Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] This week? Well, I'm gonna start that way. Let me ask you a question real quick.
[00:00:09] What is the most powerful thing that you can think of? Maybe the power most. Let me classify this the most powerful thing in the universe.
[00:00:21] Let me hear something. Let me hear some ideas.
[00:00:24] Sun. Sun. There you go. Stars. Sun, supernova. There we go. Huge, right?
[00:00:30] Anything else? Maybe. Okay, those are good.
[00:00:35] Guess what? I'm going to talk about something that's even more powerful today, and it's directly related to our Torah portion this week.
[00:00:43] And you're still clueless of what that is. I like it.
[00:00:48] Something more powerful than sun, stars, and supernovas.
[00:00:54] Speech, words.
[00:00:56] Okay.
[00:00:59] The Torah opens with something powerful. In our Torah portion this week, near the beginning of the portion, we read Vayomer Elohim, excuse me, Yehi, or Let there be light.
[00:01:17] Let there be light.
[00:01:19] Okay. God said, let there be light. Now, in Hollywood, when this happens, what usually goes wrong? Something fizzles out. You know, you have the magician. You know that the rabbit is nowhere to be found. You have the wizard. He's tapping his wand, trying to get it to work, and there's sparks flying and everything. Nothing quite goes as its plan. But not so with Hashem, the God of the universe, the God of Israel, the creator of all things. He. He spoke, and instantly, everything was as he desired.
[00:01:52] That very spoken word was exactly as he spoke it.
[00:01:59] But you know what? In our attempts, sometimes things go wrong. We speak, and things don't exactly come out the way we want. But not so with the Lord. He spoke, and that was it.
[00:02:10] There was not a moment where the universe hesitated or wondered whether it should or should not obey. The Torah simply says, vay. Hi.
[00:02:21] Let there be light. What's the next phrase? Vahi, or.
[00:02:26] And there was light.
[00:02:29] Instantly, effortlessly, and perfectly.
[00:02:34] Why? Because the word of the Lord doesn't try to create.
[00:02:39] It is creation. I want you to let that sink in.
[00:02:44] God's word is not an attempt at creation or a means of creation necessarily, but it is creation itself.
[00:02:52] It is creation.
[00:02:56] So in the midrash and in Perkei Avot, we hear that we learned that the world was created by 10 utterances. Now, what do we mean by that? If you look at the first chapter of Genesis, you hear all these places. And God said. And God said. And God said. So they calculate that up to how many?
[00:03:17] Oh, that's a good guess. You said 10. It's actually nine. But I tricked you.
[00:03:23] So the 10th one is actually the first word. Bereshit. Okay, so you have these nine and God said, and then you have one missing. Where's the 10th? Well, Sabrina was actually reading the Torah portion last night, and she actually asked the question right on cue. She's like, I see all these things in creation, but I've never thought to ask, what about the world and the heavens?
[00:03:48] Or, you know, when did that actually come into be? Because we're not. It doesn't really talk about that part.
[00:03:54] And that's where the sages say the word better. She and God created the heavens and earth. That's all that we know about that.
[00:04:00] That's when he spoke it into existence. And it just was.
[00:04:03] And so that's the 10th utterance of God, okay? And so this is what God did. And there's a phrase for this.
[00:04:13] This is called the asara meamorot, okay? These are the 10 utterances. And think of them like, sort of like divine currents of energy, but currents that continue to flow through the universe, sustaining creation. Because God didn't just speak way back then.
[00:04:34] He still speaks. His voice is still continuing. So think about this.
[00:04:40] If you're listening to a song on your stereo, your computer, your mobile device, whatever, and all of a sudden it loses power, what happens to that song?
[00:04:51] Gone, right? It's like, you know, does that song exist? Yes and no. I mean, that's just sort of a philosophical question we could talk about for a long time.
[00:05:01] But the issue is with that. It's, it's. You do not have any connection with it anymore.
[00:05:07] And if God were to stop singing the song of creation, guess what would happen?
[00:05:14] Same thing.
[00:05:16] If he were to stop. If his voice would stop from going out, then creation would cease to exist. And so God's voice. I want you to think about this. At creation, God's voice wasn't merely just the sound.
