Bitachon 260 - Checking in With God

You're listening to the 260th edition of the Buckham podcast. Last week we read the chapter in Bay chapter 20 which speaks about Yahushafhat. Now how he and the Jewish people were faced with an incredible enemy. It was a malik. And the way that they were able to overcome their enemies was by going to the B Hashem to Haray to the B mikdash dvening there asking Hashem for help singing when they heard the news that they're going to have a miraculous salvation and going out seeing the salvation, bringing back the plunder and thanking Hashem after all was said and done. Now we're going to look at a few of the in the story and look at some of the and try to get a little bit more of a depth says he said like this was part I believe of his prayer. He said, "Behold, you Hashem, you God are the the God of the heavens. You rule over all of the kingdoms of the nations. You have all the power, Hashem. No one can stand in your place. No one can stand against you." says Rashi, if you decide something, Hashem, nothing can stand in your way. Nothing can block your will. Hashem, the creator of the world, whatever he wants to be is what is. So, Yahosaba was invoking the innate power of Hashem. If Hashem controls everything, everything belongs to him. So then obviously Hashem can help Yosha to overcome his enemies. Mal says there's no way. This is so important. Think about it in terms of your life. Let's think about it in terms of any challenge that we faced that we face that we have faced. There is no chance that Hashem will leave us. There's no it's not possible for Hashem to lack the ability. But and Hashem will not change his will. Right? Hashem promises us if we are connected to him, he takes care of us. There's no way that Hashem is unaware of what's going on. Now he goes through each of these possible you know lacks as far as a lack of ability. He said like this. It's impossible to say that maybe you know the masle the the uh spiritual entities which back up the people that we see right here right now. Let's think about it in terms of today's generation. You live in London and there are Islamic crazies who want to hurt Jews or you live in New York or wherever it is. So how does it work that they have the ability to cause damage? Well, I'll tell you how it works. They have a spiritual power. Their spiritual existence is somehow being given kak. It's being given spiritual strength to be able to overcome their enemies. That's us. Now, they have a certain spiritual co. Now, is it stronger than ours? Well, I'll tell you a secret. If if Hashem is our spiritual strength, which happens when we have we attach ourselves to him. So, obviously, no other spiritual power trumps that. You can't say that the power of their spiritual sar, the angel that protects them is more powerful than Hashem and that you, Hashem, heaven forbid, can't overcome them. As says, you are the God of the heavens. Second point, maybe maybe they have power in this world. Maybe Hashem is only the power in the heavens. You, Hashem, rule over you. You're the real source of power. If if they're getting power from a particular spiritual entity, Hashem is the one who gives the power to that spiritual entity. So if you see, let's say Russia has a certain power over Ukraine. Where does that power come from? It's a spiritual power. But Hashem is the one who has the power over all of the powers here on earth. And maybe they own their own power. Maybe once they get that spiritual power, it's theirs and Hashem doesn't play around with it, so to speak. No, says, "You are the one who has the the strength and the power, which means to say that at any moment, Hashem can decide, hey, I'm taking away their power. No creation has real power. All the power remains in your hands. Hashem, every strength, every power is an extension and an influx from your strength. So like the says we say every day it's in your hands to make great and to strengthen everything. So anything that has power the power is really ultimately from Hashem. So finishes off by saying nobody can stand with you. No one can stand in your place. No one can stand against you. no one can stop you know no one no one gets to the root of the power which is you love doesn't have to overcome anything in this world doesn't have to win so to speak over any power that we see in this world all you have to do my Hashem all you have to do y is saying is remove your strength from them and then they become like nothing. They lose their power. Which in essence is what happens in the story, right? Because all of a sudden they, you know, Yosha didn't even have to battle with them. He just ded Hashem and then all of a sudden they were battling each other. They were destroying each other, the enemies. So it's if you think about it, it's a very powerful thing. You know, people make a mistake today. You listen to the way that the leaders of Israel of the of the state of Israel speak so often. They talk about uh you know in the Holocaust so we had no way to protect ourselves and now we have a state now we can protect ourselves. Now we have an army etc. And that leads to all kinds of mistakes. Um number one the yeshiva bakim who are studying the Tyra which is all about connection to Hashem they are the power if everyone would be sitting and learning let's read the story this is history this is the Jewish people's history we have a spiritual history we see indeed battles in Jewish history but we also see that the essence of it is that when we are in a proper relationship with nobody fights us no one has the the ability to to fight against us. We don't need to have any wars. We don't need an army. All we need is Kalis Israel learning Tyra, Cla Israel uh being completely subjugated to Hashem's will. And that's something that by the way, as I mentioned previously, even the Arabs understand it. When we are bowing down to they are afraid because they also know, they know this principle that when you bow to Hashem, you have spiritual power. So that's the idea here. It's important. Let's go on to another puzz behold you shall judge them. We don't have the strength to battle against this great multitude of people who are coming against us. That's part of a that we say every day when we're saying we say we don't know what we should do. Our eyes are to you. And as we're going to see in the in the mfort on this when we say it when we say this so we start off it's part of right right after we start off with our heads bowed on our on our on our arms sitting down prostrating. Then the second level is we sit up. But when we say we get up and we stand and there's different ways of showing our subservience to obviously every time we are every time we den we are showing that we believe that the source of our strength is him we believe that he is the one who will help us. If there's going to be help it's going to be from him. If there's going to be rufu healing it's going to be from him. If there's going to be parnasa it's going to be from him. Right? Whenever we bow, whenever we pray, we show that it's him. But still, we do all these different things. We put in every different effort in our showing of faith, in our trying to