Self Worth | Ustadh Nouman Ali Khan | Jumu'ah Khutbah

i'd like to share with you some important lessons that i need reminding of and you all i believe also do too from what allah describes in the story of adam alaihissalam particularly something that i want to share with you about iblis today commonly people assume that allah created and then when he created him he commanded the angels to do the sajdah and they all obeyed and iblees disobeyed this is kind of the simple version of the story that many people are familiar with but there are details in the quran that are very important that are missing when you think of the story in this way first announces to the to all of the angels and we understand that it includes at that time iblees among them in this announcement i am about to create a human being from dirt or from clay so allah has when he's saying this he has not made adam yet has not been created yet but the announcement has been made that allah is about to do it this is khali and then the word in arabic is used for describing something that is going to happen in the future and when i'm done balancing him and when i blow into him from my rooh so it's none of this has happened yet it's going to happen then he says then fall into sajdah before now there's a there's a discussion about lam that i had with a notable scholar many years ago and i was surprised that a few months ago he agreed with what i what i said about this um and i'll talk about that in a little bit but i want you to focus first on the first piece of this conversation allah has described that he is about to create our father and he has also described the process he's going to use to create us he says first of all i'm going to make him from clean now let's pause here for a second we're not the only creation on this earth made from clean in fact all of the animals and all of the species that exist on this planet also are made from clean so that's the common element between us and the rest of the life that exists on this planet all of the animals and all of the insects all of it that's that's from clean fine but there's something additional about this creation that he's about to make our father and by extension us that is more than justine there's something more than just this animal presence this animal existence and by the way we have something in common with animals animals seek food and shelter we go to the grocery store seeking food we go to the restaurant seeking food we look for shelter too in fact those are the two primary things that drive us to get an education and get a job or start a business at the end of the day it boils down to food and shelter what's in the fridge and whether or not you're living in a home that that has proper shelter are the electricity bills hey does the water running what i'm trying to say is we're just way more advanced at getting food and shelter than animals but at the end of the day those are the same basic functions and then they procreate they have children they continue the species and that's what human beings do too so in that sense as far as the continuity of life we're not that much different from the animal kingdom and from what any other species does we build homes a bird builds a nest we go out and you know seek ours and the birds go out and they seek their risk but then allah adds he's informing the angels why is this creation from dirt different from all the other species that exist when i when i make him balanced when i make him balance actually to perfect and balance the craft of something so for example if somebody's designing uh you know or welding metal they kind of make sure that the metal is welded completely even and they have tools to make sure that it's completely straight that's called taswia so allah says that there's a level of balance and perfection that is going to be added to this creature that doesn't exist in other creatures but in a in in one sense other species physically have way more balance than we do monkeys can hang on one arm they have pretty good balance birds have amazing reflexes right so this is talking more than just our ability to stand up on two feet allah is telling us that human beings will have an ability to balance opposing things they're going to have the ability for example to balance their individual needs with the needs of their family they're going to balance their personal responsibilities with social responsibilities they're going to balance their their rights and their responsibilities they're going to balance our entire life is actually going to amount to balance and in fact today now there are you know there's a multi-million dollar industry that you know teaches you know successful people business people executives they attend these work-life balance seminars right to achieve balance and allah says that human beings have the potential this human being will have the potential to live a life that is evened out that's balanced as one of the great qualities of the human being that allah describes that's going to make him amazing so first he's made like every other animal but then he's got this remarkable ability to balance things and then he says on top of all of that by the way one aspect of balance before i go further is he says i you know the balance is actually between our impulses our emotions and our thought process so let me explain what that means when when a hungry dog sees something it goes and it bites it it doesn't think about the consequences there's the emotion and then there's the action that's it but human beings they can look at something and say no that's illegal no that's haram their mind comes in at work they think about the consequences you're getting late for work there's a red light right you have the ability to balance your emotion your knee your desire to get to work early but your need to abide by the law and stop at the red light we're able to balance our thoughts and our emotions unlike other species when they have an emotion they have an impulse they