What If I’ve Lost Motivation?

Opening Du'a and Khutbah

اللهم الدين، اللهم اجعلنا منهم ومن الذين آمنوا وعملوا الصالحات وتواصوا بالحق وتواصوا بالصبر. آمين يا رب العالمين. وأوصيكم ونفسي بتقوى الله وقد أمرنا بالحق.

We begin by praising Allah by bearing witness that none has the right to be worshipped or unconditionally obeyed except for Him. And we bear witness that Muhammad ﷺ is his final messenger. We ask Allah to send his peace and blessings upon him, the prophets and messengers that came before him, his family and companions that served alongside him, and those that follow in his blessed path until the Day of Judgment. We ask Allah to make us amongst them. Allahumma ameen.

Four People Entering the Haram

Dear brothers and sisters, I want you to imagine if you walked into the Haram right now. Walk into the masjid and you see the Ka'bah in front of you. And with you as you enter into the Haram are the following types of people.

You have a person who converted to Islam and had to be ostracized and alienated from their family members, and make substantial sacrifices in order to come to Islam in the first place and then to make that journey to Mecca. Entering into the Haram, bawling their eyes out and crying and looking towards the Ka'bah and saying, Alhamdulillah, Allah brought me here. Alhamdulillah, Allah brought me to Islam. My life would have been in complete ruin had I not found Islam. This is the greatest thing that ever happened to me even though I made the greatest sacrifices to get here.

And then next to that person is someone who repented to Allah — born and raised Muslim but lost their way along the way — and came back to Allah after years of estrangement and is crying and weeping because they know they didn't deserve another chance with Allah but they got that other chance and they feel like they're becoming Muslim all over again. Weeping and saying Alhamdulillah, and actually sharing a story before we enter into the Haram about how they had a full heart attack in 2020 or 2021, and the heart completely shut off, and Allah just made it that there was just some sort of intelligence that Allah put in there, to where the heart had just enough blood suddenly to keep him alive. And now he's back to Allah. Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah. I can't believe that I'm here. Allah blessed me with another opportunity. Alhamdulillah.

And then you have a third person that's next to those two — that's been born and raised Muslim their whole life — and they wonder why they can't get that type of emotion anymore and that motivation to do these things. Like, how come I feel so behind this person that converted to Islam and this person that returned to Allah?

And then you have the son or the daughter of that person who was born and raised in Islam and is just kind of there because they were brought along for the road and never really felt like they had a choice. Sorry, fine, we'll go to Umrah, we'll go to Hajj, we'll do what we have to do. Same way that Islam has been for their entire life. My parents brought me to the masjid, my parents taught me how to pray, my parents told me to do this, my parents taught me how to memorize Quran.

And this is the scene, by the way, of four people with you as you enter into the Haram. There's this question here about the freshness of that motivation and treating Islam and treating the faith like a gift — and remaining motivated towards this deen on a consistent basis and feeling like it came from the heart — like, I chose Islam, whether it was for the first time or the second time, but I chose Islam. And a freshness that comes with that.

And sometimes when you're watching someone go through it, even as Abu Bakr رضي الله تعالى عنه wished — when he saw new converts from Yemen come to the Prophet ﷺ and weep — he said, I remember when we used to cry like that when we'd hear the Quran. I remember when our hearts were like the hearts of these people as they're hearing the Quran for the first time. And you reminisce and you want that so badly.

Al-Munamasa and Al-Munabadha: The Danger of Taking Islam for Granted

There are some — and we always talk about this — who take Islam for granted because they never felt like they had to work for Islam in the first place. I remember when I was studying Islamic finance there were two types of transactions that the Prophet ﷺ prohibited, amongst many, but they're called al-munamasa and al-munabadha. Just stay with me for a moment because it took me right to an analogy of hidayah.

