Unlocking Miracles: How Positive Thinking and Faith Can Transform Your Life

Many people go through life’s challenges without realizing that they themselves are stopping the salvations waiting to reach them from Heaven. The channels of blessing may be open, but their negative thinking and lack of belief that things can change create a blockage. It is the lack of faith that prevents the salvation.

As our sages teach, to draw blessing from above, there must first be an awakening from below. If a person does not believe that the situation can change, his very thoughts, so to speak, stop the blessings from reaching him. For example, a woman who is waiting many years for her marriage partner but decides she will never get engaged, may be blocking the blessing that God intends to give her with her very own thoughts.

God desires to bestow good upon us, and it is our duty to prepare a vessel for God’s salvation. As the Pele Yoetz explains, the question “Did you await salvation?” refers not only to the ultimate redemption of the Jewish people, but also to one’s personal salvation in all areas of life. When a person leaves this world, he will be asked whether he hoped and trusted that God would save him.

People lose out on their own blessings simply because they do not believe that God can completely change reality. The Talmud in Sotah (48b) teaches on the verse in Zechariah (4:10): “For who has despised the day of small things?” — “What caused the righteous to lose their reward in the future? It was their smallness of faith, that they did not believe in the Holy One, Blessed be He.”

Believing the Situation Can Change

To merit salvation, we must shift our mindset and strengthen our faith that things can change. What is happening today does not need to continue tomorrow — God can do anything. It is our obligation to believe that He can turn even the most bitter reality into something sweet, transform illness into health, and make the impossible possible.

Some people think that if many years have passed without their salvation, it means things will always remain that way. We must understand that although years follow the same pattern and keep flowing, they also hold the potential for change. The Hebrew word for “year” (shana) comes from the root meaning both “to repeat” and “to change.” A year repeats itself with the same twelve months, but it also has the power to be different and to bring transformation.

We must believe that even if things have been the same for years, if God wills it, this year can bring change for the better. There is no shortage of true stories about people who found their spouse just before turning thirty and are now happily married, couples blessed with children after twenty years of waiting, or individuals who rose from crushing debt to financial stability. The same holds true in every area of life — we must never give up hope, and never close the door on the blessings God wishes to send us.

We must not allow thoughts of “impossibility” to take root within us, such as “This is who I am, and I’ll always be this way,” “I’ll never get married,” “There’s no chance I’ll recover,” or “It’s logically impossible to get out of debt.” Such thinking denies God’s unlimited power and can actually close off the blessings He longs to give us.

We must think positively, work on our trait of faith, and believe that in any situation, God can completely change the picture for the good, even if everything appears hopeless. We must trust that God has ways we could never imagine to bring about our salvation.