jump on it they react but we can think about the consequences we can think about the long term we can hold ourselves back and that's actually one of the great names of our intellect in the quran is al-hijr and annoha these are words that used to describe our intellect and the hijra means a boulder a rock because a rock is a barrier to moving forward and then noah is prevention because our our mind prevents us from doing stupid things it's it gets in our way and sometimes you know you get i get overwhelmed with emotions and we make stupid decisions or we say things we shouldn't have said or we do things we shouldn't have done because we weren't thinking at the time because we let our emotions get out of balance right so allah azza says human beings will be made with this amazing ability of balance then he says and then on top of that i will blow him to him from my own meaning especially designed for this human being this special spiritual connection this special thing that will connect him this human being and allah together in a unique way in this unique powerful way that's what's going to be inside him so this is inside him unlike other animals and other species there's a special kind of thing a special kind of light inside this human being so he's made up of these three things he's made up of dirt and he's made up of this balance and he's made up of this three components allah described in this ayah and he let the angels know these are the three parts that will make this human being amazing and when these three things come together then so when you study sajdah in the quran you learn something if you just scan the entire quran and look at where allah talks about sajdah allah talks about sajdah when something incredible happens allah talks about sajdah when a miracle happens when the when the sorcerers the magicians saw the staff of musa turn into a snake a giant snake and eat whatever maya fikun whatever they had made up they couldn't help themselves they fell into sajdah when christian people came to visit rasulullah and they heard the quran you're going to see their eyes start rolling with tears they fall on their faces in sajdah because they're so overwhelmed by the miracle of the quran there's even an incident in the seraph the prophet sallallahu alaihi where when the ayah the kuffar were listening the kuffar they don't even believe in the quran they were listening i warn you of a thunderbolt like the one that came to add in the moon they fell into such that they couldn't even help themselves they fell into sajdah the quran is describing over and over again when something overwhelming happens something incredible happens that allah does that only allah could do that human beings feel so powerful it's like their knees buckle and their pride disappears and this this this thing that carries our pride falls on the face in every culture historically this is the place of pride this is why the king wears the crown here not on the wrist nowadays the status symbol is an expensive watcher so that's on the wrist right but historically what what is the show of pride in every culture is what goes on the head right the turbine goes on the head the crown goes on the head you know this is the show of where you stand there are countries in the world today where they have certain kinds of head gear only the locals can wear that if you wear that you get in trouble you can wear a different color you can't wear that's their color that's the elite class you know this is our pride this is our sense of position in society and you know what all of that disappears when you recognize the power of allah you're overwhelmed by that you just fall into sajdah that's what the quran describes over and over again and allah is making a claim here to all of the angels and the angels it's important to note the angels don't just see the scene the angels are creatures of the unseen so what what is invisible to us like the auschwitz what is invisible to us like the jinn what is invisible to us like the secrets of the skies many of them the angels they travel through the skies so we can be amazed by a mountain or an ocean or a waterfall the scene world that amazes us when somebody studies the universe and and looks through an electron microscope they can be amazed by the vastness of the seen universe can you imagine add to the seen universe those that have seen the unseen also how much more amazed by what allah does are they and then on top of that they get to communicate directly with allah allah talks directly to the angels they're not like us they have direct back and forth communication with allah and allah is telling them that this creature is so incredible of all the vast universe that he created of all the things that he put in this remarkable scene and unseen kawn he says this one thing is so powerful that every last one of you should be overwhelmed at what allah has done when he created adam that you should fall into sajdah you should just be like in awe of this incredible miracle of allah that deserves that all of the angels of allah the thing is when when the staff of musa alayhi salam incident happened a few magicians fell into sajdah when a few people heard the quran a few you know the disbelievers fell into or some christians fell into sajdah you find some fall into sajdah and you find in this one incident every angel that allah ever created is commanded to fall into sajdah how big of a miracle how big of a deal is the creation of adam alaihissalam how powerful is this creation when you step when you contemplate that and you and again adam has not been created yet this is just the announcement why should you why should you be so amazed what deserves this sajdah what warren said why should they fall on their faces well it's because of these three things therefore or thereafter fall into sajdah the fact would be sababia too thus you will fall into sajdah before him so now this announcement is made and at least we know heard this announcement also and if we at least