The Trust Factor
A daily lesson that focuses on achieving unparalleled success in life using ancient wisdom in modern times.
We will be discussing critical concepts as they are laid out in the book Sha'ar Habitachon - The Gate of Trust. Written 1000 years ago, the author reminds us of the values and wisdom that have allowed humanity to thrive throughout history.
The concept of trusting in a higher power that exists purely for our benefit, puts us in the drivers seat with absolute confidence to achieve greatness.
Eliminate: Fear, Hatred, Anxiety, Depression, Jealousy, Greed...forever!
* Note that some terminology will be in the original Hebrew or Aramaic which I will always follow with the English translation.
The Trust Factor
Episode 71 - Emergency Response Detoured: A Lesson in Divine Intervention
Divine design reveals itself through seemingly random events. That's the powerful message we explore as we continue our journey through the fifth principle of complete trust in God. What appears as coincidence is often a carefully orchestrated series of causes and effects—intermediaries through which the Creator manifests His will in our world.
Drawing from wisdom passed down for over 850 years, we examine how God works through natural mechanisms rather than open miracles. The ancient analogy of drawing water from a well illustrates this perfectly: while the bucket directly delivers water, the entire system—the rope, wheel, animal, and person—must function together. Similarly, our lives operate through interconnected causes all enabled by divine decree.
This principle came alive for me recently in an extraordinary personal experience as a Hatzalah emergency responder. When a call came from a friend's home just around the corner, a remarkable series of unprecedented events—a misplaced car key, a wine-stained suit, an alternate jacket, and unusual parking circumstances—completely prevented me from responding. What initially seemed like frustrating obstacles revealed themselves as loving divine protection, though the specific purpose remains a mystery. These weren't coincidences but carefully placed guardrails from a Father who knew what was best.
Next time life throws unexpected barriers in your path, pause before dismissing them as random bad luck. Consider reviewing the sequence of events that brought you to that moment. You might discover, as I did, that among the trillions of transactions occurring every millisecond across our planet, the Creator took specific interest in your journey. When you recognize His hand guiding you through life's intermediaries, thank Him and watch your trust and faith deepen in profound ways. What "coincidences" in your life might actually be divine guidance waiting to be recognized?
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Sunday and the Trust Factor. This is the podcast that guarantees your success when you implement its divine age-old wisdom. I want to continue to wish success to our dear brothers and sisters in Israel. God should continue to protect us and make sure that this war with Iran comes to a quick and successful end for the Jewish nation and for the free world. God willing, we should see no more devastation, no more death and destruction, as the Iranian regime would want. I also want to wish a refuah shlema complete healing to my mother-in-law, esther Bat-Masodi. She's gone through a second surgery within a week and, god willing, it should be successful. So if you can keep her in your prayers, that would help.
Speaker 1:My friends, we're moving on with the fifth principle of complete trust in your creator. We were talking about cause and effect. Over here, he's discussing this very same thing and he says we need to understand how God brings things about in this world. How does this world operate? We said many times, and he's confirming it over here, that there are intermediaries, there are things that happen in between what he wants to have happen and the outcome. We're told very clearly that in order for something to happen, number one he needs to will it into existence. It doesn't matter how much we want something to happen, if he does not will it into existence, it's not happening, my friends, it's simply not. And the opposite is true as well as much as we don't want something to happen, if he wills it into existence, doesn't matter what you do, it's going to come to fruition. That's the bottom line. It starts and stops with him, but he also requires intermediaries in this world to be able to implement, using people, using places, using tools in this world to be able to affect whatever it is that he's decided should come into existence. And he gives an example over here which is interesting, and I'm going to give you one of my own personal examples that I thought about while I was reading this. And he says the following he's talking about an example Remember that this document is 850 years old, my friends.
