A 5 Step Plan to Strengthen Your Faith
We believe that ultimately, everything comes from God for our highest good. If you are currently experiencing a difficulty, even though you have made reasonable efforts to resolve it, then at least in this moment, having this challenge is for your highest good.
We often don’t understand the benefits of our challenges, but they are there nonetheless. Many people went through difficulties, and in hindsight, they realized how they benefited. Some of the ways people have benefited from their challenges: It brought out their true capabilities and hidden potential, it led to financial opportunities, it led to new relationships or deepening current ones, it helped them become more connected to Judaism and establish a personal relationship with God, it helped them realign their priorities and spend more time on meaningful activities, it helped strengthen their faith, it helped them become more compassionate and spiritual, and less self-centered and materialistic.
There are times though, when even hindsight does not help us understand a difficulty we went through. Some forms of suffering are so intense that they are beyond human comprehension. In Heaven though, we will understand. In the meantime, don’t put your life on hold. With the tools you currently have, live your best life now. Use challenges to grow personally and spiritually, and look for ways to help others.
A person can do everything right and still experience difficulties that are not easy to resolve. It’s humbling. The ego is deflated and we realize how powerless and helpless we are without God. We can say to Him, “God, I don’t know why You want me to have this challenge right now, but since this is currently Your will, I accept it and I will try to make the most of it. I don’t need anything to change to live a meaningful life. Right now, by doing Your will, I can live a fulfilling life. I trust You to know what is best for me and I surrender to You.”
When you accept the life God gives you, even if it’s not the life you expected, you can find peace, meaning, fulfillment, and even joy within your present situation. Surrendering to God does not mean giving up. He still wants to hear your prayers and for you to make reasonable efforts to improve your situation. Surrendering to God means letting go: Letting go of your ego and the life it wants, letting go of resisting challenges and instead embracing the life God gives you. You do your part to address your difficulties, but you leave the outcome up to God and trust that whatever He does will be for your highest good.
Often, when people experience pain (emotional, physical, or financial), they ask God, “Why?!” This is a natural reaction, but even if there were an answer that would satisfy you, your faith would now be limited by that answer. Your trust in God would be limited to only when that answer applies. For example, if you can see a benefit from a challenge, your faith is now limited to only situations where you see a possible benefit. Deep faith in God and surrender to Him is when you reach a place where you don’t need to know why. You trust that God knows why and that’s enough. You let go of what is beyond your ability (understanding God’s ways) and you embrace what is within your control (growing from a challenge and living a meaningful life).
To enhance your faith, try the following: Tune into God’s presence, which surrounds you always. Then think about a difficulty and speak to God from your heart, asking for His help, preferably out loud. Here’s one possibility: “God, I know You are here, listening to me right now. I know that everything in my life comes from You for my highest good and out of Your love for me. Even though I believe that, I’m having trouble seeing the good in my challenges. I’m in a lot of pain. Without You, I am helpless and powerless. But with Your help, anything is possible. You can instantly solve my problems. I need Your help! Please help me with this challenge! Please help me feel Your guidance, strength and love. Help me trust in You and accept Your will. I surrender to You.”
A shorter version: “God, I know that this challenge is from You for my ultimate benefit and out of Your love for me. Please guide me to do my part to overcome this challenge and to make the most of my life right now. I trust You. I accept Your will. I thank You for all the hidden and revealed ways You are helping me. I love You and I surrender to You.”
When speaking to God, it’s important to first thank Him for His blessings and to try to feel gratitude and love for Him. No matter how difficult your life is right now, you have a choice of either only focusing on your difficulties, or also appreciating your blessings.
Dating coach Jackie Glaser, jackieglaser.com, who emphasizes the importance of surrendering to God, shared the following words of inspiration during an interview with her husband Aharon for the podcast (meaningfulminute.org), Stories of Hope with Tzipora Grodko, “Married at 44, Baby at 50: A Story of Faith & Resilience.” She compared waiting for God to help us with a challenge to a baby waiting for their mother to warm up the milk. The baby is crying, wondering where the milk is, but the mother knows that she's warming up the milk and that the baby will soon get fed. Even while you cry out in pain to God, know that He's warming up the milk for you! He’s preparing your personal salvation.
Talking specifically about the "milk" of waiting to find one’s spouse, Jackie said, "And for some people, that milk will come in different forms, in different times, in different ways, in different packages and sometimes even in a different lifetime, for some people. But you just have to know that it's coming from love and it's for your good and we're going to thank God for that. It's so hard to say in the middle of the pain. If someone's in pain I wouldn't say that, I would give them a hug, but that's the truth..."
