In Chapter Nine of the Gospel of Mark we read about a man who asks Yeshua to heal his son, if he can. When Yeshua says all things can be done if you trust, the man’s response is something that we should all confess we need.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

When Yeshua tells the father that if he trusts anything is possible, we are told (CJB):

 Instantly the father of the child exclaimed, “I do trust — help my lack of trust!”

So, how can he say he does trust if he needs help for his lack of trust? It seems that either we trust, or we don’t trust, right?

Not right; trust is tiered, not absolute.

And because we are human, that goes for trusting God, too. Even though we all know he is 1,000% trustworthy, trust is an emotional thing. As such, it has different levels: we can trust someone who doesn’t trust us, and vice-versa.

For example, a man who has been paroled from jail for robbery asks us for a job as cashier because he did that before he stole from where he was working. He says that he has learned his lesson and repented, so we give him a chance.

But we don’t trust him, well, not completely, so we have a video system to watch his every move which we check every night when we double-check his closing-out numbers. Now, he trusts us to allow him to continue to work there so long as he remains honest, but we don’t trust him enough to leave him unobserved.

We trust his ability to do the job, so there is that level of trust, but he trusts us as his employer a whole lot more than we trust him as our employee.

Eventually, if he has really repented of his criminal desires and proves, over time, that he is trustworthy, then the levels of trust can be more equal.

Getting back to the Bible story, when this man trusted that Yeshua could heal his son, he still doubted because of his own insecurities. I believe that is why trust is so hard for so many, myself included, because we always interpret the world through our own experiences and knowledge. If we have had a life of difficulty, or been misled and cheated on, we will find it difficult to trust anyone, even someone like Yeshua who we heard so much about.

And that time in Israel’s history was a very untrustworthy period; the Sanhedrin were composed often of political hacks who weren’t Levites, the king of Israel was not a descendant of David, and the High Priest was a descendant of Aaron, but he was appointed by a Roman official, not by lot.

It was probably the most dishonest time in Israel’s long history, so trusting did not come easily for many.

I confess that I am like that man: I trust that Yeshua is the Messiah and that he did those things we read about, but when it comes down to asking for healing for myself, or someone I care about, well… I don’t trust that I am trusting enough to deserve that help.

Yeah, yeah, I know what you are going to say- God is trustworthy to do what we ask him to do, and he will bless us even if we do not deserve it. And blessings, unlike salvation, is something we can earn (Deuteronomy 28). But still, whether we need to deserve a blessing or not, it is up to God to bless or not to bless, and I will always feel that my level of trust is undeserving of his blessings.

Yet, I know he blesses me every day, so I trust, but I need help to trust more. I have known God’s work in my life, I know absolutely that he is there and watching me, and I also know, absolutely, that he knows what is best for me.

There are some prayers I have been praying for decades which haven’t really been answered; at least, not as I was hoping they would be. God did answer me once, and it was something that I didn’t want to hear: after asking many times for God to excise certain thoughts from my brain that I don’t want, thoughts that are sinful, he told me that it doesn’t work that way.

He said that if he just took away all my evil thoughts then I would never be able to call on his power when having to face the Enemy’s temptations.

In other words, if God just made it happen then I would not be able to stand on my own when faced with temptation. God is not a “helicopter parent”, he is a coach and he will teach us how to trust, how to live, and empower us when we call on him for help. But, we also need to be able to stand on our own two feet when facing tsouris (troubles) because spiritual strength comes from spiritual exercise, and if God does everything for us, we will never develop those spiritual muscles.

I believe that every single one of us has good reason to ask God to help our lack of trust because we are human beings, which means we are weak, self-absorbed, and easily led to sin.

When we are truly humble, we will be able to recognize our weaknesses, and then we can remember what Shaul (Paul) learned. In his second letter to the Corinthians (verses 12:9-10), when asking God to remove the thorn in his side, God replied (CJB):

“My grace is enough for you, for my power is brought to perfection in weakness.”

Shaul goes on to say he will boast of his weakness.

I, also, am strong enough to confess that I am weak.

And with that oxymoron to consider, I will thank you for being here, ask you to continue to share these messages with everyone you know, and wish you an early Shabbat Shalom.

It’s been nearly three decades since I first chose to accept that Yeshua is the Messiah God promised to send, and was happy to find that I could continue to live a Jewish lifestyle, even though I “believed in Jesus”.

And since then, I have learned a lot, and if I may, I would like to share some of that with you.

Warning: This is one of the longest messages I have given, but please stay around till the end because I really believe this is also one of the most important messages I have shared.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

Many of the spiritual lessons I have learned have a real-life, physical element of truth that, whether you are a “believer” or not, and even if you are an atheist, these lessons are valuable and can improve your life.

