of the mitzvahs. And there's no question that what will motivate me to do Torah and mitzvos will be Emunah and Bitachon. But as we've explained previously, Emunah and Bittachon is like the root of the tree which then produces many branches, one being Torah, one being mitzvos and all of them are super important and vital whilst at the same time the trunk of the tree is much bigger than the branches.

 

And similarly when it comes to Emunah and Bittachon although we have many mitzvos to fulfill and that is certainly an expression of Emunah and Bitachon however there are many things outside of the mitzvos that fall under the category of Emunah and Bitachon. Some examples that we learned in the previous passages was that if one is short of funds to the point that I don't even know where I'm going to get my next meal for tomorrow a very important value of Emunah and Bitachon is to work towards getting to a place where I'm so reliant on Hashem that I feel completely calm because just like He's taking care of me today, He will take care of me tomorrow. And similarly we learned that when we thank Hashem for things that is one of the most ultimate and important expressions of Emunah and Bitachon. So certainly it's not a waste of time to turn to Hashem in our own words every day and say “thank you Hashem for the amazing life that you've given me. Thank you Hashem for the family, thank you Hashem for the food and the many other things that we can all do in our own ways.”

 

And we also learned a powerful statement from the Chofetz Chaim that he said that the ultimate reward that we will receive in the future will be based on the level of Emunah that we had and how exactly do we excel in this level of Emunah. The Chofetz Chaim defined this by saying that if a person is always contemplating and internalizing that everything Hashem does is for the best then that is our ultimate ticket for the reward that is available in the time of their future redemption.

 

And to make this more real, each one of us in our own words when we're going through a difficult challenging time let's say a person just got fired from their job or any other calamity that we can all relate to in our own lives we have the opportunity now to stop and say to Hashem in our own words, “Hashem, I know that the reason that they fired me is because You desired that that should happen to me and I have no doubt about it that that is good for me. Hashem, I know that You always do only what's good for me. I believe in You, I trust in You. I have Emunah and Bitachon in You Hashem and I want to have more Emunah and Bitachon in You Hashem. The more we do this, the more we make Emunah and Bitachon real in our lives the more our lives will be truly real and meaningful. B’ezrat Hashem, let's move forward in our journey together and transform our Bitachon.