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 97 - Finding Your True Calling is the Ultimate Test of Faith
Divine teachings for modern success aren't just ancient scrolls gathering dust - they're your practical roadmap through today's challenges. We're diving deep into why life sometimes seems backward - good people struggling while the less scrupulous appear to thrive.
Think about it: if dropping a coin in charity instantly made you wealthy, or breaking sacred laws immediately resulted in car trouble, would you really be making moral choices? Or would you be a robot responding to immediate consequences? The divine design creates space for genuine choice, revealing our true character when prosperity isn't guaranteed.
Our most powerful insight might challenge everything you've believed about work: since your sustenance comes from above regardless of occupation, choose work that resonates with your natural abilities. Are you forcing yourself into a career that feels like slavery when you're meant to inspire others? Your divine purpose isn't found in pushing papers if your gift is motivating people. Your success odds skyrocket when you align with your natural talents.
We're now entering the meat of our journey - the seven categories where faith meets practical application: health, additional income, relationships, personal obligations, interpersonal duties, divine rewards, and understanding the world to come. These ancient principles bridge both worlds, offering timeless wisdom for your modern struggles.
Want to transform your approach to life's challenges? Share this episode with someone facing difficult times - they might not tell you they're struggling until it's too late. Subscribe to continue this journey with us, and discover how thousand-year-old wisdom speaks directly to your 2025 problems.
Good morning everybody, and welcome to the podcast that guarantees your success when you implement its divine age-old teachings. Yesterday, we summarized some of the things that we've learned up until now, which is very, very powerful. We've learned a lot together, my friends. If you're enjoying, then please share it. Take the opportunity to let other people in your life know that there's a podcast that you're listening to, that you're gaining from. That applies very much in today's world, and that's exactly why I'm giving it over.
Speaker 0:It's a lot easier for me to just not even do a podcast and just focus on myself, but the reality is that I know that people are suffering, that people are having a very, very difficult time. They may not always tell you about it. In fact, most of the time they won't. You won't know about it until it's too late. My friends, it's a lot of the people that you don't suspect, and it's even some of the people that you suspect is oftentimes the ones that you don't. So please just reach out If you know somebody who's having a hard time. They're having a hard time with income. They're having a hard time with their health. They're having a hard time finding a mate. They're having a hard time having children. Whatever it is. There's no lack of challenges in the world. Share these ideas, because if you're benefiting from them, then other people will benefit from them also. Don't hesitate, because oftentimes you will find that they will thank you for it in the end.
Speaker 0:I want to finish off the recap and then we're going to move into number four, chapter number four, which is the longest one of the book. So the last couple of ideas that we've learned that I want to remind you of is that the reasons that God wants us to work are two, remember we said. Number one is a test. Are you going to do what's required of you and operate within the confines of the rules and regulations, especially when you see other people who are operating outside of those confines and seemingly making all kinds of money and being massively successful in their lives? Are you still going to adhere and know that there is one who is in charge of your livelihood, and only one, and are you going to adhere to those guiding principles? That's the reason number one. One and are you going to adhere to those guiding principles? That's the reason number one. Reason number two to keep us occupied so that we don't end up sinning. We've said keep yourself busy so that you stay out of trouble. That's something you've heard your entire life. Your parents have reminded you that sitting around doing nothing, an idle mind especially if you have resources like money available to you and no commitments or obligations and responsibilities number one recipe for disaster. Okay.
Speaker 0:It also follows that a completely righteous person should receive his sustenance without working. In other words, if you know somebody is righteous, he's connected to God, he's doing the mitzvahs, he's doing the commandments, he's occupying himself with bringing goodness into this world. That individual should be rewarded. We should see clearly with our own eyes that these people are on high, that these people are firing on all cylinders, that these people have everything that they need and all of the things that they want, that everything should be going supremely smoothly for these people and, at the same time, we should see that a wicked person who is occupied in the exact opposite with their lives should be consumed all day long, working hard, laborious type work, backbreaking type work, stressed out beyond belief. Why? Because they're occupied in all the negative things in the world. That should be the way of the world, right. That would incentivize people to live a good life, to do good things and avoid doing the bad things, but in fact, we see that the exact opposite sometimes is true. Oftentimes we see the wicked people prospering and the righteous people suffering.
Speaker 0:And we've said, although there are billions of reasons why this may happen, the simple answer is if every time you put money into a charity box, you became wealthy or you received back 10 times the amount you gave, everybody and their uncle would sit by a charity box all day long giving charity. There's no longer a test. If, every time you turned on your car on the Sabbath, you had an engine failure and you had to replace your engine, it would not take long for you to realize that you're not allowed to turn your engine on on the Sabbath. These are things that turn us into robots, my friends, and he's not looking for robots. He wants you and your humanity, you and your perfect imperfections. That's what he wants. But he also wants you to recognize when you've done wrong and he wants you to try to improve. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and move on. That's the reason why we are tested, because he wants to test our resolve. Are we going to bounce back? Are we going to do the right thing?