heard this announcement he also knows that adam is made up of three things i keep saying three things so it sticks in your head three things three things three things but we know that when allah tells us that when he refused to do sajdah he turns to allah he doesn't say he doesn't say that he says you made me from fire you made him from dirt that's just one of those three things isn't it there's two more things and he knows about those two other things he knows about the taswa the balance of the human being he also knows about the that is inside the human being but when he complains to allah that you made him from dirt he pretends that he doesn't know about those other two things but he does he fully knows the this is a really important thing that i want to highlight in these brief moments in this quad there's hundreds of lessons in the story of adam alaizam but i hope i can do some justice to this one lesson that i want you to take today and that is that when he denies these other two things he knows he knows that if he acknowledges those two things then he has to acknowledge how incredible the human being actually is but if he only acknowledges the dirt if he only acknowledges the mud then what's the difference between adam and a horse what's the difference between adam and a cow and a monkey they eat he eats they get shelter they gotcha they have kids he has kids he's not he's just an evolved animal that's all okay so he can stand on his two feet big deal what's the big deal he's just an evolved species there's nothing more to him there's nothing more to him so he has a certain he deliberately denies two components of our existence out of the three two of them he denies them and if he accepts them then he has to accept the supremacy of what allah has made the remarkable thing allah has made now he hates humanity he blames allah for giving us this position for and he swore that he wants to not only see adam alaihissalam fail because you know if you hate adam then you got adam expelled from jannah you should be like i'm good now i got my revenge feel better nah he doesn't feel better he's like now i'm going to get his kids and now i'm going to get his family now i'm going to get their kids and their kid and he keeps ruining human beings time and time and time and time again and the rage of his fury doesn't go away he doesn't feel any better after getting revenge or destroying he doesn't feel any better so the the the thing is how does he destroy human beings he does many things to destroy us but one of the most important things he does which is actually now i get to talk about the topic of my khutba today one of the things that we learn from this passage and these ayat of the quran is that iblis did not want the human being to be acknowledged as something worthy and his greatest success one of his greatest successes if he can convince you and me that in fact you're not worthy self-worth valuing yourself respecting yourself as a human being is actually one of the great crises in the world today people in the sociology world of sociology people in the world of psychology people across in families across the world are facing a crisis of people who don't see any worth in themselves oh i used to have a job but i'm retired now nobody cares about my opinion i you know i'm worthless i just sit home all day my son has a job my you know you know my daughters are gone away to college and i'm just useless here i'm just a burden on everyone there's an old man sitting in his home thinking he's completely worthless all i can do is just go to the masjid and come back but i live with this worthlessness inside me it's just better if i just die these are the thoughts he had inside his head he doesn't say it sometimes he even says it sometimes he even says it lives and lives with this worthlessness a young man lives with worthlessness he says my brother graduated my my cousin got a job everybody else is doing better this one already got married look at me i've got nothing i didn't accomplish any of those things oh i wasted so many years i should have done this i should have done that i everybody tells me i'm a loser i must be a loser what does iblis want to do he wants to get people to say things around you in your life they'll say things to you that make you feel worthless they don't even realize they're doing it they don't even realize it but they're having this effect on you when you start thinking yeah maybe i am worthless maybe i you know i'm not that i'm not that big of a deal i'm a nobody i'm a nobody and you know what that does once you develop low self-esteem you don't value yourself then you're always thinking the only way i will be valued is if somebody else values me if somebody else approves then i have value so i'm just gonna i'm gonna take a picture of myself i'm gonna make sure i change all the filters enough times and then i'm to post it online and i'm going to wait for somebody to do this or somebody to put put one of these or at least a masha'allah or something give me something because if somebody gives me i have some value all right now what do i got it i i need more value because i'm worthless again i haven't posted in two days i need to get back on i need to feel valued again when you don't have enough value for yourself you're always looking for value from where somewhere else someone else always looking for somebody else's approval always looking for somebody else's compliment you didn't say anything you didn't what do you think what do you think what do you think i should do what do you think of this what do you think of that constantly asking for somebody else's opinion because without it you're worthless and then you become afraid you know what when you become uh when you have low self-esteem then you you can't deal with any of your rights like people can walk all over you they can humiliate you and in your head you're like yeah i deserve it i'm scum anyway i mean this is i should be i deserve you even worse and what's what's even