Confronting Your Problems – a Khutbah by Sheikh Waleed Basyouni

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Allah , as we believe as Muslims, He doesn’t do anything unless there is wisdom behind it. Because one of His names is Al-Hakeem, which means, alhaakimu bi hikma. Ya’ni the one who makes orders, and this is related to His legislation, or related to whatever He decreed upon us in this dunya, with wisdom. There is always a great wisdom behind it. But we as  human beings, our knowledge is very limited. That’s why our ability to know that every single wisdom behind every actions, behind everything that you are ordained in life, it’s not possible. Otherwise we will have the same knowledge as God, which makes us similar to Him, and  no one’s similar to Him.

But Allah wants us also to investigate, to look at what Allah wants from us  when He puts us in that torture. So many people come to me, shaykh, please pray for my circumstances to be changed. Ya Rabb! Make this, you see the difficulties or problem in one country, you always ask about, “I hope the international community changes their position from this.” “I hope victory comes from that.” You have your own problem, your debt and stuff like that. I hope I win this, or I hope I get that. You always think about the circumstances that are around you. And you forget, that maybe the only reason that Allah put you in that challenge, is not to change your circumstances, it’s to change YOU!. Maybe Allah wants to send you a message to tell you that you need to change yourself. And you need to wake up.

Remember what Allah said. “Innallaha la yugaiyiru bi qawm, hatta yugaiyiru ma bi anfusihim.” Allah will not change your situation until you change yourself first. So many of these challenges in life, they are there because Allah wants you to pay attention to how you treat your wife, how you treat your spouse. How you treat your kids. How you manage your finances. How we as a community, having a problem, maybe we need to check how we are handling these problems and our relationship with our community or maybe our relationship with Allah. It’s a wake up call from Him to us.  I believe 100%, I have no doubt in my heart that these challenges in life are not ever meant to break you apart. They’re meant to make you stronger, because the value of a person is not when he or she stands in the time of ease and comfort. Actually, the value of you will appear and will clearly determine when and how you stand in times of difficulty and in times of challenge.  That will make a man a man, and that will make a good person recognized as a good person.

My brothers and sisters, Imam Ahmed Rahimaullah once was asked, the person who becomes a leader,  will he be tested first then become a leader?  He said no way, you will be tested first, and based on the result  it will be determined whether you deserve that leadership position or not, you deserve that high rank or not. He said, didn’t you read when Allah said in the Qur’an, “We have made among them leaders after they passed the test, after they would have patience in the test and the calamities that they had to deal with”.

Brothers and sisters, when we talk about challenges in life, don’t ever be led by your problems.  Don’t let your problems cover your eyes.  Don’t let these challenges in life, these bad things that are happening to you, don’t let it lead you. We should be led by our dreams, we should be led by our plans for the future. We should be led by our trust and love for Allah . We should be led by our faith, not by our problems, not by our negative feelings. We should be led always by our positive feelings and attitudes.  Don’t let these problems take over your mind and settle deep in your heart.  Put it in front of you, look at it, deal with it, but don’t ever be led by it.  And I want you to know, that ignoring problems will never help you in  solving them. We have to deal with them . I’m not saying ignore it because so many people have problems in life and they’re ignoring them, they just keep accumulating.  They keep getting one credit card after another.  Taking one more after another.  You know the problem between your spouse is just getting bigger and bigger, and crossing all these red lines. All these red lights coming up and telling you this is a warning sign. Don’t ignore it, deal with it, but don’t be led by it.