Let’s start with a touchy topic- forgiveness.

I have learned a very important fact, which is that forgiving someone does NOT make them right with God, but it does make YOU right with God.

In my experience, most people think that when they forgive someone for doing something bad to them it lets that person “off the hook”. What they don’t know is what King David did, and said so in Psalm 51, where he said his sin was against God, and God, alone.

Now, if you’re not familiar with which sin that was (Davey committed more than just one sin during his lifetime), it was a triple-play: he committed adultery, he committed murder, and he made his commander-in-chief, Yoav, an accomplice to murder.

You see, any time anyone sins, it is always against God. Yes, that sin is also against a person, but sinning is a rejection of God’s commandments, and (like it or not) God always comes first. So, if you forgive someone (which doesn’t mean you have to trust them), they still have to deal with God.

Here is the other side of that coin- if you do not forgive them, then you will also have to deal with God! Yeshua tells us that if we do not forgive on the earth, we will not be forgiven in heaven (Matthew 6:14-15), so you really must forgive those who sin against you: not for their sake, but for you own.

One other, and maybe the most important thing I learned about forgiveness, is this:

Until you truly forgive someone, the hurt will never go away.

If you have trouble forgiving someone, do what I do when I hit that roadblock: imagine what they will have to suffer if they never repent. If you have any level of compassion, you will feel so bad for them that it will make it easier to forgive them.

And this brings us to another lesson I have learned: how to love people better. By remembering all the ways we have constantly rejected God, especially my own people, the Jews, over the past 5 millennia yet he constantly is not just willing to forgive us, but he desires to forgive us (Ezekiel 18:23), it motivates me to be better, to be more compassionate (and that is not who I was before), and to be more humble.

Another really good lesson I have learned is that being humble is not being weak. In truth, it takes a lot of inner strength to be humble, and without humility you have little chance of every being saved.

Humility allows us to love better, to be more compassionate, and to accept that God is in charge. Being humble makes you a better friend, spouse, parent, and just an all-around better person.

True humility brings us closer to God, and improves our life tremendously.

I know I am much more humble since accepting God’s will over my own because before I knew the Lord as I do now, if someone was hurt of upset by something I did or said, I wouldn’t care. What I would do is to turn it around, and make it seem it was their fault that they felt that way.

Now you have to understand this was wrong because I DID do something wrong, I DID say something inappropriate or cruel, and it was MY fault. But not having humility, I was a coward and tried to avoid my responsibility for having done that.

Now when someone tells me that I did something to hurt them, my immediate response is to apologize. Even if I know that I did nothing wrong, it is more important to me that I deal with their feelings before my own.

Now there are times when someone will over-react and they need to be told that, but I will do it after I apologize. Yes, you may think I am eating crow that I shouldn’t have to eat, but that is what humility is- the strength to put someone else’s feelings ahead of your own.

Here is something else I have learned from knowing the Bible and observing the world:

The faithful are fearless and the faithless are fearful.

Without faith in God, it will never be any better than me against the world. Faith in humans is always going to be disappointing because we are, well…human! But faith in God is what strengthens you to be able to face anything, because even if you are to die, faithful people get to be with God forever, which is much better than anything we can have here on earth.

And, for the record, faithful to God does not mean following any religion, it means doing as God said to do, and that is found only in the Torah.

Something that is important to know is faith resulting from a miracle is having weak faith, at best, and that isn’t going to last because Satan can make miracles happen, as well.

You must choose to believe, and not be influenced by an event in your life because if one miracle turns you to God, another may just as easily turn you to Satan, and you won’t even know.

God will never provide absolute proof that he exists because if his existence can be proven, you don’t really need faith, but faith is the only way we can be saved.

I have also learned that there is a difference between what is important to know and what is just “nice to know” information. The “Acid Test” question I ask myself to determine which is which is this:

How does this affect my salvation?

If it doesn’t directly save me, then it isn’t important to know.

I now also know the answer to those two, age-old questions: “Why are we here?” and “What is life all about?” Would you like to know? Okay, I’ll tell you:

We are here to choose where we will spend eternity.

I’ve learned you can’t tell anyone what to believe, but you can tell them what you believe and why. Before anyone will accept what you believe, they have to first doubt what they believe, and you get them to do that by asking questions they can’t answer, but you can using the Bible to justify what you believe.

Finally, and I think what is probably the most important thing I have learned, is this:

We all have Free Will to choose what we will believe,
and we all will be held accountable for that choice.

So let me leave you with this thought: if you choose to reject the Torah (which, sadly, traditional Christianity teaches you to do) and you come before God at Judgement Day, which we all will have to do, and God asks you why you didn’t obey him you’ll have to say, “But Lord- I did what they told me I should do”.

