 Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim, Alhamdulillahi rabbilalameen wa sallallahu ala sallim wa barakah ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallim, Alhamdulillahi. So this is our second discussion in this conversation where we've been talking about faith and trying times. And we know that right now many of us are living in some of the most interesting, different and probably difficult times that we've had as a community, as a society, as a global community and probably in our entire lifetime. And so last time we were talking about how difficulty is really a chance for us to look deep down inside of ourselves and for us to think where exactly are we going to go with our life? Are we going to go in the direction that God wants us to go in? Are we going to stay neutral or are we going to go in the opposite direction that God wants us to go into? And that's one of the main wisdoms behind tests. One of the main wisdoms behind why Allah SWT sends difficulty in our life, why God will send down tests is really just examine, okay, let me see these human beings. I created them. I gave them intelligence. I gave them a brain. I gave them the ability to take action, to make choices. Now let's see how exactly they exercise that intelligence. Which choices they make and which direction they go in. Do they go in the right direction? Do they go in the wrong direction? Do they follow the guidance that I sent them or do they ignore that guidance? You can examine that at the level of all of humanity. You can think about that at the level of our own societies or our own communities. You can think about that at the level of our own families. And of course, the most important one is to think about that at the level of our individual self. And so it is a chance for us to determine which direction we're going to go in. The next point that we mentioned is that every event in life, right, there's always some wisdom, deeper wisdom behind whatever is going on. When things are designed divinely by God, you can't make mistakes. And so he is going to design things with some purpose behind them. And there is going to be a general wisdom behind why things are going to occur. And the human being, you could have one person in a test who learns a lot and another person, right, who fails that test, just like, for example, in college, when our teachers are in high school or ever type time in life or our teacher administers a test that they administer an exam, you have a portion of the people in the class who were prepared for that exam and they get an A and then you have a portion of people who were decently prepared, they get the B and then you do have a portion of people who failed the exam. They were not prepared. They get a D or they get an F. So our moments of life are times for us to prepare for when the exam comes in our way, how exactly are we going to respond? And it's in the response that we have that that evaluation is actually happening. And so we could respond with an A level response, an A plus response, and you could have somebody in the same household, one person responding with an A type response, another person responding with a C type response, another person responding with an F type of response, if that makes sense. But it's a time, it doesn't mean though, right, that on the next test, that person who maybe failed can't get the A, right? No, for sure they can and we all can. And it does also doesn't mean that the person who got the A can't stumble and decrease. It's very, very, very much possible. We have to keep exerting effort and keep working hard. And we also mentioned this idea that the affair of the believer and the hadith of the Prophet peace be upon him in a statement that he mentioned, it's the affair of the believer, it's all good, right? When the believer is tested, they're patient. And when they're given, they're grateful. And so our situation, Hamdran, this is, he said this is only for the believer. So as believers going through this situation, going through this coronavirus situation, this quarantine time, the difficulties we might be facing with our families, with our loved ones, with others in our community, the type of hurt that is happening or the grief that's happening in our hearts when we see the situation and the calamities that many in the community are going through that our healthcare workers are going through, it's a time for us to, we're going to be impacted, things aren't going to be quote unquote normal. But we have to know, okay, it is not necessarily a bad thing that the affair of the believer is all good. Because when we are tested, we are supposed to remain in a certain state in a state of patience. And when we are given, okay, Hamdrullah, we remain in a state of gratitude. And the higher level than that even is when somebody is tested that they remain in a state of gratitude, that Hamdrullah, God knows what he's doing and what the deeper wisdom behind things are. So today we're really going to be focusing on this idea that, you know, God really believes in you and I, he believes in us, he wants us to do well, he wants us to succeed, he wants us to pass the test, he wants us to get an A grade, he wants us to do really, really well. The question though is, do you believe in yourself? Do I believe in myself? Do you and I really believe that we can change and that we have the ability to change, we have the ability to work on ourselves. And for most of us, it depends on the stage that we're at in life and it depends on our mindset. Now, before we kind of get to that part though, let's talk a little bit about one of the other main kind of goals of life and that is to always be learning, right? God wants the human being to always be learning and to always be deepening in their relationship with him. One of the major goals of life is for us to deepen our relationship with God every single day and the more you learn about someone, especially in this case, the more you and I learn about Allah, the more we are driven to love him, right? When you first start to fall in love with someone, the more you learn about them, generally all these amazing traits that they have, these good traits that they have, you start to deepen that love, deepen that relationship about them or for them, right? And similarly, that's how it is with Allah, that the more we learn about Allah, okay, this is how God is, huh? Okay, this is how he is in this situation. Okay, this is how he has taught me about himself in this situation, okay? Alhamdulillah, and you and I start to deepen in that love, deepen in that connection with him. Keep in mind that it's most important for us in these times, one of the main lessons we can take away is to have a one-on-one connection with God. That's the most important thing. Have your own connection with God. It's going to be different for everybody. For some people, it may manifest the most through one act of worship. For others, through a different act of worship. For some people, they may not even be at the stage where it's properly manifesting with an act of worship. But don't think that you don't have a relationship just because you're not actually praying or engaging in something that would be a sign of that relationship. No, you have that relationship, you know. You and I know deep down inside when that relationship is there, when we're calling on God. Now, it doesn't mean it's the perfect relationship, every relationship needs work. In that relationship, it needs work. It needs time in order to get to the point where you're doing what you're the one who loves you, you're doing what they would want you to do. You're doing what God wants you to do. But at the same time, it doesn't mean that relationship is non-existent. But what's one of the ways to deepen that relationship? Okay, it's to start to learn a bit more about God. It's to learn about the one who you and I are trying to love and we are trying to figure out how do we build this deeper connection with him. And so every day, a new attribute of Allah can manifest and does usually manifest in our life. Sometimes every year, sometimes every month, but sometimes every week, sometimes every day. Now, in this coronavirus situation, different attributes of Allah are manifesting. It's upon us to figure out which attribute of it is he trying to show me. And which, what part of this attribute can I take to learn to deepen my relationship with him and then eventually to try and change myself in order to make myself more pleasing to God. And keep in mind that life is a journey. It's a journey to learn. We came from God and we're returning to God, right? Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi rajiun. This famous verse that many of us have heard, maybe our parents or our loved ones saying when somebody passes away or we say when someone passes away, the meaning of it is that we belong to God and to God we are returning and we will then return. Now it's like we came from him, right? And we are going to go back to him. In this interim time, the human being deep down inside, we're trying to remember him. We're trying to recall him. We're trying to think about, wow, what were those days, those moments like when I was actually with him? Because you and I were with him. You were with him. I was with him. Everybody was with him. There's a, it's mentioned in Allah's holy book. It's mentioned in the Quran where God mentioned, God says that there was a day known as the day of the covenant. The day where he created the human spirits, the souls and he asked all of them. He had them all outspread out on a plane and he asked all of them, am I not your Lord? Allah is to be Rabbikum is the Arabic. Am I not your Lord? And we all said yes. We all said qalu bala, that we responded yes, you are. And we, and he said, okay. So then don't say on the day of judgment that this didn't happen. Now, what was this? This happened here. The human being we forget. One of the meanings of the word insan according to some of the Ulama is this idea of being forgetful. We will forget. The human being is by nature we are forgetful. So we forgot that day. Some people remember, some people remember more, the more they try to remember, but others we forget. Life is really a journey to try to recall what were the sweetness, what was that sweetness of that moment like? And when we're feeling low, when we're feeling down, when we're feeling depressed, when we're feeling abandoned, when we're feeling lonely, when we're feeling alone, when we're feeling like nobody has our back, when we're feeling like nobody's with us, just keep in mind that the one who created you does have your back and he is with you. And the more you try to remember that moment and remember him, the easier it's going to be to try to calm down those worries. That's one of the main lessons we can take away from today and from this specific event that took place, right? That we came from God and we're returning to God. And in between, really, we just got to make sure we don't mess up majorly. And that's really the goal is just try not, we just got to try not to like screw up majorly. That would be great. And if we can do some good along the way, that's also great, alhamdulillah. And if we can please Allah, that's the best thing that we can do, right? But at the very least, we want to try not to like really just screw up majorly. That would be awesome. If we keep that up, that's generally going to be a good response that we could have. But one of the ways in which this period of where we came from him and we're returning back to him, where we're trying to remember him is to learn more about him. Because the one you, oh, the one you remembered, right? Oh, I learned something about them. Oh yeah, I remember that. That's what, that's the way I know God's mormon. I know deep down inside, there's a part of you that knows, yes, he is the most merciful. His name ar-Rahman. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. His name ar-Rahman means the most merciful. Oh, I know that. There's a part of your core you don't even know. I don't even know, but it knows that attribute of Allah. Oh, his name, the al-Latif, the most subtle and the most gentle, oh, I know that one. I know that because he was most gentle to me when I was in my mom's womb, even though your intellect wasn't aware of that, there was a reality of yours that was aware of that. Allah was being gentle with you. So he's aware of that, right? He's aware of that specific, those specific moments and he wants you and I to remember those moments. So there's different names, different attributes that are going to manifest. Now, keep in mind though, all the attributes aren't gonna be fun and ones that make us expand. Some of them are gonna be ones that make us contract. Think about the human heart. It expands and it contracts. It expands and it contracts. It expands and it contracts, right? And Allah mentions in the Quran that you have the day and the night, right? That the day is the day where the sun is bright and the night and the sun has set and it is dark and it is a time of contraction generally. Things get quieter, the day, things are more alive. Then quiet and then alive and then quiet and then alive. In our time right now, maybe even the day is a bit more quiet than we're used to, right? What does that mean though? It means, one of the deeper meanings behind this is that you are going to have a day of difficulty, or sorry, a day of ease and then a night of contraction that just like the heart goes like this, it's contracting and it's expanding and it's contracting and it's expanding and it's contracting. You will have times of life where it's, okay, it's expanding and it's contracting. It's expanding and it's contracting. And so the goal and the wisdom behind those times is for us to learn, okay, what is Allah trying to teach us in the moments of expansion? Usually that's, alhamdulillah, we're usually happy in those moments, it's easy. That's what we mean by expansion. Things are easy, we're happy, we're grateful, we're, or at least we're trying to be, we are, things are going well, we're healthy, things, there's no money problems, family time is good, everything is going well. And then there's a time of contraction, okay, things get difficult, maybe it's financially difficult or maybe it's physically difficult with an illness or maybe it's difficult in our relationships with people or maybe it's difficult with our friends or maybe it's difficult with our society or our community or in this situation, definitely a time of contraction with this coronavirus or we're literally limited in terms of what we can do. But now the wisdom behind it is that the heart, if it just stayed expanded the whole time, right, the physical heart, it would be in trouble. You need it to go like this and for the, for the blood to pump. Keep in mind that you, spiritually, me, spiritually, we need that whole contract, contraction, expansion, contraction, expansion, we need that in order for us to grow, in order for us to develop and we can learn different names and different attributes of Allah in those times. And then we can actualize different aspects of ourselves in those times, right? So keep that in mind that it's not always going to be that you are going to learn the most in ease. Most of the time we learn the same amount if not more when