Believers do This for Iman

In this hadith reported in Al Tabarani in Al Mu'jam Al Kabir and it's authentic the Prophet S.A.W says that the believer is created to go through trials.

So you will keep going through trials , this life is just a series of trials one after another. So you will go through trials, trials to faith, trials to your mind, trials to your emotional life, physical trials, financial trials.

That's what life is about it's A TEST, so we are always going through trials. But Iman, what does Iman do? Iman always repents, the believer. Always repents to Allah, meaning coming back to Allah. We always lose track then we come back to Allah . We drift a little bit, then we come back to Allah that's the nature of Iman and that's why Allah S.W.T says about the believers they are the ones when they, fall into a sin or commit some kind of a crime, they remember Allah S.W.T. 

So they seek forgiveness from Allah S.W.T. That's the nature of Iman if you think you're gonna be righteous all the time. If you think you're gonna be a peak of belief all the time. Then, you're fooling yourself because that's not how humans function. We have ups and downs in our faith in ou belief in committed to Islam, and we should not be dissuaded by that. The moment you feel down or the moment you feel that you have difted away from Allah S.W.T. That's means a wake up call bring yourself back to Allah. And you will feel good when you're connected to Allah S.W.T but you won't be able to maintain that and you're gonna go down again that's just normal, but don't you know allow, don't yeld yourself or give up on yourself when you are down so that you commit more sins.

You fight against that until you go to higher points and so on and so forth. So the Prophet S.A.W is saying here that the believers go through trials and they keep coming back to Allah S.W.T. "The believers is forgetful". We keep forgetting and by the way just to give you a simple example, If you do not on the consistent regular basis remember paradise and the hellfire. You wil lose connection to them. You will start to live you life as if they don't exist.

You might says "I know" that's not the knowledge we're talking about. Because even you know the Qur'an you are supposed to read it and recite it more. You know how to say La Illaha Illalah and you know what it means. You know how to say Subhanallah and you know what it means that not the point. The points is to keep repeating it, keep reminding yourself. You need to remind yourself, that is the tool. That the Prophet S.A.W gives us. And that's the reason why the Quran is call dhikr and dhikra, A Reminder. 

So you have to manage your heart and your iman and the way to manage this is to keep reminding yourself of the things you believe it. Because if you don't do that you will lose your faith. If you take it for granted, you say I already know that Ii already believe in Allah. You will lose it if you do not rehearse it. If you do not remind yourself of it, if you do not practice it, if you're not aware of it on a daily basis. Often time you know in our lives we know there are things we're not supposed to do, sometimes you just wake up conscious somehow and you're in the middle of something that you're not supposed to do.

You sort of catch yourself, and say how did I end up doing this? You just forgot. You will do something that is harmful to you and you will regret it. But couple weeks down the line you fall in it again but you now painful it is. But still you feel for it, because you forget.

So unless you remind yourself, unless you keep your memory and your faith heightened by reciting Quran, by praying consciously putting your mind and your heart in the Solat. By remembering Allah S.W.T often your faith will be taken away from you or you might have very little of it. And then it won't be functional in your life. 

So the message here, and the advice from the Prophet S.A.W is  to just keep reminding yourself, we are all forgetful. No matter how good your memory is it's not a matter of memory. This has something to do with the heart and with faith since the unseen is not usually apparent to you. The what you need to do is to keep the internal vision of it by reciting the words of Allah, by praying but with focus and attention and by just remembering Allah S.W.T making the dhikr of Allah S.W.T.

This should raise the level of your Iman, and that's why a man came to the Prophet S.A.W and said "Ya Rasulullah the legislation and the advice in Islam is just the way too much for me, I can't handle all of them, it's overwhelming probably he was an older man. So the Prophet S.A.W said keep your tounge moist with the remembrance of Allah that will keep your Iman high.

You keep reminding yourself of the hereafter because it's easy to forget about it by the way. And especially in today's world when everything visual and auditory is very attractive and very appealing and it pulls us in. There's a lot of distractions, they're very powerful. So need to pull ourselves from there and focus as well see the full spectrum of reality, not only the seen world. But also the unseen world and Thus we have the full story and thus we can navigate through this world and live a healthy life.

May Allah S.W.T helps us keep our faith and increase it.