Overturning the Past | Rabbi Moshe Perlstein

Imagine you can look at your challenges in an entirely different view. We're all used to whenever the Yetzer Hara is sneaking up on us, and he's about to literally knock us out, we’re just Meyaesh, we give up. Ugh, again? Got to fight him again? Imagine we tweaked it and we said, Wow, Hashem. Thank you so much for my challenge. Huh? Yes. The holy Zohar tells us, Which means there's no thought, positive, good thought, that goes to waste. What does that mean? That means that when a person overcomes time after time, with good thoughts, good ideas in his head, even if they don't come to fruition, even if he's not successful at that time, it’s not wasted. The Aibishter stores it away and when you need it most, when you’re literally at that time, and you need that extra tow-truck pull, the Aibishter gathers together all of these Reusa d’Libas, all of these good thoughts, all of these good Chizukim, strengthenings, and he adds them together to give you some extra power, extra energy to make it, that you should be able to overcome this time. Not only that, if we look at it as an opportunity, there's a Koach, there's a strength that you can use from overturning through the future the past. That means you could turn around with the strength of the future all of the past, all of the times that we didn't make it and all the times that we fell through in our struggles. And that means as follows. Every single time there's a challenge, it’s a time of Teshuva. As the Rambam tells us that there's no better Teshuva than all of a sudden, a person mends his ways, changes his train of thought. Up until now, the Yetzer Hara is like, I got this guy. He's easy. Comes with his regular day-to-day thoughts, boom. All of a sudden, this time this fellow says, No. I'm not going with you now, Yetzer Hara. I'm going to think about something else entirely. I'm going to strengthen myself. I'm going to use the power of prayer and cry out and say, Aibishter, help me. I don't want to fall through this time. And a person, through that moment, could overturn his entire past in an entirely Teshuva way and become renewed completely. I want to share a small story that R’ Levi Yitzchok Bender, the great Mashpiah from the previous generation, shared. There was a fellow that was a businessman, many, many challenges, and due to that, sadly, fell far from holiness, far from Torah and Mitzvos. In his mid-fifties, the Yetzer Hara prepared him a challenge that was wow, huge. That moment, he says: Let me think a second. No. He writes R’ Levi Yitzchok: Just give me words of strength. R’ Levi Yitzchok gave him such words of strength. And at that moment, he just seized the opportunity and he started filling up his day with Torah and Mitzvos, Daf Yomi, acts of kindness, Tehillim every day, arranging, facilitating charity for other Jews. At that moment, he had used his עתיד, his future, to fix his past. That fellow lived his way into his 90s and died a righteous man. If a person would know that I could use this challenge as an opportunity, change my life, rectify my past, and build a new future, when the challenge came to you, you would say, Thank you, Hashem, for this challenge. And it could make you grow into a new entity that you never knew you can be.