#067 Don't Worry, Allah Controls The Future
Shaytan wants you to worry about the future. That you just keep worrying,
“What’s my son gonna do? Is he gonna rebel?”
“What’s my daughter gonna do?
“What’s my husband gonna do?
“What’s my wife gonna do?
And you keep worrying about other people and what they’re gonna do. And how they’re gonna feel. Like you’re in charge of them. Or you’re in control of them.
We’re barely in control of ourselves.
But we think we can control what everybody else around us is going to do, and what their future is going to be. And we want to control their future.
You’ll have a mother, dying everyday, “Why isn’t my daughter who’s married - why isn’t she having a baby? When is she gonna have a baby?”
She’s calling her and saying, “You know, Allah wants you to have a baby.” - Allah doesn’t want her to have a baby, you want her to have a baby. I don’t know what email you got from Allah, that you told her ... but in your mind, you just want these anxieties; worldly things that you want, is all you think about for the future.
“I don’t have it, I don’t have it, I just worry about it. I don’t know why I don’t have it.”- and you’re just consumed by that, completely consumed by that. It can be the most innocent of things but shaytan wants you to be that way.
Because when you do that, you’re not happy with what Allah has given you - number one. And you easily forget that the one in charge is Allah.
And the one in control over everyone is Allah.
I am actually not in charge of my children. Once they get to a certain age, what they do is between them and Allah. All I can be is advice, that’s all I can do.
But their decisions are going to be theirs.
If our Messenger s.a.w. can turn to his daughter and say, “Fatimah, daughter of Muhammad, be mindful of God yourself, because I won’t have any control when it comes to standing in front of Allah. I won’t be able to help you.” - that’s what he says to his own daughter.
So how do you and I think we have control over others, even within our family?
Shaytan wants us to think we’re in charge. And that’s actually something only Allah has the right to.
It consumes our mind with it, of course.
When you try to control people, it backfires; it never works. You can never control people. You can’t control people.
And when you can’t control people, you get even more anxious, you get negative constantly. And when you become negative constantly, it’s impossible for you to be grateful.
Look at how the verse ends:
[7:17] You’re not going to find most of them grateful.
Because they’re gonna be negative all the time. They’re gonna be anxious about the future all the time:
What’s gonna happen to my job?
What’s gonna happen with my money?
Where is this/that gonna come from?
What’s gonna happen to the health?
What’s gonna happen to the kids?
What’s gonna happen to this or that or the other?
What if they find out?
What if this happens?
What if this one says this?
What if that one does that?
And you’re just so overwhelmed by these petty things that you forget that Allah controls the future, that Allah owns it; not you, not me.
And the fact that we had even a good peaceful day, one day, one moment, was not because we earned it or we planned it, or we controlled it. It’s Allah who gives relief.
Every single day, that’s Allah who gives relief.
The fact that our bodies are still functioning, and we’re sitting here in the Friday prayer, is Allah giving us relief. Allah giving us ability.
And we forget that, and we think that we have to figure all the future out. We think we have to control all the outcomes. And that’s one the things that shaytan wants, is to make you confused about thinking; that you have something to do with the future.
One of the greatest tricks of the shaytan is to make you pessimistic about the future: “Nothing is gonna work out, it’s all gonna be bad. Nothing ever worked anyway. It’s always gonna fail.” - You become so negative.
That not only are you negative about your own self, your negativity becomes infectious. Even people around you, somebody’s happy about something, somebody graduated, you’re like, “Yeah but you’re not really gonna get a job.”
You just have to throw in some kind of negative because you know, “It’s just our luck, runs in the family, don’t worry about it.” - this is the pessimism of the devil. He wants that from you because if a person is pessimistic, then how can they have pessimism and hope in Allah?
How can they have pessimism and reliance in Allah?
Then with that heart are they making dua’ (prayer) to Allah if they’ve already accepted defeat inside? Then nothing’s gonna work out, then they have no expectation from Allah.
Then the most essential relationship we have with Allah which is that of asking him, having hope in him - you cut that off; you’re hopeless, and what is shaytan by definition? He’s hopeless.
And he wants you to become hopeless.
These are his attacks from the front.