Al-munamasa is if you go to the marketplace in Jahiliyyah and you touch something, it's yours — you can't put it back on the shelf, you can't give it back. Khalas, you touch it, it's yours. Al-munabadha is if the seller throws something to you and you catch it, it's yours. And of course there is an element of gambling — a very intentional, superstitious type — where someone would intentionally subject themselves to this. Like, alright, I'm going to close my eyes and whatever I touch is mine no matter what — so it's like gambling on the part of the buyer. Or, I'm going to pay the seller something and whatever he gets his hand on and throws towards me, that's the one. And sometimes there's a lot of remorse and regret: I didn't choose this garment, this garment just came to me, and I don't know what to do about that.

And many of the ulama talk about the idea of faith in this way — and how to stay motivated towards seeking to please Allah and finding the truth on a regular basis — and not treating this affair of Islam and this affair of faith like it's just something that fell on you, rather than something you should be seeking for your entire life over and over and over again. And trying to develop that freshness of a relationship with Allah.

And of course this was very painful to the Prophet ﷺ and to many of those who converted to Islam — they wanted so badly for their parents or their spouses or their children to see the beauty of Islam but they just couldn't see it.

You can't guide whom you will. You can show someone the way, you can be an example of that way, you can give them the environment of that way, but if faith doesn't enter the heart, then that person is going to treat it either like a nuisance or, even worse, they're going to reject it altogether. The pain of parents who try so hard to give their children everything but it doesn't enter into the heart.

There's no compulsion in religion. You want so badly for someone in your household or someone that's under your control to see the beauty of Islam and to take it, but it's not working, it's not clicking.

And this, by the way, is a message first and foremost to those who grew up with Islam and don't realize how special what they have actually is. No one can wish you into Jannah. No one can want success or salvation for you more than you have to want it for yourself. And a person should never think that just because I was pressured into guidance, or something happened where it was conducive and I never had to choose it in the way that a non-Muslim had to choose to become Muslim, that I have to somehow go on this journey where I step away from Allah so I could step to Him intentionally.

By the way, it's one of the tricks of Shaytan — one of the tricks of Shaytan is: I did not choose righteousness, therefore I have to step into wickedness so I can choose it again and be fresh. And so someone says, I never really wanted to pray, it was kind of given to me growing up but I never really felt it, so it was pressure, and I don't want to start doing this good deed because someone else expects it of me. It actually totally disrupts human complexity altogether.

The Example of Abu Talha and Umm Sulaym

Because when you look at how many of those who embraced Islam initially embraced Islam — they embraced Islam in the context of pressure. Tribes are embracing Islam, my tribe is embracing Islam, they went along with the flow as well. That doesn't mean that they were hypocritical, but that there was a flow, there was a channeling into Islam. And so I'm going to enter into Islam as well. But it wasn't the original Muhajirun and Sabiqoon — no. Like, people are coming into Islam, I was born into the household of Islam, tribes became Muslim.

You know, one of the people that we praise so consistently when we talk about sadaqah — Abu Talha رضي الله تعالى عنه — who responded to the verse:

You will not achieve Jannah, or righteousness, or the reward of righteousness, until you spend from what you love. And he acted in one of the most sincere ways that we ever read of the Sahaba. He came to the Prophet ﷺ and he said, I love nothing more than this garden — Bayruha — in front of the masjid of the Prophet ﷺ, and Allah said until you spend from what you love — I'm giving what I love, my most precious real estate.

You know that that man entered into Islam because his wife Umm Sulaym set the mahr — the dowry. He wanted to marry Umm Sulaym رضي الله تعالى عنها and her mahr was Islam. You want to marry me? You've got to be Muslim. That doesn't mean that he didn't sincerely embrace Islam, but there was certainly something that facilitated that and that pushed him — because he really wasn't interested in looking into Islam in the first place. But look how sincere he ended up becoming. Look at the motivation shifting and the intention turning.

And so someone says, I don't want to start praying, or I don't want to go to the masjid, or I don't want to do this because someone else made me do it. Or I don't want to wear hijab because someone else is expecting me to wear hijab. I don't want to start showing up to this event because someone else is expecting me. That's not how this works.

Sometimes Allah — by actually giving us these environments to where righteousness is incentivized, and there is a moment where it's actually awkward to not do the right thing — those are the best things that Allah can give to us, until the right type of motivation and the right type of heart settles into it and then I come into it.