[00:05:31] It was substance. And when he speaks, all of reality turns and obeys his will.
[00:05:41] So Psalm 33 says, by the word of the Lord, the heavens were made.
[00:05:46] For he spoke and it came to be. He commanded, and it stood firm. So think about this. The universe is not like, you know, we think of archeology, it was, it happened then, all that kind of stuff. It's like from back then, well, this isn't that way. God didn't just create and walk away like the deists talk about. And they think about. God is involved. And his. One of his main involvements is he continues to speak creation to continue our existence.
[00:06:19] We are sustained by his word just as we were formed by it. So, John 1, you guys, we read this in our Torah portion Today in our gospel portion in the first service is that says, in the beginning was the Word, and all things were made through him. This is talking, of course, about Yeshua. And so Yeshua is not merely just the messenger of God's word, He's the word of God made flesh.
[00:06:50] And so he is the agent of creation.
[00:06:55] And so creative speech of the Lord took on human form in the form of Yeshua to affect creation through him, from within creation. That's a big concept. We won't necessarily go there. We're going to talk more about how it affects us and how we can affect things around us.
[00:07:14] But one of the things that we notice at the creation.
[00:07:17] Excuse me.
[00:07:21] One of the things that we can note of creation, that the object that was created takes on some kind of character of the one who spoke it.
[00:07:33] And so Dave mentioned Rabbi Shmuley Socks. First of all, I'm just curious. Anybody see it this week? Okay, a few of you guys. Thank you, guys.
[00:07:43] But we're going to learn a lesson from Rabbi Shmuley Socks this week. But we're going to put it in big boy terms. How's that? Okay, we're going to put it in big boy terms because God said, let us make man in our own image. What does it mean to be in the image of God? Is it like this. This image or whatever? Because we all have different images. And I don't think it's talking about physical as much as it is.
[00:08:10] We're talking about his character.
[00:08:13] Our words, however, are the closest thing that we have to Hashem's power. Because think about it. Hashem created how with the spoken word. And so he. He actually gives us a little bit of that power as well.
[00:08:29] And it's really interesting because the Aramaic Targum of Genesis, and some of you guys may be familiar with Anklos. He's the.
[00:08:39] That translation is the most famous one.
[00:08:42] He translates this passage as saying man became a living being.
[00:08:47] He translates it as saying, man became a speaking spirit.
[00:08:55] Think about that. A speaking spirit. I mean, this is the thing that separates. One of the things that really, really separates mankind from all the other creatures that were made. We have the divine ability to speak. Only humans can speak and speak abstractly. We can give things names, we can describe things. We can bless and we can curse, and we can actually shape our reality through our language. Now, hold, hold. Don't. Don't just turn me off right away. I want you to wait, and I'm going to back this up.
[00:09:32] We don't just live in God's world. We live by our words just as he does. And our speech carries fragments of this divine power that God used to create this entire universe.
[00:09:47] And if you don't believe me, let's look at Proverbs 18:21 says, Death and life are in the power of the tongue.
[00:09:56] And there's lots of implications of that.
[00:10:00] Now here's the curious part about this. The Hebrew says, you recognize those last two words beyond lashon.
[00:10:10] It literally means, anybody know?
[00:10:13] In the hand of the tongue.
[00:10:18] That's an interesting phrase. In the hand of the tongue. Life and death are in the hand of the tongue.
[00:10:26] The power of life and death are in the hand of the tongue. So our words are like tools in our hands.
[00:10:36] Those tools can be used for either creation, destruction.
[00:10:41] Creation or destruction.
[00:10:44] James 3 says, the tongue is a small member that sets great things ablaze. In other words, he says, don't use it for destruction. But it's easy to do. We all have done it. I mean, has anybody not done it? I mean, if you raise your hand, I'm going to be really jealous. But I think we've all done it. We've used our speech to hurt people and we've used it to cause lots of damage.
[00:11:10] Matthew 12 Yeshua says, I tell you, on the day of judgment, men will give account for every careless word they speak. And by your words you'll be justified, by your words you'll be condemned.
