Episode 202 - What Powers Your Next Breath, And What That Means For Trust

Ever tried to bargain with certainty—“Set me up financially and I’ll finally live with purpose”? We take that deal apart and show why it fails at the root: you can’t demand collateral from the very source that powers your next breath. Using a clear lender–borrower analogy, we lay out why collateral presumes capacity, and how that logic breaks when applied to the Creator. Even the best intentions and the most disciplined spiritual practice depend on help; service isn’t a self-funded enterprise.

We dig into the difference between body and soul to ground this truth. Parents provide the physical form; God provides the life-force that makes sight, thought, and will possible. If raw materials are cheap but a life is priceless, then our value—and our agency—flows from the soul. That insight reframes the common promise to “get serious once I’m secure.” Waiting for perfect conditions is a stall built on the illusion of control. Purpose begins with small, faithful steps taken now, trusting provision will meet obedience rather than precede it.

I share a personal chapter from my baal teshuva journey: the sting of seeing loved ones under a “blindfold” while I felt newly awake. That experience taught me that clarity arrives by merit and timing, not by demand. The takeaway is simple and sharp: move first in trust, and let that trust be the channel for strength, focus, and follow-through. If you’ve been holding your purpose hostage to your bank balance, this conversation invites you to flip the script and act from reliance, not from leverage.

If this sparked something, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs courage today, and leave a quick review with your favourite takeaway—what line will you carry into your week?

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Setup
• 0:34 Recap And Power Dynamics
• 1:09 The Seventh Response Introduced
• 1:17 Security Requires Ability To Deliver
• 1:54 Why “Advance” From God Fails
• 2:47 Dependence On Divine Help
• 4:35 Body Versus Soul Explained
• 6:09 The Value Of Life Clarified
• 8:47 Clarity, Merit, And Blindfolds
• 10:40 Closing And Calls To Action

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:25

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Trust Factor, the only podcast that guarantees your success when you implement its divine age old teachings. We are into the seventh response that we give to a person who solicits a security from God. Yesterday, we talked about Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Yesterday, we said if a king, if somebody in a position of power comes and makes a request of you, you obviously concretize it in a form of an agreement that you understand I've given you X or Y, I've lent it to you. But you don't ask for a security. It's insulting to the intelligence of the individual whom you are asking it for because everybody knows who this individual is and that it's a drop in the bucket. That was yesterday. Today we get into the seventh and the final response that we give to the individual who needs payment up front, and this is a very interesting one. He says that one who takes security from his fellow will not take it unless he is able to deliver the merchandise for which he is taking the security. In other words, if you come to me and you say, Jesse, I need a loan for$100,000, I'm not going to put a lien on your house unless I have that$100,000 to give you. That's an obvious one if you haven't figured that one out yet. He's bringing it up here for a very valid reason, and you'll see in a second. But the point here is that if I'm going to request from you a security, it implies that I have what you're looking for to give you in exchange for that security. However, someone who requests a security from the creator by asking God to give him the benefits of a secure income for life in advance of serving him does not have the ability on his own to repay these benefits through his service. He's not assured of being able to do the mitzvahs that might come to repay his previous debts to God for the past benefits that he received, and certainly cannot be confident of doing even more mitzvahs so as to repay him for the new debts that we ask every single day that he will incur on account of the additional benefits that he's soliciting. This is because even a righteous person cannot do mitzvahs and thus attempt to repay the debts that he has for the goodness that Hashem has given us unless Hashem helps him to do so. Guys, what we're talking about over here is not like we discussed previously, where we said that we're so heavily indebted to God for everything that he does for us on a daily, on a second-by-second basis, that we are constantly indebted to him because he is perfect and we are fallible. That we discussed even yesterday. We said, by definition, we're always indebted to him because he's constantly showering us with the gift of life and the opportunities that present themselves. That's not what he's talking about here. That's not why we'll never be able to repay him. What he's saying is that I'm asking for God to give me a security deposit before I go ahead on my own volition and start to live a proper, godly life where I start to do the things that are important and are required of me in order to thrive in this world, namely to lead a godly life. No, no, no. I need you to step up first. But wait a second. Without him, without the one who you're requesting a security deposit from, you can't function, my friend. You understand? You can't wake up in the morning. You can't use your hands, your arms, your fingers, your legs, your feet. You can't use them. Your heart doesn't pump. Your lungs don't fill with oxygen. That's the reality. In order for you to be able to function as a human being so that you can do the mitzvahs, he has to enable you. So when you come and ask from him for security, material security, before you start to do it, what you're really saying is that he has no bearing on whether or not you can function, whether or not you can fulfill the commandments that need to be fulfilled. When in reality, he is everything that is needed to be able for you to fulfill those commandments. What do I mean? When man is created, there are three partners in creation, the Torah tells us. Number one is the mother, number two is the father, and number three is God. The parents are responsible for the physicality. When we see an individual and we see their physical features, all of their physical features, those were the contribution of the parents, the mother and the father. The soul, that which makes us function, that which gives us life is what God contributes. It says that when God created Adam, he blew into him the soul, a living soul which is part of God, part of him. He blew into his nostrils, and that was the defining moment. That was the moment that turned a material object made of flesh and blood into a human being. There are animals in this world that aren't human beings because they don't have souls. And there may have been, depending on what you subscribe to, before Adam came into this world, Neanderthals, an earlier version of a human being, but they were only in the form of a human being. They lacked the soul. And because they lacked the soul, they weren't really humans. It only happened when God blew into Adam's nostrils his component, his contribution to creation of man. That is what separates us from everything else. That is the reason that all of the world, all of creation comes to cater to us because of that soul, not because of the body, not because of the physicality. The physicality is cheap. The physicality doesn't cost much. If you take a human body, my rabbi used to say, if you take a human physical body and you break it down to its basic elemental components, its chemical breakdown, and you put a number on how much a human body is worth, what's it worth?$10,$20? To be able to get all of the physical materials, all of the chemical compounds, to be able to put a human body together in a laboratory, the flesh, the bones, the skin, all these things, it's a few dollars. Human body,$20,$30 worth of raw goods. But when somebody gets killed in an accident, or when somebody is intentionally killed, when we sue, we don't sue for$20 or$40. We sue for millions. We sue for tens of millions. Why? Because that's not the important part. The body is not the valuable part. It's the brain. And why the brain? Because that is where the soul resides, the Torah tells us. The godly soul resides in the human brain. That is the differentiator. That is what sets us apart and makes us each so individually valuable that we could sue for tens of millions of dollars and justify it. Why? Because the value of the human being is not in what the parents contributed. It's what God contributed. Without Him, your heart doesn't beat. Your lungs don't fill with oxygen. Your mind doesn't work. The cells don't run through your veins and your arteries. What causes your heart to pump? What causes your eyes to see, your ears to hear? What causes the sensation of touch when you feel something? When you put your hand in fire and you know to pull back? What causes all of that? And the answer is it's your nishama, it's your soul that causes all that. It's God. Without Him, we cease to function. And so, as a result of all of this, we understand that when we say to God, if you just give me the material that I need, if you just set me up physically and financially for the rest of this existence, which I don't know how long that's going to be. And according to my knowledge, I think I'm probably going to be here forever. So it's never going to be enough. But that's a different discussion, which we've had in the past. If and when God, you set me up to the point where I'm content physically, then I will start to use my body to do the things that you need me to do. How ridiculous is that? When if I choose to and he chooses not to, then I can't use my body. But if I choose to and he agrees, only then can I use my body. And it reminds me that when I first became a Balchuva almost 20 years ago, when I first started realizing that there's this thing called purpose and God and creation and commandments, and so much more to life than just eating, sleeping, working, and repeating. One of my biggest, biggest challenges was being upset at the fact that I had this clarity. I was given this clarity. I call it the blindfold being removed. I had the merit of having my blindfold being removed, but yet I was watching my friends and my family members who still had their blindfolds on. They still walked around this world thinking and behaving as though they knew what they were doing and they had everything under control. But in reality, they didn't. And I knew that because I had clarity. But all I wished for was for them to have that very same clarity, which wasn't forthcoming. And I had a really hard time with that. Why? Why didn't they have that clarity? And why did I? And the answer is because God determines who gets what. And when it happens, if it happens. And I had the merit of him saying, I'm going to remove your blindfold. Them? Not so much. Not yet, at least. If they merit it when they merit it, I may take off their blindfold and allow them to start doing the midstvas, to start living a godly life, to start really thriving and reaching their stated purpose. Until then, until he decides, we are always at that deficit. We are always at his mercy. It's the same idea. I can tell him that I'm going to start doing things, but my friend, you're not going to start doing a thing until he determines, the same one that you're so demanding of a security deposit. When he determines, then and only then will you be able to start accomplishing. May we all merit to have our blindfolds removed. That wraps it up for today, my friends. Thank you for spending time with us on the Trust Factor Podcast. If you heard something today that moved you, save the episode and share it with someone who might need to hear it. Be sure to subscribe on any of the platforms. And if you're on social media, connect with us. Leave your thoughts. Drop a quote that resonated with you. Hashtag the TrustFactor Podcast. Until next time, keep growing in your trust and keep living with purpose. I'm Jesse Rivivo, and this has been the Trust Factor Podcast. Thanks for listening.