Haris88
Junior Member
What do you make dua for the most? Do you look for the special times that dua is accepted only when in a time of difficulty? Do you pray for others?
“Remember Allah in times of ease, and He will remember you in times of distress. What hit you could not have missed you, what missed you could not have hit you. Remember that victory comes with patience, relief comes with affliction and ease comes with hardship.”
After listening to a halaqah on the hadith related to dua in Riyadh as-Saliheen, and reflecting on my own situation, I began to ponder about how we are in our relationship with Allah (swt), and how we utilize this magnificent tool of dua in our lives.
I do not think it is a far stretch to say that a person (or guys at least) make dua for marriage more than anything else in their lives. Every sajdah, the end of every prayer, after every adhan, every juma, and every late night is repetitions of “Oh Allah grant me a beautiful and attractive wife who is also very pious” - or something to that effect.
In any case, the focus here is not on marriage, but rather a look at our relationship with dua. In this case, it is how a person’s desperation pushes them to such a high level of consistency and dedication. When things are good though, do we keep up that same level of dedication we had before? The time that we feel this regret most though, is when we step up our dua in face of a hardship, Allah (swt) answers our dua and grants us ease. Then when we face another hardship, we realize how negligent we were in that time of ease.
“Call upon Me; I will respond to you.” Indeed, those who disdain My worship will enter Hell [rendered] contemptible.
[40:60]
Say (O Muhammad): My Lord only pays attention to you because of your du’a to Him. But now you have indeed rejected (Him), so the (torment) will be yours permanently. [Furqaan:77]
The Prophet (salAllahu alayhi wassallam) said,
Whoever wishes that Allah responds to his dua at times of hardship, then let him increase his dua at times of ease!” (Tirmidhi)
To make fervent dua at times of relative ease can be a tough test for the heart, especially because the duress of an immediate hardship is absent.
What Do You Pray For?
What you ask Allah for most shows what the heart is attached to. If a person supplicates only for dunya benefits, then even though he is asking from Allah, his heart is attached to the material world.
When we look at the dua’s narrated in the Sunnah (the chapter of dua in Riyadh as-Saliheen is an excellent reference for this), we find general dua’s asking for goodness. We find the same with the supplications found in the Quran. We find supplications asking for good in this life, good in the hereafter, forgiveness, contentment, chastity, righteous offspring, forgiveness for our parents, knowledge, wisdom, understanding, victory, success, guidance, mercy, Paradise, and help in worshipping Allah more. We find supplications seeking refuge and protection from evil manners, cowardliness, miserliness, fitnah, debt, torment of the grave, hellfire, knowledge that does not benefit, a heart with no khushoo’, supplications that are not answered, sickness, and evil desires.
Think about if you are a parent, what do you pray for in regards to your children? Are the supplications oriented only around their worldly successes?
Who Do You Pray For?
We know that a prayer made for someone in their absence is one of the du’as that gets accepted, and an angel supplicates for us to be granted the same thing. One of the reasons given for this is that it shows sincerity in the supplication, to remember the needs of another person and to help them in the best way possible [by asking Allah for assistance].
But who you pray for is often a bigger test. Do you pray for your children? Do you pray for your parents? How often? Do you pray for your teachers? I try to make du’a to Allah (swt) to cover the faults of my teachers from me, and to allow me to benefit from them, and to grant them tawfeeq and barakah in their efforts. If you are a teacher - do you pray for your students? Do you pray that Allah (swt) enables you to teach what is correct and beneficial, and for the students to learn from it and be successful?
Do you pray for those you do not like? Saying, “May Allah guide you” in an email or online chat is what comes to mind in this example, but this is usually more sarcastic than anything else. Do we actually sincerely pray for their guidance in our salaat, or our sujood? Do you pray for Allah (swt) to forgive the sins of someone who you dislike to a great extent? That is something that is really tough to do, but it is something that can humble us significantly.
Do we pray for our friends, and for their families, asking Allah (swt) to give them all the great things we wish for our own families?
I know that the articles and books on dua are quite numerous, so it is practically impossible to offer up anything that hasn’t already been covered elsewhere. I just hope that this might serve as a gentle reminder to us to revitalize the dua in our lives. I have felt many times in my life where I felt that I was making dua almost 24/7, and yet at other times it was nearly the opposite. So I hope that this might be a small nudge for those of us not at the level we know we should be at - especially with Ramadan quickly approaching.
Will You Accept the Answer?
One thing I have personally struggled with, is coming to grips with the fact that I, in fact, have absolutely no idea what the khayr is in, no matter how strongly I may feel about something. In this vein, I find myself getting further away from asking for specific things (especially dunya things) and instead making supplication for the actual objective. Case in point, you may like a particular home that is close to the masjid. Instead of supplicating for the specific house you had your eye on, you may supplicate to be granted a house close to the masjid.
What happens though, when the house you are given is next to the masjid - but it’s not the masjid you had in mind? The du’a is answered, even though in the heart it is not what you were expecting. This is a small example, but it is something we may sometimes face. Are we willing to see though, when Allah (swt) opens up a path for us, for us to embark on it? How far does our tawakkul go in leaving our affairs up to only Him?
These struggles of the heart can only be put at ease with constant dua, and in fact also asking Allah (swt) to grant us contentment with whatever He decrees.
See Also: What is Your Favorite Dua?, and Dua: Weapon of the Believer
