Bitachon 262 - Attaining Divine Inspiration

You're listening to the 262nd edition of the Bahan podcast. We're continuing inim 2 Chronicles chapter 20. The story of Yahushaf the amazing amuna the prayers and the songs that they sang which brought about an incredible salvation from Hashem. Verse 20, it says like this. They got up in the morning. They went out to the wilderness of say as they went out got up and he said like this, "Listen to me, oh people of Judah and those who dwell in Jerusalem. Believe in Hashem your God. When you believe in Hashem, your faith will concretize. That's I'd like to translate it. When you believe in his prophets, which is a reference to I think his name was Kaziel, right? If I'm not mistaken. When you believe in them, you will have you will have success. Okay? So, we're going to talk about believing. We're going to talk about amuna, right? And we're going to talk about believing in the words of a prophet and believing in Hashem. He brings here from the says of when the Jewish people left Egypt they had this incredible miracle at the at the sea the sea of reeds splitting of the sea and the Jewish people came out of that and they sang right so it's a little bit of a similar situation to what happened here with with melafhat with king yoshahat says, "There's two things here. Believing in Hashem and believing in his servant, his prophet, you know, if they believed in Moshe, they certainly believed in Hashem." Meaning Mosher Raenu was just the he was just the messenger. So why does it say these two things? We already said that they believed in Hashem. Why we need to mention it's coming to tell us that they believed in Hashem and they believed in Moshe. This means that if you believe it's coming to equalize the two aspects. If you trust in and believe in the prophet in this case Moshe who's the royan he's the trusted shepherd when you believe in the messenger who brings you the message that Hashem is going to take care of you so then you're you're believing in Hashem it's at that same level as if you believed in the one who spoke and the world came into being. Great is the concept of belief of amuna. Amuna is not quite the same as absolute confidence. Confidence. Amuna is faith or belief. But faith and belief, as we'll see, is something important in and of itself. Foundational in and of itself. Amuna is so great in front of the one who created the world. It's very interesting. What is one merit when one has amuna? So the first thing that we see is that you get you get divine inspiration which means and by the way everyone has access to this. I've mentioned this previously the the Vital student of wrote down his works. He says that today we don't have we don't have prophecy but anybody can accesses divine inspiration and here's how you do it says the if you have amuna if you have faith if you have belief if you trust in hashem so then you get and by the way it's not just that you know things. You might know things. You might have an intuitive sense of things because you have this. But it also gives you a power to do things, right? Like we find by we find by it was it was a spirit that moved them and helped them be able to act to do things that they were not comfortable doing. Sometimes superhuman things. But that it blows through the Jewish people and it gives them the ability to sing. We also find that the reason that the Jewish people were redeemed from Egypt was in the merit of their we also find that what was it that entitled Abraham our forefather to this world and the next world and of course he's a father of many nations aamongyam He's a father of all the Jewish people. He's a father of the Muslims. He's a father of the Christians. What gave him this superpower to to have this world and the next? It was his amuna. It's his faith. says it is good to thank thank you Hashem to say thank you Hashem to sing to your exalted name to say in the morning your kindness and your faith in the night time. But then it says in the you have caused me to rejoice in your works. So we we got a few things going on there. We have amuna, we have gratitude. Thank you Hashem. We have singing and we have rejoicing. What is it that entitles us or causes us to come to this incredible joy? You know, right? It says faith in the night. It means our faith, our belief in Hashem in this world when it's dark, when we don't see him, where it seems like he's hiding himself. That's why it says in the to say over in the morning your kindnesses and your amuna at night. And so too, it says to the nation, says to believe in Hashem and believe in his prophets. Believe in Hashem and you will have success. in a a so so you see here this dual aspect believing in Hashem believing in the prophets what I would say is what I would say is we can look and we can see that there are people who have succeeded in what we're trying to get we're trying to get amuna trying to get a lot of the books that are out there for amun have stories the stories are important because and I've heard this from my rashim rab prepare he's he said that we learn about it's something that we have to get in our guts something that we have to feel in our hearts and if I see somebody else who's doing this who's working on and it's working for them Hashem is more present in their life Hashem is coming through for them and it's open it's clear and there's which means that there's a sense It's intuitively that I I I can feel what's right. I can feel the direction that Hashem is sending me in. So if I can hear somebody else who has that then and I can believe them and I'm believing in Hashem as well. concept of we find also when it comes to kibbus galas when it comes to the return of the Jewish people to Israel which we've been witnessing over the last 100 years in an incredible way what is it what is the that allows us to come back I mean if you think about it just think about for a moment the reasons why people don't come to Israel don't move here you know how am I going