 Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Wa-salaatu wa-salaamu ala-ashrafil mursalin. Sayyidina wa-nabiyyina Muhammadin wa-ala alihi wa sahbihi wa-salim. Ya Rabbana laka alhamdu kama yambagil l-jalal wa jihika wa-a'zim. Sultanic, Allahumma, allimna ma yamfauna wa-anfa'na bimaa al-lamtanayya. Rahm al-Rahimin. Today, insha'Allah, we will add to our collection one of the Quds-i Hadith that we have started with during this series. Our Hadith for today is Sayyidina Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam says Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says Al ikhlasu sirrum min sirri, al ikhlasu sirrum min sirri istawdaatuhu qalba man ahbabtuhu min hibadih. Sincerity is one of my secrets that I interested to the heart of those of my servants whom I loved. Masha'Allah, Masha'Allah. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the Quran al-Kareem, he says wa-duhu mokhlesina lahuddin, and invoke him sincere to him in religion. So what is, let's start with understanding those words. So what is dua, wa-duhu? There is an order that we have to make dua. So what is dua? Dua is a request from someone who is unable to do something. So he goes to someone who is able to do that thing, the thing that he loves to do. If you are unable to do something and you dearly want to do that thing, you go to someone, you seek help from someone who is able to do it. And when you ask, when you invoke Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, then do it sincerely. So have sincere in religion. So you do not think of any other reason or of any other way that might help you other than Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Just make sincere dua. Ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala sincerely. And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has promised us. I am close to you. I am not far. I'm close to you. If you ask, if you make a request, if you ask me for help, if you call me, then I will answer your call. So this issue of sincerity, you know, it's manifested clearly in our relationship to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Why do we worship Allah? Is it to be of the winners on the day of judgment? No. Is it to get into paradise? No. Is it to avoid Hellfire? No. This is not why we worship Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So why do we worship Him? We worship Him just because He deserves to be worshipped and for no other reason. We do not associate any other reason for this with our intention. And this is complete sincerity to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So when we worship Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, we worship Him sincerely. And our intention is just for the sake of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Now what is sincerity? What is sincerity? Sincerity is to refine. It's to filter. And it is to have our intentions for the sake of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and only for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So pure intention that does not have any riyah. It doesn't have any hypocrisy. Our intentions are pure for the sake of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in Surah al-Zumar ayah 2, he says إن أنزلنا إليك الكتاب بالحق فعبد الله مخلصا له الدين. So indeed we have sent down to you the book. إن أنزلنا إليك الكتاب بالحق in truth. We've sent down to you the book in truth. So worship Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So be sincere to Him in religion. So sincerity is the core of everything. No hypocrisy. Pure intentions are only for the sake of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. When your actions are only for His sake, then Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will give you everything. So hypocrisy is like a flame that burns everything around it. So it eats the action that you are doing. Even if it is a good action, there will not be any reward for that action. For example, the one who pays sadaqah with the intention of showing off, or with the intention that people would label him as a generous person. His money will be accepted. The poor is going to take the money. They will enjoy the money. The money will be spent. But what will happen? What will happen to that person? He got what he aimed for. He got what he wanted for this dunya. So he is known amongst people that this is the generous person. This is what he wants to have. This is what he wants people to say about him, forgetting the day of judgment. So on the day of judgment, he will miss his reward. He will be called in front of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And he will be told, you gave this sadaqah to so-and-so, on so-and-so date. And you paid this zakah to so-and-so, and you gave this, you gave that, you gave this, you gave that. And he will say, oh Allah, yes, I did all that. And Allah will say to him, you did all that so that people will say you are generous, and they did. So you got your reward in dunya, but you missed the reward of the akhirah. So there is no reward for your actions, for your money that you gave in dunya. You will not get any reward for that in the akhirah, on the day of judgment. When the actions are being scaled in front of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Because your actions, your intention for that action was not sincere for me, for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So the real reward will be missed. On the day that each small reward, each small good deed will count. And people will be in front of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, and they will have very good deeds. But they had, during