 Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Alhamdulillah, our Lord is the Lord of the worlds, and may the peace, mercy and blessings of God be upon our Master Muhammad and his family and companions. My Lord is the Lord of the worlds, and may the peace, mercy and blessings of God be upon our Master Muhammad and his family and companions. Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. Alhamdulillah, hope everybody is doing well. So, inshallah, we are going to continue on the series that we've been focusing on, and this is about loving Allah. Today's topic is about loving Allah and preferring Him over all else. And really, this is one of the main goals of this Deen, it's one of the main goals of our religion, is to have such a deep love of Allah that we prefer Him over everything else. We don't let all the little mundane aspects of our life get to us, don't let them stress us out, and we really prioritize our focus on Allah. And let the love of Him become so powerful that all of the other things that bother us become less and less cloudy in the heart. And the heart starts to get into a state of clarity where Allah is preferred over all of us. Now, this concept of loving Allah is of utmost importance in our religion. In fact, one could say it is one of the main goals of our religion. And yet, in the time that we live in, too many people have a very, very dry relationship with their Lord. We have a very dry relationship with our Deen. We don't have this kind of connection, we don't have this longing, we don't have this intimacy. Many times we all hear that Islam is a set of rituals and a set of practices and you have to do them and then there's things you can't do and there's things you have to do and all that is true. But what's the goal? Why do you pray? Because God told you to pray? Yes. But why do you pray? For yourself? It's for yourself, but to gain a loving relationship with your Lord. That's why we pray. We don't just simply pray because my parents told me to do so. No, there's a reason, there's a deeper reason why we pray. Why do we do the acts of worship that we do? These are means to a wider end. And when we start to reorient our perspective in our religion to realizing that you and I have a purpose in this world. We have a purpose. Our eventual purpose is to serve Allah in whatever way is best based on the gifts that He has given you and the gifts that He has given us. Only Allah knows that true purpose, but the more you worship Him, the more that love for Him grows stronger, the more that purpose begins to be unlocked. And Allah says in the Quran that He created human beings and jinn to worship Him. And there is this idea that the more you worship, the more you get to know Allah and the more you know Allah, the more you love Allah. You can't love someone you don't really know. And so that's a really critical aspect of this Deen. And one of the main reasons why so many people leave practice or they leave the religion is because growing up they might not hear that the love of Allah is a critical part. They might not hear that emphasized. Just one second, I'm just going to fix this. Excuse me for that. I just had to fix the camera. So they might not hear this aspect of the love of Allah. They might not see emphasis placed on it. And so look, when Islam becomes dry, it can become boring. That's a reality. Definitely, everybody has had those times where things are just boring. But for you to have a deep experience, there has to be love there. Love is what gives you the spark, right? For anyone who's ever been in love, you know that there's a certain spark. There's a certain lightness you feel, there's a certain excitement that you feel in life. Similarly, our relationship with Allah in no way do we relate it to the relationship with human beings, but in a very, very different way, in a very, very divine way, we're supposed to have this spiritual love for our Lord. And what does that do? It gives us a longing. It gives us a purpose. It gives us a desire to meet Him, right? Like, if you love Allah, you eventually will be excited to meet Allah. And when you're excited to meet Allah, you won't trip. We won't worry so much about all the stuff in this world that bothers us. Because we're like, okay, look, I'm out of here eventually. At some point I'm going to get out of this place and at some point Allah's going to set me free and then I'm going to get to meet Him. And hopefully I get to meet Him in a good state and it's going to make us desire to meet Him hopefully in the best of states. Now, Allah says in the Quran, right, that He has various verses. He says, for example, that the believers, they have a more intense love for Allah. More intense love for Allah than anybody else. These are the believers, the Muslims. They have a very, very intense love for Allah. Sometimes we see in other traditions, not Muslim traditions, but other traditions, there's a big emphasis on love and kindness and compassion. And we forget, and this is because we're just bad, frankly, and marketing as Muslims. We need more people who need to understand how to actually market our message. We forget that our religion is centered on love. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he is Habib Allah. He is the beloved of Allah. We are taught to love the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. We did a class maybe a couple of weeks back and it would be all about loving the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Right, loving the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is a door to loving Allah. Allah is the ultimate goal. Allah is the ultimate goal for us. We forget sometimes that we have a religion of love. That we have a religion that the Quran regularly talks about love. Allah is saying all the time, Allah yuhib al-sabideen. Allah yuhib al-tawabine wa yuhib al-muta tahideen. Like Allah loves, Allah loves the patient. Allah loves the people who turn to Him. Allah loves the people who are trying to purify themselves. These are all groups that Allah loves. He uses the word love so many times in the Quran. So why do we live our lives then sometimes forgetting that love is such a big part of this religion? What is it that we're doing that makes us have this dry relationship with Allah? Look, it's when that dry relationship comes, that's when you don't want to worship. When you love somebody, you want to do what they told you to do. But when that dry relationship starts to manifest, it's like, I don't really want to wake up for Fajr. I guess I have to. Because it's not about Allah. Some people worship Islam. Islam is not supposed to worship. You don't worship the rules. You worship the creator of the rules. And you obey the rules because he told you to do so. That's why you obey the rules. That's it. Because Allah said we have to obey those rules. But we have to have a love for Him and a preference for Him. So what happens for the people who love Allah, as is mentioned in many of the books and mentioned for sure in the Quran and Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ, that they began to have a certain type of preference for Him. And when you prefer Allah over all else, that means you stop preferring what? All else. It means at the heart level, it doesn't mean you stop focusing on other things. But at the heart level, you stop giving priority and preference in terms of what you think about, what you contemplate about, what you yearn for, right? So you might have work to do. We might have things we have to do in the dunya. We live here. It's not like about just sitting in one place and forgetting everything and only doing dhikr or something. No. It's about living our lives in a way where we know the destination and we have to have moments. For most of us, we're not at that place where, I mean, I know I'm certainly not, where I can really regularly be in a contemplative state and realize that Allah is with me and Allah loves me and I'm supposed to love Allah and Allah created me and kind of remembering that every second of the day. But I have to have moments of my week or of my month, at the very least of my month, or if not at least one moment of the year like in Ramadan, right? You just remember and you have these spiritual moments, these moments of spiritual breezes and these breezes come and they refresh the soul, they refresh the spirit and they remind you of your purpose. And then you remember, oh, I have a purpose here. I have to prepare for the next life. I have to prepare for my meeting with Allah. So I'm not going to worry about this work meeting that I'm stressed about. I'm just going to do it. I'm not going to worry about what my boss said here. I'm not going to worry about this family issue. I'm going to still attend to it, but I'm not going to let it worry me. The stress starts to leave because the love of Allah starts to manifest, right? So this deen is about loving Allah. And so Allah says that he says, Say if your fathers, your sons, your brothers, your wealth and the trade that you have and the trade you fear will decline, basically the kind of wealth you feel will decline, your business prospects you feel will decline and the dwellings you love, right? Like your homes are more beloved to you than Allah and his messenger and the struggle and his cause than wait until Allah brings about his punishment. That's from the Quran. Now, think about that. What is Allah trying to teach us here? He's saying that, look, he's trying to tell us he wants us to love him more than our homes. So let's say we like to see a big, big, big house and all this huge house, a beautiful home, nice kitchen, big, big closet and lots of bathrooms, da da da da da da. Don't fall in love with the house, overloving Allah. How do you know what that is? What does that mean? Does it mean you can't get the house? No, no, no. If you have a halal means to get the house, you can get the house. But if you have to take out massive interest, phones and impermissible mortgages and whatnot to go and get a house and you could have lived in more humble means, what do you love more? Do you love what Allah says? The dwellings? The dwellings? The homes? Is it the homes that we love? The cars? Have we talked about this last time in class about focus and prioritization? Like, interest is a big problem. If we love a really fancy car, oh, there's a Tesla and there's this, but there's no way to lease it. So I have to buy it. And the only way to buy it, because I can't afford to pay all cash, is to take out a loan and that loan has 2% APR and Allah says in the Quran that interest is haram, but is it really that big of a deal? I might as well just do it. And then I'll be grateful to Allah, really the blessing is from Allah. We like trick ourselves into this stuff. The believer who has love for Allah, Allah says you will, if there are