to make it there arnasa my is dot dot dot right. But it all comes down to why does a person come here? What makes a person ready to come here? It's the amuna. It's the belief. It's the it's the sense that it's going to work out and that the future of Israel is inel. So he says the the gullus the exiles are gathered in in the merit of says it's in reference to the Jewish people who are with Hashem from the Lebanon. My my beloved bride, come come from Lebanon. Come and sing or maybe come and be straight. Me shamano from we're understanding it shono means the foundation, the beginning, the the start of it all is amuno. You see that is incredibly great in front of Hashem. As we said, it's the merit of of amuna. It's the merit of amuna that gives us the gives us the divine inspiration and brings about a song a song of redemption. Okay. Now we have the it says like this The amuna of a person in Hashem, the faith of a person in God and in his Torah is that which brings a person to eternal success. And it is that which attaches a person to something spiritual. You want to be attached to the spiritual worlds. You want to be attached to Hashem. Amuna is the glue. So also those who believe, we find that those who believe, it's not clear to me exactly what it's saying. I'm going to translate it to the best of my ability. But those who believe are the righteous individuals. These are the ones who are called and they're not prophets. They don't have prophecy. They don't have a clear open voice of Hashem speaking in their head. But they can change. I read it wrong through their prayers. They have the ability. So a person has amuna through your prayers you have the ability to change nature. Stuff works out for you in a supernatural way. This is a sign that the one who believes in Hashem and in his above nature. He's not beholden. He's not subservient to nature and reality. A person who's a has the ability to change reality, has the ability to bend the laws of nature according to whatever he wants. through on a level that is above natural matters says our believe in his believe in his prophets and you will succeed. This teaches us that the result of having amuna, amuna is the precursor to success. And not only is it the ingredient or the main ingredient or the the foundational reason for success spiritually, but it's also true, sorry, not only true of this world, but it's also true of the next world. as opposed he says but say came and he established that the foundation of the entire is one thing the righteous individual lives by his amuna by his faith that's the savior and he brings it to his says I'm Sorry. B uh 2 Chronicles 32 7 and 8 says, "Strengthen yourself. Don't be afraid of the king of of Assyria. Don't be afraid of all of his powerful legions. Similar to what happened what's happening here in Arbukim that we're talking about happens again later. Don't be afraid of his powerful legions because we have more with us and it doesn't mean physical strength. It doesn't mean we have better weapons. It doesn't mean that we have better a better army. He has the arm, the power of flesh of human beings. Hashem or God is with us to help us and to fight our fights. Because the influx of strength does not come upon a person unless he awakens himself. He awakens himself first to fight the ofem according to his ability. Okay, we've got advice. We've got news for you. We got news for you. The spiritual the spiritual battle is the main battle. You know what do you want? You want physical uh power or do you want spiritual power? You want power from the one who created all that is in this world. So the only way to get the spiritual power is to prepare yourself for it. Interestingly, it's not necessary to have a tremendous amount of preparation for it. A little bit of preparation gets you a lot of divine influx says in Daniel gives wisdom to the wise which means to say I need a little bit of wisdom obviously compared to Hashem's wisdom which is infinite there's always more to go there's always more to learn so the says is Hashem gives us the gives us in this exhort, excuse me, exhortation to strengthen themselves. Strengthen yourselves to fight the fight of Hashem. What's the battle? What are we fighting? It's a battle of Amuna. It's It's a fight to get our faith. It's a fight to get our belief in Hashem. But it's the good fight. It's it's worth it. According to how much a person has taken in Hashem, so too corresponding to that, that's how much Hashem's influx comes into his world. That's how much divine providence he gets. As says, He says, "Trust in Hashem and you will see the fulfillment of that trust. Trust in his prophets and you will succeed. elves in your in your faith in don't be afraid of them because of their great strength. There's a rather long footnote here. I'll just tell you the gist of it because we're out of time. But he talks about the fact that it's important. It's it's hard when you're in the thick of things. You get out, you're in the middle of the war. It's very hard to have amuna and be talking right there. Naturally, a person feels fear. a person feels, you know, it's it's it's at a gut level. So So what do you do? We go out into the world and we have to face the fears. He says, "Work on it at home. You can get to a point in your home where you feel before you go out into the world, you feel a strength inside of yourself. You feel the amuna and the and you got to get it there." Shashib used to say, "Learn how to be when you don't need it, so that when you need it, you'll have it." We have to gather our gather our amuna at home before we're put to the test, before we go out to war. Develop it inside of ourselves, strengthen it inside of ourselves. As you listen to this, spend some time on it every day in the morning. Meditate on it, focus on it, write about it. Whatever we have at home, there's a promise. He says that Hashem will help us to have it when we go out to war. Thank you so much for listening. See you again next time.