better is it please comes to those in your life sometimes and he says hey say this to him say you know what i know i treat you like a dog but you deserve worse than that so you should be happy that i even treat you this much okay you're lucky to even get this much treatment and you hear that enough times and what happens you start internalizing it because human beings even if you reject something at first if you hear it enough times you start getting influenced by that you start seeing yourself that way you start developing your hatred not just for others but also for yourself and then you just this rage inside you is always like my opinion doesn't matter everybody else's opinion matters my voice is no good everybody else's voice is better my presence is a burden i have nothing to offer anyone when you start developing this this is a great victory of shaytan because shaytan says that's what i was saying man that's exactly what i was just dirt look at him what balance what what rule and what does allah do before you and i even came on this earth because of what our father was given which we have been given the creation of our bodies then on top of that and on top of that he gave us an honor above all of allah's creation and all of us allah's creation see us as a miracle of allah worthy of all the angels falling into sajdah in awe of what allah has done in amazement at what allah has done so now the angels in the heavens are impressed with you and you're not impressed with yourself you think you're worthless allah we honored the sons of the children of adam we honored the children of adam you know what this ayah teaches me it teaches me i don't have to look for validation from anybody else i can look for what did i do a good job or not i should check did the food come out you you know uh you shouldn't like take this lesson and say you know what i don't need anybody else's opinion now i'm gonna go home and pour all the salt into the food and then cook it and say how does it taste well i don't care about your opinion because allah has honored me like that's not what i'm saying that's not what i'm saying at all we do need to get correction from each other and by the way when you are when you value yourself then being criticized is not humiliation when you truly honor yourself when you truly realize your worth worthiness then you realize that when someone if somebody's criticizing me and saying hey you said this incorrectly or you need to improve this or this could be better then they're doing me a favor to help me improve i don't feel like i'm being insulted because when you have really low self-worth then criticism feels like you're being pushed even lower down but that feeling goes away once you have value for yourself once you recognize allah has given me value then you start seeing correction or criticism as an opportunity as an opportunity to grow it's not humiliating anymore but this is one side of the equation that we value ourselves but at least you know he's got multiple tactics and with i talked about balance in the beginning one of the things allah gave us is balance nowadays a lot of because you know people are not no longer the majority of the world is no longer interested in educating itself through books or reading or long study in fact if a video is more than 30 seconds move on move on and then they say you know what they call that i've been doing a lot of research no you haven't you've been swiping tick tock that's not called research you know but we i've been doing a lot of research into psychology no no you haven't a three-minute youtube video was not research into psychology you're you haven't studied anything right but we've become accustomed to quick sound bites you know quick quick kinds of education and as a result of that we we want quick validation and one of the things that's happened in a lot of this social media environment is one subject that keeps coming up is self-love self-worth self-esteem which is what i'm talking about too but you can take that too far you're you're amazing you're the best believe in yourself you you you know nuff nufzuk and you're like yes nafsey enough cnfc you know and you you become like obsessed with you i'm awesome i'm amazing and then some parents do this to their kids you're the best you're the best ever you're the princess little four-year-old girl you're my princess everybody else is ugly you're the prettiest you're the best and this little girl turns into a monster she goes at school and she goes the princess is here kiss the ring like she she develops this like inflated sense of self our worthiness our worthiness before allah is something that should make us give me such a high position i better put that to work i better put that to work i don't want to give you this by analogy imagine somebody gave you you you know you didn't believe in yourself you don't think you're that good but you applied for a job anyway right you applied they're like i'm pretty sure they're not going to hire me you get a call back and they want to give you the executive position way higher and you know you from what you know of yourself you're like i'm so not qualified for this but you get put in that position anyway now once you get put in that position i want you to think about and i want myself to think about what am i what's going on in my head inside am i thinking yep the boss is here watch out that's my chair or are you thinking i have been given such a high position i better live up to this i better up my game i better learn more i better become more adaptive i better you know honor this role that i've been given so i can actually prove my worthiness so the the honor was given to you first even before you got a chance to prove yourself the healthy attitude would be i need to live up to this like it or not now i'm here i better step up you understand on the on the flip side is someone who gets that position without having earned it and then says you know what what's what else is there to do i already