Bilal Philips – Ramadan 2019 Reminder 02 – Plan for Ramadan

			Salam Alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu
		

			some more thoughts for Ramadan.
		

			before Ramadan
		

			it's only a few days away.
		

			I mentioned earlier in my previous thought
		

			about the importance of stopping and trying to identify what really are the goals of Ramadan?
		

			How should Ramadan really be?
		

			Do we really want Ramadan to be a yearly ritual which has no impact on our lives? Or do we want
Ramadan to be a life changing experience because that's what Allah has prescribed Ramadan for.
		

			He prescribed it, to change our lives to make our lives better.
		

			You know, when the prophet SAW solemn spoke about Ramadan as being a means of purifying us from sin.
		

			all previous sins erased
		

			with a single Ramadan,
		

			I'm sure
		

			you can understand very easily that the Ramadan that we have been doing are not going to be a means
of erasing sin. In fact, in our Ramadan, we tend to add sin,
		

			the complete opposite of what Ramadan is supposed to be about.
		

			So my brothers and sisters, it's time for us
		

			to make a plan
		

			for this Ramadan, to make a difference in our lives.
		

			When we have to do things in the material world, we're not going to start a business. When I study a
particular course, we're gonna get married, all the different things that we do, we plan for them.
And we know the well known saying if you fail to plan, you plan to fail, we all know that. And we
apply it in our material world, or material life. But when it comes to spiritual matters, we treat
it completely different.
		

			So here we are stumbling bumbling, falling into Ramadan,
		

			as we did last year, and the year before and the year before that.
		

			Where we wake up, finally, today is Ramadan. We're fasting to our soul or whatever.
		

			And we enter into a new set of rituals. We just changed life order around a bit. Days become Knights
Knights become days, and we shift into second gear and we keep on rolling. That's not going to
change anything in our lives.
		

			So if we are to make a difference,
		

			this Ramadan
		

			or if Ramadan is to have an impact on us to change our life, then we have to do it differently from
the way we've been doing it. Because the way we've been doing it is just
		

			cultural. Traditional
		

			ritual
		

			no spiritual involvement. Oh, yes, we do make taraweeh night but, you know, most of us when we're
doing Terra, we were so full of food. We can hardly stand. We're about to fall over. We're hoping
that the mom would hurry up and finish so we can get home. You know, go into another mode, party,
play cards,
		

			watch movies, whatever.
		

			doing these things. This is the Ramadan but that Ramadan is not going to change anything in our
lives. So
		

			brothers and sisters, let's make a plan.
		

			A plan to do Ramadan. The way that Ramadan was meant to be done.
		

			What do you think about that?
		

			Think you agree with me? It's time
		

			so let us do it. Sharla
		

			So don't want to lie