more beloved to you than Allah and his messenger, then wait and Allah will bring about his punishment. Allah juxtaposes. Allah is not afraid to juxtapose his love next to his punishment. He's not afraid to do that. We have to remember that love is preferring him over all else, right? Love is not about our own kind of imagining. This is one thing where the generally speaking, many of the other religions have gone astray, where there is a focus on I love Allah, Allah loves me, Jesus loves me, I love Jesus and as a result, all my sins will be forgiven and it's all good. I can do whatever I want in life. Just how to be a generally a good person with some decent character and make all these mistakes, not really worry about it and it's all good. Our religion, inshaAllah it will be all good but we got to do the work. We actually have to do the work because Allah says you have to love him and prefer him over all else. So we got to love him more than our homes and than our cars and all these other things. The same thing, we got to love him more than our children and our family and that doesn't mean we don't love them but we have to have a deep sense that Allah is the priority. Meaning if Allah wants me to do something, I have to do it. And if Allah wants me to do something in a certain way for my home and whatnot, I have to do that, right? So the signs of this first and foremost are that we obey him. Secondly, we strive to serve him. We strive to use the blessings he's given us, the time he's given us, the energy he's given us to serve him and we make big intentions. All of us should make big intentions that we want to use our blessings and our mind and our skill set and everything it is Allah has blessed you with. Everybody who has a talent, Allah has given them that. We want to use them to serve Allah. That's one of the best ways. Because what does Allah say in the ayah? That if all these things are more beloved to you than Allah and his messenger and the struggle in his cause. Then wait until Allah brings about the punishment. Look, Allah is giving a... He's linking his love and of course the love of the Prophet ﷺ. We know those two are linked. We've spoken about that before. But also to struggle in his cause. Struggle in his way. I think sometimes life is going to get tough. We know that. We actually know, we've talked and spoken about this before that when Allah loves somebody, when he loves someone, he tests them. He wants to see can they struggle? Are they speaking the truth? Or are they just claiming that they love me but they're not actually ready to bear the difficulty that it takes? What are they doing? What kind of people are these people? So we obey him. We strive to serve him and we struggle. We struggle in this Deen. This Deen takes struggle. It is struggle to wake up for Fajr. It's more of a struggle to wake up for tahajjud. Tahajjud and jihad have the same root. Jihad is struggle in the way of Allah. It takes mojahada. Struggle. Spiritual struggle to wake up early and to do these things. It takes struggle to learn. It takes struggle to be at the masjid and serving people and feeding people and hearing people still complain when you're feeding them and doing all this good. I know people who do a lot of masjid work and they regularly have to deal with a lot of people just not treating them well and yet they persevere and they work hard and take spiritual struggle and sacrifice. But that is a sign that the love of Allah is there because one is serving Allah and serving Allah's Deen. And if Allah uses somebody to serve his Deen, ooh, SubhanAllah. That's amazing if we're able to be the people who are serving other people and volunteering and doing these types of things. We all have to have that as a core aspect of our life if we really want to love Allah. So there's a practical reality and there's an inward reality. Let's begin with the inward. The inward reality is to prefer Allah over all else. Not to stop doing everything else but to prefer Him at the heart level. It's a long for Him and a year for Him. And that means to try to empty the heart. Again, this is kind of an esoteric concept but let's try to bring it into practicality. What does it mean to prefer Allah over all else? So Allah says, Imam Ghazali, I believe, relates in this in the ahya to what Allah inspired to Dawud al-Islam, he says, I have forbidden the love of me and the love of other than me to reside in the same heart. Look, the heart is a vessel and it has a room for one. Islam is about Tauheed. It's about one. Literally, la ilaha emptying the heart. The spiritual masters say when you do la ilaha, there is no God and there is nothing worthy of worship. Nothing worthy of love. Nothing worthy of your attention. Ilallah, except Allah. So you're emptying out the heart with la ilaha ilallah and then only Allah. You only love Allah and prefer Allah. That's Tauheed. Tauheed's actuality is to prefer Allah over all else and to see Allah in every single situation. Right? There's different books that are written on Tauheed and they focus on this thing and that thing to have all this focus on like this is an innovation, this is an innovation and trying to call things that aren't actually even shirk and whatnot and they miss the mark. Tauheed is to prefer Allah over all else and to empty him from the heart. There are many means of getting there. Don't think there's only one path. There are many paths to getting