effort of iman

Rasul once said to his companions, renew your iman. The companions asked, how do we do this. Rasul said, recite a lot of laa ilaa ha illa Allah. The question now is, although the companions was already muslim, y did rasul ask them to renew it?

In another hadith, rasul said, in the end times, my ummah can be a believer in the morning and a disbeliever in the evening. Our elders concluded that, it is because our iman can be worked on.

It is like a piece of land, if u do effort on it, u can grow crops and take benefit from it. But if u dont, weeds will grow, snakes will come, water will not flow and it will be a piece of land that will only harm you.

So iman, which is belief or yaqeen, is the generator that sits in our heart. Why do we call it a generator? Because it is what makes us wants to do amal. If our iman strong, then we will want to do a lot of amal. But if out iman is weak, then lazyness to do amal will creep.

Now, knowing and believing is 2 different things. As an example, a person who knows how to shoot an arrow, and a person who believes in his ability.

When asked if it is possible to shoot an apple on person's head with an arrow, the former person can only tell that it is possible. But the latter will take an arrow and shoot it because he believes in his ability.

The same thing applies to our iman. If our iman is strong, we will believe that Allah will give this and that reward for a certain amal and we will be excited to do an amal and not feel burdened by it. But if our iman is weak, then we can know a million rewards but still be lazy because of doubt.

We must also remember that our nemesis, shyaitan is always working to steal our iman. How do they steal our iman? Shyaitan will not whisper to us to do shirik. But it will tell us to do small sins, sins which we think is ok to do. When we do these small sins, iman will decrease, slowly but surely. But if we istiqamah in doing it, our iman will be so weak that anything shyaitan whispers to us seems reasonable to do, even the deadly sins or even worse, shirik.

Our elders said, what rasul meant with reciting the kalimah is not only by doing dzikr with it but to be conveyed to other people. And this work is what we call da'wah. Although this word sounds medieval, but we need to flush that out of our mindset.

Our elders also said that the heart is like a bowl, which will absorb everything that it is fed. There are 4 doors for it. The eyes, ears, mouth and heart. And this heart will be checked on the day of our qiyamat, which is death.

A bowl that is filled with chicken soup, when tripped will give out chicken soup. If it filled with coffee, it will give out coffee. The same applies to our heart. On the day of our death, our heart will be checked, if is full with iman, or other things. Rasul said, whoever dies with iman even the size of an atom (rasul said zarrah), then Allah with grant her paradise 10 times the size of this universe. But whoever dies and brings no iman, not only will she not enter heaven, she wont even be given the chance to smell heaven, which can be smelt 500 years before even being there.

Truthfully, da'wat is the work of every mu'min and mu'minat. For every uniform, there is a work behind it. A person wearing a doctor's suit will most likely be a doctor. A person wearing a farmer's attire will probably not work as a doctor. The same goes with this religion. It is a suit that differentiates us from the others.

By doing da'wat, our heart will be filled with iman, because the doors to it is used to see the greatness and oneness of Allah. Everyday we say the strength of Allah, who has created the skies with no pillars. The sun that burns infinitely, who has created the galaxy with millions of planets and stars. Who has created a void between these entities which has no gravity. We need to think for a second, who can create these things with impeccable precision and timing? Even the scientist repeated time and time again that if the sun is closer just by a few centimeters, the earth would be inhabitable.

The more we believe in the greatness of Allah, the more we believe the rewards and punishments from Allah, the more the fear of Allah will come to us which in return will make us realize the reason we are here. Where are you from and where are you going? Life is just but a slideshow that only lasts for 60 - 70 years. And then our real life begins. Of course, we already know all of this but why do we need to repeat it? Read paragraph 1.