 Begin by attempting to praise God And our praise is never enough and then we attempt to thank a law and our thanks Will never ever ever be enough ever And then we remind ourselves. We weren't we're not made for this world This is not our home We're only visitors We're only here for a few moments What are we doing with these few moments? How are we? To our wives our husbands our mothers our fathers our neighbors How are we to those who we like and those that we may not like? We remind ourselves we weren't made we're not made for this world We're only here visitors Strangers We feel like We belong somewhere else this world is the home for the homeless and the one who collects has no intellect Why because everything we collect is going to vanish disappears a dunya daru man la dar ala Our dad our home is in the next about we're visitors here may Allah make it comfortable Asala Allah Al-Afiha The one who collects has no intellect will have a yajma man la aql ala And then we warn ourselves. We're going back to our maker. We're returning to our maker. It's beautiful verses in the Quran in Surat al-Saf the rose or the rink where Allah Allah in amazing way And everything is amazing He says they want to turn off the light of God With their with their speech with their mouths, but Allah will sustain his light Even if the disbelievers hate it. He's the one Allah is the one who sent to you Allah is the one who sent to you his messenger With guidance and the religion of truth and haqq to make it apparent and rise and victorious over all other ways Even if the mushrikun hate it. Oh you who believe Now here's the question the rhetorical question from God to you. Yeah, you have a Dina amin and how I told you come Should I should I direct you? To a business Interesting to a business to a transaction To a trade to a bargain tunjikum min adhabin aleem. It'll save you from the torment of hellfire Of course, y'allah, please please tell me what an amazing business transaction. Tell me y'allah So I can be from the winners To mean on a billahi or a soulie what you jahed on a feast a billahi be on one of your own physical believe in Allah his messenger and Strive hard and struggle in his way with your money and with your lives That'll come fire on that woman. Kuntum ta'lamoon. That's better for you if you only knew And if you do that, then what do you get? He'll give your sins where you'd kill come Jannat in Tajrim in tatiha and hard and you'll enter paradise and Rivers flowing beneath when I say I came out I give a and dwellings and houses and homes that are pleasant Fee jannati had in paradise. That's the deal ladies and gentlemen. That's the deal That I got foes and Ali and That is the great victory and that is the deal ladies and gentlemen Believe in Allah his messenger strive with your money and your lives And you get paradise and you get dwellings and you get contentment from God. That's the deal In a remarkable, remarkable way in the beginning in the in the first aqaba Transcendent in the first aqaba pledge allegiance Thus the companions came and the Prophet ﷺ asked them to make promises This is the DNA of Islam and these promises include various Various Promises and there's the first aqaba and the second aqaba. One of them is not to care about what people say about you Don't fear the censure of anyone when you're on God's way Don't fear their censure and and in return you get paradise. So that's the deal That's the covenant. That's the transaction. That's the promise. However, the next diverse is what we're here to talk about interesting and Something else. Allah says subhanahu wa ta'ala, and I'm gonna give you something else wa uhra To happen and something else that you like Something else that you adore something else that you enjoy something else that you appreciate But hold on we just said this is the deal But I'm gonna give you a sugar the sugar on top the cherry on top I'm gonna give you a little sweetness because you like it because you enjoy it. What is it? Wa uhra to happen Nasser on Mina Allah Wa Fathun Qareeb I'm gonna give you victory from Allah Nasser from Allah Wa Fathun Qareeb and And a victory that is near help from Allah and a victory that is near and give good news to the believers So this is very interesting Because the deal is that we get paradise, but Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says I'm gonna give you the cherry on top I'm gonna give you something you like something you enjoy which is victory help and And openings in other words In other words, it's our job To love the struggle and not be attached to the outcome. That's the takeaway Love the struggle Not the outcome It's our job to take care of the input law takes care of the output. We take care of the micro law takes care of the