A 5 step plan to strengthen your trust in God:
1. Talk to yourself words of faith. The next time you think about a challenge, and you hear the voice in your head saying, “No! This is bad!” Calmly and compassionately remind yourself that everything that happens to you comes from God for your highest good and that this too is for your ultimate benefit. See if instead of resisting the challenge, you can be more accepting of it and say to yourself, “Ok. I will grow from this,” or perhaps, “Yes, this will work out,” or even, “Thank you God! I will benefit from this.” In addition, preferably daily, read spiritual works or listen to classes on faith.
2. Pray. Talk out loud to God in your native language, thanking Him for His blessings and asking for His help. Don’t pray for a very specific outcome, as only God knows what’s best for us. Pray for help with the issue in general and pray for other people who are also struggling. As challenges come up during the day, turn to God for help with them. In a moment of peak stress, when you're not sure if things will work out or even in a moment of pain, after you experience a setback, rejection, failure, or loss, remind yourself that God is in total control and is guiding your life for your ultimate good.
3. Make reasonable efforts. God does not need your efforts to help you. But He still wants you to do your part. Put in reasonable but not excessive efforts (when unsure how to address the issue or what is reasonable efforts, ask your mentor). As you calmly put in reasonable efforts, remind yourself that God is in charge and that His help may come in unexpected ways.
4. Expect God’s help. Open your vessel wide to receive God’s blessing by believing and expecting that He will send you blessing (if you do your part). God has given you everything you have in life. He is limitless and wants to shower you with blessing. Be open to receiving them and don’t place unrealistic demands or conditions on the type of blessing you are willing to receive. Only our Creator knows what will truly be beneficial to us.
5. Rely on God. Cultivate that calm, peaceful feeling that comes with knowing that God has your back and that you can relax into His support. Ask yourself, “If I fully believed that God was overseeing every aspect of my life and that He will resolve this challenge at the right time, how would I feel right now?” Relax into that feeling of being loved and supported. Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik wrote (Essay on Bitachon: 32), “The main point of trust (in God) is quieting your spirit and heart and casting upon God your burden.” Every day, as best you can, tap into that feeling of peace, acceptance and letting go that comes with relying on God.
The journey of strengthening one's faith often progresses along three phases. The first phase is where you talk to yourself and to God words of faith, even though they may not fully resonate with you. During this phase, you may experience the first four stages of grief as outlined by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross which are denial, anger, bargaining and depression (or sadness). Then comes the second phase of faith which is characterized by acceptance (Elisabeth's 5th and final stage of grieving), where your resistance to your challenges lessens, but you're still not feeling that release of “letting go and letting God.” Then comes the third phase of faith, this is where you surrender to God and trust Him to lead you where you need to go. Even after you reach the third phase, you may get triggered by something and find yourself back at the first phase feeling denial, anger, bargaining or sadness. That's normal. You start again to move to the second phase, of acceptance, and then to the third phase of surrender. You may notice that this time around the surrender feels even deeper than before.
3 mindsets to have when dealing with a challenge:
1. Realize that you’re not alone. God has your back. He is with you, giving you the strength you need to persevere. (Speak to God, thank Him for the blessings in your life and if you can, even for this difficulty which is for your highest good. After you’ve thanked Him, ask for His help.)
2. Embrace or at least accept the challenge. As best you can, surrender to God’s will. Acknowledge that God’s ways are beyond you and trust that somehow this challenge is for your ultimate good. Look for ways to grow from the challenge.
3. Make reasonable efforts to address the difficulty (which often includes asking others for help or advice).
Bring to mind a challenge, and think about which of these 3 mindsets you need to strengthen?
Focus on the first mindset if you feel alone and weighed down by your difficulties. You may find reciting Psalms and talking to God helpful. In addition to asking for His help, thank Him and feel gratitude for what is going right in your life. Combining strengthening your faith with talking to God during the day and feeling His presence with you is a powerful combination.
Focus on the second mindset if you resist your challenges and tense up just thinking about them. Listening to classes and reading works on faith may help you become more accepting. Pick one thing you will do to grow from the challenge. Maybe it is reciting Psalms, studying Torah, doing acts of kindness (and even just being more encouraging and complimentary to others), being charitable, strengthening your faith, being less petty and more forgiving, being more spiritual and less materialistic. Bottom line: Look for ways to add more meaning and fulfillment to your life. Difficulties can take us away from living our lives on autopilot to really think about, “What do I want my life to be about?”
