 In Alhamdulillah, certainly all praise, gratitude belongs to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and for that reason we praise Him, we thank Him. When we ask for assistance, for what? Assistance in what? In all matters of life. When we ask for forgiveness for all the things that we have done and all the things that are coming up. And from his words, Ya, the believers, be mindful of Allah, have consciousness of Allah, have awareness of Allah, develop this thing to yourself that Allah is a primary thing for you in your life in all your contacts. Haqqatuqatuhidi, what he deserves it, falatamu tunna, under no circumstance, forget what we just said. Don't you dare forget what we just said. Falatamu tunna, don't you dare you die and you find yourself in a manner that you are departing this world, you are not in a full state of submission. Falatamu tunna illa wa antum muslimoon. We're gonna have a really short topic. I might get, I might get dinged for that because I got dinged for doing really short khutbas. You know, khutbas gotta be meaningful and short. If it's too long and lengthy, you lose the value of it. I often say, am I gonna get in trouble too? If people could do a TED talk in 15 to 13 minutes and incredible speech, you should be able to do that. So let me do this. There's one theme, there's one word in the Quran. Some of you may have heard this from me before. It comes often, it comes often in the Quran and it's quite central to the Quranic message, to everything that we do. And guess what that word is? And that's the entire topic for today, for the next few minutes. The word is ayah. You must have heard that, ayah, or ayat, the plural. It comes a lot in the Quran. It is the central thing. What does this mean? It has been translated as verse. I have a little bit of a logic reaction to that translation. Verse. What does that really mean? Verse. Ayah is rich in meaning. Ayah has so many things embedded in it for you and I to understand. Why would Allah call ayah? There are, Allah says there's ayat or ayah and everything that's surrounding you. When you go out there, you will experience it. That's what Allah wants you to experience that. Allah says when you look at the rock, there's an ayah in it. Look outside. The trees, there's an ayah in it for you. So what does this ayah mean? It cannot mean verse. There's so much. I'm gonna tell you what that means. Allah says there's an ayah within you. Within yourself. Look at yourself. There's ayah. And there's a surah in the Quran where ayah starts with that and there's multiple verses of the Quran. Oh, go read it. It's incredible. It's so beautiful. So what is this ayah? It's not just verse. It's a really shallow translation. What are the meaning is sign? So think about it. When Allah says there's an ayah that means there's a sign for you to contemplate, to think, to ponder, to say, what is this telling me? Another meaning for ayah is direction. It gives you direction. The direction, what is the purpose of direction? To get you to a destination, to a goal. The direction itself is not the goal, but the destination where you want to reach is the goal. One of the other meaning of ayah is value. It has to have something for you to hold on to. It has to be valuable. It has to mean something to you. Another meaning of the ayah is purpose. Purposeful meaning. Something has to have a meaning embedded in it for you to invest time and energy in it for yourself to go after it. So what does that say? All of this, all of these meanings, and there's much, much more, much more. I was, I forgot to say this, my daughter sitting back there, nine years old, kept on asking me, daddy, you have a hotba coming up. Are you prepared? Daddy, did you think about it? What about this? We were studying a part of the Quran and he's like, why didn't you talk about that? It was part of the swith al-kaaf. I'm like, that's awesome. But she inspired me to do this, like ayah. Let's talk about this one. I'm like, okay, so let me say a few words that I know about this. Now everything that we say ayah has, it takes you to some place, to one place. What has that done place? And we did a ton of that a month ago on the month of Ramadan. It gives you a direction towards your Lord. Gives direction towards Allah. It allows you to build a connection with Him. That is the purpose of the ayah. For you, the job is for you to go dig it, discover it, understand it, contemplate and look at it. The purpose of that is to get guidance. One of the biggest ayah, Allah says ayat is a revelation. What is the purpose of a revelation? To