there. Be a broad, open-minded human being and an open-minded Muslim. We don't need any more close-minded, narrowly focused Muslims in a way to attain heaven and that heaven has a door, no vacancy and no more room for anybody else except the people who they admit. You and me don't control who gets into heaven. We don't control who does anything. We don't control who gets into hell or heaven or anything. Allah controls that. So we have to worship him. I digress. What I'm trying to say here is that the heart has room for Allah or something else. So the dunya can fill it, our desires can fill it but this is something to keep in mind. The heart is created to worship and love something. You're going to worship something, you're going to love something. A lot of times, a lot of atheists, they miss the mark here. They think, oh, you're still caught up in these old beliefs. You worship someone, you worship something. Look at me, I'm free. I don't worship anything. Meanwhile, they want a bunch of followers. They want to be famous. They want people to listen to their opinions. They want to get angry when people get upset with them. That's called worship of the nafs. You're going to worship the nafs, you're going to worship desires, you worship people, you worship followers, you worship power. We see the President right now in the United States. What's he worships power? Because he'll do anything he can to hold on to his power. We're seeing that right now. We're literally trying to stage a coup to keep hold of his power, to keep a firm grip. But the heart that worships Allah, that heart has a different type of sweetness. The heart orients towards something. That's one thing keep in mind. You're going to worship something and you're going to love something. You could love desires. You could love pornography. You could love drinking and partying and smoking. You could love impermissible relationships with the opposite gender. You could love scrolling all the time and watching Haram movies and Haram shows. We could love all these desires. They pollute the heart slowly, slowly pollute. And so the heart is filled with desires. And then we think, oh, we might get convinced that we could have love for all these desires. And yet somehow we have a deeper love for Allah. No, we might have some love for Allah. But the deep love for Allah comes when everything starts to be removed. It's powerful. It pushes everything out. Powerfully. It pushes everything out. So, that's what we have to begin to do. The two cannot coexist. We cannot love dunya and all the things I just mentioned are dunya things. Cannot love money and trying to be famous and power. All these things that catch up the human being. Allah says in Surat Al-Amaran, that we have ordained for human beings given these shahwad, these desires. And he lists out basically the equivalent of what would be money and land and homes and cars, today cars and all this stuff. That's the ordainments of the life of this world but that's not the point. The point is Allah. So, we have to know there's room for for one. It doesn't mean we, again, stop focusing on everything. We still have to go to work. We need Muslims who do really well in business and who do well in politics, who do well in whatever it is that they're supposed to do. It does not mean by any means that everybody has to leave their work, leave what we do and become scholars or something like that. No. We need people who have big intentions to serve this Deen. And serve the Deen in whatever creative skill set. But the first and foremost thing has to be that you're a preferred Allah over all else because that way when you go off and you do the big thing that you want to do in life to make an impact to hopefully help the Muslims you won't get caught up in haram. Otherwise let's say I want to start a business and let's say at some point some really interesting opportunity comes my way and I get millions of dollars of venture capital funding or something like that. I start a company and then a really interesting opportunity comes my way to launch a new product but that product is riddled with haram. It's riddled with like alcohol or interest or something like that. The person who doesn't know and we ask Allah to protect us from these types of tests because it's very muddled. It gets very confusing but the person who doesn't know they will say oh it's fine because I'll do this and then the money I make I'll use for good and it'll all work out. But the person who knows says no Allah says I have to prefer him over Allah else. Islam does not have an ends justify the means. The means have to be halal and the end has to be halal and so we have to keep that in mind right. So the preference has to be to Allah no matter what. So how do we think about this? We got to remember everything Allah gave us to do is so we can increase in love for him but the intention is important. Our intention has to be that okay I'm going to pray today so I can increase in my love for Allah. Now think about it. What is the prayer? The prayer is not just a bunch of formal surahs that we recite. That might be what we've made it into. That might be how we've been taught. It's not just a bunch of motions that we go back and forth and standing up in Sajda and Ruku and Sajda and sitting. It's not what it is. The prayer is supposed to be an intimate conversation with Allah. You're talking to Allah. You alone we worship and you alone