Episode 33 - Why Letting Faith Lead Before Logic Changes Everything

What if your toughest problems aren’t puzzles to brute-force, but invitations to let faith lead? We explore Emuna—the foundational stance that every moment is guided by exacting divine providence—and how that changes the way we interpret setbacks, make decisions, and carry responsibility. Instead of clinging to stress, we test a different order: God gives, we receive, and commandments function as channels for compounded good, even when they stretch our understanding.

We lay out the “basic level” of Emuna with real-life clarity: the creator is the lone sovereign, and nothing unfolds without purpose. That premise can feel enormous, but it becomes practical when we learn to let faith precede intellect. When familiar fixes fail, the smarter move isn’t panic—it’s pause. We walk through how to stop escalating small fires, invite the creator into the room, and read the moment as a test that’s designed to refine rather than crush. The shift isn’t passive. It’s active alignment: invest in what uplifts your life and community while trusting providence with the friction you can’t unwind.

You’ll hear why emotional decisions backfire, how to balance head and heart without losing either, and what it takes to rebuild belief after years of carrying everything alone. We talk about unlearning control, installing habits that make Emuna your first thought, and spotting the “easy fix” that appears when you stop fighting reality’s premise. If you’ve been searching for a way to move lighter without going softer, this conversation gives you language, tools, and a sturdier frame for everyday courage.

If this resonated, subscribe for more episodes that challenge, empower, and uplift, share it with someone who needs it, and drop a line with the quote that hit you hardest—let’s keep growing in trust together.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: What Is Amuna
• 2:10 God As Giver, We As Receivers
• 4:35 Commandments As Compounded Good
• 6:40 Handing Over Problems To Providence
• 9:13 Basic Level: Divine Providence Defined
• 12:45 Let Faith Precede Intellect