got this position you know now i can look down at everybody else who doesn't have this position fake it till you make it right that's not that's not how this works this is actually the the reality of arrogance so on the one hand we value ourselves but what we actually are supposed to value is the potential that allah gave us we're supposed to value the ability to make the effort that allah gave us not the things that allah gave us the things that allah gave us he can give to anybody else and these things will come and they will go but the only thing of value before allah is and before before ourselves should actually be just our efforts human beings will have nothing of worth on judgment day except the efforts that they made that's it that's all that's going to matter so what's the this this balance between confidence and humility that has to be struck because too much self-worth will turn into arrogance and too much humility then you start thinking i'm nothing i'm nobody i'll give you an example of this that i saw in the islamic space i was at a university many years ago there were almost no muslims in the university five or six young men that are muslim students in the university right and there's no masjid for like a hundred miles so they've got to make by themselves these five young guys right and one of them is a habit quran so obviously it falls on him to kind of prepare something learn a little bit to be able to give the khutbah and to lead the prayer and he won't do it he won't do it and then you go to him and say hey why won't you give the khutbah i am nothing i'm just a fakie i i'm i know i know i mind worthlessness before allah how can i stand on the member of rasulullah because i know that i'm not even worth the dirt of the feet of the ulama that are here and he starts giving you this whole humility talk about how no no no no i'm nothing i'm worthless i'm useless and i tell him i know you're useless but still the thing is if you don't do it this guy is going to lead the prayer in english he's gonna say god is great and then he's gonna that's what he's get so you know what you kind of have to step up bro you gotta step up you've been put in a certain position you this is not about arrogance you're confusing the need for confidence with arrogance this is a time to show confidence but too much confidence now if you imagine he starts giving the khutbah but then there's somebody else that comes along and says hey this week we have a scholar oh why is he taking my spot i like my spot why why you gotta take my spot for can't you give him like saturday khudbar or something i don't know is there an alternative because i'm kind of used to having the the main stage right so now there's arrogance so there's this balance between confidence and humility that has to be struck and that's what allah azzawajal defined as one of the most amazing qualities that human beings have that allah gave inside of us this there's the spiritual and there's this material there's this confidence and there's this humility and they're both co-exist there's taswia all the time it's remarkable right that on the one hand allah mentioned dirt and on the other hand allah mentioned the two opposites and in between them he mentioned balance our entire life is supposed to be a struggle to find that balance to find that that real worth in ourselves so we're not looking for it in other people we're not looking for it in things we're not looking for it in posts or engagement or followers we're not looking for for worth in the clothes we're wearing we're looking for worth in what we what we what we give to allah and if if you're an old gentleman or you're retired and you have you feel like you have nothing to offer the world stop thinking this way every one of us will be a learner until the day we die there's no age where you should stop learning and the moment the more you're learning the more you're enriching yourself and the more you enrich yourself naturally the world around you gets enriched there's more wisdom you can offer there's more you can give somebody and this is the last thing i'll share with you a gentleman who passed away recently that i knew about an elderly gentleman who had retired many years ago and he was just living at home and he spent his entire day just studying and learning and studying and learning and when he passed away his children because he hadn't had a job so if you look at it from a material point of view he was kind of a financial burden on the family trips to the hospital all the time you know and you know what are we going to do with him who's going to take care of him you know but on the other hand when he left you know all those kids and their gran his grandkids and all of them you know what they remember the things he used to read and he used to share the wisdom that he used to share and that those little bits of wisdom you don't know they might change that grandson's life there may be a time where you know just like allah describes yusuf alaihis yusuf al-islam heard some bits of good counsel from his father yahoo when he was little and so many years of his life he held on to islam the only terbia he had were some words of wisdom he heard from his father years ago right so no no goodness is worthless no good effort is worthless no human being is worthless find value in yourself that allah has already given you may allah allow us to value ourselves see our worth and not allow shaitaan to make me and you see ourselves as someone worthless or unworthy or someone who should be stepped on or should be punished we should stop doing that self-hatred and may allah allow that self value never to turn into arrogance hakeem m you

Channel: EPIC MASJID

Views: 90,178

Keywords: East Plano Islamic Center, EPIC Masjid, East Plano Masjid, EPIC, Yasir Qadhi, Imam, Nadim Bashir, Ustadh, Baajour, Hafiz, Sajjad Gul, Allah, Quran, Islam, mosque, masjid

Id: TxZq2DjQ61M

Length: 34min 54sec (2094 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 10 2022