[00:11:24] So words are very, very powerful according to the Torah, according to the Scriptures. Now this is why the Torah makes such a big deal over vows and, and oaths. Have you guys ever studied vowels? And oaths according to the Torah? Okay, vow in the Torah is a neder, and an oath is a Shavuah. And the word neter, it means to devote or dedicate or to bind. And that actually in these passages, when he's talking about these, it actually uses those words in different ways, in multiple ways to convey the same idea. So think about it like this.
[00:11:59] If I say bind, a binding with a binder, right? I mean, it's just a. It's a plant. It's all the same root word, right? But you get the idea.
[00:12:12] But if I say oath and oath, you know, that sounds a little weird, but you know what I mean? So that's the way the Torah uses this. It means, it says vow avow.
[00:12:26] And anyway, this personal declaration, it consecrates something or obligates a person beyond what the Torah already requires. And this is why Yeshua, both Yeshua and the sages made a big deal about taking vows and oaths, because what we say creates a new reality that now we are obligated to.
[00:12:51] It's like, hey, 613 laws wasn't good enough for you. You got to create more.
[00:12:56] Put them on yourself.
[00:12:58] And so we create a new reality. This is why in the Torah, the husband or the father has the ability to nullify some. Some. And that's the key word, some vows or oaths made by a wife or a daughter of a certain age.
[00:13:17] And it's not because he's a control freak, but because he has wisdom. And this is. We want to make sure that what we avowed that we fulfill. And if we vow something that's irrational, we make a vow when we're not thinking in our best mindset, then we have a problem that we're not sure how to deal with. And this is also the origin of the kol nidre service that we did at Yom Kippur. The all vowels. That's what that service means. Kol nidre means all vows. And it's the nullification of vows, but not vows between man and man, but only vows that you have made irrationally between yourself and hashem.
[00:14:08] And so the power of words is not to be understated.
[00:14:15] We have the power to create a reality that's different than what our eyes can see at the moment. This is also why false witnesses in the Torah are dealt with so, so severely, because their testimony has great ramifications, Right? They have the power of words.
[00:14:36] They can either pronounce, guilty are innocent, and that goes a long way. Think about an innocent person who has false witnesses that condemn them, and then the judge makes that pronouncement not good.
[00:14:54] Well, this also relates to something that you may not think of. It relates to prayer how? Because prayer isn't a passive activity like most people believe, because from a Jewish perspective, prayer is completely distinct from thought. You know, a lot of us grew up in a Christian tradition. They say, close your eyes, bow your heads, and pray.
[00:15:19] You know, and that was prayer.
[00:15:23] But prayer really is not a passive activity. It's an active activity. I'm not making fun of Christian traditions. It's just that we. That's just. There's not an understanding there of what this is.
[00:15:36] And when we realize the power of words, it changes things, because thoughts are contained in our minds. Okay? It's like we have this box or something that all these thoughts are contained in, but until they are released through the power of speech. And that, for us, would be coming out of our mouth for the deaf, like, we have a deaf community that's not here with us today, but for them, I guess it would be through their hands.
[00:16:09] But it has to be released. It has to be expressed. And that becomes something real, tangible.
[00:16:19] It goes from a mere idea or concept, something locked away in our brains, to something that we have created In a certain sense.
[00:16:31] Just like Hashem's spoken word in the mouth, speech in the mouth of a man has the creative potential to redefine reality.
[00:16:43] Let me say that again.
[00:16:46] Just like we learned about Hashem's spoken word at the beginning of creation, speech in the mouth of humans, of mankind, has a creative potential to redefine reality.
[00:17:01] Think about that.
[00:17:02] When we speak words of prayer, we take hold of that potential and we bring it into the world of action, the world we live in. In order that it may materialize.
[00:17:14] We partner with God to speak into existence, the world that he desires. A prayer, unspoken, is a prayer and prayed. When we pray aloud, we are in some way on a spiritual level, changing and reshaping the world. Now, I'm not talking about name it, claim it, blab it, grab it. I'm talking about speaking something into existence that, you know, you can wish for a million dollars. You can say, I have a million dollars, all you want, but you're not going to get it unless you work for it.