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:11

Welcome to the Trust Factor Podcast, the only podcast that guarantees your success when you implement its divine age old teachings. Good morning everybody. Thank you for joining and for checking in with us today. We're continuing. We just started off chapter four. I thought it was chapter three because I was looking at three levels of Amuna, but we're into chapter four already, if you can believe it. We're covering off ground here pretty quickly. We're into the nitty gritty, the details, the definitions of Amuna. What does it mean? There are so many different ways to understand it. The book has already explained previously that one way to understand this word of Amuna means just to have a relationship with your creator. The basic meaning, the basic definition of it is faith. Anybody who knows and has learned about Amuna will tell you that Amuna means faith. Bitachon, which we talked about in season one, means trust. You gotta start with faith before you get to trust. Now we gave three levels of Amuna, the basic, the intermediate, and the upper levels, and what he's going to do now is get into the details of each one of those to clarify each of the above three levels. But he says very clearly, make no mistake, the whole principle of Amuna is to know that there is only one God, that there aren't two or more, and that he controls everything. His entire being, his entire existence is entirely to give and to do for us. You have to understand, I mentioned this in the early stages of season one, that if God by definition is perfect, if he lacks nothing and he has everything, there is nothing that we can do for him that he can't do for himself. He is complete. By definition, a divine God is complete, not lacking in any department. Therefore, his entire existence is just to do for us. His entire purpose is to be a giver, which by definition again makes us receivers. Just imagine that for a second. The whole reason that you were brought into this world was to receive goodness from him. We are deficient. And so our relationship is not a give and take, it's a take relationship. His entire purpose is to give, and our purpose is to receive, if you can imagine, what a purpose. And then you might say, Well, wait a second, what about all the mitzvahs you have to do? Yeah. Do you know who those mitzvahs are for? They're for you. Those commandments are him just giving you on top of what he's already given you. He gives you all the things that allow you to function, to operate, to exist, and to thrive in this world. And then he tells you, hey, listen, do these mitzvahs, because if you do them, then your life will get exponentially better as you do them. And then you think to yourself, why do I have to do these things? They don't make sense to me. I don't understand them. So you put them on the back burner and you don't do them. You try to avoid them because you don't understand them or you don't see the benefits built into them. So what does he do on top of all that? On top of the good that he gives you, he gives you more good by way of doing his commandments. And when you don't do the commandments, he comes to you and he says to you, please do the commandments, and if you do them, then I'll give you even more reward. You understand? It's compounded reward. That's the relationship you're in with your creator. Who wouldn't want that? I have no idea. Who in their right mind wouldn't want to align with that makes no sense to me. The fact that I have the ability to take my challenges, my struggles, the difficulties that I deal with on a daily basis and hand them over to a creator who is perfect and lacks nothing and can solve all my problems in a minute. No, you know what? I'd rather keep them for myself. Let me manage them. It's better. Why do I need to give something else or somebody else my problems? Especially when they can handle it inside of seconds, and I may never be able to handle my own problems. I may never be able to find a solution to my problems. Yet he's waiting in the wings saying, give them to me. I'll take care of them. Remember, you do my will and I'll do yours. So you occupy yourself with all the goodness that I want you to occupy yourself with to make your life better and the life of your family and your community better. And I'll take care of the hardships, I'll take care of the distractions, I'll take care of the things that get in the way that don't make you happy. What a deal. Why wouldn't you take that? Yet the vast majority of humanity have drifted so far away from his teachings, from his Torah, from having a relationship with him, that they don't recognize that this is an option. They don't understand that this is something that they can latch on to, that they can utilize for their own good. Until eventually, sometimes for many of us, we're given that opportunity. But unfortunately, there are many who make it through an entire lifetime and never get to enjoy that relationship. So let's get into it. What's the basic level of Amuna? It's defined here as belief in divine providence. I would have thought it would have said belief in a creator, but it's more than that. It's not just to say that there is a creator, that there is a God, that he runs the world, that he's involved in my life. It's not enough. That's not enough to fit the definition of a basic level of Amuna. You need to know that that God is intimately involved in your life. Let's read. Basic level of Amuna teaches that the creator is the lone sovereign of the universe. His surgically precise divine providence is responsible for every single occurrence in the universe, big and small, from the way that a blade of grass grows out of the ground to a nuclear bomb, God forbid, going off or a nuclear explosion like we talked about in that miniseries, Chernobyl, everything is under his divine providence. Nothing happens without him signing off on it. Maimonides Rambum, in his thirteen tenets of faith, the principles of faith, he says that one of them is to say every day, I believe with complete amuna that the creator, blessed be his name, is creator and ruler of all of creation, and he alone did, does, and will do every single deed. In my mind, that is a very high level. But here, as far as the book is concerned, that is just your basic entry level. That's just your ticket to get in, is to understand that everything is exacting and perfect by design, and that he controls absolutely everything, that there is nothing that is outside of his purview. He says, Let your emuna precede your intellect. Yesterday, I believe I told you that when you get into certain situations, when things don't make sense, when they just don't add up, you don't understand them. You have two choices. You can either get upset and get frustrated with the situation and behave or react out of emotion, which is nine times out of ten going to be the wrong move because you never make a decision out of emotion. That's simple. If you don't understand that, you should incorporate that as a principle in your life. Never make a decision out of emotion. And the more important that decision is, the less you should even consider any emotion. You have two mechanisms to making decisions in this world. Number one is checking with your heart, and number two is checking with your head. When you make an important decision, the more important the decision is, the more that decision should be made from the head and less from the heart. The heart will often lead you astray. So he says, let your imuna precede even your intellect, even when you've done the analysis, even when you've fixed the problem before a hundred times, and it's always B plus C fixes your problem. But today, B plus C is not cutting it. It's not doing it for me. It's not fixing my problem. Why not? Do I bang my head against the wall? Do I start to get upset and blame everybody and continue to make even more mistakes? Or do I understand that there is a message and what's going on over here, like we said yesterday, analyze and assess every situation to understand what the message is. We must regard anything that happens in life with the attitude that this is what the creator wants. As soon as you stop and recognize that B and C is no longer fixing your problem, I now have to switch off my brain for a second. I don't have to be a fool. I just have to switch off my brain, pull back, retreat for a second, and think, what's going on over here? Is there something that I'm missing? Let me remember, let me remind myself that there is another party here. That party is my creator. I may not see him, I may not be able to sense him, but that doesn't mean he's not here. He's very much here. He's front and center. He was here before I got to the problem. He was the one that allowed this problem to happen. Why? Because it's a test. How am I going to approach this problem? What solution am I going to bring to the table? And does it include him? Or is it all me? And is it all my accountant? And is it all my electrician? Is it all these people that I can call and spend good time and money chasing everybody who's going to give me a silver bullet? Or is it my creator telling me that I need some introspection? I need to focus and I need to apply what I've learned to the situation, namely that he wants to be involved, that he doesn't want me spinning my wheels. Recognize that this can be an easy fix. You don't even need B and C. Recognize this can be an easy fix. Lean on him, and suddenly it becomes easy. When you learn this, it becomes easy to apply Amuna in your daily life. Anytime something happens which upsets us, we should let Emuna precede our intellect. Emuna must be our initial thought, not an afterthought. For most of us, it's an afterthought because we're steeped in this world. We're steeped in a world of physicality. We're steeped in a world where we are the beginning and the end, that we are responsible for outcomes. And so oftentimes we have to hit a wall. We have to get frustrated. We need to get upset. We need to make mistakes and turn a little fire into an inferno before we step back and recognize what fools we were and how we shouldn't have done that. The trick to success is that it should be our initial thought, not the afterthought. If you approach the problem, having already contemplated Hashem, like it says, Shiviti Hashem the Negdithamid, which means I contemplate Hashem before I act every single time. If that's the way you've already approached the situation, you're almost guaranteed immediate success. Before the brain and the intellect begin blaming our troubles on natural forces or other phenomenon or on ourselves, our Amuna tells us that our particular situation is exactly what the Creator wants and it's a test. Otherwise, it wouldn't have occurred. Everything is the product of his divine providence, which takes us back to the beginning. That is the basic level of Amuna. If you get there, I again would consider that high level, but for the book's purposes and for the sake of reality, that's your ticket in. Once you've started, once you've laid that foundation out, which is huge. This is no silver bullet. This is something that requires time and energy and dedication to work on yourself and your belief system to deconstruct what society has constructed and start fresh. That's what a lot of us have to do, especially if you're just getting into those ideas for the first time. You have to undo all the corrupt teachings that you've been taught, the things that have been put into your mind to believe that are true. Undo that first and start to rebuild with these unbelievable ideas that will change your life and make you so much happier and so much more fulfilled. That cuts it for today, my friends. Have an amazing rest of your day. Thank you for spending time with us on the Trust Factor Podcast. If you've heard something today that moved you, save this episode and share it with someone who might need to hear it. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss upcoming conversations that challenge, empower, and uplift. And if you're on social media, connect with us. Leave your thoughts, drop a quote that resonated with you. Hashtag the TrustFactor Podcast. Until next time, keep growing in your trust and keep living with purpose. I'm Jesse Revivo, and this has been the Trust Factor Podcast. Thanks for listening.