So let's put it in context. Tefillah is: to turn the head, in order to face the one, who can bear the burden. Tefillah is: when I step out of myself, and I begin to become aware of the Mighty One who's with me, the Mighty One who's in me. Tefillah is when I become totally aware of God, and He and only Him, the Mighty One, the creator of the entire universe, every bit of Him is within me. The kingdom is not this way, or that; or up and down; the kingdom of God is the last place we look, which is inside us. That is prayer.
Repentance is: once I'm facing the one who can bear the burden, then I position myself to change my thinking, to how He thinks - which is a bigger shift than we would think.
We all like the 'what would Jesus do' bracelets. We love that! We love the what 'would Jesus do bracelets', until someone slaps us on our right cheek, and then we're supposed to turn the other cheek.
We love the 'what would Jesus do' bracelets, until someone asks us to carry their pack one mile, and we're supposed to carry it two.
We love the 'what would Jesus do' bracelets, until someone insults us. The Bible says in 1 Peter 2 and 3 (I'm very much paraphrasing this): that Jesus was hurled every kind of hurt and insult imaginable, and yet He took it and said nothing, and left it with God. Could you do that? Can I do that?
1) Tefillah; 2) Teshuvah; then the last one is: 3) Tzedakah. This is a compound word: Tzedak - just that part of the word, is the word ‘Righteous’. So you can see how Faith leads to Righteousness.
Tzedak, if you put the pictures on this, there's three letters: Tsadi; Dalet; Gof.
The picture of Tsadi is: a fish hook with bait on it. So when the Hebrew people saw the letter Tsadi, it meant: the desire of your heart, what lures you, what baits you, what draws your attention, what sort of Avon-thing happens? What desire in your heart is that? Tsadi is the picture of a fish hook with bait on it.
Dalet is the picture of an open door, which is easier to understand, because it just means: the ‘pathway into something’’ or: ‘open the door to’.
Gof is the picture of the back of a head.
In other words, the Hebrew idea of righteousness is this: the desire of your heart, opens the door to humility - that's righteousness.
If you put a 'ah', on the end of that - that is an open window, which means: ‘to reveal something’. Remember, windows back then, were made of wood, not glass; so to ‘open a window’ meant ‘to reveal something’; or: ‘to let wind in’; or ‘to let the spirit in’.
So the word Tzedakah means: “righteousness revealed”.
Hebrew people have a way for doing their money, which is really cool, and you ought to check it out if you don't know it; because they have 4% of the population, but they have 40% of the money - which means they might be onto something. And they don't even believe in Jesus, most of them - it's just principle.
I was sitting by a rabbi once on an airplane, and it was one of those great 8-hour flights, that you get stuck on the runway for 2-hours. It's really cool, because there's so much room on an airplane, and so we got talking... So I said: listen, I've discovered this thing about Terumah; and first and second and third tithes - three different tithes; the way they do their money. Can I share that with you?
So I shared it, and he said: oh yeah, you've got it spot on. I said: thanks. He said: do you know what that whole thing's called? We have a word for the whole thing. I said: what? He said “Tzedakah”, which means 'righteousness revealed'.
You see Jesus talking about it in Matthew 6. He says: when you do your acts of righteousness, do not do them before men to be seen, but do them before your heavenly Father, who is in secret. Tzedakah - acts of righteousness.
That word morphed over time to mean ‘Generosity’; so that today, in certain Middle Eastern countries, the beggars sit on the side of the road, and they go: “Tzedakah, Tzedakah, Tzedakah, Tzedakah…” Show me righteousness, show me righteousness. To ‘Reveal Righteousness’ meant: ‘to be generous’.