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Are You Running Away From Your Rizq? | Khutbah by Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy
Imam Ahmad (rh)’s best mornings, he said, were when they told him there was no flour left in the house. An empty shelf reminded him Who had been filling it every other day of his life.
Most of us run that instinct in reverse. The bank balance drops and we quietly conclude that Allah is withholding out of displeasure.
What must we remember about our rizq when it seems to stop flowing? How can Muslims reframe financial anxiety, job loss, and deepening debt as opportunities? And what does tawakkul and trusting that Allah is Ar-Razzaq really mean?
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
00:00Brothers and sisters, of course I only say this in gratitude, I don't say it in any sort of arrogance, not from a place of ownership or entitlement.
00:10But I cannot help, when looking at the world around us, the amount of heartache that exists, the amount of turmoil that exists, the amount of stress that exists, it mind-boggles me.
00:24Whenever I take note of this, and I think about how in the world do people live their lives without having Allah to assume the best of.
00:37Life's a bumpy road, and no matter who you are, your best days in this life are only gonna last a few days, and then back to the test called life.
00:49If people don't have what you have, the statement of the Prophet ﷺ for instance, wonderful is the affair of the believer, because all things wind up being good for him. Something
01:00painful happens, he's patient, he gets rewarded. Something pleasurable happens, they are grateful, they get rewarded. Without that, how do you survive?
01:11But of course, this outlook is easier said than done, easier described than internalized. And it's not like the moment you become Muslim, suddenly you're able to take whatever life throws at you.
01:24It's actually a life project, to build within yourself these good assumptions of Allah. And the Prophet ﷺ himself alluded to this.
01:35In the hadith of Jabir in Sahih Muslim, Jabir said, I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say, just three days before he died,
01:46لا يموتن أحدكم إلا وهو يحسن الظن بالله عز وجل No one of you should die except while assuming the very best of Allah, the Mighty and Majestic.
01:59In other words, it's a life project, it's lifelong work. Make sure you put in the work so the day that you exit this world, you exit with the best assumptions of Allah. You know why?
02:12In another hadith, he said, يُبْعَثُ كُلُّ عَبْدٍ عَلَى مَا مَاتَ عَلَيْهِ Every single servant of God will be resurrected, will be returned to life on the Day of Judgment in their final state upon which they died. And you do want to be someone that is resurrected while assuming the best of Allah and your
02:26ultimate destination on the Day of Judgment. In fact, in a third hadith that some scholars attribute to the Prophet ﷺ, he said that
02:35a man will be sent off on the Day of Judgment to the hellfire. And then he will turn and say, أَمَا وَاللَّهِ إِنْ كَانَ ظَنِّي بِكَ لَحَسَنًا يَا رَبُّ
02:47He would say, Wallahi, my Lord, I had assumed the very best of You, meaning I never actually thought You would send me off to the fire, never actually believed You'd actually punish me. So Allah ﷻ then says to the angels, رُدُّهُ فَأَنَا عِنْدَ ظَنَّ عَبْدِي بِي
03:01Send him back, reverse the verdict. For I am whatever My servant expects of Me. And that part of the hadith is established in Sahih al-Bukhari and elsewhere. I am what My servant expects of Me. If he expects good of Me, he gets good from Me. If he expects otherwise, that's on him. And so to build this in yourself, how do you do that?
03:16Well there's many domains and some are better than others to test, to challenge whether you have this in you or not. One of the greatest of them is our fears, our anxieties surrounding finances. Because that's a universal, it's natural. He embedded it inside of us. وَإِنَّهُ لِحُبِّ الْخَيْرِ لَشَدِيدٌ
03:31The human being is intense, all of us in our attachment, in our dependency, in sort of our appetite for wealth. And so naturally we get afraid of winding up without enough.
03:45We may cut corners, we may excessively worry. And so your finances is one of the greatest domains to test, to challenge, to improve your good assumptions of Allah, 'Azza wa Jal.
03:58And the Qur'an actually alluded to this. When Allah told us, when I ask of you, give for my sake, He didn't just leave it there. He said, give and assume the best of Me.
04:09وَأَنْفِقُوا فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ وَلَا تُلْقُوا بِأَيْدِيكُمْ إِلَى التَّهْلُكَةِ وَأَحْسِنُوا And spend in the path of God, He says. And do not lend yourself to destruction, meaning by withholding. And assume the best—Ahsinu here, Ihsan means show excellence.
