Episode Transcript
[00:00:17] Well, Shabbat Shalom.
[00:00:19] I didn't put a something on the slide this morning that may be important, and it may. I don't know if YouTube is going to cause problems on YouTube or anything, but there probably needs to be a content advisory on here because there's nothing new in this sermon, just your annual reminder of who you are and where you need to be headed. So it's your obligatory get it out up front, your obligatory New Year, New Year, I mean, New Year, new you sermon. And it's to encourage you to stop simply living an ordinary life and to move on to living an extraordinary life. So you're probably, of course, asking, you know, why do we have to repeat this every year? Why do we have to go through this, sit through this every year? And in a Messianic synagogue, it's usually twice a year, right? We got it once at Rosh Hashanah right before Rosh Hashanah, and once at the turn of the Gregorian New Year. And so bear with me, endure. Because actually, I think it's real important, and I think we'll all get something out of it. So how many of you guys have done havdala?
[00:01:34] Okay, Havdala is a time, if you don't know, havdala is a time that we separate the Sabbath from the beginning of the week. So the Bible talks about it says, you shall sanctify the Sabbath and make it holy. And so one of the ways that we do that is we do something special at the beginning of Sabbath, generally. Light candles. We have a blessing over a cup of wine. We bless our children, bless our spouse. We sing songs, invite the angels to come and participate with us in Shabbat and bring peace and shalom to our home and various other things.
[00:02:13] That's one way we sanctify it. But did you know that doing havdala is just as much of a sanctification as doing kiddush on Friday night? Why? Because it separates it. It makes it different from the other days of the week. Okay? But in that havdala ceremony, we do different things. We light the candles, we do the spices, smell the spices, we recite blessings, we hear blessings, we drink the cup of wine, and we feel the heat of the flame, okay? And we see the flame. So within this, we sanctify all five of our senses. All five of our senses experience something to tell us there's something changing here. Okay? And in that, why do we do it then? Because we want to sanctify all five of our senses. Going into this new week, we're Transitioning out now out of Shabbat. And we basically want to offer our first fruits to the Lord and say, you know what? All of me, every single aspect of me belongs to you. And I'm going to give it to you going forward, starting right now. So this is. This is really what we want to do for this coming year. We want to give everything, all of our first fruits, everything that we can back to the Lord.
[00:03:34] If you've ever studied.
[00:03:37] Well, the guys who've been studying in our Torah on Tap sessions, we've been studying this text called Meselat Yesharim. That's the cortex, anyway, and in that, you know, it's a deep book. It's a very, very challenging book. It's a great book, especially with Twerski's commentary. But in the very beginning of the book, he says, I'm not telling you anything new.
[00:03:59] I'm just reminding you of some things, some things that are easy to overlook because they're so obvious. You would think everybody would know them. Everybody would be, you know, it's so obvious that oftentimes they get overlooked. Okay. And so really, that's what about this message is. And as Sabrina said while ago, we just came out of Hanukkah, and Hanukkah is the feast of dedication, so we're going to extend this. Hanukkah actually bled over into the new year this year, which I thought was pretty cool. And so we get to enter into this new year with a new dedication, a fresh dedication, a fresh start, so to speak.
[00:04:35] And Hanukkah commemorates what.
[00:04:40] What is it? What does it remind us of and commemorate?
[00:04:45] Dedication of the temple. Good. And what.
[00:04:49] What was the struggle over assimilation? Right. It was the battle against assimilation. Okay. And so that's another area that we need to work on too, is, you know, we need to struggle against assimilation. And so how well are we doing on that front today? Ask yourself. Ask, you know, your family members. How well are we doing on that front of assimilation today? Are we just rolling over or are we standing up? And so this, this message is called Reboot 2025, bringing in the new you. And so let me give you example. Let me explain what I mean by that. So we've all used computers, some more than others. I basically cut my teeth on computers and use them every single day, all day long. Okay.
[00:05:38] Is there anything more frustrating when your computer doesn't do what it's supposed to do, when you're trying to get something done and it just won't work?
