What is Faith?
The word Imaan comes from the Arabic word Aman which means safety. Faith is the belief in the 6 pillars of Imaan i.e believe in Allah, believe in the Angels, believe in His messengers, believe in His books, believe in the day of judgement, and believe in divine decree. Faith is belief in the heart, a statement made by the tongue and action by the limbs.
Unlike popular notion, faith does wear out, as attested by our beloved Prophet Mohammad ( saw),
The Prophet Muhammad said: Faith wears in your heart as clothes wears out, so ask Allah to renew the faith in your heart.
Sahih Bukhari 1525
How to increase faith?
Now, we know just like our clothes, our faith also wears out and we need to be on our toes, to revive it. The question arises as to how we can. Do not worry, we have full proof 6- step theory to help you along the way
- Ask Allah
The first and foremost step we need to take is ask Allah, ask Him day and night so that He increases faith in our hearts. As common it is in medical science that bad dental hygiene affects the health of heart, we need to understand that a bad tongue affects the level of faith in our hearts. We cannot expect Allah to put faith in a heart that is sour just like how you cannot expect biryani to taste well and not add salt.
- Read the Quran
What’s the best way to re connect to Allah other than reading His divine words. Spend time with Qur’an as much as you can, read the translations, understand the tafsir and feel as it flows in your heart like a river flows downstream.
- Talk to Allah
Just like how you talk to your mother, friends etc and vent your heart out. Just try it with Allah, and you don’t even have to worry of everyone knowing your secret or betrayal, Allah has got your back. Allah says he is closer to us then our jugular vein mother. We must remember we were talking to the most merciful who loves us 70 times more than the mother.
- Remembering Allah
How can we expect going close to Him and not remembering Him? We should do a lot of dhikr, see videos , read stories that will remind you of Him, sit amongst people that will discuss about Him etc. Always remind yourself of the love that you both have for each other and of the judgement day
- Belief in Allah’s Mercy
I read somewhere that how the biggest sin on earth is to doubt Allah’s mercy. Our hearts turn so astray that even after Him reminding us of His mercy infinite times, we sometimes tend to forget it or worse, doubt it. We should always pray to Allah that He always keeps us in His good books and worthy of His mercy.
- Make Dua
Many of us pray our obligatory prayers, fullfill our responsibilities but when it comes to asking Allah, we often cut time our short. We should spend hours in dua, asking Allah of everything and anything. Allah says that He is there to give, we only need to ask.
We should keep renewing our faith, be in constant relation with it. Allah does not want us to go an all-out , He wants us to go step by step, slowly at our own pace.
Some days feel like bad, we think we have not been productive and it couldn’t be worse, we should know as long as we are praying our five obligatory prayers, keeping up with our responsibilities we have done our part, we have done our bare minimum , anything beyond that is bonus. So on days when you feel detached, make sure you’re doing the bare minimum and watch as Allah protects you