Floating in the Deep Sea

Bismillah R Rahman r Rahim al hamdu lillahi Nakamoto who wants to know who won the stock photo? When I was a villa Himanshu Dorian fusina. Woman CIT Imani dama de la palma de la la, la de la or Chateau La ilaha illallah wa hola Chica de hoshana Mohammed Abdullah Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa seldom at the Sleeman kathira on my bed. My dear brothers and sisters are Salam aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato.

So I want to take you back to 2012. And this is my second week in Calgary. And the sister sends me an email, she says, I'm going through a personal crisis, and I want to talk to you about it. So I said, no problem I'll meet you have to go out to the hotel on a Sunday. And she came into my office. And this was the first time I've dealt with a serious challenge that I was like, yeah, Allah, I don't even know what to do with this. Like I didn't even know where to begin to start addressing this challenge. She was a half of the of the Koran. She has memorized the Quran, from beginning to end.

And in the middle of that session, she told me that she was also an atheist. And I couldn't fathom that I'm like, how do you memorize the Quran? And are you an atheist at the same time, it just didn't click in my head. And SubhanAllah. You know, from then on, the more I started interacting with people, particularly younger people, there's a huge crisis of faith that's happening in our community. Some of us are starting to recognize this challenge in the community, and a lot of us are still in denial. We think that you know, what, our children have Muslim names, they have Muslim friends, and I'm pretty sure they're praying and you know, they're practicing their faith. But the

reality is, faith is being lost. And there is this huge challenge of going to university, and you're bombarded with a lot of different things that you're not prepared for. So when they gave me this topic of, you know, drowning in the ocean, or floating on the sea, something along those lines, I don't remember the exact title. I was like, You know what, that's the perfect topic that I want to address. So the way we're going to be discussing this issue is, firstly, we'll be talking about guidance from a spiritual perspective, and how Allah subhanaw taala addresses it in sort of a fancy house. The number two we'll be talking about guidance from a practical perspective, and what you

need to do to protect yourself and stay guided. And then the third thing I want to share with you, or what are things that can actually be implemented for those that would like to pursue the path of guidance. So let's talk about spiritual guidance first, instead of it how Allah subhana wa tada has given us the crux of what guidance looks like. And it's in three particular is where Allah subhana wa Tada. He starts off by saying, he cannot a Buddha can stay in his dinner. Serato must Hakim Serato Nadine and I'm telling him not to be born in. So here Allah subhana wa Tada. He starts off by saying it is only you that we worship and it is only you that we seek assistance from what is

extracted from this ayah is the importance of sincerity, that on the pastor guidance, you have to make sure you're sincere to Allah subhana wa Tada. So whatever guidance you are pursuing, whatever guidance you're seeking, it's not for the sake of fame. It's not for the sake of getting married. It's not for the sake of anything else, other than furthering your relationship with Allah subhana wa Tada. And I think that's pretty obvious, because sincerely is the key to all acts of worship in Islam. But where it gets really interesting is the Diwan that Allah subhanaw taala teaches us in a Serato, Mr. Kim, that Oh, Allah Guide us to the straight path. Why does it list my notes on the

commander's to make this law, it is a reminder that we should constantly be seeking guidance. That guidance is not something that you're just going to be sleeping in bed or sitting on the chair and guidance is going to come to you, but rather you have to actively pursue it. And when you study the story of salmonella Farsi rhodiola, one of the great companions of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi, wa sallam, he is like a living example of that, that he knew there is a greater purpose and meaning to his life. And he literally went from one religion to the next, till he found the truth, he was actively pursuing guidance. So when no one's Allah tells us to make this dua, that da is a

manifestation of actively pursuing guidance. And one of the ways you actively pursue guidance is to ask Allah subhanaw taala for guidance. So you say Oh, Allah guide me to the straight path. And a lot of people that end up accepting Islam, they all have their own personal version of this, on how one day they were so fed up of life, they were so flustered with everything going on the gods next to their bed and they raised their hands, and they're like, if there's a God in the sky, please guide me to the truth. They all have a similar story to that. And that is, you know, a replica of what Allah subhanaw taala is teaching us now from the mercy of Islam is that we're taught this. As soon

as we accept Islam and embrace Islam that 17 times a day, you're going to be asking Allah subhanho wa Taala for guidance. So the first real step in attaining spiritual guidance is actively pursuing it. Number two, Allah subhanaw taala goes on to say serrata Latina and I'm telling him The path of those whom you have favored. So meaning this path of guidance