we ask for help. You talk to him and then guide me to the straight path. Guide not just me guide us to the straight path. Right. You're speaking with Allah. When you go into subhanirabial atla you're saying glory be to the most high. You're having a conversation with Allah. That's the prayer. The prayer is an intimate conversation with Allah. People in their Sajdas are making intimate du'as from the heart. When you exit and you do salam Allah gives you a chance to ask him for whatever you want and inshaAllah it will be granted. That's what the prayer is. The prayer is not just something we're supposed to do to get it out of the way. You've got to stop seeing the prayer like that. Start seeing the prayer as your chance and my chance to connect with our Lord. Connect with him. Deedly connect. Connection is what's important. Longing is what's important. Having an intimacy with Allah is what's important. Why do people like to be alone with Allah? Why did the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam have so many months of being alone in the cave? Because there was a certain type of intimacy you get when you're just you and Allah. Allah is always with us. But there's a certain special type of focus when you and I just put ourselves in a room, close all the lights and we just pray to Allah and we just meditate and we do dhikr and we just talk with Allah. That intimacy that's what brings the love in. We have to have moments of that. This life that we live in is difficult. Dunya is tempting. There's so much technology in our lives and Slack and messages and people talking, calling and then WhatsApp and then Facebook and then Instagram and then we watch this Netflix show. All these things constantly playing in our head. What about those moments where you're just talking to your Lord? Some of the best moments in our life should be those moments. Just us and Allah having an intimate conversation and know that Allah says remember me. Remember me and I will remember you. When you are remembering Allah, He is remembering you. When you're intimately talking to Allah, there is an intimacy that you and I will feel. A sweet breeze that we will feel. Allah loves certain types of servants. He talks about that in the Quran. We'll talk about that in a second. But that intimacy is very, very, very important. Remember that's the focus. If we have not had those moments, let's make an intention right now. Once a month. If not once a week, if we can't, maybe even once a day, we're going to try to have moments of just privacy and intimacy. We would just speak to Allah. That's how love is cultivated. Private conversations with Him. Just saying, Oh Allah, this is what's going on in my life. I need your help here. I need your help here. And then when you see the help come, the love increases. And if you see the help come in a way you didn't expect to love, look, Allah is listening though. That's what you got to know. He's listening. And those are the moments in which you realize He is here to help us. And He loves us more than our parents do. Imagine He loves you more than your mom and your father and everybody in your family combined. Multiplied times a billion. Allah loves us so much. So we got to keep that in mind. So how do we go about attaining this love then? First is we regularly empty the heart of everything that takes us over. So all the issues that preoccupy our mind, we got to have moments where we just try to focus on Allah. This money and everything and this job and this salary and this investment and these kids issues and issues at school and the coronavirus and this and that. Just empty, empty, empty. And then the election and then the news and then what's Trump doing now and what's this person doing? Oh, just empty. La ilaha illallah. Then next thing we can do to inculcate love of Allah is to remember the blessings Allah has given us. When you recount the blessings Allah has given, it actually makes you worship Him more out of gratitude and gratitude endears more love for Him. So okay, subhanAllah alhamdulillah. Allah gave me this. Allah gave me eyesight. Allah gave me eyelids. Allah gave me fingernails to protect my hands from getting hurt and my fingers from getting hurt. Allah gave me skin that's coarse and thick here so I could pick things up and soft in other parts and Allah gave me a heart that beats and pumps, you know, so many gallons of blood every single day and just remember the blessings of Allah. There's so many. Allah gave me a car. If He gave you a car, Allah gave me a home. Alhamdulillah, I have a roof. If it's cold outside if I have a heater, Alhamdulillah, and if I don't have a heater, Alhamdulillah, I still have walls over my head. So all these blessings they make you thank Allah and then that develops a certain type of love. Third thing we can do if we want to attain love of Allah is to actually ask Him, Ya Allah, teach me to love you, give me the ability to love you and help me love you. And a sign of you, of Him loving you and that He wants you to love Him is that you ask Him for that love. The gifts you ask Allah for, inshaAllah you will get. Remember that. So Allah is in the opinion of His servant. If you limit Allah that oh Allah can only help me in one, two, three situations in life and you ask for very specific dunya things that's what you're going to get. But if you have an amazing opinion of Allah that Allah is vast and Allah can do anything and