macro We need we love the struggle We love the struggle. We love the process We love the process the system that we engage in every day We love not we love not not finishing the marathon because that's ending That's the end. We love going on the treadmill every day We love the struggle every day Even if forget the finishing the marathon We love the struggle every day In a in in in in two other places this becomes apparent where Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says full in cana aba wukum wa abna wukum Wa ikhwan wukum wa azwaj wukum wa ashirat wukum wa amwal unuqtaraftumuha wa tijaran tun taqshona kassada wa masakinu tarzunaha If these eight things are more beloved to you than these three things then beware then wait Hatta yati Allahu bi amr. What are these? What are the other three things? If these eight things are more beloved to you than these three Then beware then wait fatarabbasul if your Parents and your children and your and your siblings and your spouses and your relatives and the money that you've saved up and your Business that you fear will decline and your homes that you enjoy if these are more beloved to you Then Allah wa Rasulahu and what what's the third thing and? Striving and struggling love the struggle. We are attached to the struggle. We're not attached to the outcome It's a very different lens It's a very different lens in a different paradigm And we enjoy the victory and the help and the aid and we ask Allah for that we do We enjoy it. We're wired that way, but it's our job to love the struggle Which is very interesting More beloved to you than Allah his messenger and what he had in fi sabili he and loving the struggle in the other Verses in the Quran where Allah's power talks about people he loves and they love him Ya yuhaladina. I'm a man yertada minkum. I'm deenie. He fa sofa. Yati Allah bi qawmin. You have them He'll bring people that they love him and he loves them and they have four qualities. What are they? Do you love the struggle because it's this culture tells us maximize laziness There's trying to remember a commercial I saw a couple weeks ago which said Epitomizing this culture the epitome of the this idea and it said It's your right to be lazy Backwards the things are inversed and backwards Think think you know so for These four qualities of the people that love Allah and they love him They're gentle with their fellow believers They're strong. They have integrity and dignity and pride when it comes to the disbelievers I'm not here with an inferiority complex to gain your approval. I'm proud to be Islam began as strange will end as strange and congratulations to the strange ones or Islam began as weird and will end as weird as it began Congratulations to the weirdos Sometimes it's better not to fit in if you fit in that actually might be a concern I don't want to fit in today If you're if someone's in a mental health hospital, they don't want to fit in may love cure them all and give them healing But I don't want to fit in Being normal is no longer a healthy ambition and I dare ask is normal actually normal Is normal normal and so these four qualities Gentle on the believers dignity and pride With the disbelievers and what's the third one? They strive for Allah. They strive. They love the struggle Remember the cherry on top is the victory and we ask Allah for victory It's painful It's painful But the lens when we zoom out and we see the bigger picture things start to make sense And everything any problem we have if we stay focused on it The problem is bigger and we zoom out the problem shrinks no matter what the problem is No matter where the problem is in our life Well, I have a lot of them the fourth quality and especially for the young high schoolers and college students and junior high students And everyone and they don't care about when other people talk about them negatively Negatively. Oh look at him. Look at him. What's he doing? He's praying. He's putting his face on the ground Look at her. Why does she have that rag on her head? I don't care what they say I'm proud of my way You learn that probably when you were five years old you have your way. I have my way I'm not like you. You're not like me. I'm not like you. You're not like me You have your way. I have my way You've been saying that probably since you were five years old Maybe unless you learned it later in life. And so the idea My beloved brothers and sisters in this time in this calamitous time increasing time of confusion in this painful time there's this lens that we come with that we all The cherry on top is the victory, but really the deal we make is I'm going to strive for you. Yallah There's this book called uh, I highly recommended Called Atomic Habits It's recommended by many of our