[00:05:51] Have you. Has anyone Ever read the Dilbert cartoons? The comic Strick? Okay, so if you know Dilbert, there's Dogbert, the little dog. And he's sitting at his. At his desk with his computer. He's staring at the screen. He's on the phone with tech support. He says, tech support? He goes, I need help. And they go, what's the problem? He said, well, the problem is I'm at the edge of my mouse pad. Mouse pad, and I need to move something to the right.
[00:06:22] Okay. And the tech support says, well, have you tried rebooting your computer without saving your data? He says, yes, three times.
[00:06:31] He says, well, I know what you need. Then he said, you need a mousepad upgrade. That'll be 199.95.
[00:06:40] So, you know, joking aside, there, you know, computers can be frustrating, but. But then something jams, something clogs up, something moving slow. Something just will not do. Something weird happening. And so what is your final resort?
[00:06:57] Reboot. There we go. That's the reboot. And a reboot does something.
[00:07:02] Rebooting. And this is actually taken from the Internet of. I just want to have a succinct definition of what happens at a reboot. Rebooting your computer says can fix issues because it essentially refreshes the system memory, allowing it to start fresh and potentially resolving temporary glitches, memory leaks, or conflicts that might be causing problems with your software or applications, essentially giving your computer a clean slate to operate from. So I thought there was some great keywords in there. It refreshes your system memory. How many of you guys, you thought about something you wanted to do last year or wanted to accomplish last year this time, and you haven't thought about it since?
[00:07:47] I'm not the only one. That's good to know.
[00:07:50] It deals with memory leaks. Sometimes it takes a little longer. Sometimes it's immediate or conflicts that might be causing the problems. We all have things that get in our way, interrupt that. That curve balls we get thrown at, right? And so sometimes we just need a reboot. And so I want to just challenge you guys. It is time for a personal reboot. Okay? We need to refresh our memory. We need to reorganize our quote files, we need to reprioritize our order of operations, and we need to start again with a clean slate.
[00:08:31] So New Year's resolutions, How many have made New Year's resolutions this year?
[00:08:40] Crickets. Okay, so I was going to ask you if you were for him or against him, but I guess I know so I think fewer and fewer people are doing New Year's resolutions these days? Why do you think that's so they don't work right now? Is it the problem of the resolution or the one making them?
[00:09:07] Of course, of course. Okay, but why don't they work? They don't work because we don't have a follow up plan and we don't have accountability.
[00:09:17] That's really the reason why they don't work. We don't have a follow up plan of action and we don't have accountability. Okay. It's like saying I want to, to make a million dollars this year. It's like, whoa, that's a lofty goal. But how are you going to do it? It's like, I don't know, I just wanted to do it, you know. So it's one of those things that we can have these lofty dreams and ideas of where we want to be and these goals that we set. But if we can't really work towards that and set practical steps to achieve that, then that's not even a reality. We're not living in reality. Okay, so has anybody ever worked retail?
[00:10:04] Retail?
[00:10:06] What about for anybody done every, ever done any kind of like accounting type stuff for businesses like that? Okay, so in both of those you have, in the retail aspect of like physical sales, you have like year of year, year. If I could talk year end inventory, say that five times fast. Year end inventory. And you also have profit and loss statements, but especially in the accounting side of things and non tangible businesses and things like that. Okay. And so these are painstakingly, I mean they're just not fun, they're not pleasant things to deal with. You have to go through and dot every and cross every t and get everything done to figure out what's going on. We were talking to somebody last night and talking about, you know, how businesses, they'll go in and end of the year they'll realize, hey, we can't account for $100,000 here.
[00:11:04] So what's going on? We've got to figure out how to, how to deal with this, how to track it down and find out where that money went.
[00:11:13] And so I think our lives are that way a lot of times too. We end up the end of the day, end of the week, end of the month, end of the year. And we're like, whoa, where did the time go?
