By G9ija

Bismillahi Rahmani Raheem
Wa salatu wa salamu Ala rusulullah.
Alhamdulillah, verily, All praise is due to Allah. We praise him and we seek his help, and we seek refuge in Allah for the evil of our souls and the consequences of our actions.
Indeed whomever Allah guides none can misguide him and whomever He let astray none can guide him to the straight path.
To Proceed:

Dear Muslims, we are all aware that Iman and the strength of our Iman changes from time to place, sometimes our Iman is very strong and at other times it becomes weak. Allah described this phenomenon multiple times in the Quran itself. For example, In the end of Surah Tawba 124-125. Allah says “And whenever a Surah is revealed, there are among the hypocrites those who say, “which of you has this increased in Iman?” As for those who believed, it has increased them in Iman, while they are rejoicing”.
Allah then says in the next Aya:
“But as for those in whose heart is disease it has [only] increased them in evil [in addition] to their evil”.

So, if Iman goes up and down then it is imperative on every single one of us that we should be monitoring the strength of our Iman. Just like the blood pressure patient he check his blood pressure, anybody who has an issue their struggling with they check it, And all of us are struggling with Iman. And the most important factor for all of our lives is to have strong Iman.
So, this bring us to the question. How regularly do we check our Iman? In fact, How does one check his or her Iman?
In this article, I want to remind myself and all of you two factor we have to be careful of, when it comes to accessing our Iman.

As for the the factor we have to be careful of:

1. Just because you had strong Iman once; just because we tasted piety at one point in our lives, it does not mean that we shall remain pious throughout our lives. Just because we were close to Allah during Ramadan does not mean we are close to Allah right now. We felt spiritually strong during Umrah and Hajj doesn’t mean it will last throughout our entire lives. Iman fluctuate and it is very possible that at on point in our lives we were very Good, very righteous and then shaytan came and misguided us. In fact, Allah remind us in the Quran Surah Allah says “Don’t be like those who were given the book before you, and as time went on their hearts became hard”. 57:16
They had Iman, they had the book, they had the knowledge, but they thought we are the chosen people. Just because we were righteous at one point in our life, does not guarantee! righteous at later point in our life. On the contrary, Iman is an active verb, we must nourish Iman and be vigilant so that our Iman does not go down.

2. The second factor we have to be careful of is, that even if we have a spiritual blessing and even if there is a barakah that Allah has given us. It is possible that we don’t appreciate that blessing, and it possible that the very blessing that at one point cause our Iman to increase, at another point might actually become an impediment against strong Iman. And the best example for this is the blessing of knowledge. Allah praises knowledge and the people of knowledge and Allah actually says, you can never achieve the highest levels of Iman and Taqwa without knowledge. Allah says in Surah Al Imran “it is only the A’alim who will truly dear Allah”. 35:28 So knowledge is a gift, it is a blessing from Allah but even this gift and blessing from Allah can be abused, shaytan can come and switch out this blessing and instead of becoming a blessing, the very thing that should have lead you to Allah might actually take you away from Him. If you misuse it, if you don’t have the right intentions.
Allah says “Very the Religion in the eyes of Allah is Islam, and the only reason the people before you they didn’t broke away except, after knowledge had come to them – jealousy and arrogant came into their heart.” 5:19
In so many verses, Allah says the people before you recognise the truth and they rejected it, they knew but they didn’t act upon that knowledge. Instead their heart became hard they became jeolous and arrogant. Why was he given the book and not us? Why was the prophet in another race and not our race? Allah ascribed knowledge to them, and yet Allah said their knowledge did not benefit them. There are other examples like: Good health, wealth etc.
Just because you have been blessed in one area doesn’t mean, that it will always be a blessed area if you don’t appreciate it. Then the very blessing that Allah has given you can be slip around and use against you.
So, this are the 2 warnings that I want to remind myself and all of you.

May Allah grant us all strong Iman, and knowledge that will be of benefit to our Iman. Allahuma Aameen🤲