Well, you know, I can’t speak for the Big Guy but I am pretty sure he will respond with something to the effect of….

“I understand, my child, that you only did what they told you to do,
but it is what I say that counts!“

Thank you for being here and please remember to share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers, Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Have you ever had to work under a micro-manager? You know the kind- always watching everything you do, checking every little detail, making you feel like you don’t know what you are doing?

And that leads you to ask yourself, “Doesn’t he have anything else to do?”

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video

God knows every, little thing we do. He knows what is in our hearts, and he knows our thoughts before we do.

That sounds to me like the ultimate micro-manager.

But God doesn’t micro-manage us, even though he can. Yes, he controls our lives (if we ask him to) and he also can make anything happen, but does he really get that involved?
I mean, I know he has plenty of other things to do than to watch me 24/7/365.

And we read in the Bible how God has made things happen in people’s lives, both to help them and to punish them. We also know that if we reject him, he will reject us.

I believe when we read about the curses we will have to suffer for disobedience (Deuteronomy 28), that God doesn’t actively do bad things to us, he just removes his protection and leaves us alone to suffer what the world will do to us.

God is not a micro-manager or a helicopter parent, but he is always available to us when and if we need him, but only if we ask him. That’s why I say even though God can control every aspect of our lives, he doesn’t.

It’s all part of that Free Will thing.

Of course, if he has a specific plan for us, he will intercede and even interfere as he deems necessary, but still, if we reject the call, he will simply find somebody else.
Do you recall from the Bible all the stories about all those people who rejected God’s call? No? Not one? You might say Jonah, but he came around and did as God wanted him to do.

Everyone else who chose to reject God’s calling never got mentioned the Bible, and probably won’t make it into his presence after Judgement Day, either.

I was in management for most of my career, working in different jobs for different companies, and I learned that you need to let people make their own mistakes. I have always felt a good manager can correct what little things go wrong, and prevent the really big ones from happening by interfering at the right time. But watching what people do doesn’t have to mean standing over their shoulders.

God is always watching us, he is always concerned, and I believe he feels really bad when we reject his help, which is more easily done than you might think: you don’t need to ask him to stay out of it, you simply need to not include him from the start.

One of the biggest lies from the pit of Sheol is: “God helps those who help themselves.”
The truth is when I try to do it on my own, I am telling God to mind his own business, and I am left at that point to face the entire world, on my own.
The result is always a foregone conclusion: if it is me against the world, I will lose.

And God will allow me to lose, but what is really great about him is that if I repent of my prideful and stubborn attitude, humbly come before God and ask that he help me get out of the mess I created, he will.

So, remember this: in every endeavor you need to first ask God to work with you. Even when I just go for a bike ride, and even though I stay on the sidewalks as much as possible, I try to remember to ask God to watch out for me before I even get on the bicycle.

Nothing- absolutely nothing- is so unimportant that we shouldn’t ask God to help us.

There is an old saying that it is better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission, and in the human world, I believe that is best.

But when it comes to God, always ask first.

Thank you for being here and please remember to share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!

When I was in Sales, I learned a very important lesson: people don’t mean what they say, they mean what they do. Yeshua also taught this lesson when he said to let your “Yes” be “Yes” and your “No” be “No” (Matthew 5:37).

So, do your words match your actions?

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

Going back to my Sales experience, I was what is called a “Tinman”; not the kind that was with Dorothy, Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion. “Tinman” is an old term used for someone who sells aluminum siding for your house. I also sold window replacements and kitchen refacing, and these sales came off tele marketed leads and were a one-call close.

That means the day I see you is the day I sell you; either I leave with a signed contract or I leave empty-handed, but there was no going back. And those who bought had three business days to cancel their sale and get their deposit back.

Okay, so where is this related, at all, to a spiritual message?

I’m glad you asked.

Of all the sales I made, the ones I could almost be certain would cancel before I even got the paperwork into the office were the ones I made with so-called “Believers”.

That’s right, and yes, it is sad. And to a one, when I would call to try to save the sale (which you do, even though you know 99.9% of the time it’s not going to work) they would use this excuse…

“We prayed on it and now believe this isn’t the time to do this.“

If that was their excuse, I would remind them of what Yeshua said about no being no, etc., and that they gave me a yes.

You know what?- that didn’t make any difference. What they really should have said, to be honest, was that they changed their minds and are reneging on their word.

And yes, just because there is an option to cancel, that doesn’t mean if you take it you haven’t lied.

And when they say they prayed on it and need to change their minds, that is even worse because now they are blaming God!

Oh, yeah- like it or not, when you say you “prayed on it” and now feel differently, that is no different from saying God told you not to do it.