teachers and so you highly recommend Atomic Habits and it's the idea that atomic comes from atom An atom is the tiniest building block the smallest building block and yet it has atomic power So with tiny changes remarkable results and this idea if we can actually dismantle The lie of this culture That tells us that we will be So happy when we're lazy If we can dismantle that for a moment and Explore the idea that I want to be energetic No matter what it is that you care about If you want to if you have your dream and you know part of eddab, eddab is placing something in its place Part of eddab is realizing your potential Because god gave you a potential and all and you know it maybe sometimes maybe you forgot it But sometimes it it sparkles and you remember. Yeah, I can do this. Yeah, I can do that. Yeah, I can be this Yeah, I can be that and yes, we can Every single one of us have a remarkable potential. It's not just you know It looks like a miracle from the outside, but you know what it actually is It's actually doing these tiny things every day for a period of time When someone comes out, you haven't seen them for a month a year a decade and you're like mashallah How did he become so smart mashallah? How did he become so strong mashallah? How did he become so religious mashallah? How did he become so much eddab? It's like, whoa, that's a miracle actually It's just this tiny thing that he or she probably did every day. It looks like a miracle from the outside It looks miraculous. Wow because a miracle is something that's out of the norm out of the ordinary Wow, you know why because it's out of the ordinary for people to reach their potential nowadays It's out of the it's very rare for someone to reach their potential Because we've been we've been lied to to say Maximize your laziness and try to with to and get with maximum output Maximize laziness to maximize output If someone can sit on the couch all day with money rolling in the bank. Oh, he hasn't made what? And love the struggle So this is an invitation for myself For you for all of us To actually think about this concept for a moment To love the struggle To love going on the treadmill one minute a day to love Opening a book for one line a day For love to love calling my mom once a day These tiny things and enjoying enjoying and being attached to the struggle Not to the outcome. I'm going to do my part. Allah will do his part May Allah bring ease to the suffering Muslims all around the world We Oh Allah we turn to you collectively as an ummah We turn to you as a group we turn to you as a community we turn to you as the children of Adam We turn to you as the Ummah of Sayyidina Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. We turn to you as the Muslims from California. We turn to you and say, لبك وسعدك يا الله. We're waking up يا الله. We're waking up يا الله. We're here, we're striving to clean ourselves, to clean our tongues, to clean our eyes, to clean our ears, to stop arguing. We're here to clean our transactions. لبك يا الله. We resubmit to you. We renew our submission to you, يا الله. يا الله, our eyes belong to you, our ears belong to you, our tongues belong to you, and we'll use them as the way you want. You own us, يا الله. يا الله, we submit ourselves to you. We turn our attention to you. We entrust our affairs to you. We depend and lean on you out of love and fear of you. There is no escape from you, except to you. You are our number one, you are our beloved. Oh, Allah, we ask you. مَتَنَصْرُ اللهَ الَاَا إِنَّا نَصْرَ اللَّهِ قَرِبْ We ask you to make us that community, those believers, that love you and you love them. We ask you to let us be attached and enjoy the sweetness of serving you بالخيرُ اللطف العافية. We ask you to give victory to our teachers, our scholars, our true superheroes, and to give us true wisdom so we know what a true superhero looks like, our teachers and our scholars. May Allah bless them and their spouses and their families. Amen. And forgive all of our sins and gather us all in paradise. Amen. Amen. Amen. And we ask you for the cherry on top. We do. We ask you for the cherry on top. نَصْرُ مِنَ اللَّهُ فَتْحُمْ قَرِبْ Help from Allah. And a near opening. And a near opening. We ask you for the cherry on top. وَأُخْرَاتُ وَحَبُّونَهَا نَصْرُ مِنَ اللَّهِ وَفَتْحُمْ قَرِبْ We ask you for that. سبحانه ربِّكَ ربِّ العزَّةِ عَمَا يَصْفِفُونَ وَسَلَامٌ وَعَلَى الْمُرْسَلِينَ وَالْحَمْدُرِ اللَّهِ رَبِّ العَالمِينَ وَصَلِ اللَّهُمَّ تَعَالَ عَلَى الْسَيْدْنَ مُحَمْدَ النَّبِيُ الْأُمْمِ وَعَلَى آلِهِ وَصَحْبِهُ مَنْ وَلَى إِنَّ اللَّهَ يَأْمُرُ بِالْعَدْلِ وَالْإِحْسَانِ وَإِتَائِذَ الْقُرْبَةَ وَيَنْهَا عَنِ الْفَحْشَاءِ وَالْمُنْكَرِ وَالْبَغِ يَعَضْفُمْ لَعَلَكُمْ تَذَكَّرُونَ Remember Allah and He will remember you.