04:17Of what excellence means here, Sufyan said, show excellent assumptions of Allah when He asks you to give and give. Assume that He'll pay you back like He promised.
04:31Assume that He will make it worth your while and elevate you to the greatest reward in paradise as He declared in His book.
04:41Assume the best of Allah when He asks of you. Another exercise in this is to assume the best of Allah, not when He's asking of you
04:54to initiate a donation, to initiate some charity, but when He withholds from you momentarily. When He withholds something from you of this world. It's your job at that point, part of the project, to force yourself to believe that Allah did
05:08not withhold from me because of a scarcity of resource. He did not withhold from me because the economy sort of prevented Him from doing so. He did not withhold from me because He doesn't like to give. He lacks in generosity.
05:21He has a quality of stinginess, none of that. It is your job to remember that Allah is withholding from you for your own good.
05:31You know, al-Imam Ahmad, rahimahullah, it was reported about him and others among the early Muslims, that they used to say,
05:41Inna asarra ayyami ilayya heena yuqalu li laysa indana shay', aw laysa bil bayti daqiq. One of my best days ever is when I wake up in the morning and they tell me there's nothing
05:52at home to eat. To say there's no more flour, you know the baking flour, does he enjoy hunger? Nobody enjoys poverty. What he's trying to say is when there is an interruption in the supply chain, I'm reminded
06:06of who's behind it all. This is not automatic. I don't, I'm not entitled to this.
06:21I'm not guaranteed this. You assume it's supposed to come.
06:35It came yesterday, it's going to come tomorrow. When there's an interruption, it's one of my best days because it's like a reset button for me.
06:46Allah is refreshing for me what is the source of all good. That if it were not for Him, it would never have come. You know, al-Ghazali, rahimahullah, he has a beautiful statement. He says, if it is under a mountain and written for you, it'll get to you. And if it's between your jaw bones and it's not written for you, you're not going to have
07:00it, right? You know these devices that you carry, they're made with certain materials that are mined out of mines that are under mountains and they're on your wrist right now, they're in your pocket right now, they're sitting on the carpet in front of you right now. It was yours to do right by it, but it's yours.
07:12And likewise, you can lift something to your mouth and something can distract when you put it down. It's not yours.
07:25And so it is your job to remind yourself of just that when it happens. You know, Ibn al-Qayyim, rahimahullah, he says about financial anxiety. He says, so long as you have a lifespan left to live, your rizq, your provisions will continue
07:38to flow. Because think about it, like can someone live without oxygen? No.
07:50Could someone live without food or drink? No. As long as there's a life left to be lived, Allah will sustain that life so that you can live.
08:02You're not superhuman. He said, and you need to know that Allah, if and when He closes doors, He only does so to open more doors in their place.
08:14He says, and consider the condition of the fetus, the embryo that becomes a fetus in the womb of the mother. It has one source of rizq, the umbilical cord, that channel. When Allah severs it, meaning at birth, He replaces it with two sources of provision which are the breasts of the mother that offer it the milk that nourishes it. Then a day comes when He closes those two doors only to replace them with four doors. He says water and milk which are the basis of every beverage and then He says meat and
08:27vegetable which is the basis of any other food, right? And then you live for a few decades on this, right? And then a day comes when there's no more food or even the food doesn't nourish you
08:41anymore. He closes those four doors, if you are a believer, only for the sake of opening eight doors in their place, the eight doors of Jannah, to enter whichever of them you please.
08:53This is the assumption of Allah that needs to be built. The Prophet ﷺ said,
09:04لَوْ أَنَّ ابْنَ آدَمَ يَهْرُبُ مِنْ رِزْقِهِ كَمَا يَهْرُبُ مِنَ الْمَوْتِ لَأَدْرَكَهُ رِزْقُهُ كَمَا يُدْرِكُهُ الْمَوْتُ If the son of Adam were to try to run from his rizq, from what he's supposed to be provided, what's destined for him, the same way we all run from death, naturally, your rizq will catch you the same way that death will one day catch you.
09:19You know, like if you were to get on a boat to run from what your rizq is, your rizq will get on lightning and catch up with you in the middle of the ocean, it's yours. This is how the early Muslims used to speak about this hadith.
09:33And in another hadith he said, إِنَّ رُوحَ الْقُدُسِ The Holy Spirit, of course the Holy Spirit is the Angel Jibreel ﷺ, it's not God and it's not Jesus Christ, peace be upon him. نَفَثَ فِي رُوعِي Inspired within my soul, this is some revelation that Allah wanted him to know ﷺ.