That brings us back to today’s spiritual question: do your words match your actions?

If you say you feel this way, but act that way, then you are a liar!

Now, even though every lie is a sin, that doesn’t mean every lie is unjustified. There are times, and we see this happening in the Bible over and over, when lying is the only way to continue to live. Or sometimes a “little white lie” is the more compassionate thing to do. I would still ask God to forgive me for doing it, but what is wrong in all cases is making a contract and then reneging on it. The exception to this is if you know you were being lied to by the salesperson.

Other than that, the cancellation period is not some “Get out of jail free” card you can pull just because the next morning, when you look at your checkbook, you say, “What the heck did I do?” That’s called “Buyer’s Remorse”, and is normal even when you are positive you did the right thing.

Look, if you profess to believe in God and want to do as God says, then do not do or say something that you aren’t absolutely certain you will feel the same way about in the morning.

And, even if you feel you made a mistake, live with it! Unless you have good reason to think you were bamboozled (that’s a great word, isn’t it?), you must make sure your words match your actions.

Yeshua is the ultimate example of “I am what I say” and if you want to follow in his footsteps, you must also make sure that your words and your actions are the same thing.

In everything you do, let your “Yes” be “Yes”, and your “No” be “No” because how you keep your word reflects on you, but as a Believer it also reflects on God.

Be thou holy as I am holy is not a suggestion.

Thank you for being here and please remember to share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers, Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

Did you ever hear the saying, “Money is the root of all evil”? Think it is from the Bible?

Well… it isn’t. And there are a number of “biblical” sayings that are not from the Bible.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

Most people do not know one thing from the Bible, but they think they do because they have heard people say, “The Bible says…”.

And those people don’t know what they are talking about because they are just repeating what someone else told them is in the Bible, who heard it from someone else who also doesn’t know what the Bible really says.

They just heard it from somewhere.

People easily believe what they like to hear, and adamantly refuse to believe what they don’t want to hear, and the sad thing about that is most of the time what they don’t want to hear is the truth.

Are you familiar with these sayings, supposedly from the Bible?

“God helps those who help themselves.”;
“Cleanliness is next to godliness.”;
“The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

Sorry to burst anyone’s bubble, but none of these are from the Bible.

The one about money being the root of all evil is close- what the Bible does say is that the love of money is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10). When you know what the Bible really says, it makes a whole lotta difference, doesn’t it?

There is nothing wrong with money, or having money, or even wanting to earn more money. Where things go wrong is when the money becomes more important to you than God or family. Many of the holiest people in the Bible were rich- Abraham, Job, and Joseph were very rich, just to name a few.

And as for the lie that God helps those who help themselves, well, this is one of my favorite ones to hate. Not only is it NOT from the Bible, but it leads people to reject God!

In Joel 2:32, which is repeated in Acts and Romans, we are told that all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved: it doesn’t say all who try on their own will be helped. We are not told anywhere in the Bible to depend on our own power or strength, but rather the opposite- we are to depend on God!

God doesn’t want us to leave him out of it, but rather to include him from the start. Yeah, sure, God will help us as we go through life, but only when we go through life the way he says we should. If we want to do it on our own, God will let us; but doing it on our own is rejecting God, and when we reject him, he rejects us. Now, because he is a forgiving and compassionate God, after failing miserably on our own, if we humble ourselves, repent of our sin (of rejecting him), and ask him to forgive us and help us, he will be all-in for that.

But if you want to do it on your own, don’t expect him to help.

The “biblical” wisdom about cleanliness and God working in mysterious ways is not found anywhere in the Bible. It is true that we are told God is so far above us we can never understand him (Isaiah 55:8-9), and there are laws God gave us to obey that are called Chukim, meaning laws that we cannot understand why God gave them to us, such as the showbread. So, okay, yes- there are mysterious things about God, but he doesn’t work mysteriously. In fact, Moses said it best in Deuteronomy 30:11, when he told the people that the Torah is not difficult to do or to understand.

So, nu? …what’s my point?

It is this: if you don’t read the Bible for yourself, so you know what is in there and what isn’t, like Isaiah said (Isaiah53:6), you will be easily led astray.

When a cop stops you and tells you that you broke a traffic law, and you say you weren’t aware of that law, you know what their reply will be, right?

Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

When you find yourself facing God on Judgement Day (and we all will) and he asks you, “Why didn’t you do what I said to do?”, your only answer will be “But I did what they said I should do- how was I to know I was rejecting you?”

Expect to hear this:

Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

You can be ignorant, or you can be saved, but you can’t be saved from your ignorance.

Thank you for being here and please remember to share these messages with everyone you know, even non-believers. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.

That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!