 And he'll protect you We ask ourselves, where is Allah? Where is Allah? But the question is where are we? The Prophet ﷺ says to bin Abbas احفظ الله تجده تجاهك That protect the bounds of Allah you will find him in front of you Protect the bounds of Allah and you will find him in front of you It's hard to rely on something that you don't perceive And oftentimes we think we don't perceive Allah Allah is beyond our perception in terms of our senses, of course He's beyond perception in terms of our intellects, of course But Allah manifests His mercy And Allah manifests Himself in His creation Through His names and attributes Such that we are able to rely on them That Allah manifests mercy through the mother And Allah manifests kindness to a compassionate friend Allah manifests His name Al-Ra'uf And so when we find ourselves to be people Who our concern is to guard the bounds of Allah Then تجده تجاهك Then we find him in front of us And then the question is answered, where is Allah? Allah is evident in front of us at all times فَإِنَّ مَا تَوَلُّوا فَثَمَّ وَجْهُ اللَّهِ Everywhere that you turn, then there is the countenance of Allah كَمَا يَلِقُ بِجَلَالِهِ As is appropriate for His Majesty Allah being outside of space and time But Him, we find His support We find Him as a support, as a reliance When we guard the bounds of Allah And then He continues The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam continues to Arab and Abbas Again speaking on the idea of support وَعَلَمْ No Recognize أن الأمة Had the entire ummah The entire nations Whether it be the ummah of the da'wah Or the ummah of istijab Or the ummah that has yet to become Muslim Or the ummah that has accepted Islam لو اجتمعو اين اجتمعو على ان ينفعوك بشيء لم ينفعوك إلا بشيء قد كتبهم قد كتبهم الله لك That if the entire ummah The entire nation Whoever it may be All the creation had gathered To benefit you by a single thing They would not be able to Benefit you except by what Allah has already decreed for you وَإِنِجِتَمَعوْ على أن يضروك بشيء لم يضروك إلا بشيء قد كتبهم الله وعليك And if they had all gathered To benefit To harm you by a single thing They would not be able to harm you Except by what Allah has already written out To be رُفِعَتِ الْأَقْلَامْ وَجَحَتِ الصُحُفْ That the pens have been lifted And the pages have dried Allah has written out the decree And it's not going to change The final decree The du'az that we do Can change what we know of the decree What may be perceived Perhaps to the angels But what is the final decree Is set with Allah And this often puts us in despair We ask the question Are you saying that there's nothing I can do And the answer that yes There is nothing that you can do In one way Can lead to despair And in the other way it leads to what At least there are lines That Allah has already decreed My risk Allah has already decreed my provisions Allah has already decreed Where my wealth comes from Who my family is Allah has already decreed these things What do I have to do to worry about it That Ibn At-Tahla As-Kandari One of the great Unama of this tradition He says That Allah hasn't asked you for tomorrow's ibadah He only asked you for today's ibadah He hasn't asked you of that Why are you asking for Allah For tomorrow's provisions Allah hasn't asked Hasn't charged you To do tomorrow's ibadah To do tomorrow's responsibilities Why do you ask Allah For what he is going to give you tomorrow That Allah has already guaranteed us That our risk is going to come And not a single morsel of food Nor a single drop of water Nor a single emotion The emotions that are our risk Nor a single ibadah The ibadah that we do The worship that we do Is the risk The provisions that Allah gives us The spiritual sustenance that Allah gives us Nor any happiness or any smile Nor any sadness It's all written It's not going to change But this does not excuse us from what Allah has promised us From taking our ibadah Because there's the ultimate reality Of what Allah has already decreed But there is the experience That we have in this world Where we are asked to act upon What we experience That in that sense We do have that will We do have that free will To act upon what Allah has These situations that Allah has manifest That there's the choice of Do I want to get up and pray Do I want to take this bite Of food or not And that is what is asked of us To act on these asbab To ask on the means That Allah has placed in this world Without ever affirming Any effect of these means themselves That we believe wholly That Allah is the one Who is in control But Allah is taking us into account For how we interact with the means And how do we show our conduct With ourselves And the rest of creation Allah, Allah, Zawajal And that is where our responsibility Comes in We want to be people of Tawakul People of trust Of reliance on Allah If we don't find ourselves Understanding that Allah is going to give us What he has promised us And Allah is going to not give us What he hasn't promised us What Allah has decreed Is going to happen And what Allah has not decreed Is not going to happen Even if the entire ummah And beyond Were together to change This particular thing It wouldn't be possible Until we understand that reality It's hard to have trust in Allah Because we give too much to ourselves We give too much credit to ourselves In that sense