[00:17:49] But I'm talking about something completely different. I'm talking about the power of words and how we have the ability to affect the reality around us in some capacity.
[00:17:58] Words are powerful.
[00:18:01] I read a book several years ago. There's a biography on the Rebbe. It's called Rebbe. And it really affected me in the way that I use my words. I also read the Chofetz Chaim. We'll talk about that here in a minute. That affected the way I use my words.
[00:18:16] Still didn't get it right all the time.
[00:18:18] Still don't. But definitely impacted me and changed the way I viewed things and the way I spoke. And so one of the contributions the Rebbe had was he thought so much about the power of speech that he wouldn't let certain words come off his lips. And so here's an example in Hebrew. Does anybody know what the hospital is called In Hebrew?
[00:18:45] This is a little obscure. So it's called a beit cholim. Beit cholim. It means literally house of the sick.
[00:18:53] Okay. But he refused to call it that. He called it a beit rufua, house of healing.
[00:19:02] Which one would you rather go to if you had a choice? Here's a beit Cholim and a Beit rephua. A house of the sick and a house of healing. Which one are you going to go to?
[00:19:12] Right?
[00:19:13] I mean, nobody's going to willingly choose. House of the sick.
[00:19:20] House of healing.
[00:19:22] That gives me hope that something's going to change my life, that I'm going to get the help that I need, that I'm not just going to remain sick.
[00:19:31] This is important.
[00:19:33] He also refused to use the word deadline.
[00:19:38] Why?
[00:19:39] Yeah, because the negative connotation of death.
[00:19:43] Instead, he preferred to use the term due date. Like a mother who is expecting.
[00:19:49] Okay, big difference. Same principle involved. Okay, You've got a project due, and you can either say it's a deadline or we can say it's a due date. Yeah.
[00:20:01] And be enthused and excited about it.
[00:20:06] So as you can see, our speech creates invisible architecture around us.
[00:20:12] Complaints build a world of frustration. Gossip builds a world of suspicion.
[00:20:18] Encouragement builds a world of faith.
[00:20:21] And blessing builds a world of light.
[00:20:27] There's an illustration I love. And we. I think we do. We have Yedila's feather Pillow in our kids library. No, just home.
[00:20:35] So anyway, there's a story called Yedila's feather pillow. And you can find it in different traditions and it's told different ways about different, you know, people in the different situations. But the way we learned it is there's a lady, and she's the gossip of the town. Her name is Jedle.
[00:20:53] And so she just loves to talk. She loves to chatter. She loves to hear her voice. And she just talks, talks, talks, talks, talks. And then she talks, talks, talks, talks. And then she talks, talks, talks, talks. Okay, you get the idea.
[00:21:05] And one day she sees, let's just say Moshe. Okay? Moshe.
[00:21:11] From her window. She sees him go by or come out of the produce market and grab an apple and keep walking.
[00:21:21] Moshe just stole an apple.
[00:21:25] Okay? And so now there's a new rumor in town that she is got to spread that Moishe is a thief because he stole an apple. And I saw it with my very own eyes.
[00:21:40] And so gets all through the town, goes all through the town, comes back to Moishe, and he is furious. He comes knocking on our door, says, what do you mean saying that I'm a thief?
[00:21:56] And she says, I saw you. You stole that apple. He goes, are you talking about the other day when I took the apple from the produce guy? She says, yeah. He says, well, you didn't know the other half of the story. I delivered a chicken to him and he told me to take an apple as payment, okay? And so sometimes what we see isn't the full reality, but what we speak becomes the reality.
[00:22:22] And everybody in town now saw Mosheh as a thief and wouldn't do business with him.
[00:22:29] And so.
[00:22:31] But because of that, now she became blackballed. And no one wanted to talk to her, listen to her gossip and lies.
[00:22:41] And so she was feeling bad because nobody would listen. She would want to talk to somebody. Here's some good juicy information. She wanted to share it, but nobody wanted to listen anymore. So she wanted to go and talk to the rabbi. The rabbi always listens. And so she goes and walks across town to the rabbi's house, and she's about to talk to him, and he goes, wait. He goes, I can't listen to this.