Focus on the third mindset if you are spending too much time and energy frantically searching for solutions, or you have given up hope and have stopped trying, or you mistakenly think that if you trust in God you don’t have to make any efforts. Speak to your spiritual mentor for advice on the proper amount of effort in your situation.
It is challenging dealing with a challenge. But since God gave it to you, that means He knows you can handle it and that you will become stronger because of it.
Suffering is a powerful force. It can bring up anger and bitterness, or it can elevate and purify you. It can propel you away from God or into His embrace. We do not choose our difficulties, but we do choose our response to them. When we experience hardship, there may be a part of ourselves that wants to pull away from God. But there is always a part of ourselves that longs for His embrace. It is similar to when a parent comes home after being away for a while, sees their child, and extends both hands in anticipation of a hug. The child looks at the parent and is conflicted. On one hand, the child is upset that the parent “abandoned” them and was away for so long, but on the other hand, the child loves their parent and wants more than anything to hug them. You are that child, and God is your Father in Heaven. Even though it may feel like He abandoned you, in reality, He never did and He never will. It is just that we don’t understand His ways. God loves you and wants a closer relationship with you. His arms are outstretched, waiting for you. Go in for the hug.
Postscript
One way of strengthening our faith is by hearing how people with strong faith deal with significant life challenges. Two examples of this, involving different types of challenges, are from the podcast, Stories of Hope with Tzipora Grodko (meaningfulminute.org). One is an interview with Rabbi Ephraim Rimel, “‘One Car Crash Changed My Life Forever…’” That interview was a source of inspiration for the section in this chapter about not understanding God’s ways. And the other is with Tzirel Liba Greenberg and her husband Yankel, “It’s Never Too Late To Find Your True Soulmate,” which was a source of inspiration for the section about the three phases of strengthening one’s faith. See meaningfulminute.org, and https://www.livinglchaim.com/, for other inspirational interviews. There are also articles and books with inspirational stories. An inspiring book that details the raw struggle people can have with their faith when faced with significant difficulties and how she dealt with it is Stop Hurting, Start Healing by Raquel Kirszenbaum.
To be notified of new articles or book releases, you can subscribe at https://jacobweiland.substack.com.
This chapter was taken from my new book, available on Amazon, Make It Personal.
We often don’t understand the benefits of our challenges, but they are there nonetheless. Many people went through difficulties, and in hindsight, they realized how they benefited. Some of the ways people have benefited from their challenges: It brought out their true capabilities and hidden potential, it led to financial opportunities, it led to new relationships or deepening current ones, it helped them become more connected to Judaism and establish a personal relationship with God, it helped them realign their priorities and spend more time on meaningful activities, it helped strengthen their faith, it helped them become more compassionate and spiritual, and less self-centered and materialistic.
There are times though, when even hindsight does not help us understand a difficulty we went through. Some forms of suffering are so intense that they are beyond human comprehension. In Heaven though, we will understand. In the meantime, don’t put your life on hold. With the tools you currently have, live your best life now. Use challenges to grow personally and spiritually, and look for ways to help others.
A person can do everything right and still experience difficulties that are not easy to resolve. It’s humbling. The ego is deflated and we realize how powerless and helpless we are without God. We can say to Him, “God, I don’t know why You want me to have this challenge right now, but since this is currently Your will, I accept it and I will try to make the most of it. I don’t need anything to change to live a meaningful life. Right now, by doing Your will, I can live a fulfilling life. I trust You to know what is best for me and I surrender to You.”
When you accept the life God gives you, even if it’s not the life you expected, you can find peace, meaning, fulfillment, and even joy within your present situation. Surrendering to God does not mean giving up. He still wants to hear your prayers and for you to make reasonable efforts to improve your situation. Surrendering to God means letting go: Letting go of your ego and the life it wants, letting go of resisting challenges and instead embracing the life God gives you. You do your part to address your difficulties, but you leave the outcome up to God and trust that whatever He does will be for your highest good.
Often, when people experience pain (emotional, physical, or financial), they ask God, “Why?!” This is a natural reaction, but even if there were an answer that would satisfy you, your faith would now be limited by that answer. Your trust in God would be limited to only when that answer applies. For example, if you can see a benefit from a challenge, your faith is now limited to only situations where you see a possible benefit. Deep faith in God and surrender to Him is when you reach a place where you don’t need to know why. You trust that God knows why and that’s enough. You let go of what is beyond your ability (understanding God’s ways) and you embrace what is within your control (growing from a challenge and living a meaningful life).