We can't deny this element of our deen. The Prophet ﷺ said: Allah is amazed by those people that entered into Jannah in chains. What does that mean? Does that mean that the Muslims chained people up and forced them to become Muslim? What this means is that battles were fought in early Islam and there were captives that ended up embracing Islam — and ended up becoming the scholars of this religion and the forerunners of this religion. It was initially a situation where someone else was pulling them into the fold of Islam. Again, not forcing them to become Muslim.

And no, this does not give you permission to go and put someone in chains. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that when you read the history of human complexity, there is muallafat al-quloob — there are those whose hearts were softened through extra spoils of battle from the Prophet ﷺ. Sometimes there were other things to try to incentivize, to push people to stay on the right path — the same way that when you tell your kids to memorize Quran and you promise them, when you finish this juz', I'm going to give you this, and when you do this, I'm going to give you that — until the relationship becomes transformational, until it goes into that.

How Do I Maintain the Freshness of Motivation?

So then I come back to each and every single one of us: how do I maintain that freshness of motivation in pursuing Allah and feel that same type of renewal and revival — approaching Islam like a new Muslim who just found the gold, the gift that it actually is? How do I approach Islam like a gift and not a burden, even if it's been made very easy for me and Allah facilitated it for me without me ever really having to struggle to find it?

The Du'a of Shaddad ibn Aws

I want to give you a hadith from Shaddad ibn Aws رضي الله عنه because it comes in the form of a du'a, and Al-Hafidh Ibn Rajab رحمه الله mentions that in this du'a one can see the comprehensiveness of the speech of the Prophet ﷺ in the ways that he taught his companions how to make du'a.

Shaddad ibn Aws was one of the early Muslims and when he embraced Islam he embraced it with extreme hardship — like many of those early Muslims. And many of those early Muslims then transitioned, over decades, and they felt like their hearts weren't as fresh as the day they became Muslim. They worried about themselves: Have we become desensitized to all of this? Are we not pursuing lofty enough goals? I remember when we used to have to do this and we used to have to do that, and now things seem to be getting too easy for us, and there's a complacency that's setting in.

So he would say, later on in Islam, after the death of the Prophet ﷺ, that I've restrained myself from speaking about many things that I learned from the Prophet ﷺ — meaning, there's a caution: am I saying it right? Am I relaying on behalf of the Prophet ﷺ properly? But he said, there's one thing that I speak freely with — and he said it's a du'a that the Prophet ﷺ taught me.

The Prophet ﷺ said to Shaddad:

(Musnad Ahmad, Hadith 17124; also referenced in the collections of Al-Tabarani)

O Shaddad, when you see people start piling up gold and silver, then treat this du'a like a treasure — start to pile up with the statement of this du'a.

What does the Prophet ﷺ mean? When you see people's motivations turn very worldly — they approach their world with such motivation, their dunya, their income, their career goals, their whatever goals with such motivation and determination — he said, instead, I want you to treat this du'a like a treasure.

And the very first line of the du'a is the one that Al-Hafidh Ibn Rajab spent some time with — the one that fits this khutbah:

O Allah, I ask You to remain firm on this way, and I ask You for al-'azimah 'ala al-rushd — to be determined, motivated towards rightful guidance, constantly seeking the next way to please Allah, and then being able to commit to that.

The first part of the du'a is discipline — not falling off. The second part of the du'a is still pursuing lofty goals, still pursuing rightful guidance and trying to do more and more and getting closer to Allah — not one day feeling an emotion and saying I want to do this and then not doing anything about it. No — someone that's constantly setting new goals in their deen and constantly looking for the next way to please Allah. And just like that person follows their bank account and follows how they got this and they got this and they got that — no, like I want rightful guidance the way that a new Muslim wants rightful guidance.