Speaker 1:So he's talking about you taking water from a well, yeah, using a bucket, a rope and an animal. And what does he say? I'm going to read it to you, okay. He says like this, the bucket being the final link in the chain of causes, are the immediate cause of the desired result, which is obtaining the water. A remote cause for obtaining water is the person who harnesses the animal to the first wheel. So we've got the bucket. The bucket is the immediate cause. I got water out of a well, came out of a bucket. That's my immediate cause. But what about the fact that we've got a wheel right? A wheel is connected to that well system and there's a rope that's connected to that wheel and there's an animal connected to that rope, and then there's a rope that's connected to that wheel and there's an animal connected to that rope, and then there's an individual who prods the animal to move in order to turn the wheel so that it makes all the other wheels turn and brings the water up from the well up to the surface. However, the causes that are between the person and the buckets are intermediaries between the two things. Those intermediaries are the animal that's connected to the wheel, the interconnected wheels that move each other and the rope that connects the bucket to the last wheel.
Speaker 1:Now, if something should go wrong with any one of the above-mentioned causes, whether the immediate cause being the bucket, the remote cause or any of the intermediate causes, the objective that are meant to achieve would not change, be achieved. All of the causes must be present, with their presence enabled by God, in order for the desired result to occur. Likewise, other things that become reality cannot be accomplished by man or any other force except by means of a combination of the two factors mentioned above Number one, the decree that comes from God, and number two, providing the causes through which they are completed. We do not live in a world of open miracles, my friend. We live in a world of cause and effect, of interactions, of actions. That is this world. It's called Olam Ha'asia, the world of actions. Now I want to give you my own personal example that occurred to me a couple of weeks ago, and then I've shared the story a few times since then.
Speaker 1:For those of you who don't know, I'm a responder for Hatzalah. Hatzalah is a Jewish first response organization that deals with medical issues. In our community, we have many well-trained responders who are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and I'm one of them. I carry a radio with me everywhere I go and I'm always on call. Sometimes it's very easy for me to get to the call. The timing of the call is opportune. I'm within a very short distance to arrive on the scene. Other times it's difficult. Whatever it may be, you know it's in the middle of the night, I don't hear the call. I'm in the shower, I don't hear the call. There's a million different things that can distract me from hearing the call or getting to the call, and sometimes it's absolutely impossible. I want to share with you a story that happened a couple of weeks ago where God made it impossible for me to go to a call. That happened Now as a way of background.
Speaker 1:Generally speaking, throughout the week we get a lot of calls and most of those calls are really nothing. They're really very low-level calls. People call because they want to save themselves a trip to the doctor, which obviously is not correct, because you're taking away from the times of volunteers. By the way, we're all volunteers. We have families and jobs and businesses and for us to pick up and leave is a very big ask. But we do it. We do it wholeheartedly and sometimes people don't think long enough before they actually make the call and they'll call for things that are really ridiculous, and I've been to a lot of ridiculous calls. That shouldn't stop people from calling and it shouldn't make people think twice, because it's a very important service. I'm just making a point here. That's human nature.
Speaker 1:Now, when the call comes through on the Sabbath, on Shabbat, we know automatically that the likelihood that that call is going to be serious is much greater than it is during the rest of the week. Why? Because if you have an Orthodox Jew who is observing the Sabbath and is making a decision to pick up the phone and desecrate the Sabbath in order to receive help, to receive aid, from a Hatzalah responder, they know full well that they're desecrating the Sabbath. They've made that determination that it's important enough, and they now are aware that they're going to make another fellow Jew desecrate the Sabbath in order to give them aid, and so nine times out of ten, that call is going to be a serious call. So when we hear those calls, we generally want to get up and go. That's how we're programmed. All of the responders are programmed that way. When we hear a call, when we see the need for help, we respond. That's who we are. There are people who run to help, there are people who are programmed to run away when they see problem, and then there are people who, I like to say, are the ones who take out their phone and start recording for social media. I'm the type of person who runs to help when I see a problem, as are the rest of our responders.
Speaker 1:So a couple of Sabbaths ago I was sitting in synagogue and I was praying in the morning and a call came through on the radio. And it was right around the corner from me and to boot it was at a friend of mine's home. So I had multiple reasons to get up and rush out to that call. And as I got up to get on the way, I had to sit right back down because I realized I could not go on the call. Why? To understand this, I need to give you a little bit of history.
