Level of Difficulty

The most important fact of life that a person must internalize is that Hashem loves him unconditionally and is always there to help him. Knowing this fact offsets any deficiencies that a person might have. He lives with emuna, knowing that all the occurrences of his life are for the very best. He reacts to whatever happens to him with prayer, so that his entire life becomes good and pleasant. This is the life of emuna; the more he prays, the sweeter and better life becomes.

We learn this important matter from Rebbe Shimon ben Lakish, known as “Reish Lakish”, one of the greatest baalei teshuva of all time. Reish Lakish teaches us that, “Every day, a person’s evil inclination rises against him to kill him, and were it not for Hashem’s help, he couldn’t overcome it” (Tractate Succah 52b). Without Hashem’s help, no one stands a chance in prevailing over his murderous evil inclination. Yes, the evil inclination is a murderer that does everything to kill a person by inciting him to speak with an evil tongue, to covet, to be jealous, to get angry and to be displeased. The evil inclination discourages you from believing in yourself so that you won’t believe that you’ll ever be able to improve yourself.

Therefore, a person is lost without Hashem’s help. Every day, he must seek Hashem’s help, because what happened yesterday is over and today is a new battle. We should tell Hashem daily about everything that’s happening to us – our struggles, our thoughts and our desires.

The evil inclination’s (EI’s) biggest war is to prevent a person from engaging in personal prayer, especially daily personal prayer. The EI wants a person to lose hope that he’ll ever improve. The opposite is true. The EI is really our asset, for it forces us to strengthen ourselves in order to heed Hashem and to do good. A person should tell himself, “If I didn’t have an evil inclination, my efforts would be as meaningless as a game with only one team on the field. What value does any victory have when there’s no opposition?

The value of any achievement is measured by the level of difficulty in achieving it. For example, it is not difficult for a Torah-observant individual to refrain from lighting a fire on Shabbat. He also does not have an evil inclination for eating insects and worms. Yet, he has a big challenge in guarding his tongue from gossip and slander and guarding his eyes from looking at things he should avoid looking at, each person according to his own particular temptations. The general rule is that wherever the challenge is most difficult, the reward is the greatest.

A person should remind himself every minute of every day: I cannot defeat my evil inclination on my own. I have no chance against it on my own. My only free choice is to devote time to prayer; this is a person’s only choice. Ask Hashem to help you cope with the evil inclination and not succumb to it. This is the scope of your free choice. Once you’ve devoted time to prayer, you’ve fulfilled your obligation, but you must do that every day because the evil inclination rises up against you every day, especially in everything that is connected to your speech! Don’t give in or give up – the rewards are beyond what you can imagine.