Husain Sattar – Success Through Preparation
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In anything that we do in our lives,
one of the,
key goals is that we seek success.
And
there are certain,
components to that success that we have to
bear in mind because if we don't
have these components in our in our methodology,
we're very unlikely to succeed.
And so whether it be an action of
the deen or whether it be an action
of the dunya,
these components these components that are required for
these are these these components are necessary in
order to achieve success.
I'll just give you one example. This thing's
not working. So I was saying that
I was saying that,
the
in order for an individual to succeed in
any action that they
undertake,
whether it be in the dunya or whether
it be in the din,
there are certain
essential components to success.
One of the essential components to the success
in any endeavor is that we have preparation.
Anytime you wanna succeed in something, if you
have if you prepare yourself for that thing,
you're much more likely to succeed
in that particular action.
I'll just give you a very simple example.
You know, if you have a test coming
up in a couple of days,
there's 2 ways that you can go about
handling that test. You can simply take the
test. You just walk in on the day
of the test, and you take the test,
and you'll get a certain result.
Or you can prepare yourself, and everybody knows
every sensible student knows that you have to
prepare yourself. And if you don't prepare yourself,
you're not going to do well.
Now for those people that are studious and
those people that study and those people that
take school seriously,
it would not even come to your mind
that you shouldn't prepare.
There's no way you would go into a
test without having even read one page.
But believe it or not, there are students
who, when there's an exam, they walk into
that exam without having prepared a single thing.
And you can ask teachers if you ask
a high school teacher.
They'll tell you that
there are some I have some students, they
don't even open the book the whole year.
But they walk into class and they take
the test, and they expect that they're just
going to be able to survive.
And then there's another group of students. They
prepare. They study. They
get themselves ready for the exam. And when
it comes time for the exam, they're able
to succeed.
So this is just a very simple simple
example. I mean, another example, I was speaking
to a brother, and he was talking about
the fact that he likes to cook.
So he was telling me about I said,
okay. So you like to cook. Tell me,
you know, what are the things you cook?
He said, oh, I cook Indian food. I
cook Chinese food. I cook this food and
that food. He said, you know, one day
I have to invite you over to have
Chinese food at my house.
I said, well, you know, why don't so
then there was another person sitting there. He
said, why don't you just have a party
and invite all of us over? Why don't
you just invite him over for Chinese food?
He said, oh, no. No. No. The secret
to Chinese food you can't have Chinese food
for a big large large number of people.
The secret to Chinese food, you have to
prepare. You have to prepare the everything in
advance, and you can only cook small portions.
You can't make it for 50, 60 people.
You have to make it for 5 people,
but everything has to be prepared.
So he was telling me that the secret
to cooking this Chinese food is actually preparing
oneself.
In so many things, I mean, for example,
if you wanna have a wedding, when a
person has a wedding, when you arrange a
wedding,
you have to prepare for the wedding months
months in advance. People,
there are people, you know,
even in this day and age, that they
decide they wanna get married and they come
to the masjid an hour later and they
get married.
But most people, when they want to have
a wedding or get married, they plan many,
many months in advance. They say that this
is gonna happen once in my life,
and this is an opportunity to for festivity.
This is an opportunity to gather together family.
You don't get these opportunities very often, especially
in the busy life that we lead. They
spend months months months preparing for the event.
These are examples of the
dunya.
The examples of the din are the exact
same way.
If you prepare for events in the din,
then and only then will you be able
to take advantage of them. For example,
we know that the foundation of salah is
tahara.
So the foundation of salah is tahara. Now
you can take a step back.
Salah is an amazing opportunity.
It's the ascension of the believer, the maharaj
of the believer. It's the opportunity for the
believer to be able to approach Allah
in a way that no other action can
bring them close to Allah.
Now there's 2 ways to approach salah.
One way,
the way that the person who doesn't care
anything about their grades, you just simply show
up.
Okay. It's time for you know, I'm doing
whatever I'm doing, and the salah time comes,
my mind is in 30 other things. I
just quickly drop those, quickly pray, and quickly
go back to what I was doing.
That's one way to approach salah,
and the example of that is the example
of the person who shows up to class
without ever even having open the open the
textbook.
Just simply shows up
thinking that because I'm here, I should pass.
So because I showed up for salah, I
should pass.
That's one way to approach it.
And the other way to approach it is
that the person takes time.
They recognize that salah is an important
component of our deen. It's an opportunity of
a lifetime to be able to approach Allah,
to be able to interact with Allah
in his very special way.
So they prepare for it.
They prepare in advance for it. They await
it.
You know, they recognize my salah is coming
up at,
you know, 8:30.
So
in half hour before, they're thinking, I gotta
get to salah.
The half hour before, they're preparing themselves. They
make wudu before they come for salah.
They start planning. Okay. I mean, how many
times has a person planned which surahs they're
gonna recite in their salah?
Has anybody ever thought about, you know, I'm
about to enter to salah in 15 minutes.
Let me think about the surahs that I'm
going to recite when I'm gonna be praying
salah.
So
so this is an a simple example.
How how can we
know how can we know for a fact
that if a person does not prepare
for an exam,
there's no way they're gonna do well,
yet we can enter into salah thinking that
we don't have to prepare at all.
When it comes to matters of the dunya,
we always prepare ourselves,
and we look down upon those people that
don't prepare.
If there's some kid in your class and
he never studies,
you expect him to fail. You don't pay
any attention to him. So
how can we, if we look at look
at that aspect of our life
it's not working. It's okay.
How can we, if we look at that
aspect of our life, think that
we can just show up to salah and
without having prepared, expect to be able to
maximize on the experience?
