What Is the Highest Level of Emunah? | Rabbi Yosef Benyaminov

Our sages tell us there's three types of >> [music] >> emunah, believing and trusting in God. Number one is what we all know, you have to put in effort. You put in effort and then Hashem sees your effort and corresponding to that, he blesses your effort. Number two, no effort. Right? [music] If somebody is on a higher level, he believes Hashem will provide for me. I'm just going to do mitzvot, I'm going to learn Torah and the the mitzvot all day, Hashem will provide [music] for me. That's the second level. But there's a higher level than that. With in this week's parsha, parsha Lech Lecha, it's called negative effort. When you do something makes no sense and you still achieve great results. >> [cough] [clears throat] >> Avraham Avinu [music] went to get his servant back, Eliezer, um sorry, Lot, his nephew back from uh the the the war. There was a war of king four kings versus five kings, right? And [music] uh four kings, they won. And that means the four kings, even though they were fewer numbers, they won over the five kings. And Avraham took Eliezer, his >> [music] >> uh servant, and he went to war against the four powerful kings. How's that making any sense? That's negative effort. And sometimes in life you were doing something negative, but if you really trust, you believe that God will make you succeed, he will. Hashem is interested in showing you that he has got your back, that he's supporting you, he's there, you know, with you. Because if you believe that it's God that's doing it, you understand that the outcome will be also be by by God. So, Avraham was on the highest level that he was able to understand that that's how he went into this war and that's why he won. We find the same thing by Nachum Ish Gamzu, the story that [music] the he brought a gift to the king and on the way he stayed in the hotel and the all the gifts were stolen. >> [music] >> He got up in the morning realizing that the gifts are stolen but he continued going to the king >> [music] >> because he had realized that I'm going to put I'm going to make this work because I believe that God will take care of me. Even though it was negative effort, the the governor blessed him and he gave him tons and tons of rewards. We have to try to climb from level number one, number two and even even some people might be even level number three.