their life, they had bad manners. He would have asked this person, he hit that person. He killed someone. So the first one will take some of his good deeds. The second one would take some of his good deeds. The third one would get some of his deeds. So when his good deeds are done, there is no more good deeds, and there are still people who want their right on the day of judgment from that person. Then Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala would say, give him your bad deeds. He got no good deeds, and he is receiving the bad deeds of those whom he mistreated in dunya. So we have to pay attention. What are we doing in this dunya? We have to pay attention to the intention of our deeds. So associating another intention to that for the sake of Allah, so associating another attention to this intention will make people lose their reward on the day of judgment. But if the intention is just for the sake of Allah, then Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will give abundantly. And when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gives, he will make it a great reward. He gives, he gives without any fear that his kingdom is going to be less or his reward is so much so that it will decrease what he has. So you will feel that you are getting closer to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala when you do something and your intention is just pure for him, just pure for his sake. You will feel that you're bond with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gets stronger. And this is what we really need in this dunya. We want to be closer to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Here's a story about sincerity. Once there was a fearful man. Everyone fears this person. He was so strong. He was so oppressive. He was a bad person. Everyone knew him for being a bad person. And everyone tried to avoid him. One day, this same person completely changed. And he became a friend of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala asked how this change happened. He said, he told the story and he said, I know the reason. So he said, once I was passing by the market. I saw a page of the Quran, just a paper of the Quran thrown on the street and people were passing over it. They were trusting it over it. And without noticing, of course. So they did not notice that this is a page of the Holy Quran. So seeing that I immediately bent down. I picked it up. It was dirty. I wiped it. I cleaned it. And I went to the perfume shop. And I bought a nice perfume. With the only one Durham that I had in my pocket. So I perfumed this page of Quran. And I put it on a high place that no one could pass over it. It will be safe on that high place. And he says, I swear that I heard a voice saying to me. I will bless your name because of what you did. And he was changed. He was changed from being a bad person to being a very good Muslim. And he became a friend, one of the friends of Allah SWT. What's the lesson of this story? The lesson of this story is that do not belittle any sincere action. No matter how small it is. So this man has honored a torn page of the Quran. He would not accept someone to step over this page of the Quran. So as a result to honoring the page of the Holy Book, Allah SWT honored him. And everyone started to love him. The reward of Allah is amazing. So again, the lesson is do not belittle any sincere action. No matter how small it is. But similarly, never ever belittle any sin. Never, never say that this is a small sin. I will do it, it's okay. And then I will make soba. I will make it so far. No. Don't ever cross that line. A sin is a sin. No matter how small or big that sin is. So imagine that you died while you are sinning. Then when you will be resurrected on the day of judgment, you will be resurrected doing the last action that you have been doing in this dunya. So you are sinning, then you will be resurrected sinning. No. Never belittle a sin. Never. But always remember, always look at the one whom you disobeyed. Allah SWT said don't do this thing. This is a sin. And you did it. You disobeyed Allah SWT. You obeyed Shaytan? No. This is not what we are in this dunya for. We don't want Shaytan to be happy. We don't want to disobey Allah SWT. We want Allah SWT to be pleased with us. When he is pleased with us in this dunya, he will be pleased with us on the day of judgment. We are all going back to Allah. We are all going to stand before him. And he will justly judge all our deeds or our actions. What are we doing in this dunya? What are we looking at in this dunya? Where are we going? Where are we heading? What are we doing with our hands, our ears, our eyes? Are we with our tongue? Are we using all these organs or these parts of our body to obey Allah SWT? Or to disobey him? Allah gave us the eyes and he said, do not look at things that are not lawful, that are haram. He gave us a blessing, so we have to understand. We have to obey Allah. He said, do not go to these places. Then we have to listen to Allah. We have to obey Allah SWT. On the day of judgment, no one is better than another person except by righteous deeds. And those righteous deeds are all pure. They are all special. They are all for the sake of Allah SWT. It might be that same one action for two different people. It might be highly rewarded for and the other one is not accepted. It all depends on the intention. It all depends on the sincerity of the intention. Sayyidina Muhammad SAW said, إِنَّ مَا الْأَعْمَالُ بِالْنِيَّاتِ وَإِنَّ مَا لِكُلْ يِنْرِيْ إِنْ مَا نَوَا So actions are by their intentions. So all actions will be scaled according to their intention. So have sincerity with