Always Start with Prayer

During our 2014 work planning workshop, our boss – a Christian – said the following statement in his opening remarks:

“One of the reasons I think we failed to perform our best in 2013 was we always forget to start work by making prayers.

We work as if we think we can do it all by ourselves, but in fact we forget the most important success factor must come from God.

So this year in 2014, let’s make it a commitment to always begin by prayers and asking God for success in the things that we do.”

SubhanAllah – When you forget, Allah sends reminders to you in ways you do not expect.

Ya ma’shar al-Muslimeen – how often do YOU remember to ask Allah? How often do YOU remind others to remember Allah?

How often do we arrogantly attribute our success to our own accord, and how often do we sincerely ask of and humble ourselves before the One Who is the Ultimate Source of all Success (Al-Fattah) – the All-Generous (Al-Jawwad), All-Responsive of those who ask of Him (Al-Mujeeb)?

So let us always remember to make sincere du’aa to Allah and always ask of Him, and as a means of nearness to Him – let’s not turn du’aa into a mere ‘ritual’ that we only say “ameen” when the imam recites a script.

Let us never forget to always ask Allah to grant us success in all our matters of Dunya and Akhirah.

As the poet he says,

“the son of Adam, the more you ask of him, he gets angry,

Whereas Allah gets angry if you stop asking Him”

“And your Lord has proclaimed – ‘make Du’aa (call upon/ask of) Me, surely I will respond to You.

Verily, whoever is too arrogant to worship Me will enter Hell, humiliated!” (Surah Ghafir 40:60)

The Prophet Muhammad (sallAllahu alayhi wasallam) said:

“There is no person who asks Allah for anything, except that Allah Grants it to him, or keeps away from him a similar evil,

As long as he does not ask for something evil, or for breaking the ties of kinship”

When a person heard this, he immediately said, “In that case, we will ask for plenty (from Allah)!”

The Prophet responded “Allah (is even) more plentiful (than all you can ask)!”

(Narrated by at-Tirmidzi who graded it hasan sahih)