Allowing important areas of our lives to go unexamined and uncontrolled is the source of a vast amount of pain and loss. One such, if not the most significant, loss is our strong relationship with Allah.

Establishing a close connection with Allah requires work. Sometimes we feel that His rules are difficult to obey. We think, “Let me do what I want to do. Obedience is hard for me”.

In all honesty and to an extent, we all have felt the same way. Allah’s call to obey goes against the grain of our natural inclinations; we are all born wanting to be free and liberated without restrictions.

However, Allah pulls us in another direction by His love. He calls us to obey Him out of his concern for our best. Sometimes that means we must make hard choices.

Allah’s words aren’t given to hurt us; they are for our good. As the designer, He knows how his design works best. We cannot see the future; we cannot know where our choices lead us, but He does, and He uses his word to guide us.

As a child, my strongest motivation to be good was to please my parents. If we have no inner motivation to please Allah, we need to work on our love relationship with Him. We need to focus on His greatness and His love for us.

Even what seems insignificant to us matters to Allah. He calls us to make up our minds to obey him, even in the small things, those things that appear to be no big deal. Our obedience to the small things reveals how much we truly love Him.

We must keep our faith on the increase through daily good works using all of our bodies. Kindness with our tongue, charity with our wealth, and service with our limbs will help us remain connected to Allah. Link all of our actions to attaining His pleasure.

How to develop trust in Allah
Strengthening our trust in Allah is like learning any other skill. The more we commit to it, the stronger it gets. We cannot expect to strengthen our ties with Allah and increase our faith if we only worship when we feel like it.

Start with Qur’an
We need for starters to infuse our life with the Qur’an such that we become a living, walking, talking embodiment of the Qur’an.

I found to cultivate my heart, and I committed to repenting as many times a day as I could, every day.

Pick a time when you can sit, be in a state of peace, and be truly present with Allah. Thankfully – we serve a God who is able to forgive sins, all sins. Before or after Fajr, or `Isha’ prayer are often times of quiet, appropriate for this repenting.

At first, it may feel dry on our tongue, we must persist however until it comes alive in our heart.

Seek His Help
Even if we do have people to turn to, nobody can replace the warmth and openness we will ultimately feel with Allah. At times, sadness and difficulty bring us closer to Him than happiness and prosperity.

In those moments of sadness and confusion, we should reach out to Allah and release all our worries and sadness to Him.

Part of the reason that we feel emptiness in our prayers is because we feel that by praying fasting and supplicating, we are doing something to benefit Allah and that He should feel obliged to reimburse us for our efforts. We then desire certain outcomes that our limited insight feels is best for us and if those do not occur, then Allah has not answered them, so we become despondent.

Be Patient
We live in a time of instant gratification; we need to remind ourselves that attaining lasting faith is a tremendous gift that cannot be attained simply because we want it right now.

Strengthening our trust in Allah does not just happen. It is a journey of enormous spiritual growth. When the wounds are still sore, that is when our heart fully connects and surrenders to Allah.

Remember He knows us better than we would ever know ourselves.

Khalid Latif