[00:23:05] And she goes, what do you mean? She goes, well, we've got to deal with this and you got to make amends for what you did to Mosheh and other people.
[00:23:14] And she goes, well, what do I need to do, Rabbi? He goes, well, let's start off. He said, go back to your house, get your best feather pillow, big and fluffy, and then cut the top off of it and then bring it to me, okay? And so she's like, that's weird.
[00:23:30] He says, he trusts me, trust me, just do it. And this will take care of things. And so she goes, okay. So she went all across town, all the way back to her home, got the pillow, cut the top off of it, came out of her door first thing, a gust of wind, feathers everywhere for days, okay? She is looking and the feathers are going everywhere throughout the town.
[00:24:00] She's like, oh my goodness, what do I do? She's like, well, he didn't tell me to bring all the feathers, so I'm going to go back. So he goes to the rabbi. She goes to the rabbi and brings the pillow, and the pillow is pretty much empty by that point.
[00:24:14] And he says, yedla, what's going on? What's this with the pillow? The empty pillow? I told you to bring your best pillow. Is this the best that you have? She says, no, the wind caught it and the feathers are everywhere. He goes, well, you need to go back and get all those feathers or this is not going to pan out. Okay, go get all the feathers, put them back in the pillow and then come to me. She's like, oh, I've avoid. So she goes, and she goes all through the city, and by this time, feathers are everywhere, every crack and cranny, every house under, every foot stuck to people's feet, you know, Stuck to the cows and the chickens and the horses. And so she's trying to pick feathers out of every little thing.
[00:24:54] And she gets as much as she can. She's like, this is impossible. I'll do my best, but there's no way I can get all this. And she comes back to the rabbi, and she's a mess, and knocks on the rabbi's door. He opens the door and she says, rabbi, I'm so sorry.
[00:25:12] I tried and tried and tried, but I cannot pick up every single feather. There is no way. It is impossible.
[00:25:19] He says, and I think you have learned your lesson. Once those words release from your mouth, there is no way you can figure out where all it's gone and be able to retract it all and get it all back.
[00:25:34] And so she learned a very, very valuable, important lesson that day of the power of words.
[00:25:40] And she became a BAAL Teuva in a certain sense. She reformed and made an oath to speak properly and truthfully.
[00:25:55] And then her life changed.
[00:25:59] So that was Yeddela's feather pillow. It teaches us the power of words because words don't just float in the air.
[00:26:08] They're the spoken reality of something deeper through the voice of our soul.
[00:26:14] Because Yeshua says, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And for Yeddlehead, she assumed the worst in people.
[00:26:27] You guys have heard probably, maybe got a lot of visitors today of Lashon Hara or Lashon Hara, and Shmirat Halashon, or as Steve would say, Shmir as Halashan Smiras.
[00:26:44] So Lashon Hara is evil speech.
[00:26:48] Shmira Talashon is guarding the tongue. The Chovez Chaim. Anybody heard of the Chovez Chaim?
[00:26:55] Some of you guys? The Chovez Chaim really had a huge impact on my whole family, Sabrina and I, at least when we studied Kofzheim years ago. But he is the rabbi from Poland, turn of the 19th century or early 19th century somewhere, and actually probably mid 19th century that I'm trying to think dates maybe a little later. Anyway, he basically devoted his life to studying the power of speech and the effects that it can have, both positive and negative, mostly negative, how to avoid negative speech. That's why it's guarding the tongue. But his actual name is Rabbi Israel Mayor Kagan, and they call him the Chovez Chaim because this comes from Psalm 34 that says, who among you desires life and days of seeing good, guard your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking, you know, speaking deceit. Okay? And this Chovez Chaim is the Phrase, desires life. That's where this comes from. And he became. That's actually the name of his book that he published. And so that's the name that they began calling him.
[00:28:07] And so he taught that this speech, this evil speech, not only injures the person that you speak about, you think, you know, it may hurt them, of course, but it also creates a spiritual force that damages both the person speaking and the person listening as well. So in any time something negative is shared about anyone, then three people are damaged. The speaker, the listener, and the person being spoken of. And so if we think about it, this actually, this lashon harad, this is actually what kept the children of Israel from entering the promised land for 40 years. When they came back with their report, the 10 of the 12 spies, what did they say?
