Good Morning Yamon Ki Yesepar and Nevim Arith Hayomin:
Psalms 56:3: “What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.”
“Fear is the opposite of faith.” (A great man once said that)
In Luke 11:1-13 Jesus tells a story in a humorous way (at least for his disciples it would be humorous), about a man who has a visitor in the middle of the night and has no bread to offer him. In the Oriental culture it is a great disgrace and loss of honor if you do not or cannot offer a visitor a meal. So this man goes to his neighbor and starts to bang on his door demanding that he borrow a loaf of bread. The neighbor comes up with excuses why he cannot get up out of bed to give him some bread. But the man is not deterred by his neighbor’s lack of response and keeps bugging him until he gets out of bed and gives him the bread. Jesus was not saying you should bug God to the point where you give Him a headache and finally, just to get some peace, he gives you what you want. Oddly, that is the lesson that is taught by many.
What Jesus was doing, as any good rabbi would, was to give a humorous story to offset a more serious illustration. It was a common belief among the Jews of that day, as it is today, that our fears, feelings of guilt and/or unworthiness keeps our request from reaching God. Do you ever try to praise or worship God or even pray, but the circumstances you are in just keep you from uttering a prayer? You get so discouraged or so fearful that you cannot even pray. Jesus is telling us in Luke 11:1-13 that we need to keep pounding away at these fears until break through them to reach the Father.
The illustration that was used at that time was that of king going to battle. The king was the prime target of the enemy, if they could kill the king, the battle would be over. To protect himself, the king would often dress like an ordinary soldier, so the enemy could not single him out. However, the enemy could usually figure out where the king was because he would be surrounded by a large division of soldiers to protect him. The enemy would attack and attack these elite soldiers guarding the king, until they had removed all the guards preventing them from reaching the king. They would then either take the king captive or kill him and call it a day.
Sometimes we seek God in prayer but it seems our prayers keep bouncing off the wall. Actually they are bouncing off our feelings of guilt, unworthiness, and fear. All these emotions keep us from trusting in God. David understood this very well. He was after all a king, and he knew what it was like to be a target. He knew what it was like to be afraid, to be in the cross hairs of every soldier when he went to battle.
The word in the Hebrew for “afraid” is “yara” which is spelled “yod, resh, aleph.” The shadow of the “yod” represents indecisiveness. Sort of like being toss around like the waves of the sea. One moment you are trusting God and the next you are fretting over you situation. The shadow of the resh represents lack of confidence in the Holy Spirit and the shadow of the Aleph represents a lack of unity with God. The usages of the word “yara” include guilt, feelings of unworthiness, and fear.
The word for trust is “batach” which has the idea of welding yourself to something. A welder will tell you that a metal bar will break anywhere before it will break at the point of the weld. The weld becomes the strongest part of the two pieces of metal that are joined together. More than that the reason the weld will hold so solid is that the portions of each pipe, through extreme heat will melt into each other. The weld does not happen instantly, it takes time and persistence to bring the two portions of the pipe together. You have a spot weld, that can be done quickly, but that will not hold like a solid weld. This gives you the picture of “batach.” Of course they did not have welders in those days, but they did understand the idea of melting something together to create strength and that is what batach is, melting yourself into God and God melting Himself into you. The process of melting takes time and persistence, but soon all the impurities that keep the weld
and the objects being melted together are burned away and the melting process will end with two objects tightly bound together.
Fear is the opposite of faith. When David felt yara (guilt, unworthiness, and/or fear), it was at that time that he would batach (trust) or weld himself to God. Sometimes it takes persistence as all the impurities must burn away, but the result will be batch, firmly welded to God – trust. We all know trust does not occur over night, it take time to “build” trust or “weld trust.” After a lifetime of God proving Himself over and over, “What time I am afraid, I will (be able) to trust in Him.“ As He proves Himself faithful over and over through the years, our trust him becomes firmer and firmer. The more David experienced the faithfulness in God the easier it was to trust in Him when fear crept up.
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