things are hard and we are supposed to be learning. So again, the takeaway here, the second takeaway for today is that learn and see what you're supposed to be learning in the times of difficulty and in the times of contraction. When things are a little bit restricted and when things get difficult. And how does that work? Allah mentions in the Quran that when he tests you he digs up a part of you that's dormant. It's deep down inside, right? It's like you didn't really know it was there, right? But it's stirred up when the test comes. Now, some people deep down inside their metaphysical cup they could have sugar. And when it's stirred deep down inside, sweetness manifests and beauty manifests and easement and they're able to handle that situation. But for a lot of us deep down inside it's not sugar. Maybe it's vinegar or something, right? That deep down inside of us we haven't really seen parts of us. You're like, I didn't even sometimes we go through life. We're like, I didn't even know this part of me existed. You see a family member or situation like I didn't even know you were like that. Like I've known you for this long and I didn't even know because you see, okay when things get tough a different part of the human being comes out. And many times we're seeing Alhamdulillah in the society that for humanity, it's a good part of the human being comes out. Like I'm sure, you know, people, like we watch videos or these days videos are being circulated on social media, right? There's videos of, I was reading an article that other day that there was a family who was at the checkout counter like a target or a supermarket and they weren't able to pay or sorry, they were finishing their groceries, they were checking out and after they got to like two thirds of the groceries the lady was like, okay, this will be your total. And she was like, oh, I don't have enough money to pay for everything. So she was gonna say, okay, just put away one third of them like just put them back. I'm not gonna be able to afford it. And there was a woman who was behind them and she knew things were difficult and that this family was going through difficult. She's like, no, you don't even worry about it. I'm taking care of all of it. And she just gave the credit card and she paid for everything. I mean, Alhamdulillah, that's the beautiful types of experiences that are coming out. Humanity is showing a different side of themselves. You have people who are trying their best to help in whatever way possible, right? People, you have even companies that are building ventilators that their core job is to build cars and they're building ventilators for free. Like Subhanallah, these are really, really good things. It's when that was stirred, what came out, right? And then you have other people who they're fighting. You have other videos that go around and people are like fighting for toilet paper and fighting for the last can of food that is a darker side of us came out. But don't think that dark side is the only side. No, there is a good side. There is a lighter side of us that can come out. And so it's when that test comes, a part in us that's the dormant part is going to manifest. And so you would, I just have to know, okay, this is now, I'm trying to see what I'm really made of, right? When that situation happens, what am I really made of? And that's going to be able to assist us and then figuring out what we need to work on. That if we are, when things are difficult, if we show that we're really just made of vinegar or lack of a better word, right? Or of ingredients that we don't like to eat regularly, we need to know, okay, I got to work on this, right? If I'm yelling all the time and super pissed and angry and just not in a good mood, okay, I got to work on that, right? But if I'm in a state of trying to help people or if I'm in a state of trying to keep, stay positive and keep my family members positive and all this, okay, that's a good sign. I need to increase those traits. That's one of the ways of us testing. So we all like, everybody likes sugar, everybody likes sweets, right? Everybody likes their favorite, their favorite sweet. We all got like a little candy stash or sugar stash or cookie stash or whatever it is that we go back to time to time again, our little guilty pleasures. Just keep in mind that just like you like the sweetness, right? People like to see sweetness come from you and God likes to see sweet traits manifest. God likes to see sweet traits manifest from you. And so just keep in mind that the more goodness that manifests when a test comes, the better sign it is. And the more of the side that we don't really appreciate about ourselves that kind of darker side that manifests, the more it is that we note, okay, I want to, I need to work on this. I need to figure out a way to fix this. So now we want to get to this other idea that Allah really as we go through this journey, right? We will start to notice, oh, okay, I got, like I'm really worried all the time. I'm really, really anxious. Okay, that's something I've got to figure out. I can fix this. Like the Quran has, the Quran is like a book that has all these cures. It's just every single chapter has cures for different situations, different diseases. But those cures, they're not like, it's not like you can take the Quran and like eat a page of it and then you're going to get cured. That's not how it works. It's like the cures are, you read them, you think about them, you apply them, you ask God to help you, and then the cure helps us with our problems. That's the Quran, but it's full of secrets. It's full of all these like secret cures and secret ways for us to get better and improve in our life. And so one of the secrets of the Quran is that God is helping us solve this problem of not having any confidence in ourselves. That many of us, we go through times where we're not confident, where we just feel empty deep down inside and we don't feel like we're anything. We feel like we have no worth. Now the challenge is, if you aren't empty, but you think you're empty, there's a problem. Like take this water bottle, for example. If I thought this water bottle was empty, but let's say it's like half full, well, I wouldn't even use it and I wouldn't use it to quench my thirst. And then I would need something and I'd be like talking and I'd be really, really thirsty. And I wouldn't know there's something right here that I could have taken to help me with my thirst. That's how we all are. Everybody, where Allah has given us immense potential, sometimes overflowing type of potential, but we think of ourselves as empty. We're like, I can't do it. I can't work. I can't change myself. I can't fix myself. I can't change my life. I have no hope. Don't think like that about yourself. Don't think like that about yourself. Think and realize that Allah believes in you. So if God who created you believes in you, then you have to believe in yourself. We have to believe in ourselves. And what does that mean? It means very practically that Allah, he created us with a lot of potential and with very, very specific potential for each person. We all have unique, unique DNA structures that are part of the wisdom of us. Reflecting on that is we have unique abilities that God has given us that we're supposed to ideally use in pleasing him. But think about it like this. Sometimes we think God is out to examine us and then get us and then, okay, they didn't do what they were supposed to do. Boom, they're out. They're going to hell. No, that's how we start to think. That's not how it works. No, God is like, again, figuratively speaking, it's like he's rooting us on. He's cheering us on. He wants us