all your intentions. Even if you are doing something, a routine thing, do it with the intention of pleasing Allah SWT. You do your house chores every day. Just have an intention with that. So the action will be changed to a worship, an action of worship to Allah SWT. Now what makes a person have good intention and sincerity in their actions? It is fearing Allah SWT. It is loving Allah SWT. It is keeping in mind that Allah SWT is with us. He is over watching us. He is looking at us. Do we want Allah SWT to see us singing? No. Do we want Allah SWT to see us obeying Him? Of course. So Allah is over watching. So we want Him to be pleased with us. It is the same if someone is present watching a person doing his job or not. So if someone at work, when the bus is around, then he is so careful. He does his job completely on the spot. He is very accurate. But when the bus is absent, he doesn't. He is not as sincere as he is when the bus is around. But always remember that Allah is there. Allah is with us. So we have to perfect our actions. We have to try to be as good as we can. Now moving to the second part of the Hadith. We talked about sincerity. We talked about the secret that Allah SWT has. And what does he do with it? So I entrusted it to the heart of those of my servants whom I loved. What is this secret? It's in the heart. Which heart? The good heart. The sound heart. Not the heart that is filled with dunya, with loving, this vanishing life. No. It's the heart that is filled with loving Allah SWT. With loving Sayyidina Muhammad SAW. It's a pure heart. So with this heart, we want to have a sound heart. So to meet Allah SWT on the day of judgment without any fears. So sincerity is one of my secrets. It's one of Allah's secrets. That he has entrusted to the heart of those of my servants whom I loved. So what is that? How is that happening? It's in the heart. In the heart. So our heart should have only the love of Allah and the love of his messenger. It should be a sound heart so that we will be saved on the day of judgment. If our heart is clean and we clean our heart by doing istaghfar, we know that we all sin. But the eraser for that sin in the heart is just to do istaghfar. Astaghfirullah. Astaghfirullah. We have a few minutes with Allah SWT to ask him for forgiveness. Have a sincere tawba and ask Allah SWT for forgiveness. And again, Allah is over watching. Allah is with us. He is listening to us. When you want to talk to someone and you don't feel that there is someone who deserves to listen to you. Or there is no one who is wise enough to help you, who is dependable to give an advice. Then turn to Allah SWT. Do not waste your time. Go directly to Allah SWT. He is listening. He is waiting to hear your voice and Allah loves to hear the voice of those whom he loves. So this sincerity is a secret that Allah SWT has put in the heart of those servants whom he loves. So we want to be loved by Allah SWT. So what is love? Who are those servants that Allah SWT loves? Those are the people whose Allah blesses in dunya and in akhirah. Those are the people whom Allah SWT blesses in this dunya and in the akhirah. Bounties of Allah SWT will be with them in this dunya and in the akhirah and the day after and the life after. Those are the servants of Allah SWT whom he loves. And this love relationship between Allah SWT and his servant is mutual. So it's from both ends. And it is known that love cannot be from one end. It should be from both ends so that everything will go smoothly. So that everyone will be happy with the other person. Now what leads to this love relationship? How can we have this love relationship with Allah SWT? We can follow several things and the first one is it's loving Allah SWT and loving those whom he loves. So when you love Allah SWT then your heart is filled with the light of Allah SWT. This is why we say Nurum Min Nurillah. Ya Allah we ask you for light of your light. We ask you for this special blessing ya Allah. So the first thing that leads to the love relationship between us and Allah SWT is to have Allah in the center of our hearts. And is to love those who love Allah SWT and whom Allah SWT loves. So this is very important. Loving Allah SWT. Loving the people of Allah SWT whom if you look at their faces they will remind you of Allah SWT. When they speak their words will get out of their hearts and they will go directly to your heart. When they give advice, this advice elevates you. It makes you go up and up. Those are the friends of Allah SWT. So another way of this love relationship between us and Allah SWT is connecting to Allah SWT by reading his words. By reading the Holy Quran. By understanding the means of the words of Allah SWT. And when we understand the words of Allah, we have to apply them in our daily lives. So when Allah SWT loves someone, he sends them his blessing. He sends them divine help, divine support. He knows everything and he knows who deserves to be rewarded. So those are the people who are loved by Allah SWT. So sincerity is a secret. Again, we say the definition of sincerity. It's a secret that Allah SWT has put in the heart of those whom he loves. And who is the most loved by Allah SWT? He is loved by Allah SWT to the degree that his name accompanies Allah's name. When we hear the adhan, the person who is calling the adhan says, I bear witness that Allah is the only God that Muhammad is his messenger. So the name of Allah SWT is combined with the name of Sayyidina Muhammad SAW. The name of his Habib, the name of the person whom he loves. And Adam SAW realized how much Allah SWT loves Sayyidina Muhammad SAW. So when he was begging Allah SWT for forgiveness after eating