[00:11:25] What happened? I thought I was just, you know, here and here I am. Or you know, we enter into something and then later on we think, you know, seems like yesterday when I started that, but I'm Way down here. And I haven't progressed at all the way I thought I would. And so, you know, we all invest our time. I tell our kids they grew up hearing me say this over and over and over again, and I probably mentioned it before here, but we all have an allotted time. We all have the same amount of time, 24 hours a day, right? I mean, if you find a way to extend that, let me know, because I'm interested. But we all have 24 hours in a day. And those I tell my kids are like $24. If you want to make it, you know, more money, it's like each hour is worth $100 or whatever, but you have that limited amount of money, that set amount of money every single day that you're going to spend in some way.
[00:12:28] And how are we spending that? How are we spending that money, which is time? Are we spending it on sugar and sweets? Are we spending it on things that are going to make us into the person that we need to be and make us healthy and make us, you know, be able to have the energy and the stamina and everything that we have?
[00:12:48] You know, that's the same thing. If we want to put it in practical terms of, you know, do we spend this time that we've been given on wasting things? I know. I'm guilty of that. Do we waste it TV and entertainment and all kinds of different things, or do we invest that time so that we can get dividends later on? There's a huge difference.
[00:13:18] I know probably most of us in this room, as we've at one point in our lives, we got a paycheck. And then within the next day or so, we were like, look at your bank account. And you're like, I thought I had money in there, but I don't.
[00:13:35] Where did it go? Where did it go? And he's like, I just got paid, but I have no idea where all that money went, and I don't really have a way to account for it.
[00:13:49] Sometimes it's simply because bills hit real quick. Sometimes it's just because we've squandered it.
[00:13:54] And we try to figure out what happened. And then once we realize we've blown all of our money and have nothing to show it, we've got to do something about it. We can either say, oh, wow, oh, well, and go on and keep repeating the cycle and repeating the habit, or we can change. We can say, hey, let's track down what happened and let's change this so make sure it doesn't happen again.
[00:14:19] So what I want us to look at is how do we spend our time and how we spend our time in 2024 and how are we going to spend our time in 2025? Matthew, chapter 20. You guys know the parable Yeshua talks about day laborers? He gives a parable to day laborers. There's a guy that he needs workers in his vineyard. He goes out and he finds these guys standing around. He says, hey, come work in my vineyard. Then he goes back the next part of the day and comes back. Well, usually, you know, you talk about the end of the story and the sort of the point of the story and the moral story. But something that stood out to me is he said he found these guys, these day laborers standing around idle. And he asked them, he says, why do you stand here idle all day long?
[00:15:05] Okay, they're waiting for something to happen. They're just idle and waiting for something to change instead of actively pursuing something to change instead of trying to make a difference and trying to make that change in themselves. So I want each of you guys and myself included, think about where we were last year at this time and think about where we wanted to be by this year at this time.
[00:15:34] What are things that come to your mind?
[00:15:39] What goals or what things that we may not have set a goal, but we may have expected we would be further on down the road, right?
[00:15:48] In areas like our spirituality, our physical, you know, our fitness or whatever, our finances and in our relationships.
[00:16:02] Over this last year, have you been able to develop your character more than you did the previous year? Are you more kind, more generous, more compassionate, more thankful than you were last year? Those are some big questions.
[00:16:20] Compared to last year, where are you this year? Where are you right now compared to January of last year? In your connection with God, in your connection to your spouse, in your connection to your children and your connection with your community and others, were you able to. And here are some of the practical things, too. Just in your. In your spiritual life, were you able to keep up with the Torah readings? That's a. That's a difficult thing sometimes, right? Just something as easy as the Torah rings, were you able to take time and dig into additional studies? Were you able to study the Gospels and the Apostolic Scriptures? Were you able to study Musar and implement those practices? In your life of character development, were you able to spend daily time in prayer? Those are big questions and something. Some things that we may, you know, think about occasionally, but we really don't set those goals of, you know, I want to be a man of prayer. I want to be a man of the word or whatever, and I'm going to do X to accomplish, to get to that point. I'm going to dedicate this time every single day to doing this. And so I want to challenge us to really figure out a way that we can reboot in 2025 right now so that we can be a different person this year, in 2026. At this point, we can look back and say, you know what? I've moved. I've moved from where I was. We should never be the person that we are all the time. We should always be evolving, changing. And I use the word evolving in the loose, in the literal sense of the word. But, you know, the sages talk about the difference between Jacob and Esau. Esau came out of the womb. And how does it describe him?
