Lean not on your own Understanding

Try not to lean on your own understanding when it comes to your perceived self image. Consider what Shlomo (Solomon) said in Proverbs 3:5 Trust in Yahweh with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.

So what does it mean to lean on our own understanding? I believe that the proverb is referring to how we perceive ourselves based on how we were spoken to as we grew from childhood to an adult state. So let’s say that we were constantly told negative and hurtful words. It would stand to reason that your own understanding would be a direct response to those negative thoughts and feelings. Therefore the Proverb is encouraging us to trust in Yahweh and to change our understanding to reflect how Yahweh perceives us.

Remember Yahweh considers His people to be a “special treasure” so if you consider yourself to be among Yahweh’s chosen people you need to change your negative understanding of yourself. As I’ve gone through my life journey I have come to realize that I must strengthen my resolve that as I have “special treasure” status I need to stop looking at my present situation to shape my view of myself and focus on the place that Yahweh has put me in. This place is a secure and peaceful one where I can enjoy the support of Yahweh’s grace and mercy. 

So as I go out into the world I need to hold fast to the words that Yahweh has spoken of me. This is to give me confidence that I can stand up to the doubt vendors that try to sell me on the idea that I’m less then what Yahweh has spoken of me.       

Words we say to others

Words that we say about others are just as important as the words we say to ourselves. I discovered a long while ago that the way I viewed others was a reflection of how I felt about myself. For example; if I thought someone was speaking a negative word about themselves I found myself getting upset with that person. I came to understand that I have had a tendency to speak negatively about myself which I then got upset with myself about. Therefore what I was upset about within me became a sticking point for me with others. So it would make sense that the less negative I spoke about myself the less I will be affected by the way others talk about themselves.

So now with all of that wisdom flowing within me, if I hear someone talking negative about themselves, instead of getting upset with them I can offer them a word of encouragement.

If I hadn’t dealt with my own internal situation it would be difficult for me to be in the place were I can offer words of light and truth to others. So I would like to offer these words of encouragement to you. You do have a choice as to the way you speak to those around you. You can offer up words that will bring a person to the heights of confidence or cast them down upon the jagged rocks of despair. This may sound contradictory to the true statement “we can’t change anyone else, we can only change ourselves” but lets look at it in this light; we can, with our words have slight influences on the people we come in contact with. It is not that we are trying to change others rather we are trying to change the way we ourselves interact with others. This brings to mind Proverbs 25:11 A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver. The word fitly in this reference means in a timely manner or at the appropriate time. We can see that if we use a positive word at the appropriate time that the word is as precious as silver and gold.

With that in mind when we interact with others let’s try to lead with a positive uplifting word and remember that like us others need encouragement as well.         

Who Do You Believe You Are?

I have found that it has been very helpful for me to focus my thoughts on Elohim. When I focus on The King of the Universe I get a deeper understanding of positive self talk. How do I do that you might ask? Great question!! First you must accept the word that Yahweh Elohim has spoken about his chosen people. Look at Devarim (Deuteronomy) 7:6 “For you are a holy people to Yahweh your Elohim; Yahweh your Elohim has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth.” This is what Yahweh spoke to Moshe, to in turn speak to the people of Yisrael. If you count yourself as a part of Yisrael then these words were spoken to you.

We need to not only hear these words but also act upon them. We need to say them out loud to ourselves so that our Nefesh (Soul) begins to accept them and believe them.

In this verse we see that Yahweh has said we are a “holy people”. The word holy means set apart. The reason that it is important to know that meaning is to show us how special we are. We are set apart from all other people meaning that we are unique. These words were not meant to vainly puff us up but rather to reassure and lift us up. This verse should excite us and bring great joy into or innermost parts.

Think about the part that states that “Yahweh our Elohim has chosen us to be a people for Himself”. We need to internalize this so that when any of the negative thought merchants try to push a thought of doubt or discouragement upon us we will know deep within us that we are the chosen of Yahweh!

We need to hold fast to the section that calls us “a special treasure”. Shout aloud to yourself that I’m Yahweh’s special treasure!!!! You can have complete confidence that this is a righteous and truthful statement.

The more you say the words of this verse out loud to yourself and internalize these words, you will begin to see positive changes in the way you perceive yourself.         

Truth and Light

Words can bring strength and gladness or fear and dread. We need to be mindful of the words that come into our Nefesh (Soul). We need to examine them to see if they are true about us or not. Do the words that are said by others have the sound of truth and bring us to a place of encouragement or do their words have the feeling of dread and darkness? Do the words we say about ourselves bring us closer to the light of truth, or do they drag us down into the darkness of despair?