09:45If the son of Adam would to even try to run from his rizq, from what he's supposed to be provided, what's destined for him, his, the same way we all run from death, natural,
09:55your rizq will catch you the same way that death will one day catch you. You know, like if you were to get on a boat to run from what your rizq, your rizq will get on lightning and catch up with you in the middle of the ocean, it's yours.
10:10This is how the early Muslims used to say about this hadith. And in another hadith he said, إِنَّ رُوحَ الْقُدُسِ The Holy Spirit, of course the Holy Spirit is the Angel Jibreel ﷺ, it's not God and it's not Jesus Christ, peace be upon him.
10:24نَفَثَ فِي رُوعِ Inspired within me, this is some revelation that Allah wanted him to know ﷺ. This message, أَنَّ نَفْسًا لَنْ تَمُوتَ حَتَّى تَسْتَكْمِلَ أَجَلَهَا
10:36وَتَسْتَوِعِبَ رِزْقَهَا that no soul will die without living its lifespan to the fullest, every breath that's yours you will have, and collecting its provisions in full. So what's the point of this?
10:50He says, فَاتَّقُوا اللَّهَ وَأَجْمِلُوا فِي الطَّلَبِ Now that you know this, now that you believe this, I'm the messenger of God telling you, right? So fear Allah and beautify your request.
11:02And do not be driven, he said, by your fear for your finances. He said that rizq and rizq is wider than finances, but I'm summarizing here or giving an example.
11:12Do not be driven by your fear for your provisions into seeking it through ways that Allah has prohibited. فَإِنَّمَا عِنْدَ اللَّهِ لَا يُنَالُ إِلَّا بِطَاعَتِهِ
11:25Because that which is with Allah, the goodly, the blessed, can only be attained through obeying Him. Yeah, you might be able to get it in the superficial materialistic sense, you cheated on whatever
11:37and got that job, but maybe you got cancer with it too. And don't just think worldly, maybe you got the job and that's the reason you stopped attending Jumu'ah and your kid stopped being Muslim, right?
11:48That which is with Allah is only attained through obeying Him. You don't cut corners and deceive and cheat with the timesheet or sneak behind the girl's
11:59dad's back to have a relationship with her and get her emotionally attached or vice versa. You beautify your requests. You know Ibn Aqil al-Hanbali, rahimahullah, great scholar, he narrates this about himself,
12:13not about someone he heard it from. He said, I arrived at Mecca once for hajj and ran out of money and I was hungry and I found a pouch filled with gold at a moment of need and I heard someone saying, my pouch
12:26of gold, there is a monetary reward for someone who finds my pouch of gold. So I go to him and he describes to me that it's in the form of a necklace and I tell
12:36him here's your pouch of gold and he wants to give me what he had promised to give. And he said to him, I will not accept a reward for this except from Allah.
12:49He said he survived, subhanallah, and he made his hajj and he got on a boat to continue on his journey. His boat broke so he had to take a detour. He winds up in Halab, a city in Syria, Aleppo.
13:01He says it was the first day of Ramadan, they heard me reciting in the corner of a masjid, they tell me you have a beautiful voice, can you lead us in taraweeh, in night prayers because our imam just died. I said fine, and he led them for the month of Ramadan.
13:14After the month of Ramadan he's going on his way, they say please, please you can't leave us, you're such a blessing to our community. He says but this is not my home, this is not my family, they said you can make a family here, the imam actually has a daughter if you wish you can marry her.
13:28So he marries the daughter of the deceased imam. He says I enter upon her on the wedding night and she's looking at him like what is wrong with this man, I'm the bride and he's not looking at me, he's looking at the necklace on my neck.
13:40She tells him what's wrong with you, he said no, no, no this necklace has a story and he relates to her the story from Mecca. She says SubhanAllah, my father would always make du'a that Allah provide me with a husband
13:54that has the integrity, the trustworthiness of the man from Mecca. He said and I had a child with this woman and she died giving birth or shortly thereafter
14:06and so he wound up even inheriting the necklace from his deceased wife. Don't cut corners, whether the repayment comes this year or in ten years or as your trophy
14:17in paradise or your admission ticket into paradise, beautify your requests, it won't change anything but you're standing with Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala.
