Allah's Plan For You & Me

Trials and temptations

✦⋆· Prophet Muhammad (saw) said, "I fear for you the trials that are in good times more than in bad times.

You have been struck with tests of bad times and you have endured them with patience, while verily the world remains sweet and luxuriant [to you]."

● "Blessed are the sincere. They are the lanterns of guidance, and all dark trials are cleared away from them."

● "There will come a time with trials where a person will rise in the morning a believer and turn a disbeliever in the evening, save those whom Allah, most High, revive with knowledge."

● "Know that my community after me will become swathed with trials like parts of a dark night.

At that time a person will be a believer in the morning and a disbeliever in the evening; he will sleep a believer and wake up a disbeliever.

Groups will sell their religion for a small offer of the world."

✦⋆· Imam Ali (as) said, "Take care and do not pray to the Lord, saying, "Lord! I pray to You to protect and guard me from temptations and trials", for there is none who is not tempted and tried.

But beseech Him to guard you against such temptation as may lead you towards wickedness and sins because Allah says in His Holy Book, know that your wealth and children are temptations. (Surah al-Anfal, 8: 28).

It means Allah tried people through wealth and children so that it may be tested as to who is content with what he gets honestly and who is thankful to Allah for the position he is placed in with regard to his children.

Though Allah knows them better than even they know themselves, yet those trials and tests are for the purpose of their realizing and knowing those deeds which merit reward or which deserve punishment.

There are some people who love to have male children and hate daughters and there are some who simply crave for wealth and hate poverty.

● "Trials are of three kinds: love of women, and this is the sword of the devil; drinking of wine, and this is the snare of the devil; and the love of dinars and dirhams, which is the arrow of the devil.

So those who love women will not benefit from life, and those who love drinking will be barred from Heaven, and those who love the dinar and dirham are slaves of the world."

● Imam Ali (as) who was riding, said to a person by the name of Harb who was walking with him, "Go back, for the walking of someone like you with me is a trial for a governor and a [source of] humiliation for the believer."

● "Know that those who are wary of their duty to Allah will find through Him a way out of the troubles of trials, and a light from darkness."

● "A brutal oppressing governor is better than a continuous trial."

● "He who ignites the fire of a troubling test will become its firewood."

● Mu'aammar b. Khallad said, "I heard Imam Reza (as) say: "Alif, lam, mim. Do people imagine that they will be left off (on their own) saying: 'We believe!' and they will not be tried? "And he then asked me, 'What is trial?'

I said, 'May my soul be sacrificed for you, what I know is that it is to be tested in religion.'

He said, 'They [the believers] will be tried the way gold is tried', he then said, 'They will be purified the way gold is purified."