Faith in Allah's Plan | Great Lecture by Dr Nouman Ali Khan | Motivational

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Faith in Allah's Plan 

 

Faith in Allah's Plan | Great Lecture by Dr. Nouman Ali Khan | Motivational

My intention today is to share with you some highlights from a very unique story in the Quran this is towards the end of surat al-qahaf something we recite every Friday this is one of the events in the life of musa alaihissalam the chronology of it is not known but it seems it’s very much later on after his great missions have been accomplished the challenge against the pharaoh is done the crossing of the water is done the Israelites are somewhat there in the desert now etcetera and it seems it's in that time frame that Allah calls him to task he gives him a mission essentially that he has to go learn something the first thing i'd like to highlight isthmus alaihissalam's commitment to learning he says when i recited in the beginning of this he said to his young student his you can say his intern his father his young man in other words he took an assistant with him and he says to him I’m going to continue and stay committed to this journey until i reach the place where two oceans meet even if it means i have to spend multiple time year multiple lifetimes finding it he’s telling this to his student and all of this the purpose of this journey is he's going to learn from someone so the first thing he's teaching his student is that more than anything else he himself is a student and he's teaching his student his own commitment as a student i don’t it doesn't matter if it takes me multiple lifetimes to find this destination or not because i don't know exactly where it is I’m just heading in this in this direction and you're coming along with me but don't ask me to quit because I’m not going to I’m that committed to learning this is Allah’s way of also teaching us that the knowledge he's about to learn isn’t something trivial of course you know that musaalaihissalam is the most mentioned prophet in the Quran he’s also the recipient of the largest revelation the torah is significantly much bigger in volume than the revelation of the Quran and he's by that definition he’s actually the most knowledgeable of all human beings until that time he has more knowledge of revelation than anybody else that has been given and yet this man is now being told alaihisthat he is going to go learn and he and by the way his followers what are they called they're called people of the book meaning people of learning the people who who take his religion and even though they've made changes to it they’re called people of ink in other words this is the messenger Salam who inspired so much learning and so much knowledge that came after him they were his people became known as the people of knowledge and the people of information and the people of the book in any case he's going to learn something that requires an extra effort on his part even if it takes him lifetimes there's something unique and valuable about these lessons that even the book of Allah at the time is not going to teach him he has to learn this from somewhere else either doesn’t have this answer and Allah won’t just give it to him he won't just reveal it to him Allah says in the Quran Allah used to speak to Muslim directly in direct communication and engage with him in in a very rigorous communication and yet Allah says no this is not the kind of learning that even Allah will teach you directly you're going to have to go on a journey so it is a very unique circumstance you don't just Passover this little bit of information you have to appreciate what's going on here the most knowledgeable person in the world at the time is now being told you have to go learn a lesson from somewhere else and so he goes on this what seems like an endless journey who is this person that he's going to learn from what what is what are his credentials  mean if musa alayhi salaam is going to the most mentioned prophet in the Quran is going to be going to become a student of someone we must really learn his name and acknowledge him so now when we get to that Allah azzawajal he says they found us one of our servants literally the Quran describes this teacher of Muslim as one of our servants i know that in our narrations and some of the opinions we find his name to be pronounced differently Quran deliberately does not mention his name you would think this is a very important individual and there's even an argument whe therit's human or angel not it's not an issue in the quran the Quran didn't ask that question we don'thave to ask that question the Quran gave us one bit of information about him hewas one of our slaves what does that dothat actually teaches us somethingprofound about those who reach theheights of knowledgethey are nothing more than a slave ofallahtheir titlestheir credentials are insignificantbefore allah he's a mysterious figurethat musa alaysalam just knows this isthe person i have to learn from and it'sreally interesting also musaalaihissalam does not ask him hiscredentialsand say so i'm supposed to learn fromyou i mean where did you graduate fromwhat revelation do you getwho are you supposed to belike you know when you're learning fromsomeone you want to kind of size them upthere's nothing like it he's musa alislam straight up goes to him and saysmay i follow youcan i and he didn't saycould you just teach mei came all this way because apparentlyyou know some things i don't know so whydon't you just tell me i'm i'm already tired Quran also describes musa islam on this journey we've been pretty exhausted