To enhance your faith, try the following: Tune into God’s presence, which surrounds you always. Then think about a difficulty and speak to God from your heart, asking for His help, preferably out loud. Here’s one possibility: “God, I know You are here, listening to me right now. I know that everything in my life comes from You for my highest good and out of Your love for me. Even though I believe that, I’m having trouble seeing the good in my challenges. I’m in a lot of pain. Without You, I am helpless and powerless. But with Your help, anything is possible. You can instantly solve my problems. I need Your help! Please help me with this challenge! Please help me feel Your guidance, strength and love. Help me trust in You and accept Your will. I surrender to You.”
A shorter version: “God, I know that this challenge is from You for my ultimate benefit and out of Your love for me. Please guide me to do my part to overcome this challenge and to make the most of my life right now. I trust You. I accept Your will. I thank You for all the hidden and revealed ways You are helping me. I love You and I surrender to You.”
When speaking to God, it’s important to first thank Him for His blessings and to try to feel gratitude and love for Him. No matter how difficult your life is right now, you have a choice of either only focusing on your difficulties, or also appreciating your blessings.
Dating coach Jackie Glaser, jackieglaser.com, who emphasizes the importance of surrendering to God, shared the following words of inspiration during an interview with her husband Aharon for the podcast (meaningfulminute.org), Stories of Hope with Tzipora Grodko, “Married at 44, Baby at 50: A Story of Faith & Resilience.” She compared waiting for God to help us with a challenge to a baby waiting for their mother to warm up the milk. The baby is crying, wondering where the milk is, but the mother knows that she's warming up the milk and that the baby will soon get fed. Even while you cry out in pain to God, know that He's warming up the milk for you! He’s preparing your personal salvation.
Talking specifically about the "milk" of waiting to find one’s spouse, Jackie said, "And for some people, that milk will come in different forms, in different times, in different ways, in different packages and sometimes even in a different lifetime, for some people. But you just have to know that it's coming from love and it's for your good and we're going to thank God for that. It's so hard to say in the middle of the pain. If someone's in pain I wouldn't say that, I would give them a hug, but that's the truth..."
A 5 step plan to strengthen your trust in God:
1. Talk to yourself words of faith. The next time you think about a challenge, and you hear the voice in your head saying, “No! This is bad!” Calmly and compassionately remind yourself that everything that happens to you comes from God for your highest good and that this too is for your ultimate benefit. See if instead of resisting the challenge, you can be more accepting of it and say to yourself, “Ok. I will grow from this,” or perhaps, “Yes, this will work out,” or even, “Thank you God! I will benefit from this.” In addition, preferably daily, read spiritual works or listen to classes on faith.
2. Pray. Talk out loud to God in your native language, thanking Him for His blessings and asking for His help. Don’t pray for a very specific outcome, as only God knows what’s best for us. Pray for help with the issue in general and pray for other people who are also struggling. As challenges come up during the day, turn to God for help with them. In a moment of peak stress, when you're not sure if things will work out or even in a moment of pain, after you experience a setback, rejection, failure, or loss, remind yourself that God is in total control and is guiding your life for your ultimate good.
3. Make reasonable efforts. God does not need your efforts to help you. But He still wants you to do your part. Put in reasonable but not excessive efforts (when unsure how to address the issue or what is reasonable efforts, ask your mentor). As you calmly put in reasonable efforts, remind yourself that God is in charge and that His help may come in unexpected ways.
4. Expect God’s help. Open your vessel wide to receive God’s blessing by believing and expecting that He will send you blessing (if you do your part). God has given you everything you have in life. He is limitless and wants to shower you with blessing. Be open to receiving them and don’t place unrealistic demands or conditions on the type of blessing you are willing to receive. Only our Creator knows what will truly be beneficial to us.
5. Rely on God. Cultivate that calm, peaceful feeling that comes with knowing that God has your back and that you can relax into His support. Ask yourself, “If I fully believed that God was overseeing every aspect of my life and that He will resolve this challenge at the right time, how would I feel right now?” Relax into that feeling of being loved and supported. Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik wrote (Essay on Bitachon: 32), “The main point of trust (in God) is quieting your spirit and heart and casting upon God your burden.” Every day, as best you can, tap into that feeling of peace, acceptance and letting go that comes with relying on God.