14:27Be for Allah as He wishes brothers and sisters and you will always find Him so long as you assume the best of Him above what you expect, above what you assume, above your wishes. Akhulu qawli hadha wa astaghfiru-Allaha li walakum.
14:41Alhamdulillahi wahdan wa salatu wa salamu ala man la nabiyya ba'dahu ashadu an la ilaha illallah
14:51wahdahu la sharika lahu wa ashadu anna muhammadan abduhu wa nabiyyuhu wa rasuluhu. So let's bring this full circle.
15:01How do you get into the habit, how do you sort of make headway in this project of assuming the best of Allah even when He withholds?
15:11By training yourself, pushing yourself to assume the best of Allah when He gives. This was from Allah. The flower wouldn't have got here, the paycheck wouldn't have got here, right?
15:25By assuming, seeing, you know Allah's name? What does ar-Razzaq mean? Rizq is your provisions. Ar-Razzaq doesn't just mean the one who provides. Ar-Razzaq means perpetually providing. He's always providing.
15:39The breeze, the smile, the companionship, He's always providing. The better you're able to associate what you've been provided with, with the provider who's
15:51always providing, the better you'll be able to say, this exception, this time when there was an interruption, it must be for my own good.
16:02You'll be able to say what Salam ibn Dinar, Abu Hazm, rahimahullah, said, Inna ni'mata Allahi alayya fi ma zawaa aani minad-dunya khayrun min ni'matihi fi ma a'tani. Listen to this.
16:16He says, Allah's favor on me, in terms of what He withheld from me in this world is even greater than His favor on me in terms of what He gave me.
16:27Fa'innahu a'taha qawman fa halakahu. Because he's saying, I read the Qur'an, like I don't have blinders on. He says, because I see that Allah had given it to many people and they were destroyed as a result, right?
16:40It's not like this world, Allah gives to those He loves and those He doesn't love. He gives faith. He gives certainty. He gives trust, right? That's the best thing He can provide you with because that's how you get into the eternal life.
16:53The stuff here, even if you have marriage, even if you have career, these things will run out if they don't destroy you before they run out, right? And so he's saying, He's given so much to people and then they got destroyed.
17:07And then he recited the ayah of Allah, wa law basata Allahu rizqa li-ibadihi labaghaw fil-ard. Allah says, if He were to unleash the floodgates of blessings on people, they would transgress on earth.
17:22That is the habit of humanity. So predictable, so consistent. Wa lakin yunazzilu biqadarin mimma yasha'. But instead of doing that, setting them up for these failures, He dispenses in a calculated
17:35way to whomever He wishes, innahu bi-ibadihi lakhabeerun baseer. Because He is so well acquainted with His creation, Subhanahu wa ta'ala.
17:46So when you see the rizq, as rizq from Allah when it's coming, you'll be able to realize this is actually an upgrade in my rizq when it stops coming.
18:01It's Allah setting me up for Jannah. As He said in the Qur'an, and with it I close, inna hadha la-rizquna ma lahum min nafad. This, I wasn't humiliating you when I did that.
18:12This here now that you're in front of, this is our true ultimate rizq, it never runs out, He said. May Allah 'Azza wa Jal provide us the good and the blessed. May Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala never give us what will distract us from Him.
18:27And may Allah allow everything He gives us to be a means of being more appreciative of Him. May Allah 'Azza wa Jal protect us from everything He has forbidden and make us content with whatever He has given.
18:38And may Allah strengthen and dignify the Muslims in the east and the west of this world and make us among those who contribute to their strength and their dignity. Allahumma ameen. Allahumma salli wa sallim wa barak 'ala nabiyyina Muhammad wa 'ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam.

















































































































































































































































































































