Why Good Deeds Lead to More Good—And Shaytan's War Strategy

Foreign is.

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Subhanallah.

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Is.

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We're continuing what we're speaking about with regards to the reasons why a person's heart the causes of a person's heart becoming open to the quran and sunnah becoming open to allah's and the love of allah subhanahu wa ta'ala what are these causes well when we read through these 10 causes that ibn is mentions he says this chapter is regarding the causes for the cause is for the heart being opened the heart being opened the heart being filled with love and inspiration from allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala what is what when we look at this list we see some of these things are things that allah does and some of these things are things that the human being does right so when we look at it in this way we start to see that there is a connection a deep connection between the actions of allah and the actions of the servant meaning that allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will give the servant and the servant will then act upon what he was given and when the servant acts upon what he was given allah will give him again and that will cause another act and it is a cycle that a person gets into the opposite is true as well that a person may get into a cycle of evil right that's why they say the scholars say subhanahu.

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And what recompense for good is there other than good right it's a rhetorical question meaning the only recompense for good is good likewise allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says and the recompense for evil is an evil equivalent to it okay so what does this mean this means that a person may lean into the fray lean into the cycle of evil and become swept up by it so they do an evil and that will lead to a more evil thing and when they do that evil thing it will lead them to another evil thing and that is the worst punishment of evil the worst punishment of evil in this life is that it leads to more evil it never stops right there and the greatest reward or one of the greatest rewards of good in this life is that it leads to more good it doesn't just stop with that one good thing it will always have an effect a positive effect that will come back upon the person who does it right because when you do a good deed this causes the pleasure of allah and does the pleasure of allah have effects of on us in this life what's the answer yes are they effects that are in real time meaning i do a good deed and allah interacts with me yes and so yes it will affect me when i do a good deed allah will respond faith allah responds to the servant as he does good just allah responds to the servant when he does bad right just allah responds to the servant when he does bad if a person commits a sin if a person does something that is evil you can expect a response from allah subhanahu wa ta'ala but that response is delayed the response of allah to evil is delayed why who can tell me why it gives you time to repent what's the name of allah a s means the forbearing the one who gives respite the one who gives time and so when allah when you do a good deed he responds immediately maybe not in a way that you imagine that he would respond he is more generous than his creation can ever be and that is why one of his names is as shakur the thankful a shakur lahuma anayan al-manil.

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Responds to evil in a different way that he responds to good meaning that when you do good he will immediately respond when you stand in salah and say alhamdulillah allah immediately responds and says right allah immediately remember me and i shall remember you right so immediately he will respond to that good the angel on your right shoulder will immediately write the good deed but his response to evil is different his response to evil is meaning that he delays negative response to evil because he is forbearing and patient with his servants he gives you time to repent time to check yourself and that time might be that time might be a long time it may be years that allah will tolerate from somebody until the person changes his ways right and so there is a difference between the response of allah to evil and the response of allah to good however we have to now put iblis into into the mix now iblis causes the sin to become bigger and bigger and bigger immediately once he gets you to stumble he will push you to make sure that you fall and if you fall he'll sit on you to make sure that you stay down do you understand that is not necessarily a response from allah that is your enemy taking advantage of your weakness so the scholars tell us that the reward of a good deed is a good deed that it will that it will bring on more good deeds but evil deeds they will also breed evil a shaitaan will experientiate and he will expedite that evil he will make it come quicker because he saw you stumble so when he saw you stumble he will take advantage that you're off balance and this is what happened with the brothers of yusuf allah they were thinking evil thoughts about yusuf they were jealous they started to think how can we plot against him so as shaytan told them come on man i mean murder happens people kill each other but allah forgives you know allah subhanahu ta'ala forgive you you know it happens it happens to the best of us i mean look you guys are going through a lot right now this is shape on you guys are going through a lot huh all 11 of you and then yusuf and his little brother benjamin oh they come from another mother and they're the special ones and they're closer to the father than us and we're not all of us together can't make up yusuf that's not fair right that's not fair you guys are going through a lot that's a lot of stress for you it's okay get rid of him and you'll be fine after that you'll you for you'll get the pleasure of your father and then you will as well repent and you will you'll be straight this is the only time you're going to break the rules i'm going to break the rules only this time so a shaytan took something small and he made it huge the scholars tell us that if you look to the mercy of allah when you are about to do an evil deed it will it will turn it into a major sin right it will turn it into a mess you are supposed to be focused on what aspect of allah when you are about to sin what aspect the pleasure of allah the forgiveness of allah or the anger of allah the anger of allah when you're about to sin you remember allah's anger that will keep you from doing that but if you go to sin and you remind yourself of allah's mercy it will turn that sin into an exponentially larger sin so we now understand the concept of the cycle of good and the cycle of evil and we now understand that a shaitaan will also allow you to do good things in order to get you to do bad things what does that mean a shaytan i want you to imagine with me a game of chess i'm not talking about if chess is halal or haram okay it's just an example i want you to imagine with me a game of chess or war for instance war maybe is a better analogy so nobody leaves saying the sheikh said so the better analogy in war a skilled general in war war is a collection of battles correct you have battles and that that is the war so a battle may last a day or two or three but a war may last 10 years right so skilled generals may allow the enemy to win a few battles in order to defeat them in greater battles a skilled general may allow slight or seeming defeat in some battles in order to win the war and from this concept as shaytan the some of the taberin.