Allah can give anything and Allah is going to do what's best for me and you ask for big things whether you see that you get them or not that's not something to worry about. But know that Allah wants good for you if you're asking for big things or big spiritual gifts because He's giving you the inspiration to ask. How many people don't even get to ask? How many people don't get to say la ilaha illallah? That's a good thing. The fourth is to act on the traits. The fourth way to gain Allah's love is to act on the traits that Allah loves and in turn you will get special love from Him. Allah says in the Quran that Allah loves the patient that Allah loves the people who trust Him that Allah loves the people of Taqwa that Allah loves the people who turn to Him and who make Toba that Allah loves the people who are regularly trying to purify themselves. I believe that Allah loves the one who maintains justice in the world and then the one who is trying to strive towards ihsan. So the more you and I do those the more it's a sign if Allah gives us Taufiq to have those traits that Allah's love is with us and hopefully our love for Him will increase inshaAllah. The next one we already mentioned is to obey Him naturally. Love comes with obedience. We are all disobedient. We can still be disobedient and have love for Allah. But the more we love Him the more we'll try to be obedient. There's a certain limit we'll get to like if we regularly keep we all struggle on the path right? But you get to a point in the spiritual path where you're like okay I got to just conquer these certain sins I got to stop doing them. I can't just live my next 5-10 years doing the same sin I've been doing. If we are we make Toba but we got to move on at some point get past one and next. So the sign of progress there is we increase in obedience and we decrease in disobedience. We all have disobediences that we do but they should get more subtle and more refined. They shouldn't be major sins. I mean shouldn't be major sins but if we're doing major sins to minor sins to less frequently doing the minor sins right? And then we just to doing things that maybe are disliked but not haram. Slowly slowly we limit those things. We never should get content like oh I'm doing just enough right? No we ask for more. We do more. We add on more and there's different things depending on the station we're at in life depending on how old we are we're a father or a mother or a sister or a brother or a child there's different routes to increase the love more obedience. For children we serve our parents more. If we're men or women we aim to dress more modestly. There is not a limit for example of modesty. That keeps going. I'm going to start wearing clothes Allah will prefer more. This is actually a very important aspect of our deen that has been lost in the western tradition. No I have to work as man and woman to try to to be more modest because this is Allah's viewing me. If you want to increase in that love and increase in that, right? How much time am I spending serving Allah's deen serving the community of the process. I'm okay I'm going to spend 20 more minutes a week. 20 more minutes a day. Whatever it is that I can do the next thing that we'll mention in order to attain this love is to actually turn to Allah before you turn to anybody else. What does this mean? This develops the friendship with him. We have problems in our life. Before when you have a problem before you call your best friend or like your family or sibling or somebody give a call to Allah. Go pray to Raka. Try that. Okay Allah I need your help. God forbid somebody gets sick or gets in a health issue or loses their job or any difficulty or blessing or situation we need guidance and first turn to Allah whether you're sitting here sitting at work these days if you're working from home. Okay you don't need to go necessarily go pray if the time isn't there you don't need to like pray Nawafil prayer or something just have a conversation with Allah. Allah help me with this before going and seeking advice and before like messaging other people can you believe this person did this? Allah this is difficult for me. What do I do? You will get inspiration inshallah Allah will make it clear Allah guides those who strive in his way. He says that in the Quran right? So ask him and he says whoever has God consciousness Allah gives them a way out of any problem but turn to him first that's important. Prefer him before anything else the next one as we mentioned already is to develop an intimate relationship with him have conversations with him and imagine what it's going to be like not in like a physical way not in any anthropomorphic way but the feelings you will have when you meet Allah imagine what it will be like finally when this world is done and we leave this place and then inshallah we will meet Allah imagine that feeling and the state we want to be in and if we feel that oh my God we all obviously are going to feel like oh my God how am I going to present myself in front of Allah but we should also feel like a longing I can't wait to meet my Lord with all my imperfections with all my faults this is the day I've been waiting for this is the moment of life I've been waiting for everything I did was for you ya Allah everything I did was to try to get close to you and I did a lot of wrong but I hope you forgive me for that subhanAllah that we have to keep that in mind imagine