Revive Your Heart: Putting Life in Perspective

fī sabīl Allah
, I don’t

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want any money’. He understood immediately that this is Allah responding to
his 
duʿā’
. He did not have what we call back home, where I come from, 
takalluf
:
‘No, no, no, thank you. I don’t need anything, I don’t need it’. When people are
offering you help, that might be from Allah, that might be the answer to your
duʿā’
. So if somebody is offering you a job and you say, ‘No, no, no, I can’t
accept this favour’, why are you turning away the favour of Allah? 
Mūsā
(
ʿalayhi al-salām
) has far more integrity than you, he didn’t shy away and say,
‘No, no, no, that was a voluntary task, I expect nothing’. He expected nothing;
he expected from whom? From Allah. But when Allah brings people his way, he
doesn’t turn it down.
As I conclude, let me tell you what happens. This one 
duʿā’
that he made,
with that sincerity: not only did he get invited, not only did he get paid, as a
matter of fact in the middle of that conversation he got offered the daughter’s
hand in marriage; so he got married and on top of that he got a job for eight to
ten years. So he got housing, employment, marriage, immigration status, all of it
in one shot, because of this one 
duʿā’
! Did he ask for any of these things? No.
He started his entire family—a new life began for 
Mūsā
(
ʿalayhi al-salām
) all
because he appreciated what Allah (
ʿazza wa-jall
) had given him, even in the
middle of the desert, even in the middle of nothing.
We have to become a people of 
shukr
; a people of gratitude. Which is why
you must appreciate that when 
Mūsā
(
ʿalayhi al-salām
) is in a desert again.
Mūsā
(
ʿalayhi al-salām
) ends up in a desert twice: once when he ran away as an
individual from the army and a second time when he ran away from the armies
of 
Firʿawn
as the leader of an entire nation. So in the life of 
Mūsā
(
ʿalayhi al-
salām
) he ends up escaping from Egypt twice: once, personally; once, with an
entire nation. When he left with his entire nation, you know what he said to
them? He said to them:
Also call to mind when your Lord proclaimed: “If you give thanks, I
will certainly grant you more…”
(Ibrahim 14: 7)
He turns to the Israelites who are in the middle of the desert, complaining

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about the heat, complaining about the lack of food, complaining about the lack
of water. He turns to them and says, ‘Your Master had already declared that, “if
you can become grateful, I will absolutely increase you”.’ I will give you more
and more and more. 
Mūsā
(
ʿalayhi al-salām
) is not just teaching them a theory;
he is teaching them this 
duʿā’
based on his life experience. He’s already done
this before. When he was grateful to Allah, Allah gave him more and more and
more and more. This is the life lesson he is teaching the 
Banī Isrā’īl
, and that
duʿā’
— 
la’in shakartum la’azīdannakum
—is so powerful; it was a 
khuṭbah
given by 
Mūsā
(
ʿalayhi al-salām
) to 
Banī Isrā’īl
, and even that got recorded in
the Qur’an.
So you and I have to learn—and this is something we easily forget—to be
grateful for what we do have, and not to focus our attention so much on what we
don’t have. To learn to acknowledge that whatever we do have, we could not
have survived without it, we are