Speaker 1:Number one I did not have the key for my car. Why didn't I have the key for my car? Well, the day before, on Friday, my daughter took the car and she had misplaced the key. Never happened before she's 18. She hasn't been driving too long, but she's never misplaced my key from my car. On that Friday she misplaced it, and on my way out to synagogue we scoured the house for a good 10 minutes trying to find the key. No such luck. I was forced to take my wife's car, which happens to be a Tesla and doesn't have a traditional type key. I couldn't use my phone because of the Sabbath, so I took the key card, which is like a credit card. Normally I hang my keys on my radio, but this was a bit of a different key card, so I put it in my jacket pocket and I took my wife's car.
Speaker 1:I got to synagogue and everything was great. That night we had Friday night dinner. At the Friday night dinner for the first time, probably in maybe as long as I can remember, certainly in the last 10 years I spilt a glass of wine. That glass of wine went flying across the table and everybody who witnessed it said the same thing afterwards, and everybody who witnessed it said the same thing afterwards. We saw it go in slow motion. It was as if we had all the time in the world to reach out and stop that from happening. But nobody did. We were not allowed to. It did not happen. That glass came flying and all the wine that was in it landed all over my suit. Great Another occurrence, wonderful.
Speaker 1:Now fast forward and I'm sitting in synagogue and the call goes off and now I'm ready to go and I reach for my keys and I realize I don't have my regular keys. Oh, I took my wife's car. I reach into my jacket pocket. No such luck. What happened?
Speaker 1:I woke up in the morning to put on my suit. I normally wear the same suit on Saturday that I wear on Friday night, but this time it was covered in wine and it stank of wine, so I had to switch suits. I had to put on a different suit, which I've never done before, and now I'm sitting in synagogue and realized I left the key in the other jacket pocket because I dropped the wine all over my suit. Now it's not over yet, you might think, and I thought to myself well, there are other people in synagogue. I could borrow the rabbi's car, I could borrow a friend's car, but in reality it was one of the very few instances in the 20 years that I've been going to the synagogue that there was no room in the driveway. It was a residential synagogue. There was no room for me to park my car. I was forced to park at the bottom of the driveway, perpendicular to the other cars blocking off the driveway, so that meant nobody was coming or going out of that driveway. My friends, I could have chalked that up to just a bad coincidence, but I didn't.
Speaker 1:I spent the next 10 or 15 minutes in synagogue, perturbed, reviewing in my mind what had led up to that, and I realized through transaction after transaction after transaction, starting with a lost key and then going to another car and then putting a key in my jacket pocket and then having instead of my radio, and then having wine spilled all over my suit and then having to change suits and then having to park at the bottom of the driveway to block everybody from coming or going. There were a series of intermediary events that happened to me, where God said to me very clearly have a seat, my boy, you're not going anywhere. There is nothing that's going to get you out of this house and onto that call, no matter what you do. Why, until this day, I have no idea. Thankfully, there were two responders that went to the call, but I was certainly one of the closest ones and could have gotten there a lot faster.
Speaker 1:But God had other plans. I don't know what those plans were, but I could tell you with absolute certainty and complete clarity that I could not go because it was the best thing that could have happened, whether for me or for the individuals who needed help at the call. That fact that I was not going was the best thing that could have happened at the time. I don't know why, but I know that God runs this world and I know that he loves me and I know that he's perfect and I know that everything he does is for my best. So at the end of the day, I have the review, I have the act of reviewing his efforts to establish for myself the love that he has for me, to make sure that he put multiple stumbling blocks in my way, multiple gates that I would be certain that there's no way that I'm leaving that house. Who would do that? But a loving father who knows what's best for me and put defenses up to make sure that I would come out okay. And that review further cements my relationship with my creator.
Speaker 1:I'm sure these events happen to you. They happen to all of us. The next time they happen to you, do not dismiss them as coincidence. Stop and review what led to it. Think about the intermediaries, think about the rope and the bucket and the animal and the individual in between and all the transactions that had to happen that he had to worry about you, aside from the trillions of other transactions that happened on a millisecond by millisecond basis, with 8 billion people on the planet. He did that for you because he loves you. Say thank you and establish your relationship and rebuild the trust and the faith that you have in your creator. Have a spectacular Sunday, my friends.