[00:18:18] Red and hairy, right? And the sages say this is because Jacob came out and he was. He basically came out who he was. He was a man, the most man he would ever be because he didn't change, he didn't develop, he didn't grow in his spirituality and his emotional and his thinking.
[00:18:45] He just decided, I don't need to change. I am who I am, and that's who I'm going to be.
[00:18:51] Jacob, however you see his character develop, he's dynamic. You see him make bad choices, and then you see him make good choices. You see him fight for what is true, for what is right. You see him blessing his children. You see him setting the standard and the precedent for this great nation that God would bless.
[00:19:14] And, you know, when you think of studying, a lot of times people think, well, you know, that's not me.
[00:19:22] I don't really have the time to study. That's not really the thing that I do.
[00:19:27] I'm busy. You need to understand, Darren, I'm too busy. And I'm not a scholar even, you know, I'm not really into studying. And, you know, I have a hangnail.
[00:19:38] Oh, wait a minute. That's. Yeah, sometimes you hear those type excuses, but sort of a lame one, right?
[00:19:44] But we will make. We'll make any kind of excuse that we can to get out of developing, of changing, of growing. You know, I've struggled for years.
[00:19:56] Many of you guys know my story, But I've struggled for years of developing personal habits, of physical exercise and fitness because same excuses hang. No, no, no. I mean, I'm too busy. I don't have time.
[00:20:15] And it's come back to bite me. And I've been struggling over the last six months to really change that. And it's difficult and it's very, very hard.
[00:20:25] And so the quicker we get on board and start beginning changing and getting on a path to say, this is who I want to be and I'm going to pursue it and I'm going to walk down that path, the sooner we can be that person.
[00:20:41] Right? You know, think about investments. You know, I've got an ACORNS account. You guys may know what that is.
[00:20:48] That I started four years ago because that's the first time I've had consistent income. Actually, it's almost. It is five years ago now. So it's the first time I've had consistent income pretty much since we've been married.
[00:21:01] And so every paycheck I get a little bit of my paycheck stuck into that, and it's not much.
[00:21:11] If I had started when I was my son's age, Boaz's age or somewhere there, my first job, I'd be sitting pretty, pretty nice, okay? But I've had 30, 35 years of not investing, and therefore I don't have much to show for that money, that investment, that time that I've poured in, those jobs that I've had A lot of the same way with our spiritual lives. I mean, we do the work, put in the work, but then do we really invest the way we should to have what we desire later on in life? Because we don't have that foresight, right? We don't look ahead. And it's the same way with our spirituality, our relationships, our anything in life. If we just try to coast and let things go on, then we'll never have the dividends that we think that we desire, you know, that we really need or want.
[00:22:19] And I want to challenge us to create new habits. You guys have heard Rabbi Damien talk about the book Atomic Habits, right? Atomic Habits, it's a great book. It's a secular book, It's a self improvement type book. But it's the truth. If we develop those habits, and here's the deal, within Judaism, a lot of those habits are ingrained if you were raised in a, in a religious home because you, every day you study, you do such and such and everything.
[00:22:51] But us raised in a secular society and not in that habit, we haven't developed those habits as young people when growing up. And so atomic Habits, I think is a great starting place. It's perfect time for us to develop these new habits for daily learning. And learning is first part because as GI Joe said, knowing is half the battle.
[00:23:15] So even if it's only 10 minutes a day, we need to dig in somehow, no matter how busy we are. I think everybody can carve out 10 minutes a day. You think that's reasonable?
[00:23:27] Okay, you're committed. Thank you for agreeing.