[00:28:51] They said, this land, ah, it's bad. It's not a good land. It's a land that devours its inhabitants. We can't do this. It's an evil land, basically. And that's what kept them out of land, because they slandered a land.
[00:29:07] Think how much more bad it is to slander people, humans. Okay, let's flip the coin. Go on the opposite side. The power of blessing. We had the power of blessing as well. Not just the power to do damage, but we have the power to bless and to do good and to change the reality of those that we bless. So think about Friday night at your Shabbat table.
[00:29:35] Who has kids in here still at home?
[00:29:41] Still at home, sorry.
[00:29:42] We have the opportunity to bless our kids every Friday night, if not more frequently, of course, but especially every Friday night. We do what we just did up here. We bring these kids up here, we give them a blessing. We have the power to bless them and change their trajectory by the way, we speak to them and bless them and speak into their lives.
[00:30:07] And, you know, this isn't just a spiritual theory, so to speak, but modern science affirms this about what the Torah teaches in regard to words, that words reshape our brain. They influence words are health and they form reality. Perception loops. Okay, so here's a study from Psych Central called do words have the power to change your brain? Let me just read a little snippet from it. Your brain responds to words in ways that affect your experience of the world. Taking care to use words that don't cause harm to others can help protect them from trauma.
[00:30:45] We've all heard the saying, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. But is that true?
[00:30:53] There's Been a lot of research into the power of words, and that answer is no.
[00:30:57] A person's choice of language can affect not only how another person feels, but how they perceive events around them.
[00:31:07] Word use may even influence the experience of physical pain.
[00:31:14] What people know about certain words, including when they're commonly used, or also changes how people think about other words.
[00:31:23] Positive verbal affirmations or good words can lift people up. Encouragement can improve physical performance.
[00:31:32] Words can also cause harm. Childhood bullying, verbal abuse in domestic relationships, and even word choice by medical professionals can lead to emotional challenges. This is all from this article.
[00:31:48] So words are huge. They affect us.
[00:31:52] And it referenced the sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
[00:31:59] People must have created that to deflect harmful words because they don't know the reality of what that says. I tell people all the time, sticks and stones may break my bones, but your words will slice me in little pieces.
[00:32:13] Words are powerful.
[00:32:15] God created the world with words around us. Excuse me. And our words have the power to build or destroy the worlds around us. This is especially true of those of us who have significant influence over others, such as parents or teachers. So if you are a parent, if you are a teacher, I would encourage you to re examine your words at every opportunity that you can. I know growing as my kids were growing up, I used my words incorrectly. I used them in a bad way to damage their little psyches.
[00:32:49] I had to relearn how to be affirming rather than criticizing. I had to relearn how to speak life into them, that I see the potential in them, even though I may not be experiencing the behavior right now, speak that potential into them and, and it changes how, what trajectory that they're on. We can all do that.
[00:33:11] And I'm a living experiment. Ask my kids when things change. We haven't got everything right, haven't got everything perfect. But you can definitely tell a shift in when we started changing the way we spoke to our children.
[00:33:27] So I just want to say a word of parents, just because your child isn't living up to your expectations, don't reinforce that world through negative speech.
[00:33:40] Don't reinforce that world through negative speech.
[00:33:46] Nechovitz Chaim talks about, you know, speaking evil, speechless. Shahra One of the things he talks about is that these principles even apply to ourselves.
[00:34:00] And I'm going to have to wrap it up. But quick story about how the Chovez Chaim learned this the hard way. He was on a train traveling to speak somewhere.
[00:34:12] And this is back before, you know, media was Popular. They didn't have instant communication. They didn't have news channels and TVs and all that kind of stuff.
[00:34:23] So a lot of times you hear about these famous people, but you didn't know what they looked like. You really didn't know what they look like unless you got a book and it had their picture, the drawing in it or whatever. And so he was on this train and going to speak somewhere, and he was sitting with the guy, and he asked the guy what he was, where he was headed and what he's going to do. And he said, man, I'm traveling, you know, travel a long way. I'm headed to so and so place to hear the Chofetz Chaim. He's such a tzadik.