Now the power of salah is such that
even if a person doesn't prepare and they
simply show up,
it is enough to be able to create
forgiveness.
It is enough to be able to approach
Allah. But why wouldn't we if we are
people of seriousness, we're people striving in the
deen, if we claim ourselves to be those
people that are in the forefront of pursuing
the deen, why wouldn't we be among those
who prepare for salah?
So we should seriously think about what we're
doing when we when we perform acts in
the deen,
and especially if we prepare ourselves in acts
of the in acts of this world.
If we're the type of people that prepare
for any event, then we should be preparing
for events of our deen as well.
Now you can take this one step further.
Then you can say, when you prepare for
an event,
you prepare for the event to the extent
that the event matters.
Right? So if there's a quiz
and you have to take the quiz the
next day,
you're barely gonna prepare. You say, this is
just a quiz. It's 5 it's 5% of
my grade. So you spend a few hours
at night and you prepare you study, then
you take the quiz the next day.
If it's a test, you spend a couple
days preparing. Why? Because the test is a
little more weighty. If it's a final exam,
you spend a week studying
because the final exam is even more weighty.
If it's a board exam, person's taking a
medical board exam, or they're taking some really
serious exam that's gonna have major repercussions on
what what they can do with their with
themselves,
they'll study for months.
You know, when I interact with the medical
students and I'm seeing how they're studying for
their board exams, they study 6 months in
advance.
And even if they're not studying, they've prepared
themselves. They go out. They buy all the
books. They ask their friends. They're planning. They're
plotting. They're thinking. This is gonna be my
schedule. This is what I need to do.
This is what I need to make sure.
They eliminate all sources of distraction months beforehand.
If they have their exam scheduled in June,
they eliminate all distractions by April.
They get rid of everything.
They tell their friends, we don't have time.
We'll talk to you after the exam.
They pay off all their bills. They make
sure there's no headaches to be to to
have to worry about, and then they begin
to focus on what they have to do.
Why? Because they know that the repercussions of
that event are so severe that if they
don't prepare themselves and they don't do well,
they're gonna have difficulty moving forward.
The same aspect for people of the Deen.
People who are striving in the Deen, they
have that same notion. They look at the
event, and based on the event, they prepare
themselves to a certain extent. Now prayer is
a daily event. It's an amazing event, but
it's a daily event, and it comes 5
times a day. So there's a limited amount
that you could prepare. I mean, if you
wanted to prepare for Isha right now, you
only have a limited time that you could
prepare.
But there are some very special events that
occur very rarely,
and those are events that they that should
change the mechanism
that of ours, should change the schedules that
we have, should change the way that we
prepare ourselves.
For example, how many people have thought about
the fact that in less than
7 weeks, Ramadan will begin?
I mean, have we thought about that? You
know, the month of Rajab just came in
a couple days ago.
So the month of Rajab heralds the fact
that Ramadan is just 2 months away,
and it's such a major event. It's a
once in a lifetime, you know, opportunity.
Yes. It comes several times in our life,
but it's a once in a lifetime opportunity
to free ourselves from hellfire,
to put ourselves back into Jannah, to reconnect
with Allah, to attain Allah's forgiveness.
How many of us have prepared?
And how many how many of us show
up on the day 1st day of Ramadan,
you know, of never having opened the textbook?
Just Ramadan hits up you know, there's 2
things. You Ramadan can hit you or you
can approach Ramadan.
Right? Ramadan approaches
us. We're running the other way. Ramadan grabs
us by our neck and brings us into
it.
But how many people are there that actually
approach Ramadan?
They plan. They prepare. They begin
to increase their fasting before the month begins.
They begin to increase their recitation of Quran
before the month begins. They begin to increase
their time in their masjid before the month
begins. They increase the sadaqa that they give
before the month begins. How many people are
there out there like that?
Very few very few and far between. But
those are the people who are the wise
ones
because they prepare themselves well in advance to
take advantage of this very unique opportunity.
So we should think about
our deen. We should think about our deen
in this way, that what are the opportunities
that Allah has provided for for us, and
how can we prepare ourselves for them?
Salah,
one of the greatest preparations is tahara. We
know that from hadiths, tahara is the foundation
of salah.
The more the the more you take care
of tahara, the greater the salah will be.
Beyond that, we know that in the month
of Ramadan, the salahaba used to for the
month of Ramadan, salahaba used to prepare weeks
in advance.
The prophet used to remind them that the
month of Ramadan was coming. They used to
fast, get themselves ready, take to be able
to take full advantage of the month.
They used to enter the month in 5th
gear.
When you enter the month in 5th gear,
what does that mean? That means that every
day of the month, you're able to take
advantage of it. And when you get towards
the end of the month, you're in a
new state of iman.
And most of us, we get hit by
Ramadan. It takes us 10 days just to
figure out that we're in Ramadan. It takes
us another 10 days to get used to
the schedule of Ramadan. And when we're finally
ready to take advantage of the month, it's
basically ready to leave.
We won't be able to maximize on our
opportunity if we don't prepare for it in
advance.
We should think now. There's an opportunity to
do at tikaf in the last 10 days
of Ramadan.
How can I make sure that I have
those days off?
We should think now that, okay. I've gotta
get myself into the habit of fasting. How
am I going to do that? Maybe I
should start fasting Mondays Thursdays. Maybe I should
fast 3 days of the month, etcetera.
These small
acts of preparation
will take us a very long way.
Small acts of preparation take a person a
very long way.
So may Allah give us a tawfiq to
be among those who prepare for acts of
our deen, and may he make us among
those who are able to maximize on the
incredible opportunities that he provides.