from the tree, he said to Allah SWT, I ask Allah to forgive me for the sake of your beloved Muhammad. How is this happening? So he said, he is the first person to be created. So how was he asking Allah SWT to forgive him for the sake of someone who is not born? And Allah SWT asked him, how did you know that I love Muhammad? How did you know that? And Sayyidina Adam SAW said, he replied to Allah SWT and he said to him, His name, when I was making dua, when I was with you, I looked up at the throne and I found his name is written with your name on the throne. And if you don't love him that much, you wouldn't have written his name. You wouldn't have combined his name to your name. So again, we have to have sincerity in all our actions. I want to tell you a story of someone who was sincere and who asked Allah SWT sincerely and how Allah SWT fulfilled his request. Someone was saying, work, but my salary is so little. It's not, it's a few terms here and there. And I have so, I have borrowed money from so many people. I have so many debts. And when I get my salary, it won't be just, it won't be enough till the end of the month. So I have to borrow from other people. And I have to borrow from here and there. I have to get money from this person and that person. So he said, leave that, I will live like this until I died, until I die. I was happy with my wife and she understands the situation that we are in and she's a very good wife. But these debts that I have are a big burden for us. So one day I visited some of my friends. And one of them was exactly the same way as I am in. So he told him. He knows about his friend. And when his friends just opened his mouth to talk, to talk about the situation about how much the salary is so little and it is not enough till the end of the month and how he borrows every now and then. He said, I'm going to tell you something that happens to me. Just take a little bit of your salary and give it to Sadaqa. Give it to people who are less fortunate than you are than yourself. So he advised him just to pay Sadaqa. So when he went back to his wife, he told her what happened with his friend. She said, okay, you won't lose anything. Why you don't just try it? Maybe Allah SWT will reward us abundantly. And she knows that Allah SWT will reward them. So she urged her husband to pay Sadaqa to take some of his salary to pay Sadaqa. So he said, okay, I'm going to assign this much of money every month I will pay a Sadaqa. And that person said, I swear that no little time, just a very little time passed and I noticed change. And that change was in myself. I became a little bit at ease. I became pessimistic. I became the optimist. So even though I had so much debts, but I got relaxed. And it was only two months that my life was started to be organized again. And my salary, even though it is very little, but it started to have barakah. It started to be blessed. So I didn't notice that earlier. And he immediately knows that this is the blessing of the Sadaqa that he is paying every month now. So Allah is helping him. Allah is rewarding him. And he calculating the blessings, calculating the extra amount of money that he has because of the reward of Sadaqa, then he was sure that it won't be a long time and all his debts will be paid off. So later on, he was talking to one of his relatives and he got into a little bit into real estate with him. So he started to send some clients for him. And for each client that would buy something from them or rent something, then he will get some benefit from that. And Allah, he said, in no time, I started to feel how the reward, how the blessings, and I started to save some money now. I started to do so many different things, even though they are little, but all of them are successful. He had complete trust in Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. He knew that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is rewarding multiple times when he is going to pay this Sadaqa. So do not, again, do not belittle the any small deed that is pleasing to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. So we ask Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to make us of those servants whom he loves. We ask Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to entrust love in our hearts, and to make our hearts shine so that they would accept the light of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, of Sayyidina Muhammad ﷺ, of the Holy Quran. So our hearts will become sound hearts. That we will meet Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala with a sound heart. So we ask Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to bless us. We ask Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to make us of those whom he loves. We ask Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to highly reward us. He's there. He's hearing us. And he is the most dear. We just need to ask him. So ya Allah, we are asking you to bless us. Ya Allah, you are listening to us. You know that each one of us has their own issues. So we ask you, ya Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, to help us all. And with this, we come to our, to today's session. And we have one more session next week, insha'Allah. And that would be the last session to end up this series, insha'Allah. Wa salli Allahumma ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa ala alim wa sahbihi wa salim. Ya Rabbana laka alhamdu kama yambagi l-jalali wa jihika wa adhimi sultanik. Wa al-sanaat wa al-sanaamu ala al-habib al-a'zam. Sayyidina Muhammad, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Wa al-sanaamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.