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Foreign what does that mean that a shaytan may allow you to do 99 good things just to make you fall in one thing what does that mean we have to know a shaytan we have to know how he plays this game okay it means that let's say a person does a sin right say a person you know drinks does drugs whatever so a shaytan will allow him and not not bother him when he goes to pray yeah let him have that why so that he will continue to do the evil that he's doing so he sees this as a greater evil so he balances it let let me win this one and you continue to pray right and he'll leave you alone this is why ibn abbas.

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The jews claim that when they stand for prayer a shaitaan does not disturb their focus he does not whisper to them and disturb their focus in prayer so ibn abbas responded and said why would a shaitaan bother himself with an abandoned house with an abandoned building anyways what does that mean that means that they are non-muslim they have disbelieved in muhammad he won the war let them have that one pray pray deeply with focus meditate hard right that will only increase their kufur with this shaitaan he knows that because when they stand for prayer their heart is full and their heart is this and that but it's based on what disbelief it's based on disbelief these are the games that a shaitaan plays so if you do something terrible if you do something bad but then you see from yourself doing other many good things first of all don't give up hope in allah and don't stop doing the good things but second of all beware because the shaytan knows what he's doing and he knows what you're doing too if you find it easy to do evil and then easy to do good be very careful because that's that's one of his traps that he uses am i making sense do we understand this concept the next thing that we're going to move on to as.

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He says the fourth cause of a person's heart being opened and a person being inspired by allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is turning back to allah and loving allah with the entirety of your heart what does that mean loving allah with the entirety of your heart didn't the prophet salallahu sallam love his wives didn't he love his children didn't he love his companions didn't he love his grandchildren yes of course so how is it that ibn al-qaeda is saying the entirety of your heart when we see that there was a place in his heart to love others as well because he's speaking about a particular type of love a love that we hear in songs a lot and this love is a love of worship what is this love it's called unconditional love unconditional love what is unconditional love that no matter what allah does to me or gives me i will love him right this is only for allah and this is a type of love which is what which is called rebed this is called love which is a type of worship that aspect of your heart that aspect of your love is only for allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala if it is directed to anything or anyone other than allah it weakens your love for allah and you are not loving allah with the entirety of your heart there's a difference between there are actually.

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M.

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Foreign.