Speaker 0:And sometimes, even though we see the negative people doing the wrong thing and somehow seemingly doing better than we are. Is that going to bring us down? How easy is it for us to be challenged and to fail in those tests? That's the question. It should be very difficult. It should be that we get slapped upside the head on a regular basis and it doesn't phase us. We walk right through it and remember what I've said. When you do that, when you go right through that test and you come out the other side unscathed and then you're tested with the same thing again, exact same scenario, and you pass it with flying colors, you're done, the test is over. My friends, there's no sense in flogging a dead horse. God realizes you're not going to fail that test. More importantly, the evil inclination realizes you've passed that test, it's done. Why berate it? Move on to another one, and as you pass these tests, you become bigger and better and stronger and the best version of who you can be in this world.
Speaker 0:Now, final thing that we just finished off talking about is that, since God is the one who provides our income in all cases, then you should choose an occupation that works for you, physically or intellectually. You have to choose a livelihood that speaks to you so that you're not feeling like you are enslaved to your job. There needs to be an element of connection to your job so that you don't feel as if you are being driven into slavery. Right, you don't need to feel like your job is a weight on your shoulders all the time, because you may actually enjoy going to work, because it suits you well. You're good at what you do. That will give you the best odds of success. When you're good at what you do, when you naturally have an affinity towards a certain industry or a certain job and that's where you focus your time and energy on, then you have the best odds of massive levels of success.
Speaker 0:If you're supposed to be a motivator, if you're supposed to be somebody who inspires other people, and you're spending your days underneath a car, fixing cars or pushing paper from one side of a desk to another or any of these other jobs that you can be occupied with, instead of actually being out there motivating and inspiring people, then you are not achieving your best potential. You're just not. You are sacrificing who you are and your natural abilities to a job to be able to make money to support your family, if you know that that money is going to come one way or another. There is nothing specific that you need to do in terms of creating a livelihood that will get you more or less money. You do what's good for you, a legitimate career that speaks to you and that you have a natural affinity towards, and he will take care of the rest. Do not despair, even if you suffer occasional setbacks that is perfectly normal in every single industry.
Speaker 0:Now we're about to get in, my friends, to chapter number four. I'm going to read you the introduction so that we know what we're getting into. It says that this is the longest chapter in the Gate of Trust, and he describes how to apply trust in practice. In other words, up until now, if it wasn't me giving you this over, you'd have had a lot of theory. You would have had a lot of ideas, nice ideas about how God runs this world, but how do you put them into practice? Now I've taken upon myself, as we've been learning this, this to give you real world examples every day of how we put this into practice.
Speaker 0:That's the purpose of this podcast. It's not to give you theory. The purpose of this podcast is to take ancient, thousand, multi-thousand year old wisdom and to apply it today, to apply it in the year 2025, and to explain to you that the Torah is eternal, that God himself, who created and gave us the Torah, lacks nothing. He knows the past, present and the future because he in fact controls it. So the Torah that was given to us 3,500 years ago is just as applicable today as it was then and it will be in whatever future happens to come our way. Some people might tell you that that's not the case, and I hope that in your experience so far in this podcast, you've learned that those people could not be more wrong. Let's continue.
Speaker 0:He says that he's going to explain when and how a person with trust is supposed to put forth his own effort. Remember, we said the Hebrew word is to be able to make an effort. How much do you make and how do you make it? And when and how? He's to rely on God's care and orchestration. In other words, when do you worry about your effort and when do you worry about God's effort? Where do you start and stop? Where does he start and stop? To this end, he will set out seven broad categories in which we must rely on God, and they go as follows.
Speaker 0:Number one health and basic sustenance. We're going to talk about this, guys. It's a big one. Today, a lot of people are sick, a lot of people dealing with all kinds of difficulties and fallout from a very recent history which has affected a lot of people's health. That's number one. How do we deal with that?
Speaker 0:Number two additional income. In my mind, that means, over and above earnings that you're making from your living, right, the desire, the natural human tendency to want to earn more. Number three relationships with others. We all have them. They're fundamental in our lives. We are social creatures. How do we apply faith in our relationships with our parents, our siblings, our spouses, our children, our friends, our co-workers? Number four fulfilling the mitzvahs, personal mitzvahs, the ones that apply to us individually. Number five fulfilling interpersonal mitzvahs. In other words, how do I fulfill the commandments between me and my fellow man? Right, by having faith and trust in God? Because, boy, is that ever challenged when you're dealing with faulty, frail human beings and you have to have an interpersonal relationship and do good by them and they may not be doing good by you? How do you apply faith and trust in that situation? Number six reward for the mitzvahs doing the commandments. Again. You know I don't like the word reward, I don't like the word punishment. In my mind they are simply positive and negative consequences of our actions. We're going to talk about that.
Speaker 0:Number seven, the last section, is the supreme goodness of the world to come. A lot of people have no clue about the world to come. They barely know about this world and how it operates and the policies and practices and the principles that are applied to this world, let alone the next world, which is not a tangible one like this world is. You'll note that the first three categories that we're about to discuss we deal with matters relating specifically to this world. The next two discuss matters that bridge the two worlds this world and the next world, and the last two that we're going to discuss deal directly with the next world. I don't know about you guys, but I think that the meat and potatoes are about to get introduced. I think the rubber is about to hit the road Strap in my friends. Have an amazing day.