The journey of strengthening one's faith often progresses along three phases. The first phase is where you talk to yourself and to God words of faith, even though they may not fully resonate with you. During this phase, you may experience the first four stages of grief as outlined by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross which are denial, anger, bargaining and depression (or sadness). Then comes the second phase of faith which is characterized by acceptance (Elisabeth's 5th and final stage of grieving), where your resistance to your challenges lessens, but you're still not feeling that release of “letting go and letting God.” Then comes the third phase of faith, this is where you surrender to God and trust Him to lead you where you need to go. Even after you reach the third phase, you may get triggered by something and find yourself back at the first phase feeling denial, anger, bargaining or sadness. That's normal. You start again to move to the second phase, of acceptance, and then to the third phase of surrender. You may notice that this time around the surrender feels even deeper than before.
3 mindsets to have when dealing with a challenge:
1. Realize that you’re not alone. God has your back. He is with you, giving you the strength you need to persevere. (Speak to God, thank Him for the blessings in your life and if you can, even for this difficulty which is for your highest good. After you’ve thanked Him, ask for His help.)
2. Embrace or at least accept the challenge. As best you can, surrender to God’s will. Acknowledge that God’s ways are beyond you and trust that somehow this challenge is for your ultimate good. Look for ways to grow from the challenge.
3. Make reasonable efforts to address the difficulty (which often includes asking others for help or advice).
Bring to mind a challenge, and think about which of these 3 mindsets you need to strengthen?
Focus on the first mindset if you feel alone and weighed down by your difficulties. You may find reciting Psalms and talking to God helpful. In addition to asking for His help, thank Him and feel gratitude for what is going right in your life. Combining strengthening your faith with talking to God during the day and feeling His presence with you is a powerful combination.
Focus on the second mindset if you resist your challenges and tense up just thinking about them. Listening to classes and reading works on faith may help you become more accepting. Pick one thing you will do to grow from the challenge. Maybe it is reciting Psalms, studying Torah, doing acts of kindness (and even just being more encouraging and complimentary to others), being charitable, strengthening your faith, being less petty and more forgiving, being more spiritual and less materialistic. Bottom line: Look for ways to add more meaning and fulfillment to your life. Difficulties can take us away from living our lives on autopilot to really think about, “What do I want my life to be about?”
Focus on the third mindset if you are spending too much time and energy frantically searching for solutions, or you have given up hope and have stopped trying, or you mistakenly think that if you trust in God you don’t have to make any efforts. Speak to your spiritual mentor for advice on the proper amount of effort in your situation.
It is challenging dealing with a challenge. But since God gave it to you, that means He knows you can handle it and that you will become stronger because of it.
Suffering is a powerful force. It can bring up anger and bitterness, or it can elevate and purify you. It can propel you away from God or into His embrace. We do not choose our difficulties, but we do choose our response to them. When we experience hardship, there may be a part of ourselves that wants to pull away from God. But there is always a part of ourselves that longs for His embrace. It is similar to when a parent comes home after being away for a while, sees their child, and extends both hands in anticipation of a hug. The child looks at the parent and is conflicted. On one hand, the child is upset that the parent “abandoned” them and was away for so long, but on the other hand, the child loves their parent and wants more than anything to hug them. You are that child, and God is your Father in Heaven. Even though it may feel like He abandoned you, in reality, He never did and He never will. It is just that we don’t understand His ways. God loves you and wants a closer relationship with you. His arms are outstretched, waiting for you. Go in for the hug.
Postscript
One way of strengthening our faith is by hearing how people with strong faith deal with significant life challenges. Two examples of this, involving different types of challenges, are from the podcast, Stories of Hope with Tzipora Grodko (meaningfulminute.org). One is an interview with Rabbi Ephraim Rimel, “‘One Car Crash Changed My Life Forever…’” That interview was a source of inspiration for the section in this chapter about not understanding God’s ways. And the other is with Tzirel Liba Greenberg and her husband Yankel, “It’s Never Too Late To Find Your True Soulmate,” which was a source of inspiration for the section about the three phases of strengthening one’s faith. See meaningfulminute.org, and https://www.livinglchaim.com/, for other inspirational interviews. There are also articles and books with inspirational stories. An inspiring book that details the raw struggle people can have with their faith when faced with significant difficulties and how she dealt with it is Stop Hurting, Start Healing by Raquel Kirszenbaum.
To be notified of new articles or book releases, you can subscribe at https://jacobweiland.substack.com.
This chapter was taken from my new book, available on Amazon, Make It Personal.