[00:23:32] Dave's sitting there shaking his head because he's going to do two hours. So the great sage Hillel says, one who does not add to his knowledge causes causes it to cease, and one who does not study the Torah deserves death. He's not talking about going out and killing a person. He's just saying that there's no point in them being alive because they're not really fulfilling their mission. They're just living like an animal. We're just living like an animal for not engaging. And the Torah and what God has for us, then there's no really point for us to exist because we're not accomplishing our mission in this life. And so I think. Yeah, it was last week, you remember I mentioned something about I was playing with guitar. I said, you know, I haven't played in a long time, and I really had to work to get this back. So I grew up playing guitar. I started playing guitar when I was 8. So I've had a lot of time to play guitar. But leading up to last week, I almost had to learn over again because it had been that long since I played.
[00:24:39] If you don't use it, you lose it. Okay? This is the same with Torah learning. You may have learned Torah as a child, you may have learned the Word of God as a child. You may have learned in Sunday school or whatever. But if you don't revisit that, if you don't add to it, then that stuff is just going to fade away. You'll remember bits and pieces, but you may not be able to connect what's going on. May not be able to know what you think you know. You may be saying that word, but you may not mean what you think it means. You may not mean what you think it means. Okay, this week's Torah portion. Vayagash.
[00:25:27] In it, you know, somebody comes to the aid of Joseph, one of his brothers. Who was it? Anybody remember Judah? Okay, Judah stands up and he faces, not to the aid of Joseph, but of Benjamin. Sorry. And he faces Joseph. He basically, the sages say that their conversation, there was a showdown. Okay? Basically, he didn't know who Joseph was at the time, but he was defending his little brother. Benjamin said, you're not going to take him because that will kill my daddy. That will kill my father. And he's going to toe to toe to the biggest, baddest guy in Egypt besides Pharaoh. Okay. And the sages say this debate actually carried on later into the relationship because of this sort of difference, a different way of looking at things. And there was a debate between them of how one was supposed to serve God. And it was based on their experiences.
[00:26:25] Joseph. I'll just say Judah. Judah said that in order to really serve God, we need to isolate ourselves and really just completely focus on God. Get rid of all the distractions in life and just only focus on God. Sort of monastic, in a sense. Joseph, however, said that it was our job to be in the world, but you've heard in the world, not of it. And to elevate every aspect of our lives to a state of holiness and help others to achieve that as well.
[00:27:03] Okay, this is in Kabbalistic and Hasidic thought. This is called gathering the sparks. But anyway, this is a way to elevate every aspect of life. And so Joseph was in the middle of things. He was in the pits of Egypt, and he had to realize that this too is God. Judah couldn't really accept that in a certain way. He couldn't accept that these bad things, these carnal things, these physical things, these mundane things had to do with God. God was on this other plane. And we had to somehow put ourselves in a position to totally get there. Joseph, however, said, in my everyday life, I'm going to elevate my everyday things to the point that God can use them. And I think that's what we need to do as well.
[00:27:54] Jacob, you remember when he came down, Joseph called for him. He sent the finest in the land of Egypt. And he said, told his father, he said, come to me, come to Egypt. Move everything. Bring everything you own and come and move to Egypt and I'll take care of you.
[00:28:12] Jacob was not a young man. How old was he? 130 years old. Okay. Has anybody ever tried to move their parents at an older age? That is difficult. Okay? And I can see why, because you're settled. You are, you know things you don't. A big life change like that is just difficult.
[00:28:36] And so it would have been easier for Jacob to say, no, I'm not doing it. You come with me. Come, come back home. You know, take care of me from here. I deserve this because I'm your father.
[00:28:50] But he didn't make that excuse.
[00:28:54] He came just as Joseph wanted him to, and he made the long, arduous trip to the land of Egypt to be reunited with his son. He made the effort and overcame the obstacle that stood between him and his son yeshua in Matthew 25. You guys all know this a parable of talents, okay? I'm not going to use the word talents here because it convokes certain things.
