Allah values the heart and deeds
“Allah does not look at your appearance or your wealth but He looks at your hearts and your deeds.”
Allah judges the heart and the deeds flowing from it, so believers must cultivate faith, sincerity, remembrance, mercy, love, and humility while treating spiritual diseases.
The khutbah in 6 steps
- Explains that Allah values inner faith and righteous conduct over appearance or wealth.
- Compares the physical heart’s importance with the spiritual heart’s importance.
- Describes the heart as the site of faith or disbelief and sincerity or hypocrisy.
- Explores remembrance versus heedlessness and love versus hatred.
- Discusses mercy versus harshness and humility versus arrogance.
- Concludes that spiritual heart diseases require treatment and previews the next khutbah.
In the khateeb's words
“Allah does not look at your appearance or your wealth but He looks at your hearts and your deeds”
“simply declaring faith with the tongue and showing outward submission does not mean a person has true faith until that faith becomes firmly established in the heart”
“if you want your heart to become soft feed the poor and gently stroke the head of an orphan”
“a person may appear healthy and full of life around us but his heart is spiritually dead in the sight of Allah”
For the dinner table
This khutbah teaches that Allah cares about the condition of our hearts and the good deeds that flow from them, not our appearance or wealth. The heart can hold opposite qualities: faith or disbelief, sincerity or showing off, remembrance or heedlessness, love or hatred, mercy or harshness, and humility or arrogance. These qualities are shaped by our choices, so spiritual health deserves attention just as physical health does. The speaker especially recommends acts of mercy, including feeding someone poor and gently touching an orphan’s head, as a way to soften the heart. He closes by asking Allah to purify our hearts and says the treatment of these spiritual illnesses will be discussed in a future khutbah.
- What is one way we can show that our actions match sincere intentions?
- Who could we help this week in a way that makes our hearts softer?
- What helps us stay humble when we feel proud of ourselves?
The masjid
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