Allah subhanho wa Taala has established it has a very particular definition it has a very particular characteristic and that is a path of those whom Allah subhanho wa Taala has favored. Now where does Allah subhanaw taala in the Quran, talk about those whom he has favored. He talks about it in Surah Nisa for Allah, Allah Allah Dena Anima Allahu Allah human being was clean was Shahada, he was solid he was you know, Allah He karateka. So unless he talks about who are those individuals whom Allah subhanho wa Taala has favored, and he mentions that they are then the being they are the prophets of Allah subhana wa Tada. They are the Cydia clean, they are the truthful ones, and these truthful

ones, it has a greater ramification it's not just about speaking the truth. But these are the scholars of Islam was Shahada, the murders was solid hain and the righteous people. These are the people whom Allah subhanho wa Taala has favorites. So here are Listen, I know what are they saying? You have to pursue the path that Allah subhanaw taala has put out in front of you the great luminaries of Islam, the prophets of Allah subhanaw taala, the companions of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, these are the people that you should try to emulate because that is what guidance looks like. So look at their lives, study their lives, and that is the path you want

to follow. So it's not just any path, but it is a particular path that Allah subhanho wa Taala has laid out from the prophets, and then particularly from the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam the path of his companions of the Allahu anhu. Then Allah subhanaw taala goes on to say, they will have to be Allah him Allah born in, and not those who have earned the Wrath of Allah subhanho wa Taala, nor those that have gone astray, who are those that have earned the Wrath of Allah subhanho wa Taala. And who are those that have gone astray? When you look at those who have earned the Wrath of Allah subhanho wa Taala we were a group of people that knew what the truth was, but

they abandoned it, they chose not to follow it. And thus they earned the Wrath of Allah subhana wa Tada. And then the second category of people are those that went astray. And these are the individuals that had no concern for guidance whatsoever, meaning they did not want to be guided in the first place, Allah sent them guidance, and they completely ignored it, and thus they went astray. So these are two paths that Allah subhanho wa Taala puts forth to us to make sure that we don't follow those paths. And this is what I wants to emphasize that when you look at the first path, they are the individuals that knew the truth, but consciously chose not to follow it. What

exactly does that look like? What that looks like on our day to day lives, my dear brothers and sisters, is that you have that moment when your alarm clock goes off for fidget. And when your alarm clock goes off for fetcher, you make a conscious decision at that time, am I going to wake up and prays a little further? Or am I going to fool myself into thinking, Let me press the snooze button. And then I will wake up in about 10 minutes time, and I'll pray them. And we know the reality at that time that as soon as you press the snooze button, you're not waking up, you're not going to be sleeping for the next couple of hours. And you're not actually going to be able to get up to perform

your morning prayers. That's the reality of the situation. Now what ends up happening over here is that we fail to realize that with each conscious decision, where we make a negative and bad decision, that takes away from our guidance. So doing good actually becomes more difficult. Doing good actually becomes more difficult, as you rejected guidance till guidance is completely taken away from you. And then the second component of this was actively pursuing it. As I mentioned, that was the first key action point that you have to be constantly pursuing guidance in order to actually achieve it. Now when you have to know what guidance looks like, right, and that's what the first

part of that ayah was, it is the path of the prophets and the companions, as we mentioned. So you have to live a life according to guidance. And that is how spiritual guidance works. So this ties into that question, you know, from a religious perspective, how does God choose who ends up getting guided and who doesn't. And a lot of the times people have this understanding that it's purely God's decision, whom he chooses to guide and whom doesn't get guided. But when you look at this, I guess equation, this equation teaches us the exact opposite. That Yes, God is definitely part of the equation. But you have responsibility there yourself, to want to be guided. And that starts with

wanting to be sincere and developing a relationship with God. And that continues on with actively pursuing guidance, and realizing that you may not be guided right away, but as long as you're actively pursuing it, then you will eventually get it as long as you are sincere. Then once guidance comes to you, you have to embrace it and act upon it. And it's not good just to it's not good enough to theories theoretically just know about it, but not act upon it. And that life cycle has to continue, you have to actively pursue guidance each and every single time. So that is a spiritual relationship of guidance and how it continues and how it sustained and how it develops. Now from a

practical standpoint of guidance, how does that actually work? So as Muslims, we pray five times a day, those are the obligatory prayers that every Muslim

