Reminders
20 / 83
99 gods vs 99 names of one God | Daily Reminders
As our circumstances change, our connection to a specific name of Allah changes. We call upon Allah differently depending on the situation. It’s very important for us to take the time to connect with each one of Allah’s names and reference them in our prayers and du’as. The more we connect with all of His names, the closer we are to Him.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Hi everyone, Assalamualaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuhu Audhu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem Alhamdulillahi Wasallamu Ala Rasulillah Wa Al'Alihi Wasahbihi Wa Man Wala So my throat is getting better Alhamdulillah, but I mean I'm making progress. So inshallah my voice will be a little bit louder today than it was the day before. And hopefully inshallah ta'ala I'll have it fully restored in no time. So again I appreciate your du'as, your prayers, and your remedies, and your well wishes and thoughts. So tonight what I wanted to reflect on was this concept of 99 names of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. 99 names of one God versus 99 gods. And I'll tell you why that's very important. The first thing is that if you were to take the 99 names of Allah and interact with them in isolation, then they would not connect you ultimately to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. But to connect with Ar-Rahman is to connect with Ar-Raheem. To connect with Al-Ghafoor is to connect with Ar-Wadud. To connect with Ar-Razaq is to connect with Al-Waqeer. If you really pay attention, one of the blessings of having the 99 names of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is that if you connect with any one of them, ultimately you're connecting with the same God. And all of that brings you closer to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So connecting with all 99 of them is a means of connecting you to one. And it's important for us then to think about how proportionally connected we are to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Because when the Prophet salallahu alaihi wa sallam said that Allah has 99 names, man ahsaha, whoever perfects them, completes them, solidifies them, ascertains them, affirms them, dakhalal jannah, will enter paradise. What that means is that the more you connect to the 99 names of Allah, the more you connect to Allah, and the less that you connect with some names of Allah, the less you connect with Allah, the less you connect with God himself.
And it's important for us to find a way to make sure that we're connecting with each one of those names of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and to find them around us in everything that's happening around us. So why is this so significant to us right now? Allah mentions in the Quran, wa lillahi al-asma'u al-husna fa'd'uhu biha, that to Allah, to God belong the most beautiful of names, so call Him using those names. Call Allah with all of His different names. And if you think about right away off the bat, your dua, your supplication, your prayer, how many names of Allah do you use in your prayer? Right? Are you only connecting with Allah? Are you connecting with the most compassionate, the most merciful, ar-Rahman ar-Rahim? Are you connecting with ar-Razaq? Are you connecting with all of those different beautiful names of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala? Or do you only use the name Allah and use a few of Allah's names, the ones that are most familiar to you and most common to you? And so the first thing you have to ask yourself when you see that ayah, that verse is, how much am I making dua? How much am I supplicating? And then how can I bring all of the names of Allah into my life in my supplication? How do I call upon Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala using all of His names in my supplication so that I'm connecting to Allah from all of these different angles? Because at the end of the day, to bring all of the 99 back together in our hearts, in our minds, in our thoughts, on our tongues, is to completely overwhelm ourselves, right? With the contemplation of Allah, who He is, and how we connect with Him. And so I should be thinking to myself very intentionally, how do I start to bring about all of the names of Allah into my supplication? Now here's the thing with that. Usually, you don't connect to a different name of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala because you read it in the Quran or you came across it or you thought about it. Usually you connect to a different name of Allah because your circumstances have changed, right?
And so I had no reason to think about, or I thought I had no reason to think about this name of Allah until something happened to me. And so for example, if I had never worried about my sustenance before, if I was very comfortable financially, then al-Razzaq, the sustainer, was not so much at the front of my mind. It wasn't something that was occupying my thoughts because sustenance was not something that I was worrying about. But now that things are happening the way that they're happening, and I'm not as comfortable maybe in my finances now, I'm going to constantly be reminded of rizq and the concept of sustenance. And so I really need to have not just a wholesome understanding of al-Razzaq, but I need to have a regular mention of al-Razzaq, mention of the sustainer in my prayers, right? And really connect with that name in a very wholesome way. And so the circumstances around you change and then it's like, okay, well, what does this name mean? And how does this name connect, right? And that's one of the blessings of the shifting circumstances of our lives is that it forces us to connect to Allah in a different way. And so you call upon Allah differently when you're in hardship than you do when you're at ease. You call upon Allah differently when you're in fear rather than when you're comfortable, right? You call upon Allah differently in all of these different circumstances, even if you're not necessarily using a different name of Allah. Usually you're calling upon Allah in a different way. The nature of your dua, the nature of your supplication is changing. And so how do you infuse the names of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, the names of God into your prayers, into your supplications, intentionally in a way that you're connecting with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala as a result of or through all of these different ways. And then add another layer to that. What you want to get to is that when you look around you, no matter how you're looking around, what you're seeing,
everything around you should start to connect to one of the names of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So you see an act of generosity immediately, Al-Kareem, the most generous comes to your mind. You see an act of love immediately, Al-Wadud comes to mind. You see an act or you see something that's fashioned beautifully, immediately Al-Musawwir comes to mind. You see the vastness of the creation, immediately Al-Khaliq comes to mind. You see something where you've been entrusted or someone else has been entrusted to no one but their Lord, immediately Al-Wakil comes to mind, right? So all of these names start to immediately come to mind as a second nature for you with everything that's changing around you. So in your dua, in your supplications, in your prayers, you are purposefully, intentionally using all of the names of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And you could start right now with your witted prayer, for example. You could start with, you know, after every prayer, studying one of the names of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. If you go to Yaqeen's website, you'll find that we had a series, Sheikh Mohammed Shanawi and myself did a program, mostly him. I just did the introduction, to know him is to love him. And Sheikh Mohammed has been doing a beautiful breakdown of the names of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Because it's always been my belief that if we had a proper understanding of the names of Allah, then the issues of faith that have been made primary will be rendered secondary. They'll be turned into peripheral issues because you have such a trust and a faith in the name of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, in the names of Allah and the attributes of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And so the first thing again is, how do I intentionally bring about all of those names in my dua? It's not enough to memorize them in a nasheed, okay? If my dua is missing some names of Allah, then that could be an aspect of my life that I'm not connecting to God, okay?
So if I'm not using those names of God, either in my supplications or connecting them to the circumstances, there's a void and there's an absence then, a disconnect in those things that are happening around me and God. And the idea is to connect all areas of my life to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, to God. And I can't connect all areas of my life to Allah, unless I connect to all of the names of Allah, right? So all of the names of Allah are relevant, the question is whether we've made them relevant or not and whether they immediately are triggered in our minds and in our hearts and in our thoughts, when we see things happening around us. So the first thing again, as an assignment, as a takeaway, just ask yourself every night, everyone should be praying witaj, right? Trying to pray witaj. How do I bring about a new set of names of Allah into my dua, into my prayers and my supplications? So I connect with Allah that way. And then the second thing is, how do I connect the circumstances around me to those different names of Allah? So when things are happening and unfolding in my life, how do I immediately say, that reminds me of Allah, Al, Allah, The, and then think about that name. And then the third thing, as I mentioned in the very beginning, the difference between 99 gods and 99 names of one God, is that the more I connect to Ar-Rahman, the more I connect to Ar-Razaq. The more I connect to each one of these names of Allah, it brings me in a wholesome way closer to Allah. And the greatest blessing, the greatest blessing of anything that can be given to us, of bestowal or of deprivation, right? Of hardship or of ease, is a deeper connection to Allah. And that is one of the blessings of unique circumstances, because unique circumstances force us to reflect and to reconsider how we have embraced or neglected some elements of our faith. And the first place to start when you're reconsidering how you may have neglected some element of your faith,
is whether you've neglected an aspect of God that was relevant to your life, but that you had been ignoring. And so let's make it a point, insha'Allah ta'ala, to connect to each one of those names of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. و لله الأسماء الحسنى فادعوه بها. Last thing, I should have mentioned this in the beginning actually. Last thing. The greatest way to connect to those names then, after you supplicate with them, after you reflect on them with the changing circumstances, is to manifest the human component of any of those attributes when they are present. So for example, Allah is Al-Kareem. Allah is the most generous. I can't be Al-Kareem. And Allah's generosity is unlike the generosity of a human being. But I can be generous. And the more I connect to Al-Kareem, the most generous, or the more I connect to generosity in my life, the more I connect to Al-Kareem. I can be merciful. My mercy will never be like Allah's mercy. But if I am merciful, then I will undoubtedly be more connected to the most merciful. So every element of Allah's names that has a human, because nothing of Allah's names are human, but there is a human companion to that divine name and divine attribute. I should be manifesting that in my life. And if I'm not, then I'm failing in that regard. And I need to find a way to bring it in my life, insha'Allah ta'ala. So whether it's justice or generosity or love or mercy, I need to be a part of that, insha'Allah ta'ala, and manifest that whatever way that I possibly can. And that's why the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam said, ارحموا من في الأرض يرحمكم من في السماء Be merciful to those on earth, and the one in the heavens will be merciful to you. So may Allah subhana wa ta'ala bless all of you and allow us to connect to Him in every way possible,
to connect to all of His names, and ultimately to connect to Him, and to fall deeper in love with Him in these moments. اللهم آمين جزاكم الله خيرا والسلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته
Welcome back!
Bookmark content
Download resources easily
Manage your donations
Track your spiritual growth
1 items
1 items
1 items
25 items
50 items
9 items