[00:34:52] He's such a righteous person.
[00:34:54] And the chovish Chaim says, he's not such a tzadik, okay? And the guy slapped him, slapped Nechovitz Chaim.
[00:35:03] And he's like, now I know you must not even speak badly of oneself because of the way it can cause other people to react.
[00:35:15] And so we had the power to do good, we had the power to do bad through our speech.
[00:35:23] You know, encouragement, encouragement, encouragement. There's nothing wrong with speaking encouragement.
[00:35:30] So let's go back to the genesis pattern.
[00:35:33] When God created the universe, darkness existed before the light. Have you ever thought about that? Darkness existed before the light. Hashem had to specifically say, let there be light.
[00:35:45] Our lives will inevitably be.
[00:35:49] In our lives, there will inevitably be moments of darkness. That's just a fact.
[00:35:56] But we have the power to speak light into our situation.
[00:36:01] And every time we speak, hope into despair, truth into confusion, forgiveness into conflict, we echo that first moment of creation.
[00:36:15] We break through that darkness.
[00:36:19] When we speak especially about a person or situation, we are bringing potential into reality.
[00:36:25] If there's a potential for failure, broken trust, etc. We can either speak that into existence or we can speak the opposite into existence.
[00:36:36] Whatever we speak about, we are breathing life into it.
[00:36:42] It's your own personal Golem, or Frankenstein if you want. Well, that way you have breathed life into something that could have died out on its own.
[00:36:53] And this is why we pray out loud. This is why we read the Torah out loud. Because the Torah, beautiful Torah, but they're just letters on a page until we breathe life in them through speaking it aloud, reading it aloud, we breathe it into life.
[00:37:18] Does that mean if there's a Torah written in a forest and nobody reads it, does it. Nevermind. Okay, okay, so here's your challenge. Replace complaint with Gratitude. Replace gossip with prayer. Replace despair with positive confession.
[00:37:35] Try calling people up rather than calling people out.
[00:37:40] Speak potential into them in order to put them on a better trajectory.
[00:37:52] So you may be thinking, seriously, Darren, you're just teaching that name it, claim it, blabbit, grab it stuff that you mentioned earlier.
[00:38:00] It's just words. They aren't magical. And it doesn't matter how many times I say I have a million dollars in my account. The fact of the matter won't change. And you're right.
[00:38:09] But you're also wrong.
[00:38:11] You can't just claim something and force reality to bend to your will. Your speech is a beginning of a shifting reality. And the very first part of that reality needs to change between your ears and down in your heart.
[00:38:27] We have to believe that our words are powerful and we have the ability to shape not only our reality, but the reality of those we speak them over.
[00:38:39] And we should take this responsibility seriously.
[00:38:42] Last illustration.
[00:38:46] If a teacher speaks has two students with the same aptitude.
[00:38:51] And to one student that they're always saying to this person, oh man, you're great. You're brilliant. You're growing. You have potential. You can do this.
[00:39:00] But to the other person, they're saying, man, you really need to reconsider this. I really don't think you can do it. Matter of fact, I think you probably need to just take a withdrawal from this class and just move on.
[00:39:13] Maybe choose a subject that isn't so deep next time. Which one do you think is more apt to strive in that environment?
[00:39:20] Both students live in the world that was created for them by someone else's words.
[00:39:31] Words create worlds.
[00:39:35] What type of world are you creating?
[00:39:39] You don't have to endure in a world that you despise. You can create the world that you want to live in, and that reality can begin changing today. By speaking life light into darkness, that light will eventually appear.
[00:39:52] Maybe not as quickly as you'd like, but it will appear nonetheless. Because words have the power to create worlds. And you have the words within you that are waiting to come forth and create the world of your choosing. Shabbat Shalom. I'm Darren with Shalom Macon. If you enjoyed this teaching, I want to ask you to take the next step. Start by making sure you subscribe to our channel. And next, make sure you hit the like button on this video so that others know it's worth their time to watch.
[00:40:22] Last, head over to our website to learn more about Shalom Macon, 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.
[00:40:41] Sam.
