The Torah Network

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So you “believe”?

So what?!

You have “faith”?

So what?!

What have you done with your “belief”?!

What does your “faith” do for you?!

…and more importantly, what do your “faith” and “belief” do for others?!

Churchianity has wrongly taught the world that belief is accepting facts read from a book or heard from a pulpit. And that faith is trusting in some old man in the clouds (and who bears a striking resemblance to pagan Jupiter but supposedly isn’t) trusting him to save us from fiery damnation, or simply to make us happy, to feel better and help us cope with harsh realities.

Christian faith and Christian belief are much like a rocking chair. They aren’t good for much but personal relaxation. And using them will keep you moving but never really getting off the porch.

Contrariwise, the Good Book provides a profoundly opposing view of faith and belief…

Biblically speaking faith and belief (both words being colloquial terms) are emuna and bitachon. Though Hebrew words aren’t as simplistic as English, and each is an essay in itself to cover the full meaning, the short of it is that emuna would have been better off being translated as “fidelity” rather than rendered as “faith”. And bitachon should have been more properly reproduced as “relying upon” or “acting based upon” rather than “faith, trust, belief”.

Our English words hold way too much French and Latin history but moreover, way too much Greek emphasis and view. Greek thought process. And that mindset derails our whole view of what we are reading in Scripture and what we are supposed to be getting out of it.

Faith and belief, come with a Greek view of something you have, something you hold, something you use…but almost never something that you are or something that you do. Or even moreover, something you are based on that something that you do.

Emuna is an action whereas faith is a feeling and a thought. Bitachon is an action aswell but belief is just a feeling and thought. Being generous we will say faith and belief are a series of thoughts and feelings. But nevertheless, they are all immaterial, intangible ideas.

What we were commanded to do is not to believe and have faith but to practice emuna and bitachon. We were commanded to live in accordance with the Divine Instructions and how we live them out is emuna. We were told to perform actions in accordance with the Divine Promises and that is bitachon.

But faith and belief?

If we are relying on faith and trust we might aswell go full Peter Pan and add in pixy dust, for all the good sitting around thinking and feeling about spiritual matters will do for us.

Get out of the rocking chair.

Get off the porch.

And go out into the world to live the Divine Instructions.

THAT is what the Good Book calls for. That is emuna and bitachon. That is where the thoughts and feelings in our heads and hearts meet the harsh realities of life and living.

Question Everything
templecrier.com

Comment

16 w

This is not found in the Bible but it is implied in several places — faith is kind of like a muscle, it should be used and exercised to strengthen it. How we do that is found in the Bible; Proverbs 3:5 — 6, “Trust the Lord with all your heart. Don’t depend on your own understanding. Remember the Lord in everything you do. And he will give you success.”

Comment

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Erev Shabbat: day 6 (Friday) 2 august / dag 6 (vrydag) 2 augustus 2024
Please note that times indicated are SAST

18:00: Home Worship 150 with James Block/G Steven Simons
Repeated tomorrow (Shabbat) at 11:55
Email/Epos: theway146@mailfence.com
Web: www.silvertrumpet.life

Broadcast links/Uitsaaiskakels:
Zeno: www.zeno.fm/silver-trumpet
Radio.net: https://www.radio.net/s/silvertrumpetradio
hearthis: https://hearthis.at/silver-trumpet/
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080224
WORD FOR TODAY “can you finish the race”: Luk 14:28 "For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it?

SPOKEN VERSE FOR TODAY: Jos 24:15…as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD."

“Faith comes by hearing” positive frequencies spoken out loud hourly.

www.BGMCTV.org

Comment

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15 A man’s days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.16For the wind blows over it, and it is no more, And its place no longer remembers it.17 But the loving-commitment of יהוה Is from everlasting to everlasting Upon those who fear Him, And His righteousness to children’s children, 18 To those who guard His covenant, And to those who remember His orders to do them. Tehillim (Psalms) 103