that feeling and if Allah is pleased with us Allah says in the Qur'an that he is pleased with them and they are pleased with him imagine that what else could you want Allah what a gift so those things will increase the love and they'll they'll give us a spiritual breeze inside that gives us a desire to increase in nearness to him and lastly just have good thoughts about Allah and prefer him over all else try not to give preference to things that Allah would not want us to do and have good thoughts of him and have a good opinion of him we need more good opinions of Allah we need to be strict he's going to punish me in this and that like don't limit him think about him in a merciful capacity at the same time obey let's try to obey him not use Allah's mercy as an excuse for us to just like keep doing our wrongs and our sins we got to work on it Allah yuhid but tawabin he loves the people who are off turning and repentance to him we all sin a lot we say astaghfirullah astaghfirullah forgive me my lord remember that loving Allah is very important preferring him to Allah else is very important and then these traits these ways we mention to attain the love of Allah emptying the heart of Allah else number two remembering the blessings Allah gave us number three is asking him for this love number four is acting on the traits that he loves in the Quran and we act on those traits and try to embody those qualities and throughout this class we've mentioned a few of these qualities but I don't think we've covered all of them number five of course obeying him number six turning to him before we turn to anybody else number seven developing an intimate relationship with him having conversations with him longing for him thinking about what the meeting with him will be like number eight having good thoughts about Allah think good about him and lastly number nine just preferring him over all else in an inward way and in an outward way if we do these things inshaAllah things will open up and the love will open up and if we start to see our relationship with Islam with our Lord as one full of love what else could we ask for that is the goal that is the goal we need more love we need more love in our homes we need more love with our children we need to teach more people about loving about how much Allah loves us and loves them and loves humanity and loves the people who will worship him and loves even Allah has a certain type of a special type of love for the believers but there is a certain type clearly that he sustains everybody so Allah has a certain type of care you could say that he is giving everybody he is like whether you believe him or not he is like letting your heart beat and your brain move and your brain think and the hands are moving everything is working so we got to spread a message of kindness and love and the very least I would encourage all of us and our families to reorient our Islamic relationship and the way we speak about Islam as being focused on loving Allah first not on the rules not on this, not on that love of Allah and watch when love takes over everybody wants to follow the rules believe me everybody wants to follow the rules when love takes over everybody wants to do the best thing people will do more than just the basic because the love is there but when the love is missing and the rules come without the love that's not a recipe for success it's not going to lead to a dish that doesn't taste very good it's going to be like eh no but when the love is there and the rules are there and the worship is with a sincere intention ooh that's going to feel good it's going to taste good it's going to result in good and that's what we need to keep in mind in the times that we live in especially with our youth especially with the situations that we're in and we got to remember everybody has a different door so if the door of love is not the door you feel okay I mean that's kind of a limiting limitation but don't close the door of love for anybody else gotta keep the doors of love open the doors of mercy open the doors of Allah's gentleness and the doors of Allah's expansiveness open and the doors of our potential we're beings who love we're beings of light and love that's what the human beings we are so let's keep that potential love is unlimited inside of us we have an unlimited capacity inshallah to love let's not try to limit that and let's try to access the unlimited by contemplating the unlimited by contemplating the Lord and by endearing inshallah and cultivating a certain type of love for him we ask Ya Rabb Al Alameen Alhamdulillah Alhamdulillah Ya Allah that you give us your love and you give us the ability to love you and that you give us your gentle breezes and that you forgive us and pardon us for all of our sins and give us the traits that you love Ya Rabb Al Alameen and allow us to prefer you over all else and let us long for you and have intimacy Ya Rabb Al Alameen with you Ya Allah and let us have intimate conversations with you Ya Rabb Al Alameen Ya Allah regularly, inwardly and outwardly and let us focus all of our attention on you Ya Rabb Al Alameen Wa sallallahu ala wa sallam Wa barakah ala Sayyidina Muhammad Ya Allah and we ask that you give us a special love for your beloved Prophet sallallahu ala wa sallam Wa sallallahu ala wa sallam Wa alhamdulillah Rabb Al Alameen Wa zakim ala khayr, salam alaikum inshallah we will see you all next week salam alaikum