find a way to make connection, to find a way to speak to Allah, to find a way to talk to Him, to find a way to yearn for Him. Another meaning of the ayah is something that has to put you at awe, at just like exceptional state of mind. That's what Allah tells you. Look at the ayah and you should be an absolute awe of your Lord, of your master. Well, Allah says there's ayah everywhere. Allah says there's an ayah for you in the story of Yusuf A.S. and his brothers. What is your job? Your job and my job is to go and understand that and dig deeper and say, what is the ayah here? What is the sign for me? What is it that I can take away from this? What is the value for me here? How do I understand something from that that I could implement in my life? Allah says there's an ayah in history. Allah's telling you, here's my best part, my best part of how to implement Quran in your life. Don't get me in trouble, but here's what Allah says. Allah says take a vacation. He's like, what? Yeah, Allah says take a vacation. Go travel, Allah says in the Quran, see the earth, go travel across the land. For what purpose? So he could see the ayah of Allah and learn something from history. Allah tells you there's ayah in the history for you. So Yusuf, Allah says, in Isa, Jesus, peace be upon him, there's an ayah, he's an ayah and there's ayah in him. Well, for you, it behooves us to study what that means. What can we get out of that? Multiple areas. It's not just the verse. It gives you purpose, it gives you guidance, it gives you directions to reach to destination. What is a destination? A destination is to reach to Allah, to get his contentment, to be in a state that he is, radiAllahu anhu maradu anhu, that he is satisfied with you, he's happy with you and you're happy with him. To the point that you will get that Allah tells you in the Quran in the last chapter that we read a lot, it says Allah tells you to enter to my jannah. That's the goal, that's the destination. So what is an ayah? Here's the definition I wrote. Ayah is a sign that gives direction and it has a meaningful and delivers value. That's what ayah is. We went through this incredible month of Marathon and we need to hold on to something. As I've spoken here before after Ramadan ended, when we went through all those activities, we can't carry all of those. We have to hold on to something to sustain it. At the end of the day, the name of the game is to sustain, sustainment. What can you hold on to and carry that forward with your life until the next Ramadan? And then you build something else and you go to the next Ramadan. I don't know if I'm gonna do this quickly. I don't know if I alluded to a concept that I heard from one of our sheikhs. It was the concept of trampoline as opposed to ladder. You know what trampoline is? You jump high and you come down fast. You jump high, you come down fast. There's no gain. But the concept of ladder, you climb and you climb and you climb. You get to a level and you get off that level and you climb again and you get off that level. You could don't come down. So he was explaining really beautifully, saying when you're in the month of Ramadan, you need to gain. You have to have a gain of what you're doing from where you are today, from the status quo a little higher. That's the concept you are there. You gain, you sustain that and you move forward. And that's what Allah says, have progress, progression. I'll say a few words. I'm going to say a few words. Inna alhamdulillah wassalaatu wassalaamah ala Rasulillah, sallallahu alaihi wassalaam. Allah also says in his book, ba'ala audha billahi min ash-shaytanu rajim, Inna allahu wa malaiqatahu yusalloon alal nabi, ya ayyuhal ladina amanu, sallu alaihi wa sallimu taslima. Allahumma salli ala Muhammadin wa ala ala Muhammad. Kama sallayta ala Ibraheem wa ala ala Ibraheem, innaka hameed al-Majeed. Allahumma ba'arika ala Muhammadin wa ala ala Muhammad. Kama ba'araka ala Ibraheem wa ala ala Ibraheem, innaka hameed al-Majeed. Rabbana la tu'akhizna inna sinna wa wakta'na. Rabbana wa la tahmal alayna israan, kama hamal tahu alal ladina min qablina. Rabbana wa la tahmal ala ma la tahaqata lana bih, wa'afu anna wa'afil lana, wa'urhamna anta maulana, fanzorna alana qawmil kafirin amin. And lastly, speaking of the progress and progression, Allah says the following thing in the Quran. And that's how we will conclude, insha'Allah. Allah says these are the three things you must do and the three things you must avoid. So pay attention again. Three things you must do and three things you must avoid. What are those three things? Inna'Allah.