Transcript
Automatic transcript; may contain mistakes, especially in Hebrew.
This week's question is, sometimes I feel embarrassed to ask for things when I'm davening, because I feel like I don't have the right to ask anything of Hashem because of my sins. How can I approach tfilah in a way where I feel worthy to ask things of Hashem? Rosim Chobunam Yipesh Yisrael would say that it's not the bite of the snake that kills you, but it's the venom that the snake releases into your body that ultimately kills the person. And so too when it comes to our service of Hakadosh Baruch Hu, the Avera is not what kills us. It's the feeling of shame, the feeling of unworthiness that is like the venom of the snake being inserted into our body. It's the feeling of shame that will destroy our avodas Hashem. Hakadosh Baruch Hu loves us infinitely, regardless of whether or not we do an Avera.
What does that mean? How could Hakadosh Baruch Hu love someone who betrays him so often? Hakadosh Baruch Hu is infinite and Hakadosh Baruch Hu is perfect. And if Hakadosh Baruch Hu loves, that means he loves infinitely and he loves perfectly. True love, as the Mishnah N'avos says, is not thing dependent. If you only love someone because of something that they do for you, then you don't love them, you love the thing. If a person loves their spouse because their spouse brings home a parnassah or because their spouse is a good baker, So then they love money and they love food, but they don't love their spouse. If Hakadosh Baruch Hu only loves us because of the mitzvos that we do, or because we abstain from doing aveiros, then he doesn't love us and he doesn't love perfectly. That would be like saying Hakadosh Baruch Hu doesn't need you, he just wants you for your mitzvos, he loves mitzvos, but that's a terrible thing to say, we wouldn't say that about any person, why would we ever say that about Hakadosh Baruch Hu?
Read the full transcript
So Hakadosh Baruch Hu doesn't love us less because we did an Avera because he wasn't really interested to begin with in the Avera, he was interested in us. So now if that's the case, why should I abstain from doing an Avera? Well the answer is that if somebody loves you infinitely imperfectly, then you want to do everything that they ask of you because you feel so indebted to them and you feel so humbled before their exceptional love that it drives you to do what they ask and to To abstain from those things that they say please don't get involved in those things and ultimately That's how we build Hakadosh Baruch Hu's world by doing Hakadosh Baruch Hu's mitzvos and By abstaining from doing Hakadosh Baruch Hu's averos everything in the world surrenders itself Before god and this is what god wants he wants us to be connected to him now davening more Than anything else in the world brings Hakadosh Baruch Hu into the world because through Through Davening we are surrendering all things before God recognizing that the source of everything is Hakadosh Baruch Hu.
So we should daven regardless of whether or not we should do it, whether or not we did an Avera because that's what Hakadosh Baruch Hu asked us to do. There's something almost narcissistic about saying I feel like I can't daven because Hakadosh Baruch Hu knows about my Averas. It's just the opposite. You did an Avera. Do another one by nach davening Rekognize That He's The Source. We're asking things from Hakadosh Baruch Hu because we recognize that ultimately Hakadosh Baruch Hu is the one who provides everything for us because we're here to serve Him. So it's like going to your boss and saying I need a computer in order to do the job that you hired me to do. Same way we're coming to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. I'd love to serve you. We need health in order to serve you. We need wealth in order to serve you.
We need G'ula in order to serve you. There's so many things that we ask for in Davening, but they're not for us. They're for the mission that Hakadosh Baruch Hu created us to do. So you've done an Avera, welcome to humanity. You've done a lot of Averos, join the club. You've done Averas that you're deeply embarrassed of. A father loves their child, regardless of how many Averas they've done, because they don't love Mitzvos and they don't love Averos, they love you.
Is this shiur filed in the wrong place? Let us know.