In EmunahSpeak:
So Who are You Relying on…we
said that the avodah of bitachon is to train oneself to rely only on
Hashem.
Not Hashem plus your accountant or your expertise. Hashem knows if you have bitachon in Him or you are relying on the doctor also or your own hishtadlus. Hishtadlus doesn’t make you a partner with Hashem. Think of it as the password to the game of life. It's the equivalent of saying "swordfish" to gain admittance. Once you have given the password Hashem takes care of 100% of the problem, not the 95% you supposedly left over for Him after you did your 5%. That Hashem’s 100% might work out to be zilch, zero, and nada of what we have set our minds on in any given situation is of no consequence because bitachon is not results oriented and therefore makes no promises. It defines how we think not what we get.
Not Hashem plus your accountant or your expertise. Hashem knows if you have bitachon in Him or you are relying on the doctor also or your own hishtadlus. Hishtadlus doesn’t make you a partner with Hashem. Think of it as the password to the game of life. It's the equivalent of saying "swordfish" to gain admittance. Once you have given the password Hashem takes care of 100% of the problem, not the 95% you supposedly left over for Him after you did your 5%. That Hashem’s 100% might work out to be zilch, zero, and nada of what we have set our minds on in any given situation is of no consequence because bitachon is not results oriented and therefore makes no promises. It defines how we think not what we get.
And
this mindset, not so coincidently is spot on with what’s required for effective
tefillah.
And
what exactly is effective tefillah?
As
per EmunahSpeak:
So Say Something Already!, pretty much everything because we learned there
that the
good news is that no sincere prayer goes unanswered. That’s heads.
Tails is that sometimes the answer is no. But even when the answer is no,
as it is all too often to suit most of us, it’s no only in the sense of what we
wanted. In terms of what we needed at that moment it was a resounding yes, because everything
that happens in this world is for our good.
Very
frum to be sure, but in times like these, when our enemies thirst for Jewish
blood as if it were wine, we would very much like that resounding yes to be on the front burner as opposed
to the back, and the three words that will make it happen are Ein Od Milvado.
Rabbi
Daniel Travis tells us that the Yesod of tefillah is when a person comes to a recognition
that Hashem controls everything in the world and that only He can take care of
the situation.
We’re
talking complete clarity here that a person burns into his heart.
And when with
that clarity in hand, that Hashem is the only one Who can help, such a Jew in anguish
expresses pain over a another Jew’s suffering, such a tefillah goes straight up
to Shomayim and rips it open.