Try to remember a time in your life when someone said something positive about you and how great you felt. Did the time and place immediately jump to the front of your mind? Did you suddenly feel the rush of exhilaration at the memory? If so, congratulations you are doing quite well and need to keep in touch with those positive uplifting people, but if you are having trouble remembering a time in your life when someone really encouraged you, be at peace and know that there are a lot of us in that situation. So what can we say about this dilemma? We can say I will be the one to give myself the positive affirmation I want to hear. What? That sounds awfully self-centered doesn’t it? In the extreme, any self talk can become a source for self centered thoughts, but if we are careful and keep in mind that we can only change ourselves and not others we can begin to shape our thoughts into a positive stream of great mental behavior.

What I found myself doing was trying to figure out what I wanted to hear and then how I wanted to feel. The first thing I wanted to hear was that I’m a great artist, so I began to say out loud, “I’m a great artist”. Now with that kind of statement I wanted to make sure that I at least had some talent or ability so I decided to show my work to a few people I could trust to be honest about my work. They all agreed that I was a good artist and one of them even said my art was great! Right then I realized that the positive self talk combined with the decision to timidly reach out and show my art to some one resulted in gaining the words I wanted to hear. I was able to shine the light of truth into my Nefesh.

Now that experience was wonderful but I also realized that I still had to work on my belief system and learn how to mentally defend myself against the doubters and the dream stealers. How tragic it is that there will always be negative and abusive people in the world. So we need to always be building our positive internal word arsenal so that when the deceit peddlers come against us we are ready to say no to their bill of lies.

Sticks and Stones

You are most likely familiar with the statement “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me”, this statement may seem helpful on the surface but there are some misleading concepts involved here. Let’s look closely at this statement to see if it is truly accurate or helpful. The first part claims that “sticks and stones may break my bones”; let’s think on that for just a moment, better yet you can prove this statement out for yourself. Go outside and walk by some sticks and without touching them see if any of them can actually break your bones. Pick one up and see if just holding it in your hand will accomplish the actual breaking of your bones. Strange isn’t it that the stick has no power of itself to fulfill the bone breaking statement. Now try it with some stones. Find a place were the stones are gathered together closely in one place and walk slowly by them. Do you feel any bones begin to break within you? No? How strange. Try picking one up and hold it in your hand. Is the result the same as the stick? Yes, of course it is. You have now proven that sticks and stones left on there own cannot break your bones.

Now let’s examine the latter part of the statement “words will never hurt me”. This part is a little harder to prove out because it involves being honest about how we feel when words are used for or against us. There is a Proverb that I like to quote when dealing with words, it is Proverbs 18:21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit. This is very powerful when you understand that the words that are spoken and heard stay within us forever. So if someone speaks negative words to you, you will begin to think negative thoughts and those negative thoughts will begin to form negative behavior. If you are honest with yourself you know when an insult hurts you and how it makes you feel. You know that it stays in your mind for quite along while. You know that if you dwell on the insult long enough that it can actually change the way you think of yourself. With that said, we now can see the words can and do hurt us.

We all would like people to say good and righteous things about us, so how do we get them to do that? Keep in mind we cannot change others we can only change ourselves. So we need to begin to speak positive words about ourselves. What? Did I just say that we need to say positive words to ourselves? Yes indeed we do, because as I stated earlier we cannot change anyone else we can only change ourselves. So to clarify that statement we cannot make someone say nice things about us so we need to say nice things about ourselves and maybe, just maybe, as we begin to say good and righteous things about ourselves others may pick up on it.

Ultimately we need to be speaking life giving words to ourselves and then speak those same life giving words to others.

There is a simple phrase that you can start with. I would suggest that you do this in the privacy of your own space. Yes you need to say this out loud. The phrase is: I’m a winner. This is not, I repeat, not designed to make you feel superior to anyone else or to vainly puff you up. It is designed to give you a feeling of confidence and a sense of accomplishment. Now to back up your new found feeling you need to go out and win. One way you can do this is to say to yourself, today I’m going to say hello to one person that I don’t already know. A safe place to do this is in a neighborhood grocery store or a one stop shopping center. Remember all you are doing is saying hello. Once you have said hello to one person congratulations, you are a winner!

There is one more statement that you can make that will help keep you motivated. It is: I feel good, I feel great! The good part of the statement is fairly easy to achieve but the great statement is what you are ultimately striving for.