You know there's this famous saying — like Habib, the fighter — he talks about how discipline is what wins, not motivation. You need discipline, not motivation, because discipline is what's going to keep you on. And that's true. Sometimes you're not going to feel like praying. You might not have felt like coming to Jumu'ah today, but you still came because you knew that you had to. Sometimes you're not going to feel like doing this ibadah or doing that ibadah but you're disciplined enough to keep to it. But you also want the motivation to keep going for more and more. And so this is in the du'a of the Prophet ﷺ:

Two Causes of Losing Motivation

And the majority of the du'as of the Prophet ﷺ focused on this idea of being able to continue, to stay motivated and to do better and to excel. And there are mentions in particular of this type of muscle, this type of motivation. There are two reasons why people start to lose motivation.

First: Depression and Paralysis

One of them is depression — paralysis. I don't mean depression in the medical term. I mean, so many bad things are happening, there are so many setbacks, and so I don't really feel motivated to keep doing good because the bad just keeps on getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and so I don't really see a way forward.

And this is like when Allah says:

Don't lose heart and don't grieve, when you are the victorious — should you remain believers. And what this means is that if you look around the world and you say, Palestine is getting worse, the situation of the Muslims is getting worse, this is happening, this is happening — and you start to lose motivation — then you renew your belief in the qadr of Allah, in the divine decree of Allah, in His power. And that is the diagnosis for that — that Allah is ultimately in charge, and Allah's power will reign supreme, and Allah will not let my good in the process go unrewarded.

Second: Disinterest and Loss of Freshness

But then the second one is disinterest — lack of motivation that comes out of being disinterested, that comes out of no longer feeling the freshness of the day you returned to Allah as a new Muslim or repented to Allah as a refreshed Muslim, or had these lofty dreams. And this is the part where you have these du'as from the Prophet ﷺ to enable yourself. And you look to how easy Allah has made certain things for you. And you have to ask yourself: what are the life deen-goals that I have set for myself that I keep on working towards, like a person who is desperate for Allah's reward?

And if you're not setting big goals for yourself at the religious level, then that's an indication that you're not motivated towards the big reward that Allah has promised to you — that you're treating deen like a side hustle, that you're treating religion like just something that you do on the side and my parents brought me into it and yeah, I mean, I do this because I do that but it's not your number one priority. That has to actually represent itself in the goals that you're setting for yourself on a regular basis.

And when you look towards the people that Allah has put in our lives as examples — of those who stay fresh, of those who stay motivated — ask Allah. Because sometimes it's not the environment. Sometimes it's not the lack of an example. Sometimes it's not that Allah hasn't given me enough pressure and enough people to push me in that direction. Sometimes it's that the heart needs to be unlocked.

And so you find all of these du'as of the Prophet ﷺ, the most frequent one:

O Turner of hearts, make my heart firm on Your way. Ask Allah to open your heart towards rightful guidance. Ask Allah to make your heart firm upon rightful guidance. And then surround yourself with people that are motivated towards that rightful guidance. And then do the actions of those that are motivated until you find your own internal motivation taking over as well.

Closing Reminder

Remember when Abu Talha married Umm Sulaym — Islam was an obstacle to his marriage. After Abu Talha married Umm Sulaym, he went so far in his Islam that even the most precious real estate in the world, he volunteered it for the sake of his Islam. Sometimes the heart becomes unlocked and the motivation becomes refined as you keep pushing yourself and pushing yourself and pushing yourself — even when you quote-on-quote don't feel like it.

Alhamdulillah for the things that Allah put in our lives that push us towards good. And the people that Allah put in our lives that push us towards good. And the circumstances that Allah put in our lives that push us towards good. And Alhamdulillah for the crises that are sometimes forced into our lives to make us choose Allah once again and come back to Allah fresh.

We ask Allah for husn al-khatimah — for a good ending at the end of it all. And we ask Allah that we return to Him with hearts that are attached to Him — that we come to Allah with fresh iman, with fresh faith. That what Allah has facilitated for us, that we take the best course of action in regards to it. And we ask Allah to forgive us for our shortcomings in regards to what He has revealed to us. And we ask Allah to make us amongst those who love this deen, who love this message, who work for this deen, and who worship Allah sincerely — day and night, in private and in public.