to do well. He wants us to succeed. Everybody, he wants humanity generally to succeed, especially the believers. He wants them to succeed. But we sometimes are like, oh, I can't do it. Or I don't have the ability to do it. I'm so incapable. There is a degree of us admitting, okay, I myself alone am weak. I can't do it without Allah's help. We know that. In this situation we're seeing in the coronavirus that we can't even do anything ourselves. We need God for everything. Alhamdulillah. We should keep that in mind always. But at the same time, it's not about giving up on yourself. So let's look at a story in the Quran where Allah mentioned in the Quran he's talking to the angels and he's telling the angels, I'm going to create a representative. I'm going to create my representative on earth. Now imagine if you want someone to represent you, that means you've got to trust them. That means you have to really believe in them, right? And that means that you really have to see them as capable of doing the job, of doing an amazing job. That's not easy. Very few of us would say, for example, like for a major situation in life, like I'm going to let this person represent me, right? Like let's say the governor of a state, if they're just like, okay, I got to go somewhere. I'm letting the lieutenant governor just there representing me completely. What they say goes, right? Or your mom might say, okay, what your big sister says, it goes. She trusts them, right? But then like, maybe in the future, it's, or maybe five years ago, it wasn't, they weren't able to assign their representation to somebody, right? Maybe it's like, oh, they're not mature enough. You had to take on that responsibility. God is saying, I'm going to create a Khalifa on earth, a representative. Who's going to represent me? Now that's a big deal. That hasn't happened, right? In this situation, Allah has not allowed somebody before to represent him. What does that even mean? That he's going to let someone represent him. He wants them to represent goodness. He wants them to represent justice. He wants them to represent the spreading goodness. He wants them to represent helping people. He wants them to represent mercy. He wants them to represent courage. He wants them to represent balance. He wants them to represent all of these amazing traits that are encouraged in the Quran. But he's saying, okay, I'm going to represent them. The angels are like, hold up. Are you telling us that you're going to create somebody who's going to sow corruption on the earth and shed blood? So they are asking God for clarification because, see, the angels they've seen, they've been around for a long time. So they saw there was a creation before the humans on the earth, the jinn. And the jinn, they create a lot of problems on the earth, right? And so the angels are like, are you going to create another being like that? Because we just want to understand. Think about it, what are these things? It's so corruption and shed blood. So those are the signs of not representing God, essentially, right? You're sowing corruption, you're creating problems for other people, you're spreading bad, you're spreading problems, and shedding blood. Those are very, very obvious signs. And then any other quote unquote signs of evil that manifest from that, it's a sign of us not representing God. And so promoting war and promoting evil and promoting bad character and promoting societal corruption and promoting acts that are corrupt, all of these types of things are signs of not representing God, promoting governments that are uncorrupt, all these types of signs, right? Now Allah says to the angels, He says, I know what you don't know. I know what you don't know. Now, many of the commentators, the commentators, those are the people who talk about what the Quran could mean here. They're saying, okay, Allah knows about us what the angels didn't know. There was a secret there that Allah knew about this creation that He created. And then Allah says He taught Adam, alaihi salam, Adam, who's our father, Adam and Eve, right? Our father and mother, Adam alaihi salam, the first human created. He taught Adam alaihi salam the names, the secrets, the names of everything. He gave him what it, and He distinguished him with something special of knowledge. And then He asked the angels the same questions. He asked Adam alaihi salam, Adam alaihi salam got the questions right. He asked the angels, they didn't know the answer to the questions. And then He told the angels, I know what you do not know. And He had them bow down to Adam alaihi salam because of a secret in him. Now, what is that here? Allah is saying, I mean this for us, if we really reflect on this story, what is the takeaway? That God is showing us that He believes in us because He's saying that Adam and all His children, alaihi salam, Adam alaihi salam and all His children, Bunny Adam, right? Known as the children of Adam, I believe in them. They have the ability, if they just knew to represent me, they have the ability, if they just knew to really, really, really be the best of people. They have that ability inside of them. In fact, to such the extent that I had the angels bow down to Adam alaihi salam, right? That's a really, really significant deal. So what is that show? God is on our side. God is rooting for us. God wants us to do well. He's given the human being amazing potential and amazing traits. And He's given the human being so much potential and so much ability to do good that sometimes it's overwhelming to even realize like how could He trust a being like the human being with something like that. But it's exemplified the most in the prophets. The prophets have, they fulfilled that mission of representing God. They fulfilled that mission that no matter what they stood for justice, no matter what they stood for good, no matter what they stood for, trying to help people. That's what the prophets, peace be upon them all, stood for. And they represented God in the best way possible. Question is what we should take away from here is He believes in us and are we representing Him? Are we believing in ourselves in the way that God wants us to believe in ourselves? Because He's believing in us. He knows that we have that ability. And then it's even more for the umma of the prophet, peace be upon Him. For the community, the umma known as the community of the prophet, peace be upon Him. This trait is even more magnified. That Allah says in the Quran, كُنْتُمْ خَيْرَ أُمْمَةِنْ أُخْرِجَتْ لِنَّاسَ That you were the best people ever sent for to humanity. Referring to the umma of the prophet, peace be upon him. Referring to the community of the prophet, peace be upon him. And then think about it. Already, Bani Adam is already like a chosen group of Allah's creation. That He didn't ennoble anybody as much as He ennoble the one who is the children, the Adam of Islam and His descendants. So all of humanity, He gave them potential. Now, it doesn't mean we act on the potential, but He gave it to us. He says in the Quran, وَلَكَدْ كَرَمْنَا بَنْيْعَدْمْ And we ennobled Bani Adam. We ennobled them. We, Allah ennobled you. If Allah ennobled you, don't think that you're nothing. Don't think you're in, think you're nothing from a no potential point of view. We shouldn't think we're something from like, we shouldn't think we're arrogant. We shouldn't be arrogant or think on big shot. That's not what we're talking about here. But don't demean yourself. Don't think that you have no potential. Allah ennobled you. Don't think that you can't change yourself. Allah ennobled you. Don't think that you can't work on yourself. Allah ennobled you. Don't think that there's any family member or person in your family that you want to get help, that they can't be helped. Allah ennobled them. Allah will give them help. Don't give up on anybody. Because Allah ennobled them. So how are you, who are you to demean them? Who are you to say, oh, you can't change? Who are you to say, oh, you did a sin so big that nothing, you can't be forgiven? That's not my place. It's not your place. It's not anyone's place to say that to anybody. Because Allah ennobled them and gave them the potential. And then he gave the ummah of the Prophet ﷺ, peace be upon him, a more amazing selection, a more kind of like the cream of the crop, right? And what did he say to them? He said to them that you are the best people ever sent forth to humanity. You are the best people ever sent forth to humanity. That's amazing. And he dignified them, right? In a special way. Because of the fact that they were the ummah of the greatest of creation. And he told them that the way you represent that is by enjoining good and forbidding evil. By basically trying to help people and trying to prevent people who are creating problems and doing bad things to do bad things, right? That's one of the ways to show this sign of where we are at and where the ummah of the Prophet ﷺ is at. So now the next point. Do you and I believe in ourselves? That's the question we have to ask, right? Do we think we can change? Do we think that we can be different? Do we think that we can work on ourselves? And the answer is, I hope we do, right? Because it's now is the time. It is the time for us to have aspiration. It is the time for us to have himmah. It is the time for us to want to change. It is the time for us to have a deep desire, deep down inside to want to be different. This is the time. If now it's not the time, when else will we do it? Right? So believe in yourself in a way that God has believed in you. And keep in mind that when you believe in yourself, when you believe in Allah most importantly, when you know that you can change and you set yourself on a goal, Allah will help you with every other part of life. Because so the next piece for us to take away is believe in yourself and then set yourself, set out on a goal. Set out on a goal to please Allah. Set out on a goal to change your life, to change ourselves to want to be in among Allah's favorite people. Because there's a hadith where in a statement of the Prophet ﷺ that whoever sets all of their goals and aspirations as Allah to the next life, that Allah will take care of all their other goals and aspirations. That whoever makes their aspirations singular towards Allah and his messenger, towards the next life, Allah will take care of all their other goals. So if you and I just shift our focus, we stop focusing on all this other, oh I want to get this position, I want to have this much money, I want to have all these things, we have goals. But that's not the sole focus of our life. We focus our life on God. We focus our life on pleasing God. Amazing things can happen. Amazing things can happen, right? And so we have to try to increase our potential by having the right goal. And again, this is where we have to step back depending on the situation that we are at in life. Maybe we, somebody told us we're not religious enough. Maybe someone said that. Maybe somebody said you did such a big sin that you can never be forgiven, you can never change. Just push, you know, just gently, just don't worry about what that person said because believe that Allah can forgive. There was a man, it's a narrative in the hadith, that there was a man who had killed, the Prophet ﷺ said, there was a man who had killed 99 people. And he went to a person who was known devoutly to worship a lot. And he asked him, is there a chance for me to be forgiven? And the worshipper who, again, he had a lot of worship, but he didn't have much knowledge. He said, no, no, no, there's no chance that you're gonna be forgiven for all, he wanted to change. He finally realized after killing so many people that I, this is not something I should have done. And he wanted to change. And the worshipper was like, nope, yep, no hope for you. So he killed them too, boom. He's out, he's killed a hundred people now. Then he goes to a person of knowledge. And the person he asked him, is there hope for me? I've killed a hundred people. Is there hope for me to change? Well, God forgive me. He says, yes, there is hope. Just pause here for a second. Now think the difference even in our life between if you talk to somebody, you might think they're really religious because they worship a lot. Don't go to them for your religious questions. Go to somebody who's qualified and who knows because that person clearly, we're learning from the story, could not know that much. So you could worship, we could pray a lot fast to all do all this stuff, but it doesn't mean, and that's all good, but it doesn't mean that that person has some type of actual deeper knowledge or deeper understanding. And this happens many times in our communities where we will think just because we have, that we've been making a lot of thicker and prayer and all this stuff. And now at some point or another that makes that person knowledgeable and not necessarily at all unless that person has spent time learning, right? So be very, very careful then because you might go to somebody who you see, oh, I made this mistake. Is there a chance for me to be forgiven? And they're like, how big was the mistake? That's not even a question. That shouldn't even be part of the conversation. There is no too big of a mistake or too small of a mistake. It's in the eyes of God, everything can be forgiven. So then what happens? The man says, yes, you can be forgiven, but you have to go to this town and you have to go to this town and you will find people there who are good people and they're believers and spend time with them. He says, okay. And so he sets off on his journey and as he's walking there, he dies. And now what happens? God sends the angel of wrath and the angel of mercy and he sends them and he says, okay, angel of wrath is like, yo, yo, yo, he killed a hundred people. He's coming with me. He's going to hell. He's in there no way. The angel of mercy is like, nope. He wanted to change his life. He had set out on the right path. Let me help him. He want, like, I'm taking him with me. So they're disputing. And then God tells him, okay, measure, measure the distance. If he's closer to the place that he left, that he embarked on, right? And to where he is now, okay, angel of wrath, you take him. But if he's closer to the place where he was going, even just a little bit closer, angel of mercy, he's yours. Okay, so Subhanallah, they measure. And there's different narrations about this. One of the ones that I have heard though, is that they measure. And he's just slightly closer to the place that he left. So the angel of wrath is like, okay, he's coming with me, right? Like he was, you know, he'd killed so many people. He wasn't closer to the place he was going to. He's coming with me. And in one of the narrations, they say Allah, Allah moved the earth. He moved the earth and shifted the line a little bit this way. And then he became closer to the place that he was going. And the angel of mercy takes him and that person, even that person is forgiven. Subhanallah. What is it deep down inside? It's a desire that I'm going to change. But he was forgiven, not when he was doing, it's not like, okay, he was doing the killings and all these major harms. And then he said, oh, I'll change one day. But like that one day is some off day in the future that he doesn't know. No, no, no, no, no. He had now set off on the journey to change. And Allah recognized that he set off and Allah changed him. Sorry, Allah forgave him because he had that desire to change. So if you and I think I'm not religious enough, I can't change. I can't work on myself. I can't become somebody of goodness. All of these thoughts we might have. Remember this story. Allah can forgive anybody and that he's on your side and he will rig it in your favor to help you. But you have to set off today or tomorrow, whenever we can. But ideally now on that path to change it, we should make an intention. One of the takeaways from this then is to make an intention now. I want to change. I want to work on myself. I want to be somebody of goodness. I want to get rid of the bad inside of me. I want to get rid of the sin inside of me and I want to set off on a path of goodness and we just go one by one. Doesn't mean all of a sudden somebody becomes some super spiritual saint, super saint, right? That's just flying around, worshiping. No, no, no, no, no. That's what we're talking about. It's just one by one. We work on ourselves, right? And maybe though somebody told us, okay, well, maybe we start to believe though, maybe we're in the next category where we start to believe, well, there's really no hope. That I made the law a bunch of times and it didn't really work. I prayed so much. I was never the person who did wrong and yet I still had trouble in my life. We might have these questions that pop up and we didn't get the answer that we wanted to. And so we say, what's the point, right? Like we kind of know God is there, but we're kind of like, is he really even listening to me? Maybe I'm in some small group of people that he's not listening to. We start to get these weird questions in our head. Remind you here of the story of the Prophet Zachariah, alaihi salam, where he made dua'ah to Allah that him and his wife didn't have a child and he wanted someone to inherit the prophecy. And so he made dua'ah to his Lord, to Allah and he asked him. And he asked him. And he asked him and he kept asking him for decades it's mentioned that he asked him. And then Allah finally, after decades of asking him, he never gave up hope in God and he's starting the dua'ah, he tells Allah, Ya Rabb, oh my Lord, you never let me down. I know you're not gonna let me down this time. It doesn't mean he's gonna answer in the time that you want but he knows Allah will not let him down. So have confidence in that, that he's not gonna let you down. And then he asked and eventually he was given the Prophet Yahya, Yahya alaihi salam, the Prophet John or known as John the Baptist in other traditions. Now again, think about that. If a Prophet whose dua'ah is accepted always, the Prophet's dua'ahs are accepted and they're so close to Allah, they're in such close spiritual proximity with Allah, had to ask so many times, that's all good if we have to ask a lot but we shouldn't forget, we should not give up, we should never give up in the situation that we have. So whatever voice we have inside, that's the voice that tells us we have no hope, the voice that tells us that I can never change, the voice that tells us that I haven't really lived my life to the fullest yet and so why should I change now? Let me first have all the quote unquote fun I wanna have and then I'll finally change, right? Just know that when you do that, you're stifling your potential because you have potential for way more fun. The high of spirituality, the high of being close to Allah is far better than the high of all the other things that many of us are caught up in. It's far better because those are temporary highs, they're temporary highs and then they result in deep lows. That the high of taking a hit of weed or the high of taking a sip of alcohol or the high of looking at haram and engaging in something inappropriate, the high of being in a relationship we shouldn't be, all these are temporary highs and they result in deep lows but the high of trying to do the right thing, it might have some difficulty to get there but it results in a sustained high, like a sustained meaning, a spiritual calmness, right? And that is what we wanna be aiming for but it just takes a little bit of initial inertia and time and energy and then it sets in. And so don't lose hope. Don't lose hope even in the times that we're in. Many of us, we might be thinking, oh my God, like this is, this coronavirus situation is so intense, maybe the world is ending, maybe all these, we're unsure what's going on. Just realize that if you and I want to still have hope we have to remember that there have been times in the past that have been worse than this and people have lived through them and they have still tried to change. That usually the best change makers emerge in the worst of times. Look at all of the amazing people who emerged after such difficult conditions that the African-American community went through in the United States. All the amazing leaders that emerged, Malcolm X being at one of the foremost of those leaders, Martin Luther King, who emerged after such difficulty but great leaders emerged. After this difficulty, let the leader inside of you emerge. There's this famous name of be the change you wish to see in the world. When you and I wish to see things changing, we want to, we should have a desire inside to want to change and to want to help other people. And remember, it's all about how you view yourself and how you view your potential. That when the people who, in the community of the Prophet Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, when they saw the Prophet peace be upon him, they didn't see the messenger of God. They saw the orphan of Bunny Hashem, the orphan, he was an orphan of this tribe. He didn't really have much. They thought, oh, he was a, you know, his father passed away when he was young. His mother, or father passed away before birth. He was born. His mother passed away when he was young. That's who they saw. They didn't, they, and there, for them, their status was measured by all of these outward things. But Allah, Allah saw in him the messenger of God. And then the Prophet Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, eventually, right, when he realized he is the messenger of Allah, that that's who he saw himself as. Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. Don't forget, forget what everybody sees you as. See yourself as somebody who has potential to change. See yourself as somebody who has the ability to do good. See yourself as somebody who has the ability to make an impact. And then know that Allah already sees you as somebody who has that potential and who is his representative. And so now comes then, what is the plan? What is the roadmap to change? How do we use our faith in the times that we're in to actually increase, to actually become closer to God? First is we start with just reflection. Where are we weak? And where are we strong? Like, where are we, what areas are we weakened? And what areas can we improve in? Then we start, the first ingredient for changing is starting with knowledge. And knowledge is an amazing thing, right? That there was a night in a cave that changed all of humanity. 14, over 1,400 years ago, 1,400 years ago, there was a night in a cave where knowledge was revealed and it changed everything for all of humanity, changed the state of humanity. And it was in that story goes that the Prophet peace be upon him, he was in the cave known as Ghad-e-Hirat. He was in this cave and he would meditate. He would go for long periods of time. It was a cave on the outskirts of Makkah in the mountains. You can still go to it today in Makkah. And he would go and he could see the Ka'bah from there and he would, in his way, he was only, he only believed in Allah and he would be worshiping Allah. And he had such pure intentions and such good intentions. He would regularly go to this cave and then one night that's when the revelation came down, right? That many believe that the Muslims, we believe this is known as the night of power, where Jibril, alaihi salam, the angel Gabriel, the archangel descended and he appeared actually to the Prophet peace be upon him and he commanded him. He said, Iqra, recite. Iqra, recite, read. Iqra, read. Iqra, bismi rabbika ladhi khalaq, khalaq al-insana min alaq, right? That he commanded him. Read, recite in the name of your Lord. The Lord who created the human being from klat, khalaq al-insana min alaq, right? And then he commands the Prophet peace be upon him to read and then the verses go on and they talk about knowledge. That the one who created you and atlam al-insan ma'lam ya'lam, that he taught the human being what he did not know. Again, emphasizing knowledge. The first revelation that came down was talking about knowledge and one of the wisdoms of revelation when it's revealed is revealing knowledge that's heavenly. The best type of knowledge, only the prophets have access to the best type of knowledge. We can access small parts of that, right? The prophets have access to divine heavenly knowledge and that's revealed in the form of revelation which is why they are so amazing and which is why we have such strong reverence for the prophets and that we want to love them and we should want to have immense love for the Prophet peace be upon him because of this access to divine knowledge that we would not know of and so that knowledge then sparked a change and changed him and then changed all of society and then changed the humanity as we know it, right? That the best and the greatest of religions was introduced to humanity and subhanAllah, the course of the world changed after that. What does that mean? That knowledge can make a big difference. Just opening a book, Allah can reveal meaning open something for you not reveal something directly to you but He can give you an opening by you reading something, reading the Quran, He can make you understand that verse in a way that could change your life or by you listening to something or watching, whatever it is, He can give you that understanding and so start that change. The takeaway here is start that process of change with knowledge, with seeking some type of knowledge, with learning something good and reducing the things that are entering us that are not so good. That's a two-step, part-step to knowledge. Limit the ignorance, increase the knowledge. So we decrease, okay, one for all the videos that we watch on YouTube or TikTok or Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat, okay, reduce one and add in a good video of something beneficial, slowly. Okay, reduce something we're watching and like a show and add in a book to read. Just slowly increase the knowledge and there are types of knowledge and inshallah we'll talk about that next time. What types of knowledge we can spend our time learning that will be beneficial as it starts with knowledge. The second ingredient then is to add in devotion. That regard of devotion meaning turning to God. Regardless of how serious we are, we should be on a path to trying to fix ourselves and regularly turning to Allah. At points in our life, we wanna have that inside of us, right? But how do we do that? We might not be able to see it as seriously as maybe some other people in our life but we just have to take one step at a time. But the best, the main takeaway here is once that knowledge has settled in, keep in mind that God is your friend. He's your best friend. See him though as your best friend. That when you need something, just the one takeaway here is talk to him just for little bits of time, five minutes a day. Okay, I'm gonna talk to God. Why? Because Allah says that when you come to him a hand span, he comes to you an arms length, okay? So you think about it, you come to him like this much, he comes to you like four or five times this much. Then he says, when you come to him, walking, he comes to you running. Imagine if you go to Allah running, what's gonna happen to you? SubhanAllah. Imagine if you go to Allah running, what is going to happen? You have immense potentials, just start walking to Allah. How do you walk to Allah? Even if somebody's not praying at all and they don't have the himmah to pray, just have a conversation with him. Put down the phone for a few minutes and have a conversation with Allah only, right? And he does have a phone number if you need to reach him. It's called, it's the number is two, four, four, three, four. And there's a few extensions you can have if you wanna get to him even faster. Two rakat for Fajr, four rakat for Doher, four rakat for Asr, three rakat for Makrib, four rakat for Isha. That's the call. He's there every time you go to that prayer rug. He's there, ready for you, right? In a very, very real way. Allah is there. Allah says he's closer to you than your jugular vein. He's closer to you. He mentions that in the Quran. SubhanAllah. So just calling him and calling on him means what? If I literally just sit here, close my eyes and I just talk to him for a bit. Okay, ya Allah. Things were, you know, things were tough today or things were good today. I'm going through this situation. Can you please help me out? Please, let me figure out what to do about my work situation or I don't have a job right now. I really need some help. It's just small. You don't have to have, right? There is a formal way, an ideal way of making dua that we hold up our hands and we say Bismillah or ma-na-raheem, we sense out a lot upon the Prophet's name. There's all these etiquettes and adab. Okay, that's the absolute best way. But just in a normal way, you're walking outside, right? Maintain the social distance if you do walk outside but if you're walking outside and just have an open conversation with God, oh, you know, I hope things are well. I just wanted to tell you about my day. Can you please give me some ways to help? Now, he's not going to respond in the way you would expect a human being to respond but he is responding. He says, fad-kuruni ad-kurkum. Remember me and I will remember you. And the one who remembers Allah, he remembers them in a better place. He remembers them in a better gathering, right? Allah remembers you though. So he's thinking now he will inspire you to do something insha'Allah to help you with that situation but just start by talking to him. So the takeaway here, we spend the time learning and then the next takeaway is we have five minutes a day of just talking to him. Then we increase that to 10 minutes a day and then 12 minutes a day and then 15 minutes a day and we should go more and more and more and one of the meanings of the word taqwa which is one of the goals of the month of Ramadan, God consciousness is to be so conscious of Allah that we're always trying to talk to him, right? And the people who are close to Allah, they have what are called intimate dialogue with Allah. Munajat, they have deep intimate dialogues with Allah that they are talking to him at a very, very deep level. They're so close to him. They're so aware that he's aware of all their problems that they know he's going to help them. So keep that in mind. The next step that we take on this path is to change where we're at with other people. So maybe we are beefing with somebody, maybe we have problems with somebody, maybe we hate somebody, maybe we're fighting with somebody, maybe we've had a grudge against somebody for years. Now is the time to give an apology or to ask for an apology or to just forgive them in your heart. Why is that? Because remember, you and I, we've screwed up too. We've sinned. Do we not want God to forgive us? We want God to forgive us. If we want God to forgive us, we have to forgive other people. If we don't forgive other people, we can't expect Allah to just forgive us. So forgive those who are near to you. Forgive those who are, who have gotten far from you, but once we're near to you, forgive them. Just let it go. What's the big deal? Now imagine in this coronavirus situation, somebody you know and you love who you've had a grudge against and God forbid they get the coronavirus, which is very possible. We ask Allah for protection. What if that happens? And then what? And then they go into, now we see all these stories in the news, they go into the ICU and you're not allowed to enter the hospital. And then they're not, there's no way for us to reach them or to talk to them. And then God forbid they pass away. What would we do? How would we live with ourselves? If we just, it was the difference between you remembering that person in the right way or you not letting yourself live it down was just a sorry. Just call. So the takeaway here is if you and I want Allah to forgive us, call that person. Call that person. Anytime, today, tomorrow, shoot him a text. Hey, can we talk? Hey, like that situation you and I have been arguing about, just let it, let's just let it go. I love you. I just want to forgive. I just want to say sorry or I'm sorry. Or I just was hoping you and I could talk it out. Like I really felt hurt. I was hoping you could say sorry, whatever it is we need to say, but don't hold on to it. What's the point guys? What's the point? There is no reason for us to hold on to these things. And so when we have done these, we will now start to embark on a path of change. And just lastly remember that there is nobody, there is nobody who cannot change. That we can be from the worst of the worst and Allah can elevate that person to among his most favorite people. Look at people like Malcolm X. The Malcolm X, if you read the autobiography of Malcolm X, that he was a hustler on the streets. He was dealing drugs. He was dealing with prostitutes. I mean, he was, he was very, very, very much living a life of a vice. And he had sincerity and he set off on a path to change. And eventually he came to a group who eventually led him to true Orthodox Islam. And then he became one of the best callers to Allah in history, in the history of the United States. And he was a martyr in the sake of Allah, insha'Allah. Like in the cause of Allah. Like look at, and that's just, I'm just giving a brief example of somebody who changed their life. And now because of his life, he's brought so many people, many of the most amazing people and the scholars that we have in our communities today were influenced by reading Malcolm X's book and they wanted to change their life. SubhanAllah. So don't think that you and I can't change, right? We're, we, we, we, no matter where we're at, we can change. And then he went on to help all these other people to make societal change, to make just change in the civil justice system, to make a change in the way that people perceive Muslims, the way that people perceive African Americans. He went on to do all of these amazing things. But his beginnings weren't the best of beginnings, but his endings were the best of endings. That's what matters is how we end. So don't give up in that situation. And so now just to recap that, remember, life is about learning. Life is about learning because in this period we came from Allah and we're returning to Him in this time of, this intermediary time, it's just about us trying to remember, right? How do I learn and remember how it was like and remember my Lord? And one of the best ways to remember Him is to learn about Him. So make a commitment to yourself to set off on the path of learning and setting off on the path of trying to learn more about God. The next takeaway for today is to believe in yourself. Food for yourself a little bit. God believes in you. God ennobles you. God gave you the best. He made you, created you in the best of forms, right? That He says He created the human being in the Wat-tini wa Zaytun wa Turi Sinin wa hadal balad al-ameen laqad khalaqna al-insana fi asana taqweem that we created the human being in the best of forms. Wa laqad karamna bani Adam we ennobled bani Adam. He ennobled you. He created you in the best of forms. He believes in you. Do you believe in yourself? Just think and start to believe in yourself so that you can start to make a difference in your life and change your life. Then the path to change, as we mentioned, starts with the path of knowledge. And so just something small, reading one new verse of Quran, reading one new book, listening to one talk, whatever it is and reducing the things that influence our darker sides, reducing that and adding in knowledge. Then the next takeaway is to increase our devotion just by talking to God for a few more minutes every day. And slowly, whether we're praying one time a day, we start adding in one more and then one more and eventually till we're at five, or if we're praying five, we get for in-depth in those prayers. But remember, the goal is that you want to start to converse more with your Lord, have a deeper connection with your Lord, to have depth in that relationship with your Lord. And then the next one is to change with people, right? That one of the ways to increase our faith in these times that we're in is to realize that life is short. Life is so short. Don't have grudges with people. Don't have beef with people. Call that person, text them, ask them to forgive you. Let it go, forgive them. Let it go from your heart. If that's with our siblings or our mothers or our fathers or anybody else, our cousins, our friends, anybody, just pick up the phone and call and let it go. It's not worth it. It's not worth it. We have people in this society sometimes that they don't talk to family members for decades. That's not worth it. It's not going to pay off in the end and Allah will have a special love for you if you pardon them. He gives you more than you could hope for if you pardon them. And just remember, things are going to get better, insha'Allah. The one who tries, the one who believes and Allah guides them, Allah will give them a way out. He will give you a way out of these difficulties. He guarantees that in his verse. And remember, what he says, it's a guarantee. It's a promise. Nobody can match that promise. And Allah says in the Quran, فَمَا يَتَقِ الْاَيَجْ أَلَّهُ مَخْرَجَدَرْ Who has Taqwa of Allah, who tries to apply the principles of working on themselves, of changing themselves. Allah gives them a way out. You give them a way out of the coronavirus. He'll give them a way out of all their problems. He'll give them a way out of every difficulty. And he will change their life to end in the best of ways. But we have to take that first step. We ask that Allah enable us to take that first step, that he deepen his relationship with us, that we deepen our relationship with him and that we become among the people who are adequate enough to really represent him on this earth in this time we're living in and in the future. Thank you so much. Wa sallallahu alayhi wa sallam wa barak'ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam Wa alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen Wa Anwath Fatiha. Bismillahi Alayhi Alayhi Alayhi Alayhi Alayhi Wa Alayhi Alayhi Wa Alayhi Alayhi Jazakum ala khayr. Assalamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.