You must own each of these statements. That is to say that you must accept and believe you are a winner and that you do feel good and that you do feel great. I would suggest that you say these statements out loud to yourself a few times in a row each morning. I’m not suggesting that you chant them or use them in some bizarre ritual. Simply say them out loud, accept them as true statements about yourself, and then go about your day and see what happens.

This is the beginning of your journey into self motivation and happiness. Remember, you are also trying to speak life into others as well.         

Hello and Shalom,

I thought I would start this blog with a statement about light! Light is a fascinating thing. It is what allows your eyes to perceive colors, see near and far, and experience all the visual nuances of the world around you. Without light we would not know darkness. With that said lets look at the Creator of light. Bresheet (Genesis) 1:1-5
1 In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of Elohim was hovering over the face of the waters.
3 Then Elohim said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And Elohim saw the light, good; and Elohim divided the light from the darkness. 5 Elohim called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.
In this passage we see that it is Elohim that created the heavens and the earth. (Before I go further I would like to mention that a person could spend a considerable amount of time studying the first verse. I would recommend to everyone that they do study each verse very carefully. For this entry however, I wanted to focus on the light portion of this section.) Before we look at light let’s look at lights counterpart darkness. Darkness in verse 2 is choshek (transliterated word) חֹשֶׁךְ (Hebrew text) it is a masculine noun. The important thing to note is that darkness is being referred to as a thing. So from this we can see that darkness was created first before light.
Now let’s look at how Elohim created light. Verse 3 tells us that Elohim said, “Let there be light”. The word for said is amar אָמַר literally meaning to speak showing us that light was created by the spoken word of Elohim. I find it fascinating that what we see was spoken into existence.
We now know who created light and how light was created. Now we can look at what light is. The word for light is owr אוֹר it is used to describe the light of day, the light of a lamp, the light of life, the light of instruction and the light that is Yahweh! There are other examples as well if you get out your concordance you will find the full list.
I have taken the time here to briefly explain light so that when we see a reference to light you will have an understanding of were I’m coming from.
As I have stated a person could spend an enormous amount of time studying Bresheet 1:1-5. I will come back to this in the future but for now I would like to jump ahead to
Bimidbar (Numbers) 8:1-5
1 And Yahweh spoke to Moshe, saying: 2 “Speak to Aharon, and say to him, ‘When you arrange the lamps, the seven lamps shall give light in front of the menorah.’” 3 And Aharon did so; he arranged the lamps to face toward the front of the menorah, as Yahweh commanded Moshe. 4 Now this workmanship of the menorah was hammered gold; from its shaft to its flowers it was hammered work. According to the pattern which Yahweh had shown Moshe, so he made the menorah.
In this passage we see that the menorah had seven lamps and these lamps were to face forward so that the light would be in front of the Menorah verse 2. This phrase in verse 2 shows that it was Aharon the High Priest who was responsible to make sure the light would shine forward. Also in Vayikra (Leviticus) 24:2 we see that the Menorah was to be continually lit. The Menorah would always be giving light to guide the way through the Mishkan (Tent of Meeting). Directly across from the Menorah was the table of showbread. On this table was placed 12 loaves of bread Vayikra (Leviticus) 24:5-9. I believe that these 12 loaves represented the twelve tribes of Israel so symbolically the Menorah was always giving light to the entire nation of Israel. The people of Israel always had the light of Yahweh shining on them as long as the kept His mitzvot (commandments). We read in Yeshayahu (Isaiah) 2:5 House of Yaakov, come, and let us walk in the light of Yahweh. The light here is most likely referring to the word of Yahweh which is his written Torah. Taking the word of Tehillim (Psalm) 119:105 Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light for my path. I also see a direct correlation to Yeshua. Yochanan (John) 8:12 tells us that Yeshua said “I am the light of the world.” So like the Menorah Yeshua shines on us continually if we follow Him. To follow Yeshua is to have “the light of life” as well, which I believe is the written Torah. The written Torah is the light that teaches us how to live.
So to conclude this first blog entry I would like to say that I believe that a person must “walk in the light of Yahweh” and the only way to do that is to accept Yeshua as their redeemer so that you can begin to follow the written Torah.

Hello and Shalom

In this blog I will be sharing some of the material from the classes I have taught over the past 7 years. The classes have been on a wide variety of topics from the written Torah all the way through to the apostolic writings. I will be posting my first lesson soon.