Comforts & Luxuries

Sheikh Muhammad ibn Salih al-Uthaimeen رحمه الله تعالى said:

"The more people increase in comfort and luxury and the more they open up before the people [with the Dunya], the more evils will open up before them. It is comfort and luxury that destroys a person. Because if a person was to concern himself with comfort and luxury and providing enjoyment to his body, he will become negligent of providing enjoyment to his heart, and his greatest worry will become providing enjoyment to this body that is doomed to become worms and rotten.

This is the ordeal, and this is what has harmed people today. You can hardly find anyone except that they say: "What is our palace? What is our car? What is our furniture? What is our food?" Even those who study [Islaamic] knowledge, some of them only study in order to gain rank or status to reach the blessings of the Dunya. As if man was not created for a significant purpose. The Dunya and its blessings are only a means, nothing more. We ask Allaah to make us and you use it as a means.

Ibn Taymiyyah رحمه الله تعالى said:

"A person should use money as he uses a donkey to ride, and as he uses the toilet to relieve himself."

Not Everyone Is Suitable To Be Your Friend

Ibnul-Qayyim رحمه الله تعالى said:

“Know that the greatest of losses is for you to be preoccupied with one who will bring you nothing but a loss in your time with Allaah سبحانه و تعالى  and being cut off from Him, a wasting your time with the person, a weakening of your energy, and the dispersing of your resolve. So, if you are tested with this – and you must be tested with this – deal with him according to how Allaah would wish, and be patient with him as much as possible. Get closer to Allaah and His Pleasure by way of this person, and make your getting together with him something to benefit from, not something to incur a loss from.

Don’t just be patient

Don’t just be patient, be patient and along with that hope for a reward from Allaah سبحانه و تعالى for your patience during your calamity

Sheikh ibn Uthaimeen رحمه الله تعالى said, 

 

“Indeed when a person faces calamities with patience [but] without hoping for a reward from Allaah, the calamity will become an expiation for his sins. And if he shows patience along with hoping for a reward [from Allaah], then along with being an expiation for his sins it becomes a good recompense and reward. And the meaning of hoping for Allaah’s reward [al-Ihtisaab] is that a person believes that he will soon be rewarded for the patience [he is showing], so he makes good his thoughts about Allaah and thus Allaah سبحانه و تعالى, will give him [a reward] according to what he thought of Him.”

{At-Ta’leeq alaa Saheeh Muslim, p. 342}.