mind you this is the same musa alaihisalam who's crossed the water who's been in the desert who's done quite a few pretty exhaustive things who's been in muddy and almost dying of dehydration to find water this is the same moosa that went on this journey and says i'm pretty exhausted by now and after this exhaustion he doesn't say can we just sit down here and learn now can because it's been a pretty tough journey for me he says to this individual this he says to him can i follow youthis is interesting because it's what he's going to learn isn't just word she has to follow him this is a kind of learning that will come from experience it's not it's not book knowledge it's not classroom knowledge it's experience knowledge and this is something musaislam already knows this person will teach me something that cannot come from books or words he's going to show mecertain experiencesso he's asking permission to follow him and only by living those experiences will i learn something and of course his response is your you don't have the patience for iti don't see you as capable of withstanding what's going to be coming don't see that you have the grit the perseverance the patience it takes to learn these lessons and musa salaam then convinces him and by the way musam could have also said uh excuse me i don't have patience you know who i deal with i dealt with i debated with him you know whose leader i am banu israeli don't have patience you know what the kinds of things they've said to me he doesn't say that clearly musa al-islam you and i know his patience has been tested throughout this life throughout his life time and time again his patience has been tested and yetthese lessons his teacher is telling him they're not that easy it's going to test your patience you're going to lose it you're not going to be able to with hold it that's a pretty pretty powerful statement to make and for Quran to record it like that about musaand he says you'll find me patient insha allah ifallah wills i'm not saying that i have that capability before allah grants me that capability i will demonstrate patience to you okay so that's his prerequisite for this learning this is important for us because we learn before we learn anything about these lessons what we have to internalize is that these lessons cannot be learned if you're not patient and these lessons will only be learned if your and my patience is tested if we're put in difficult circumstances these lessons are directly related to difficulty and hardship where your patience and your grit is going to be put to the test so this is what musa is being told and of course musa has seen difficulty before this is not new for him so he’s pretty confident he'll be able to manage the situation so they go on their way and instead of me going aya by aya I’ll just share some highlights with you thefirst stop on their journey is that they ask this man this teacher of his and musa islam they bored onto a ship now when they board onto a ship obviously there are people they’re travelers and they ask these people can we ride with you so they've done them a favor the circumstance is not just about a ship i have to you have to understand now we have a situation where there are people who did other people a favor the people that own the ship have done musa salaam and his teacher a favor by allowing them to ride along with them they go on this ride he starts going you can imagine goes to the the bottom of the ship and start sripping out the planks and damaging the ship it's now starting to sink from inside and musa sounds like have you just damaged this boat so you can drown the people that are on it what are you doing what an unheard of thing you're doing what a terrible thing you're up to how could you do this and the teacher turns to him and says didn't i tell you you're not gonna you don't have the patience for this you can't learn these lessons and he says okay okay okay don't don't hold don't hold me to this don't penalize me from this mistake and don't make this hard for me fine fine fine you just do what you do but before we go any further i want you to appreciate something there are people that are going to be in your life and mine that you might be doing something good too you did something good to them and they do something terrible to you and you're standing what how why would you do this to me or you're a bystander watching like musaalayhi sam is a bystander watching they did something good for us why are you hurting them the last person you should be hurting is the one who did good to you you know like the poet says i taught him how to do archery every day and when his shot got really good he shot me you know that's that this idea is so weird i was helping you i did so much for you how could you turn around and do this to me this is what musa i'm shocked about anyway this is the first lesson they goon he doesn't know what the lesson is yethe still got questions in his head why did this happen you don't have the patience let's keep going time for lesson number two and they go on to lesson number two and they see this kid they don't know who this child is and he just kills the kid this man kills a child this child has done nothing to you he's committed no crime you don't even know him musa alayhi salaam is an absolute shock by the way this is the kind of person musa alayhi salaam is the kind of individual that when a person was being beat up he intervened you remember earlier on his in his life somebody was being beat up and he he intervened and said you know and he went up and he just he punched the guy stopped it from happening now he's seen a child be killed the shock and anger and frustration of musa are you serious have you killed a pure innocent soul without it having or this child having committed any crime what kind of unheard evil have you just committed and the teacher turns to him again with this corpse of a child in front of him and says didn't i say to you you're not going to have the patience for this you can't handle this okay he said fine if i ask you anything else then okay you don't have to accompany me i got it okay from my end i have no excuse you you have every reason to leave me if i if i if i do if i cross the line one more time i've been disqualified now we've got two circumstances so far one in which people did good to them and apparently they did bad back in the other nobody did anything to you they you have nothing to do with this one why would you harm them why would you do something to them and this is also something unfathomable for musaand then you get to the third circumstance they went to some town and you know they refused the people refused to be hospitable to them in the least bit hey do you know where the well is you drink some water shut the door in their face pushing them around nobody's offering them any help you know and they they're not they're clearly not welcome where they are you know i don't know as a kid i watch alot of western flicks when a guy walks into a salon and everybody kind of somebody's chewing on a straw just staring at him like there's about to be a gunfight or something like they're not they're known they're not welcome here you know what you're doing here stranger you know that kind of thing so when that happens and they're not welcome they're walking by and they see this monument type wall that's broken down and it's tipping over yuriit looks like it's going to tip over and damage the whole street and his teacher says yeah we're going to work on this wall we're going to fix this whole wall in the middle of town people are cursing at them people don't care for them people are clearly letting them know you better leave here you better get out of here and they’re fixing the street in the middle they’re fixing this wall in the middle and musa sounds like these people are terrible to us and they won't even give us so much as asip of water we’ve been working and laboring here all day building this wall if you wanted you could have been paid for this work at least maybe we would have gotten a couple of dollars here and there and maybe would have eaten some thingbut that much and he says this is it this is the time you and i partofit's interesting the story began where two oceans meet and it it's ending where they part you know these two are now parting and in a sense they're all both also oceans of knowledge islam is the ocean of knowledge of revelation and this teacher of his is the knowledge of this other kind of knowledge that doesn't come from books but now they're partying and so now he tells him the reasoning behind all three of these there was a greater plan from Allah and in this plan those people whose ship was destroyed actually their ship was about to be seized by the navy the king was taking every ship to add to his navy when they came by their ship they saw the ship is damaged they said no good for the navy they let it go they're going to suffer damages they're going to have to fix it up but at least they still get to keep their their livelihood they can still earn a living in the case of the child only allah could have known that down the road in the future this child was going to be a criminal tyrannical to his parents and Allah gave that child an outlet to jannah and allowed his parents also relief of great calamity that was coming their way nobody could have known that except Allah in the case of this wall Allah was looking out for two orphans in that townthat was so mean to them whose father left a great deal of money behind and that money was buried under that wall if that wall tipped over people would have seen that treasure they would have the kind of people they are we know what kind of people they are those kids wouldn't have seen a penny of it that would have been eaten up by some body else and Allah wanted that those kids grow up one day and are strong enough and to protect their assets and then they dig up what is theirs this was Allah’s plan but in all of this none of this makes any logical sense I mean unless you know Allah’s plan you’re not going to know the logic behind something terrible that happens what i'm getting at is sometimes you're going to do good for people and you're not going to get compensated like that wall sometimes people are going to do terrible things to you you haven't done anything to them sometimes you've done good for the mand they only do horrible things to you or somebody else you see these are these things around you and when this happens your patience is going to be tested how can they get away with this how can they do this to me why would they do this i want to give you one more place in the Quran which is also in a sense related to the people of musa alaihisvery interesting language you know the Israelites when they were established and when they finally became an independent nation eventually Allah actually in in the history of the jewsin the history of the Israelites they were ransacked and invaded by foreign nations multiple times and allah mentions two major major invasions in suratul Israel but the way he mentions it understand that the is raelites the jewish community of the time we consider them the Muslims of that time you have to understand what that meansthey were the muslims of that time thatwas the ummahand they lived in a town and then non-muslims came non-believers came and invaded them they broke into every home you don'thave to go further when you describe soldiers breaking inside homesthen you know what happens next thatdoesn't have to be spelled out every body can know anybody who understands war knows when militaries go into civilian towns all unnamed kinds of atrocities take place but that army that came in you know what allah called themhe sayswe appointed over you meaning we sent to invade over you servants of ours the strangest phrase those people were disbelievers enemies of Allah pagansat tacking muslims and what did Allah call them his servants sometimes people do that do terrible terrible things they don't even know that they're serving larger plan from Allah they don't even know it they don't even know that even in their rebellion against Allah they are actually at Allah service they don't even know the believers might not understand why this is happening to them they don't see the future script they don't have that curtain lifted from Allah like in the case of the teacher of musa who said look this is going to test your patience because you don't know what's behind the scenes all you see is what's happening in front of you you don't know what’s going on you know in the background that is only this is knows the unseen and the scene we only get to see what's in front and when we see what's in front we go crazy we lose patience you see how can they do this how did Allah let this happen you know that parent those parents who lost their child are not going to say oh yeah i guess he was going to get older and be a big pain they’re not going to say that they say how did Allah let this happen why did my child have to die and those same parents if that child lived 20 years later i wish you died when you were young the kind of pain you've caused us those same parents will say those words but Allah knew Allah they don't know Allah knows and you don't know Allah. Allah has knowledge and you don’t have knowledge this is the kind of lesson that musa alaihi salaam could not just have been told he had to experience it why because you can read about patience you can learn about you can listen to about it but if you're experiencing somethingyou're experiencing a kind of situation where you cannot understand why this ishappening to you why is this happening to me and then still know like don't think this is a bad thing for you there's good in this for you there's good in it for you if you can internalize that then you've learned one of the most important lessons in the Quran one of those lessons that could not have been learned easily even by the likes of musaand if it's not easy for you and me to internalize that lesson right away that’s okay it wasn't even easy for musawe're not being expected to turn in to angels we're not being expected to not be frustrated to not be angry to not lose patience that's not the expectation from Allah as a matter of fact even someone of that status of muslim from from ululif he can multiple times be told look you're losing your patience told you you're not going to be able to handle it then who are we we are going to go through those circumstances but this story and these this this guidance is going to remind us that we have to take a step back sometimes and just look at Allah’s plan and say i submit to it there is something good in it in this life and in  the next and you know what I’m going to accept that and this is the lesson that musa had to be given we are not going to have someone like you know musa's teacher who will walk around with us and when something bad happens by the way i know you're frustrated but you know the realthing you know you lost your job right now and you're really upset but actually a much better job is coming and you would never have even applied for it if this didn't happen and you're going to move to the town you always wanted to move to but that's all planned out for you but i i just didn't want to tell you that so right now i know you're pretty depressed because you don't have any savings you don't have money to pay the rent and the electricity bill and everything’s falling apart but just wanted to let you know there's something in the source code you didn't understand uh that's not going to happen with us that's not going to happen that's that's only with that messenger and that lesson that he had to learn and through that we know that there' s always a plan because of this story we know there's always a plan and the plan of Allah is always always meant to be something good you know that knowledge that this man had or this individual had I’d say be to be careful how did Allah describe his knowledge he says about this individual Allah gave him a mercy that comes especially from us and then secondarily he says we gave him a knowledge that comes especially from us in other words that knowledge that he has before it is even knowledge it is a mercy before it's even knowledge it is a mercy from Allah that was important to mention because everything he did didn't look like mercy it didn't look like mercy not from the naked eye not from the eyes of the scene but from the eyes of the unseen there is mercy in that too may Allah give us eyes of iman and really a heart that can withstand difficulty withstand hardship whatever hardship you are going through in your life whatever circumstances that are that are weighing down on you and may Allah azza will give you the faith to know there's something good behind this that is on the horizon you just have to hold on to your.