[00:29:22] But you know, basically what happens is the man, the landowner, he says, I'm going away on a trip and I've got these three servants. I'm going to put them in charge of some of my wealth to take care of while I'm gone. Okay, so let's just say the first guy, he says, I'm going to give you 50 GS and I need you to take care while I'm gone. Next guy, he says, I'm going to give you two GS and you take care while I'm gone. The last guy says, I'm going to give you a grand and. And you need to take care of it while I'm gone. So what happens? He comes back a long time later. What? A short time later. I don't know how long it was. And the guy with $5,000 now has 10. The guy with $2,000 has now made. Doubled it and made $4,000. But what happened with the guy that only had $1,000? What did he do with it? He buried it, right? So it wouldn't be stolen. I mean, it's like that's not just stupid, but it's not really what the master wanted either. He knew what the master wanted him to do with it.
[00:30:25] And I have a feeling we all tend to do this in some way. God has given us this life and what are we doing with it? Are we investing into it to make it more then the way we came into this world? Or are we just being like Esau and saying, I am what I am what I am? That may have been Popeye, but you know, we. We have to do something. We have to make an investment to be able to change Yeshua. Actually, this is how he says the servant was dealt with. The master said, you wicked and slothful servant, you knew that I reap where I've not sown and gather where I scatter no seed. Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers and at my coming, that I should receive what was mine with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to the one who has 10 talents.
[00:31:27] So if you are a good steward over all that God has given you in your life, stewards, somebody that is not a good steward, God's going to do something to make you even more of a good steward. But if you're not a good steward, he's going to take what you have and say, I'm not wasting effort into this, okay? We need to realize that if we're not investing, if we're not utilizing this life for what it's supposed to be, then we're wasting it. He says to everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance from the one who has not even what he has will be taken away and cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness in that place where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
[00:32:18] I gave an example of this in my book 4 Responsibilities of a Disciple. But I talk about a guy named Poor Dave, and we're not talking about Dave Hazen. That's a whole other story. No, his name was not even Dave. Okay? But in the story, Poor Dave, a friend of mine had taught a discipleship class for several weeks, and this guy came up to him finally at the end of the course, and he said, you know, he said, I'm really thankful for this course. You know, it's really taught me what. What a disciple is and what a disciple isn't. And I've realized that I'm not a disciple. And my friend was just like, yes, mission accomplished. But then he added, but I'm okay with that.
[00:33:11] So it's just like, you know, just everything crashes. I was like, you hear. It's like, you hear the call, Cars just start piling up on the interstate. You know, how can you not. How can you be okay with that?
[00:33:30] But you know what? A lot of us are.
[00:33:32] In a certain way, a lot of us are.
[00:33:39] We've been given that $24 a day, and we blow.
[00:33:47] We just blow it. So I want to encourage us to invest.
[00:33:55] What does that look like for different people? It's going to do different things because some people are already doing certain things, Other people are doing different things. And so one of the things that we're doing as a family is we're having a. And we. We haven't technically started, we've discussed in our group chat, but is we're having a book challenge for this year. Okay, what books are you going to read this year of personal development, spirituality, even. Even certain things. Like, you know, a fiction, because those have value in themselves as well sometimes.
[00:34:32] You know, I. I've started my first book this year. Is this book right here that I've had sitting on my shelf for probably three years. Okay. Your best year ever. I could have had that three years ago.
[00:34:45] Man.
[00:34:50] But it's taken me three years to want to have a good year.
[00:34:58] So your best year ever by Michael Hyatt, and I want to read this little excerpt from it. He says, one of the biggest reasons we don't succeed with our goals is we doubt that we can.
[00:35:12] Hmm. Anybody ever thought that we don't succeed in our goals because we doubt that we can? They're just out of reach.
[00:35:24] Says polls show that the percentage of people in their 20s who achieve their New Year's resolutions is far greater than those over 50. Why do you think that is so Says, in fact, while 8 in 10 millennials set resolutions, almost 7 in 10 adults over 65 say setting resolutions is a waste of time.