connect, in our showing subservience to Hashem. We do it in many different fashions. Sometimes we fall on our faces, sometimes we're sitting up, sometimes we're standing. But we don't know exactly what's the right way of showing it to Hashem as it were. What's the right way of proving it to ourselves that we indeed are subservient? But we're going to try everything. We're going to try every way of doing that. And we're going to see more to what this means. Let's see. that he brings from the tour which is says we we've prayed in every different way in every different position that a person can can do. So, right, we we sat down, we stood when we were doing and we put our heads down, we fell on our faces and we find that this was something this type of was something that was done by Moshe. Moses when he was on our when he was praying on behalf of the Jewish people, they had sinned and he was asking for forgiveness. says he sat on the mountain says and I stood on the mountain says I fell in front of Hashem which means to say he did every different type of every different type of position again to show his subservience we've done it all we've done every position we've prayed in every different way that we possibly can that we think we can at that point we say and we don't know what else to do. Okay. So there's like a an admission we don't know and and I think that part of the prayer part of the is that we think of it as I don't know how to find favor in Hashem's eyes. I don't know how to get God to do what I want. But that's not the idea. The idea is I don't really know. And this is the point of of where we get to the place where we where we recognize that all theik that we're doing. I dab in so hard it doesn't seem like I got answered. Yeah. Because I'm dabbing so hard. I think I'm going to get answered. The is the point where I I realize that it's not about me getting answered. Even the is just about me connecting just about me giving up my own belief of what I need. All the magic happens in that in that van that I don't know I don't know let's see he brings here from the Israel the of the It's hard to understand why at the end of his that's what we just read. Why? He says, "We don't know. I don't know what I'm going to do. We don't know what to do cuz our eyes are turned to you." He had a lot of legions. He had tons of soldiers. What does it mean he didn't know what to do? says we all know if you have some to do generally speaking unless you're on a very high level you do whatever it is you leave the results but if he had if he had um soldiers and he had legions so why didn't he just use his soldiers and he would get help would help Right. Important point. Does not help us when we're just like lazy. I'm lazy. Hashem, you do it for me. That's not how it works. There's a it's almost like you see in the story and I don't know about you but I've seen this from my own experience in life that there has to be like a a tension tension in the world like a meta like there's a challenge there's an army coming out without that tension so we don't pay attention and we don't notice we don't have the motivation to move without the tension. Right? The relationship with before this army came out and after they came out was completely different. Yosha maybe and the people I mean they had a certain relationship with Hashem but it was a very I don't want to say the word lazy but it was um it just was when there's a tension when there's an army coming out to to battle you all of a sudden it creates a necessity to come back into relationship with a more intense So understand says the there are two reasons why said this. Why did he say I don't know what to do there? You have something to do. The first is it's true that he had many legions. He had lots and lots of uh army personnel. They weren't ready. They weren't ready for battle. They weren't fully armed. This whole thing had happened quite suddenly. They were already accustomed to a peaceful time for a long time. Think about what happened on October 7th. Hey, things weren't perfect, but it was like uh we weren't expecting our enemies to to attack us. It was a shocker war. It was a shock. We were accustomed to, hey, things are okay. We're okay. We've got the strength. We have deterrence. So what happens when some things suddenly heat up? There's like a a hesitation. There's a lack of preparedness. We just we weren't ready. That's what happened with Yosha. That's why he said, "Yeah, it's true that we have our army. We have our our our weapons, but we're just not battle ready. says, "The more um the main reason, the more essential reason why he said this was remembered and understood that which Hashem said to Mosher Raenu." Jewish people were escaping from Egypt. The Egyptian army was running after them. Bring them back. And Hashem says them. God will fight your battle. So Yosh knows that. He knows that sometimes Hashem fights our battles for us. How much do we need to fight? He knew that Hashem fights on behalf of the Jewish people. Hashem fights on behalf of those who are I don't want to use the word pathetic, but those who lack the ability to fight on their own behalf. Right? So there's like a kind of a catch 22 that happens when we have a proper army. We have the ability to fight for ourselves. says, "Isn't they fight for yourself?" But Yoshafet says, "Okay, I have a I have an army. I I could fight for myself, but what does it take to convince you as it were that I need your help and I don't want to fight? I want you to fight for me. Yeshua. He had two options really in front of him. Do I fight? Do I go out with my army? Do I battle myself or do I depend on Hashem's miraculous salvation? What What am I supposed to do? What do I do in this circumstance? What do you do? He looked up to heaven like a person who's in doubt, not sure what to do. That's why he said we don't know what to do. Our eyes are to you. So, wow. This is a this is a really foundational incredible what it means to say what comes out of this from the nerl is that I could have every power it could be everything in front of me. I can have every ability to do things for myself, but I need to turn to in that moment and say, Hashem, I don't know if I'm supposed to do this or you are going to do this for me. Wow. I can turn to Hashem and say, I have the power to do this. You have given me the strength. You've given me the the ability. You've given me the the knowledge, the wherewithal. Do you want to do this for me or am I supposed to do this, Hashem? I don't know. And and then what happens in the story? The Nva comes and says, Hashem says, I'm going to take care of you. You don't have to do anything. There's going to be a miraculous salvation. It's very heartening. Sometimes we feel like we have to do everything. And the Pusk is telling us we don't always have to do everything. There are options in front of us and we can put it to we can say Hashem you tell me you guide me what is it that you want me to do? What is it that you want? What is do you want me to do? And what is what miraculous uh what miraculous intervention are you going to reveal in my life? Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you again next time.