Guidebook to God
27 / 30
Ep: 27: Tahajjud: Finding Light in The Darkness | Guidebook to God
Today’s content uncovers the beauty and benefit of turning to Allah when others sleep. Discover the significance of Tahajjud: finding light in darkness.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Finding Light in the Darkness Finding light in the darkness, tahajjud, the night vigil, the night prayers, subhanAllah. This is one of the great aims that you and I should seek to improve in. And I know it's very difficult. Wallahi it's very difficult for me to kind of talk to you even about it. Many of us, subhanAllah, we struggle with our day to day prayers. We're just struggling with fajr, just struggling with dhuhr, or finding time in our work or at school to be able to take time off and pray our dhuhr prayer. And now you're telling me to pray night prayers? Well, believe it or not, one of the best ways for you to improve your five daily prayers, the quality of them, your habitualness in them, is that you make a determined effort to pray the voluntary prayers. Because it makes you understand the value of the regimented salah. And I do want to talk to you about the value of finding light in the darkness. Finding an opportunity to turn to Allah when others are asleep. Finding an opportunity to pray to Allah when nasu niyam. The Prophet ﷺ said, tadkhulu aljannata bisalam. You want to enter jannah in peace? Sallu wal nasu niyam. Pray when other people are asleep. When your street outside is dark, and the night has set, and nobody is awake except SubhanAllah, you have risen, your family have risen, to answer the call of Allah. And a few hours, a few minutes, a few moments before fajr, you catch two raka'ah, or four raka'ah, or six raka'ah, or eight raka'ah. And I'm not saying you have to spend half the night, or even a third of the night in beginning. But to find that your love will grow to Allah. Your consistency in fajr prayer will become much more consistent when you have said that you want to converse with Allah before it. Nobody has trouble waking up for fajr in Ramadan.
Nobody has trouble finding it difficult to wake up half an hour early for suhoor, prepare a meal for our families, to eat with our mothers and parents and fathers, to sit together and have a quick sahari and suhoor, and then pray fajr. But we find it difficult outside because our priorities are not set. So I want to inspire and remind myself, wallahi, and you of the beauty of salatul fajr. Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala says in surat al-sajdah, the name of this chapter is called prostration. And in it is a sajdah where Allah describes salatul tahajjud. He says, تَتَجَافَ جُنُوبُهُمْ عَنِ الْمَضَاجِعِ يَدْعُونَ رَبَّهُمْ خَوْفًا وَطَمْعًا Those who are elite, those who are righteous, those who have built an ethics and a character of righteousness, they are those whose bodies, whose sides, whose backs have a hatred and a resentment for their bed. You say, what does that mean? It means that if your bed is so soft that you can't get out of it because it's so warm, it's so comfortable that you miss your fajr prayer, you should look at that bed and hate it and say, you've kept me away from answering the call of Allah. الصلاة خير من النوم You have distracted me from the remembrance of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. And therefore, the ideal of the believer is that their own body physically resents the fact that their bed has kept them asleep when they could have had an opportunity. So when they wake up, تَتَجَافَ جُنُوبُهُمْ Their body declares that we don't love the softness of this bed at this time. خَوْفًا وَطَمْعًا What wakes a person up? Why will you become consistent in tahajjud? There's only two reasons. خَوْف There's a fear you have of Allah. There's a fear you have of the circumstances in your life. SubhanAllah, when somebody's sick, when somebody's unwell, before you have surgery, if there's a divorce that is pending on the horizon,
whenever there's something that's troubled your father, your mother, your brothers or your sister, whenever there's a major disturbance, it's easy for people to wake up and say, Oh Allah, Allah, Allah, help us, help us, help us out of fear. And therefore, Allah acknowledges that this is a valid reason. خَوْفًا And number two, طَمْعًا Out of greed, out of yearning for Allah's blessing, that even though I'm not afraid, I want more. I want more of the wealth of the dunya. I want more of the higher standard in it. I want to be acknowledged in this life, but acknowledged in the next life even more so. Did you know the Prophet ﷺ describes those who pray salatul tahajjud, their night vigil, which comes from the word جَاهَادًا, which is the word jihad, right? And therefore, it's a night prayer, but it's the night jihad that you and I perform in answering Allah ﷻ. The Prophet ﷺ said, شَرَافُ الْمُؤْمِنُ قِيَامُهُ بِاللَّيْلِ The nobility, the honor that a believer has is their prayer at night. Why do you get honored? It's because you're recognized for something good you did. You know, you get honored on the completion of your degree in the ceremony of convocation. You get honored in your workplace with a pay raise. You get honored in this dunya and akhirah by Allah ﷻ, by being made a person who's able to pray to Allah ﷻ at night. And therefore, that kind of tells you right now, are you from the honored or dishonored? Are you from the elite or the debased? Are you from the people whom Allah has blessed or are you from the people whom Allah turned away? And some of us, I know some who are listening to this, you're young, but this is the time for you to say, listen, I can't pray the whole night. I don't know enough Quran. All I want you to do is to just before you sleep, there's two ways to pray tahajjud. Before you sleep and you prayed your salat al-ishaa, before you pray your witr prayer, pray two rak'ah or four rak'ah or six. Just Allahu Akbar al-fatiha and qul huwa Allahu ahad.
Allahu Akbar al-fatiha qul a'udhu rabbil falaq, qul a'udhu rabbil nas. That's it. Two rak'ah. It takes two minutes. Or wake up a little bit earlier before fajr and pray two rak'ah. Not the sunnah fajr but two rak'ah before it. And ask Allah for his forgiveness. Ask Allah for his mercy. In so doing, you've signed a contract of love, signed a contract of peace with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. You will not ever able to estimate the blessing that Allah has set store for you for being able to pray that tahajjud. Bima ukhfiyah lahum min qurrati a'ayun. That which will please their eyes. Jaza'an bima kanoo ya'maloon. On account of that prayer that you just performed. Subhanallah. The immense reward for those two rak'ah, the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam said, Rak'atain, two prostrations before fajr in the darkness of the night, khayrun minad dunya wa ma fiyha. Will equal greater than what is all that is found in the treasures of this life and the next life. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala make us consistent in our prayers, consistent in our ibadah. Bless us with the ability to stand before him when others are asleep and to increase our families and us in goodness. Know as well that the waking up of another person to stand in prayer at night when they would have slept is one of the great ways of earning Allah's rahma. The Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam said, rahimallahum ra'atan. Allah's mercy descends upon a wife. Qamat li taqooma allayl. She stood up to pray at night, saw her husband asleep, fa'aqadat, tried to wake him up, fa'aba. He said, no, leave me alone, I got work tomorrow. Nadhathu bilma, she sprinkled a little bit of water in his face, hatta astayqad until he woke up. She didn't pour water by the way. Don't bring a vase of water and pour it over your dad or your mom or your brother or whatever. Nadhathu bilma hatta astayqad until he wakes up. And fa'aqadat and they prayed to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Allah's mercy descends upon that household.
May Allah allow us to wake up and be examples of good for other people. Wa salli allahumma wa sallim wa zid wa barik ala Sayyidina wa Nabiyina Muhammad salallahu alayhi wa sallam. Your brother Yahya Ibrahim, wasalamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu.
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