them should be trying their utmost best to pray. But those aren't the only prayers that have been legislated. We have a category which is just below them the supererogatory prayers, the sooner prayers. And then we have a category below that, which are the knuffle prayers, right? Those are the prayers that you can perform pretty much any time of the day just because you feel like worshiping God. Now, how do we understand guidance in relationship to prayer itself. When you look at these different categories, you have to understand that there are layers of prayers. And that's what it's like. So an individual that's praying is five times a day when his faith goes down when his Eman

goes down, there is nothing to protect his prayers and he usually ends up losing some of his prayers, and individual that's doing his fourth prayers with his supererogatory and his Sunnah prayers, when his faith or her faith goes down, they may lose their supererogatory prayers, but their main prayers, their fourth obligatory prayers are still there intact. Now an individual that adds a third layer of protection. And that is the individual is praying as for the sun, the end of the prayers, when his demand goes down, he may lose his or her knuffle prayers. But then his fourth and sooner prayers are still there to be protected. And this is the rule of active guidance. So now

when you understand this with your prayers apply to all aspects of your life. Because the each and every component of worship in Islam, there's going to be an obligatory component, there's going to be a recommended component, and there's going to be that optional component. And the more layers you protect your worship with, the more you will stay within the parameters of guidance. And the more lackadaisical you become with your acts of worship and choose not to layer them up, the more than likely guidance will just slip away. And this shows us the importance of having a very practical action based face. There's no point in having a faith that you only believe and claim that you know

what faith is in my heart, but you chose not to show goodness, not your Creator, nor to the people. And that faith is very impractical and is a faith that cannot be reconciled with Islam, because Islam is all about faith and doing good deeds, and both of them have to come together. Now, in terms of practical steps and action points that need to be taken by everyone. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam himself would frequently make a dua, and this is especially powerful, especially coming from the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam himself, he used to frequently say yum opennebula Paulo is a bit called the allergenic alternative the hearts make my heart firm upon your

faith upon your religion. And this shows us again that active pursuit of guidance and asking God for protection and asking God for guidance, it has to be self initiated. Now why is the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam teaching this to us? He's teaching us that even as the best of mankind. Part of the human experience is that you become vulnerable to doubt is part of the human experience is that you become vulnerable to desire. And part of the human experience is that your faith will go down. And what you want to do is before it completely crushes, you stop it as much as you can before that crash actually happens. So that is why you're asking Allah subhanho wa Taala constantly to

protect your faith. So the first thing you're going to be constantly doing is asking Allah subhana wa Taala, to protect your faith and to keep you steadfast in your faith. And once you reach that level of being steadfast, then making sure you're thanking Allah subhanho wa Taala. For that steadfastness. My dear brothers and sisters, we don't realize the blessing of knowing your purpose of life and your purpose of creation. There are millions of people in the world that wish they knew and understood why they existed. So the fact that we as Muslims understand that we were placed on this earth to worship Allah subhanho wa Taala. And to try to make this world as great of a place for

everyone as is possible. This is a huge blessing on Allah subhanho wa Taala upon us, and that is where the component of gratitude comes into play. And that is why Allah subhanho wa Taala he tells us in the Quran, when the injury occurred to him that as he then the content, if you will, to thank Allah subhanaw taala then he will increase you see you thank Allah subhanho wa Taala first economy thank Allah subhanho wa Taala for guidance. And Allah subhanho wa Taala increases you in guidance. So the first part of taking action is making dua. The second part of action is being grateful to Allah subhanho wa Taala for that guidance, and for being steadfast. The third part of action that we

want to take today is making sure that our understanding of faith is the correct one. And a lot of the times will not learn when our understanding of faith is incorrect. That is when it collapses, right the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he actually tells us that no one overburdens themselves in their faith, except that it is destroys them, meaning that no one goes to an extreme in their faith, except that it destroys them. And I want to give you this example from the Prophet Muhammad Saddam's time himself. Three men came to his house while he was away, and he took an oath to his wife that was president at that time. One of them said I will fast all day and night and I

will not break my fast. A second one said that I will not get married. I want to stay

Celebrate. And a third one said, I will be continuous in my prayers without taking a break. When the Prophet Muhammad SAW them came home, and he hears about this, he asked about who these individuals are, and he goes to them, and he admonishes them, but also reprimands him at the same time that Why are you making your faith so difficult upon yourselves? And I want you to understand this key component. A lot of people think, hey, if I fast all day and night, isn't that great for my faith? Or if I pray all day and night? Isn't that great for my faith? Or what if I choose to be celibate, and I don't get married, and I can devote myself to God completely, isn't that great for my faith.

