Who Knows Your Full Potential?

0:28If you're, let's say, going to be an investment banker or an architect or an artist or something else, over time you're going to get better at what you do. So if you start today, let's say, as an architect, you're at level one. After 20 years, you're at level ten. You're really good. So to get to your full potential took you 20 years. Hashem wants every Jew to get to his full potential, but Hashem also knows in a natural way, it's going to take him 20 years, or 15 years, or 10 years, or 50 years to reach his full potential. So, He doesn't want you to waste time because he knows right now you're 25 years old, or 35 years old, and it's going to take you 10 years to get to your full potential. But He only gave you 50 years in this world. Already decided, before you came to this world, it has nothing to do with your sins. You have 50 years in this world. I give you 50 years to reach your goal. But you're now 35 years old, and you still need 10 years to reach your full potential. Now, I didn't bring you into this world to play video games. I didn't bring you into this world to make money. I didn't bring you into this world to have a new girlfriend every day. I didn't bring you into this world for idleness. I brought you into this world to achieve your full potential.

1:52So now when I know that you need 10 years to reach your full potential, I need to ensure you have those 10 years. As you approach age 40, since you only have 50 years total, Hashem is offering you a wake-up call. He's saying, "Excuse me, you're running out of time. You need 10 years." If you start wasting time, year after year, you reach a point at 40 years old where you can no longer achieve your full potential. Why would He give you ten more years? You're not doing what He says. We have to give Him a reason. Right, but that's the thing. We have to give Hashem a reason. So yes, He can change, but it's based on our actions. Now, if we continue violating, this is one thing that we need to know. It's also important to know. It's a little hard to hear, but it's the truth. Sometimes Hashem sees that someone He gave fifty years to is going in a direction that... ...where it's impossible for him to do teshuva. He's doing so many bad things that by the time he gets to return, he reaches the point of maybe even recognizing that there is a God. However, he's going to run out of time already because he was only given 50 years. That person could be taken out of the world early. Even though he was given 50 years, he could be taken early. Why? Because Hashem wants to bring him back so he can start all over again.

3:20The problem with that is that there's a gilgul, yeah. But the problem with that is that we shouldn't rely on that. It's a form of punishment. It's like saying, you know, okay, so I'm not going to do what I need to do. Instead of going to work every day, I'm going to go to a concentration camp for a few months and then I'm going to come back. No, it's not a good idea. Plus, also, we don't exactly have an abundance of time left for the world. But as for that person who has lived 50 years, what happens to him? How does Hashem give him wake-up calls? Hashem speaks to you at your level. We are not Moshe Rabbeinu. If anyone thought they were Moshe Rabbeinu before this lecture, let me remind you, you are not Moshe Rabbeinu. Moshe Rabbeinu was the only one who spoke to Hashem face to face. Even though he didn't see anything, he spoke to Him as you and I are speaking right now. He spoke, you spoke back, and so on. Everyone else, every other prophet that we had, had to be in some type of sleep, or some type of meditation. They weren't awake. Moshe Rabbeinu was the only one that was awake when he spoke to Hashem. So we're not Moshe Rabbeinu. So how does Hashem speak to us? Difficulties. Difficulties. Anytime we have a difficulty, that's Hashem talking to us.

4:44Someone loses money, Hashem is talking to you. Someone has a problem at home, shalom bayit, Hashem is talking to you. Someone has any problem, someone even goes into their pocket and instead of picking up 25 cents, they take 10 cents, Hashem is talking to you. Every form of difficulty is Hashem telling you that you are doing something wrong. You have to fix yourself. He's not punishing you for no reason. Even though people like to say, oh, kaparat avonot, kaparat avonot, meaning, you know, a sacrifice for my sins. It's not, Hashem didn't bring you into this world as a kaparat avonot. The true kaparat avonot is in a different place, much, much worse than this place. Here you came here to fix everything, to do good. You didn't come here to commit sins. It's not something that most people understand exactly. They think, oh yeah, so I'm suffering in this world, so I'll have Gan Eden. It's not exactly like that. You have to do mitzvot to attain Gan Eden. So, when Hashem is telling you, listen, I took some money from you, it's really my money. But you feel like it's your money. That's why I took it from you. You feel it's your money, but it's truly mine. So I took it from you.

5:55When you realize that it's my money, maybe I'll give it back. I took some money from you because you think that you're the one who controls the income. So you work on Shabbos. Shabbos is My Shabbos. The money is My money as well. You are also Mine. So I'm going to take some things to remind you that you are Mine. If someone has a sickness, it's a reminder. There's a good story that became famous about 15 years ago in Tel Aviv. There was a guy who became very successful in Israel 15, maybe 20 years ago. He made $3 million, which in Israel is a significant amount. He had $3 million of investable money. So he decided that he was going to invest it. There were two big towers in Tel Aviv that were being built, and he went to see the building. He went to the 17th floor. And they told him, listen, you can buy the entire 17th floor for $3 million. He looks, he looks, he goes, eh, it's not for me. It's nice, but it's not for me. Okay, I said that. So he goes home, he gets a phone call from somebody he went to school with a long time ago. This guy lives in Romania.

7:14He says to him, "Listen, I have the right investment for you." He asks, "What is it?" He responds, "This lot of land in Romania, it's $3 million exactly. If you buy it, I'm telling you the government is going to buy it from you for a lot more money. They're going to develop it—all these promises." So he thinks, "You know what? Land in Romania, Tel Aviv—let me go to Romania." He gives $3 million to purchase $3 million worth of land that he's never seen in Romania. Sad, right? Every couple of weeks, he calls the broker, the guy that sold it to him, but he stopped answering the phone. One month, two months, three months, four months, a year passes. He's not answering the phone. Now, all of a sudden, he thinks that he would have sold this land already, but he didn't sell the land. It becomes clear to him that the guy scammed him. The $3 million is gone. He realizes, "I don't have any other money coming in now. I have a lot of problems." So one day, after a little over a year, he gets a letter from the Israeli IRS, Masach Nasa. It's a little bit different than in America, where over there, if you owe money, they come to your house, and they take your belongings. It's not like in America, where they send you a bill for five years before they send you to a collection agency. So he was told, if you don't come up with $17,000 or $25,000 for not doing your accounting the right way...

8:43We're going to come to your house, and we're going to empty out everything. So now, for the last few months that he hasn't made any money, he's been borrowing from people because everybody thought he had money. But now, after a few months, they know he doesn't have money and he's not paying back. So where is he going to borrow this money? He finds out from somebody that there's a place in Tel Aviv that just opened up where he can borrow money. Where is it? On the 17th floor of the building that he was supposed to buy. The floor. So he goes over there. It's a hard money lender. Well, hard money means high interest. Sharks, 30% interest. What is he going to do? He has no choice: either give up his stuff in his house or accept 30% interest. So he goes there. They give him $25,000, and he's miserable. He leaves the office and thinks to himself, "I was supposed to own this. They were supposed to be my tenant." Now I have to pay them 30 percent. The person thought to himself, you know what? At least I'm in this building. Let me see what the rest of this building is. He opens the door and realizes it leads to the roof. It was the top floor. So he goes to the roof, looks around, and cries a bit to himself, saying, I can't believe it. As he tries to leave the roof, he doesn't realize it's an unfinished building, and there's only a lock on the inside. He can't get out. Let's read this. I know this, and I read this.

10:05So what happened is that he goes and he sits on the roof. He can't, you know, right now in Israel it's very, very hot. It's not, it's a hundred and something degrees. He's on the roof, burning up, thinking he's going to die. He says, "Okay, you know what? If I throw a $100 bill, somebody's going to pick it up, and they're going to look up." So he throws a $100 bill. Someone finds it on the floor, runs away, and doesn't look up. He thinks, "Okay, $100 is not enough. I need to get more people to notice." He takes $500 and throws it. The money lands, five people grab it, and run away. Yet, none of them look up. They just pick it up, and they run away. He gets so mad, he takes the entire $25,000, and he throws it into the air. Everything lands, a bunch of people gather up like mice with cheese. They all take the money; no one looks up, and everyone runs away. Now he has no money, and he's still stuck on the same roof, dying. So he starts crying, and he's like, I'm going to die on this roof. No one, there's 17 floors.

11:29What am I going to do? What am I going to do? He's sitting down, crying, crying, crying. He looks to his right and he sees there's a bucket of small rocks over there. He didn't see it before. So he's like, you know what? Maybe if I throw rocks. He takes one of the rocks and throws it. It hits somebody in the head. The guy looks up at him and starts yelling. He can't hear him because he's on top. Yeah, exactly, exactly. He's like, you know what? So, he takes a handful of rocks and throws them again, making sure to hit a few people. Obviously, they're going to call the cops. The cops come, they open the roof, and he tells them the story. And he said, your story is so strange, there's no way you would have made it up. Fine, they take him home. So he gets home, and he can't believe what just happened. He lost the $25,000, but even more than that, he's like, I don't understand. I threw $25,000 in the middle of the street, and no one looked up. Didn't anybody ever think where it's coming from? Why, it just appears in the middle of the street, 25,000. No one thought, oh, maybe somebody's throwing it. But as soon as I threw a small rock, everybody calls the cops. That's when he realized it's the same thing as me. When I was making money, I didn't ask where it's coming from. I thought I was making it.

12:45But as soon as the guy stopped picking up the phone and I started having some problems, with Masach Nasa potentially coming to my house in a few days, that's when I looked up to Shamayim and said, "Hashem, why are you doing this to me? Why are you throwing rocks at me?" He said, "From now on, I have to find out what this Judaism stuff is. I heard about it, and I have to find out." And he says that the day he did this, the day he said this, he received a fax from the guy from Romania. The fax said to call him as soon as possible. He calls the guy, After cursing him for 20 minutes, the guy from Romania for not picking up the phone for over a year, the guy says to him, "Are you finished?" He goes, "Yes." He goes, "Okay, well, the government is buying your land for like $30 million." Not everyone has siyata dishmaya like this, where they get instant results like this, but I guess he had a certain zechut. The point is that as soon as he recognized the Source, the Source gave him more. And that's something that people don't understand. Some people say, "Listen, I don't have to worry about more parnasa. I'm already making money. I'm making $50,000 a month. I'm making $20,000 a month. I'm making $100,000 a month. Okay, and I don't keep any mitzvot." They don't realize that if they actually kept mitzvot, maybe they would make a million dollars a month. Maybe they would make a billion dollars. People don't know their full potential. And that's the problem. If we do what Hashem says, He will fulfill our needs and desires.