[00:35:54] Most adults over 65, it says, why? It's sad, but the greater the number of setbacks we've experienced in life, the less likely we are to believe that we can prevail. Doubt is a goal toxin.
[00:36:11] A goal toxin. Okay, how many of you ever had gall toxins build up in your life? You say, there's no point. Why should I even try? Right? It's like, I don't know, just remind me of you. Ever seen the Peanuts comics and shows everything. Charlie Brown trying to kick the ball with Lucy holding it, right? It's like, what's the point?
[00:36:38] You know, no matter what you do, she's gonna move it.
[00:36:43] But Charlie Brown tries again. He tries every time. You know, we should have that. That optimism, even if we land on our backside.
[00:36:56] My next book that I want to commit to is called On Purpose by Rabbi Mindel Kalmanson. It's some of the teachings of the Bavature Rebbe on the purpose of life and fulfilling our purpose in life. Okay, what are your goals? What are you wanting to read? Learn to develop, to invest in yourself of being a better version of you. You don't have to be somebody else.
[00:37:24] The goal is not to make you into somebody else.
[00:37:27] The goal is to make you a better version of yourself and fulfill the mission that God gave you, right?
[00:37:37] So as Rabbi Damien said many times, it all starts with daily atomic habits.
[00:37:46] And if you know the laws of thermodynamics, an object at rest will remain, tends to remain at rest until acted upon by an outside force. So consider this your outside force, and this is your swift kick in the pants. Okay? So everybody just say ow and get it over with.
[00:38:09] We want to be like Jacob rather than Esau. I want to challenge you to hit that reset button and bring in the new you. And in 2025, change the trajectory that you're on so that you won't go where you're going by nature and end up in a ditch somewhere, but go where you want to go, be who you want to be and be a blessing to the people around you.
[00:38:36] You know, what are the some of the things that you know, this is personal, but what are some of the things as a community we can do as a reset in 2025? You know, we can judge favorably and think the best of each other. By the way, this list is courtesy of my beloved bride.
[00:38:57] We can work on guarding our tongue better.
[00:39:00] We can work on really upholding Torah better as a community.
[00:39:04] We can press in close to Yeshua, hold on to him, uplift him, and teach his teachings and everything related to him as our Messiah. And we can work on developing those fruits of the spirit in our life, letting those things come out in our day to day lives and not just when we're in this context.
[00:39:30] That's a big list there. Tall order.
[00:39:34] So how and when do we start? Well, start by making a list. Say, I want this to change in my life. I want this to be the new version of me. I want to be more kind, I want to be more patient, I want to be more loving, I want to be more compassionate. I want to see my spouse this way. I want to hold my tongue. I want to be more thoughtful in this area, whatever it is.
[00:40:01] And then take that list and prioritize it.
[00:40:06] Then start putting it in action. That's where really, really the rubber meets the road. Because we can study about something, learn about stuff all day long, and be an armchair scholar in anything that we want until we really see action. The fruit of that, it doesn't mean really anything. Hamzerzuut. You guys know that word Zerzuot? Zera zoot is When I first learned about this word, Hebrew word, someone told me, I said it means alacrity. I said, great. That doesn't help me a bit because I don't know that word either.
[00:40:45] So it basically means when you have something to do, do it immediately and zealously and wholeheartedly and complete it. Complete the task.
[00:40:56] So have zero zoo start now. It's like investing money that I told you earlier. The longer you wait to invest, the less return on the gain you'll receive. If you want to see transformation in your life and become the person that you want, even above the person that you need to be, then we need to start today.
[00:41:18] Do something about it. Beginning today.
[00:41:22] Reboot and bring in the new you for the New Year Shabbat Shalom if you enjoyed this teaching, I want to ask you to take the next step. Start by making sure you subscribe to our channel. Next, make sure you hit the like button on this video so that others know it's worth their time to watch. Last Head over to our website to learn more about Shalom Makin, explore other teachings and events, and if you're so inclined, contribute to the work that we're doing to further the kingdom. Thanks for watching and connecting with Shalom. Macon.