But what we fail to realize is that this faith was revealed to human beings. And this faith has to be pragmatic for human beings, we were created to have relationships, we were created to pray, and to relax, we were created to eat and to fast, not just to do one of them the whole entire time. So one has to be very pragmatic and very practical and inclination and in in tune with the human experience. So what exactly does it mean finding the balanced faith? So let us go back when Allah subhanho wa Taala tells us guide us to the path of those whom he favored. We want to look back at how did the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and his companions or the Allahu anhu,

understand this faith. And through their understanding of this faith, we established principles. And those are the principles that you want to live your life by. Those are the principles that you want to interact with your faith. Now, what do those principles look like? In summary, your faith has to be spiritually enlightening, meaning that when you interact with your faith, it has to increase your Eman. It can't just remain stagnant. It can't go down if it is you're doing something wrong. Number two, is that your faith has to be logically sound, meaning that you can't come up with something that you don't understand. People do not interact well with things that they don't understand. How

are you supposed to implement something that you don't understand. And that is why when it comes to our faith, our faith was revealed to you know, the Bedouin man as well as to the scholar it can be understood by all that's how simplistic it is in its nature. So it has to be logically sound. And then the third thing, and this is perhaps the most important one, our faith has to be taken from its original sources. Right? We cannot say that Islam is based upon my opinion, or your opinion, or some other scholars opinion. But Islam is purely based upon what Allah subhanho wa Taala said, and what the prophet muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, and these are the original sources of

Revelation, and the way you interact with it is that make sure that each time you interact with these sources of Revelation, you're looking to be spiritually enlightened, you're looking to have some sort of action based upon what you're reading so that it actually makes you a better person. And you want to make sure that it's logically sound. Now, when this comes to this concept of logically sound, I think people don't understand what this means. They feel that you know what, when it comes to faith, it's just blind acceptance. There's a difference between blind acceptance and submission to Allah subhanaw taala. So from a Muslims perspective, if Allah Subhana Allah and His

Messenger sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said something, we automatically submit to it. But that does not mean we don't look for the wisdom or the reasoning behind those legislations. And I feel we live in a day and age where people are not encouraged enough to ask what is the wisdom and the reasoning behind legislations understand it, because the more you understand it, the better you will interact with your faith, and you'll be able to retain your faith. But if you don't pay enough attention to understanding what you're doing, and while you're doing it, eventually you're going to stop caring about it. And that's something that we don't want to see. So now, let me recap everything that I've

shared with you today. We talked about spiritual guidance and spiritual guidance is based upon sincerity, actively pursuing it, when it comes to you, you accept it. And then you have that model of guidance, which is the guidance of the predecessor the prompts that I sell them and all the previous prophets, as well as the companions of the law. And the second thing we spoke about is protecting your actions. And actions have layers, they have a fourth component, they have a center component, and they have an ethical component, the individual that's just doing his forte, when his demand goes down, he's going to end up losing it, but the individual that does more than that, he'll

be able to protect his layers of faith. So focus on doing your obligatory deeds first, but build upon it Don't be content on just doing the obligatory because if you just survive on the obligatory when your faith does go down, as as part of the human experience, you may end up losing your obligatory deeds. And then the third component, which was the action based component that I want all of us to try to implement to the best of our abilities. Number one, constantly making the door of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam Yama, cannibal pub sub, it's called biagini alternative the hearts make my heart firm upon your faith and religion. And then number two is thanking Allah

subhanho wa Taala for that guidance and for being steadfast and the more you think Allah subhanho wa Taala forward, the more he increases you in it, and the third thing is that

evoking a sound model of understanding your faith. So each and every time you learn something new, submit to it, if it is authentic, understand why you're doing it and embrace it and continue to grow. Never let your faith become stagnant, always continue to grow. And I pray that Allah Subhana ones are the mix of those that are guided and our guides for other people that Allah subhanho wa Taala keeps us steadfast till the day that we die, and that Allah subhanho wa Taala makes use of those that the best of their deeds are the last of them. And Allah subhanho wa Taala graced us with seeing his beautiful face in the hereafter mean will lozada Allah sallallahu wasallam above the

Garden of Eden Mohammed bin Wanda and he was salam wa Salaam Alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh