Road to Return | How to Come Back from Sin
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Ep. 15: Deprioritizing God | Road to Return
What place does God have in your life? Sh. Yahya Ibrahim discusses what—or Who—should be first in our life, and how deprioritizing Him becomes one of the greatest sins we can fall into.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Allah must always come first. Deprioritizing Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala from your life is a major transgression. And when I say deprioritizing Allah, I don't mean that you intentionally do it in every aspect of your life. It could be that you're very selective as to where you make Allah important in your life and where you intentionally omit Allah, the laws of Allah, and that which he has instructed from your very existence. Some of the things that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, for example, warns us about in the Qur'an and condemns, have you seen the one, have you considered the individual who has made their ilah, their deity that they worship, their own desirous self. And it's almost as if a person decides for themselves the way they want to live life in the capacity that they want to live it and have an unfettered, unending approach to fulfilling just what they think is good for themselves without receiving the divine light and guidance and the scripture and the sunnah and tradition of the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. And therefore they deprioritize Allah from first asking, is this halal? Is this haram? How can I improve this? Is this the way the Prophet would have done it? Is this something that is pleasing to Allah, pleasing to the way of the believers and the way of the Rasul Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. Another important critical aspect of how at times we may deprioritize Allah is that we take credit for everything as if it's our own doing alone. And Allah gives us that parable in Surat Al-Kahf of the two men who had gardens next to each other, one whose garden flourished and the other who worked just as hard,
used the same techniques and the same land and the same irrigation systems, but it didn't flourish as much. And the first and former said to himself, maa adhunnu anta biidah hadhihi abada. This garden, nothing could ever ruin it. Its roots are deep, it's water, it's pure, it's, you know, I've have a tried and true method. Don't you see that I've invested all of my life in it? I have created this for myself. And he took all credit for getting that everything that he's using at his disposal, all of the things that he has learned from others who came before him, the land that he's procured, everything is not his own making and doing. And there is no such a thing as a self-made person who that they have made everything for themselves. At the very end, when Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la causes that garden to ruin as a sign to all of us, that there are things that we should never assume that are just in our power and domain. You didn't make yourself and will not make yourself into who you are just through hard work and smarts. And a lot of it comes to what you have inherited in genetics, in your parents, in your opportunities, in your teachers, in your schools, you stand on the shoulder of giants. And at the end of that sequence of verses in Surah Al-Kahf, the man says, Ya laytani lam ushrik bi rabbi ahada. I wish I had never made shirk, partnered anyone with Allah, meaning that I didn't put myself on equal footing with Allah, that I didn't say, ma sha'a Allah la quwwata illa billah. This is from the will of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la for me. Another way that people deprioritize Allah is that they hear the verses, yasma'una ayatillahi tutla alayhim. They hear the verses of Allah. They see the signs of Allah. They're given admonition and reminder by the imams and their families and their teachers
and their community, but they turn blind. Summum bukmum umyum fahum la yaqiloon. They attempt to pretend to be deaf, dumb and mute and blind to the truth. And Allah causes them to be as if they have no intellect and no knowledge whatsoever. Do not ever in your life hear of a word of Allah, hear of an instruction of his Nabi Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and that you willfully choose to disobey it without any restriction, that you just go headlong in it and say, this isn't something that I'm going to do. Don't ever reject the word of Allah. Don't ever deprioritize Allah in your life. Don't ever put someone in the place that only Allah should be. La in ashraqta la yahbatan na'maluk. If you were to join others with Allah, if you were to love others the way that only Allah should be loved, if you were to fear others the way Allah should only be feared, if you were to hope in others the way only Allah should be hoped for, if you make your boss or your teacher or your friends in the same position as Allah, that they tell you do this or don't do this or go there or don't go there and you know it is in direct contradiction, it is opposite to what Allah has said and you choose them, you choose the haram, you choose the sin instead of the path of Allah, that becomes a deprioritization of Allah and a major transgression in your life. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la tells us that Luqman said to his son, Ya Abu Nayya la tushrik billah, oh my son don't make anyone equitable, equal in partnership to Allah and that's not just in you worshiping Allah and worshiping others. I know none of us are going to bow down to an idol or you know worship a false deity as we
believe as Muslims but if you take the legislation and if you take the instructions of that which is haram and make it more important in your life, more practiced in your life than that which is halal and that which is ordered by Allah, then you have put them on a place that only Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la should have in your life, that the one who orders, the one who prohibits, the one who you fear more than all is Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. Equally you should never love anything, anyone in a way that makes you reject Allah because of your love for them, which your love should only be an exclusively in an unconditional capacity for Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. Allah must always be first and the greatest priority in your life.
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