where we think If I do this and I do that And I do this And eventually this other thing will happen And this isn't to say That we shouldn't be taking our means Just as we take our means Sometimes we take these sort of statements To drop our responsibilities One of our teachers said If you want to drop your responsibilities With this believing that If Allah decides that he is going to Make me pray Then Allah will make me pray And I don't have to do anything And if Allah decides That he's not going to make me pray Then he won't do that He said you know When people say things like that You should ask them to do the same With their food And with their sleep And with their water And say if Allah is going to Say shayat me He'll say shayat me And if Allah won't say shayat me He won't say shayat me They shouldn't bother To eat their food Or drink their water Or take a nap And they're tired Or whatever it may be And this is the type of games You play with Allah He plays games with you You know If you play games with Allah It's not It's not a There's no There's no winning that game And until we recognize That this deliberation That we do in our actions Is not going to bring us Anything except what Allah has already decreed We won't find comfort in our lives And Allah will make you appetizing for this And the ones who are Muslims Will be appetizing That is the most merciful Who is the most forgiving In the name of Allah Praise be to God In the name of Allah And peace be upon Him And peace be upon His Messenger And his family And his companions And his companions Imam Mustafa Yaquman Sharif Says that One of the Scholars of the last 150 years or so Says that If you want to relieve yourself Of anxieties and distress put yourself in a position where you don't depend too much on yourself and recognize your dependence on Allah because either you're going to stress and have anxiety and be anxious over fulfilling the means that you have already seen in place and then worry too much about the results and either what's what you're going to do is going to occur or not occur so before you do the action there's the stress and then after the action whether according to the result there's also stress or lack of stress that if you don't find what you wanted to occur what you wanted to occur if you don't find it to occur then you have double the stress because you think to yourself I've done all this effort and I have you know put in my whole entire I did everything right this is the eye if there's always there's always the Anna then the me the eye is very little room for Hua there's very little room for he Allah and when we put ourselves in that sort of situation where it's always the eye what did I do then we find ourselves disappointed by our actions and our means that we took and then we're also disappointed by the result but if we see it as Allah has enabled me to take these means and whatever the result happens that's up to Allah then the worry of the anxiety the distress that we are we are putting ourselves in when fulfilling these actions is lifted to a considerable degree and then the result we know is with Allah so whatever happens we are thankful that Allah either rewards or punishes according to the intention that we had and whatever happened after that's in the hands of Allah and it's not up to us and so we ask Allah that he makes the people who are not people of anxiety and people of anxiousness and people of stress and people of deliberation we ask Allah that he makes the people were complete complete trust in him we ask Allah that we are people who have trust trust in the Sharia that he sent down and the trust the problem in trust in the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam that he sent down we ask that we have complete trust in the means that he has given us knowing that they come from him and not trust in them in any other manner we ask Allah that he makes the people who are trusting in his plan we ask that we are people who have who are trusting in his bounds that people who regard his bounds we ask that we are people who are protected and protected by Allah we ask people we We ask Allah that we are people who are, find Allah in front of us, we ask Allah that we are people who are benefited only by what He, by recognizing that we only are benefited by what He decides to benefit us with, and we ask Allah that we are people who are only harmed, who only see our harm coming from Him, by what He decreed to harm us. We ask Allah that He remove us from the harm of stresses and emotions that come when we leave our alliance with Allah. We ask Allah for relief from those anxieties. We ask Allah for complete solace and complete serenity and complete peace in Him, so He say, Allahumma anta al-salam, wa minka al-salam, tubar al-tayyad al-jalali wal-ikram, hayyina wa dikhilna dara al-salam, rabbina aatina fi al-duniya hasana wa fi al-aafdina hasana wa qinata bannar, rabbina hablana min az-wajina wa dhurriyatina qurrata a'yuni wa ja'nna limuttaqina imama, we ask Allah to bless our teachers, particularly our first teachers, our parents, rabbin hamhumaa, kuma rabbia ni-saghira, rabbin hamhumaa, kuma rabbia ni-saghira, rabbin hamhumaa, kuma rabbia ni-saghira, We ask Allah to recognize that Allah and His angels send the benedictions and salutations on the Prophet ﷺ, and we're asked to do the same.