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Says that you are to love allah with all of your heart what does that mean all of your heart when we look at the prophet sallallahu alaihi he loved his wives right he loved his children he even loved his uncle who died on disbelief correct died as a disbeliever but the prophet loved him why because abu talib was his uncle first of all second of all because abu talib helped him enormously because abu talib went through all of the trials and hardships and protected him isn't that correct that you cannot guide those whom you love this verse was sent down regarding that you cannot guide those whom you love so allah mentions that the prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam loved abu talib but he loved him with what is called and referred to by the scholars of islam as natural love natural love what is natural love natural love is that you love someone because of either who they are or what they do right somebody is nice to you they they're they're friendly they're this they're that your neighbor mows your lawn or whatever is always giving you gifts etc etc is a nice guy you might come to love this person but you don't love them with a with a religious love you don't love them islamically you don't love them religiously you love them naturally right because they're not fighting against islam they don't hate muslims as far as you can see they they are good to you they are nice to you they protect you they defend you they do this they do that so you love them a person's mother may be non-muslim would they not would they hate their mother in a natural way no this is my mother i will always naturally love my mother but on the day of resurrect when a person dies natural love dies with him we understand that concept natural love dies with the person you naturally love someone that natural love will come to an end with your death on the day of resurrection you will not love that person because on the day of resurrection what is left is what religious love love of worship so i love all muslims whether i've met them or not for the sake of allah this is this is this is islamic religious love i worship allah by loving allah loving what allah loves and loving who allah loves right so i i am now loving in a in a religious capacity so when ibn is one of the reasons for inspiration and the heart to be open is to love allah with the entirety of your heart he's speaking about the entirety of your heart the aspect of which is a religious love not directing that kind of religious love to anyone else directing it to a child directing it to a parent directing it to a friend which happened in the time of the prophet sallallahu alaihi there were people that wanted to become muslim but their friends told them i will never speak to you again if you become muslim or their parents told them i will never speak to you again if you become one so their natural love spilled over into their religious love and that prevented them from becoming muslim and following the prophet salallahu why because they loved in a religious capacity someone they were to only love in a natural capacity his son died as what one of his sons died as a catholic correct he was destroyed by the flood and was hurt by this correct and he made dua to allah.

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You promised me my family you promised that my family would be safe and my son is part of my family and you are the most just in judgment and so allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said.

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He says to allah you just you you my child was flooded and drowned in the flood and you promised that my my family would be safe and allah said he is not of your family he's a son how can he not be of his family he's not of his religious family correct he's not of his family in a religious capacity he's of his family in a natural capacity right but he's not of his family in a religious capacity and sometimes those two bump heads what happened in the battle of buddha right that some of the companions fought their own cousins and uncles and sometimes their own fathers right in the battle of buddha this is what happened why did they do that because their religious love superseded their natural love so there's natural love and there's religious love when ibn says one of the reasons to be inspired and your heart opened by allah is that is that you love allah with the entirety of your heart meaning the aspect of your heart which is the aspect of religious love it is only for allah sometimes that religious love is infiltrated by that natural love natural love becomes too much to the point that it becomes religious so some of the people of quraish when the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam called them to islam their father said no their mother said no their friends said no and so what did they do they followed what their parents said they followed that this becomes a type of worship now it's as if they're worshiping their parents in this case the natural love superseded the religious love so when we say loving allah with the entirety of your heart meaning that you love allah with all of your heart in a religious way and that part of your heart is only reserved for allah subhanahu wa ta'ala it's reserved only for allah if anything or anyone else is found in that part of your heart your heart becomes weak and your iman becomes weak and this is where we find in the quran people are mentioned who have had weak faith and they are referred to as those who have illness in their heart what is that illness something of this world infiltrated that portion of the heart which is only belongs to allah subhanahu.

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So we see this now i will discuss this issue you see people even muslims but alhamdulillah in the muslim community this is much less okay that they know that for example homosexuality is wrong it's haram right it is an absolute abhorrent abomination correct but then their child their son their daughter comes out of the closet as they say comes out so they start to change their views on that topic they start to say well you know it's not so bad they'll go to their wedding i love you no less you're my son no matter what i support you all this stuff this person has now what happened to him this person his natural love has over spilled into a religious love and that is exactly what will weaken the heart and weaken a person's faith and that will close your heart to the book of allah and the book of the son of the prophet it's very dangerous it's very dangerous to allow any part of this dunya to infiltrate that part of your heart which belongs only to allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala we understand that concept that is a very important concept our scholars used to tell us.

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They so they say keep the dunya in your hand don't allow the dunya to get into your hearts if you allow it to get into your heart it will your heart will turn into a tool that a shaytan will use to take you to hell but as long as you keep the dunya in your hand it will always be a tool for you to get to allah subhanahu wa ta'ala natural love dies with the person who who who dies when you die your natural love dies with you and on the day of resurrection.

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So this is a very very important concept that we discussed tonight we discussed the difference between natural love and religious love we discuss the relationship between natural love and religious love and we discuss the cycles of good and evil and how allah interacts with both good from his servant and evil from him that is enough for tonight he was about.