1977-July-29

Bilalian News

Happiness And Freedom

Wallace D. Muhammad

Our happiness is in serving Allah. Allah tells us in the Quran that He has created us in the best mold. He has created us in the highest form and in the most excellent form but our ignorance and disobedience to the good healthy laws and instructions of God bring us down to the lowest of the Sow. God also tells us that He has created us to be His servants. The Quran says that He has created men and Jinn to be servants and to worship Him, If I am created for God's worship and God has said it, then I cannot find my fulfillment, I cannot fulfill my purpose, I cannot achieve the excellence that's meant for me until I become a willing slave servant of my Creator.

How do I serve my Creator? How do I become a slave servant to my Creator? I can do it by learning the life that I am to live. God has revealed for us the life that we are to live. Learn that life and live it. I cannot live just any kind of life. "Freedom" does not mean free to live any kind of life I choose to live. "Freedom" means that I have the dignity and the honor of doing it for myself. God could have done it for me, but then I would not get the honor. I would not get the credit, for doing something for myself. God has freed me to enrich me. God has freed me to dignify me. Now if I take that freedom and use it. wrongly, I rob myself of the dignity that God has provided for me. But 't I use it wisely, I dignify myself.

Obey God! Is that too much to ask? God asked you to control yourself. That's good for you. Controlling yourself gives you strength. Exercising control over your life increases the strength in you. A man who exercises no control over his life grows weaker and weaker. A muscle is developed by putting it to use. A muscle is made weak by taking it out of service, out of use. I have moral muscles in my structure. I have to use those moral muscles. I cannot say that I am morally free. "Morally free" means that I am not going to direct my moral limbs. If I do not do that, my moral limbs are going to grow weak and pretty soon I will not have the moral strength to save my moral life. But if I direct and exercise these moral limbs, and if I direct my moral life, I grow stronger morally.

Slave By Nature

Direct your own spiritual life. Do not let the forces of the wind direct your spiritual life. Do not let Mary, John, and Joe direct your spiritual life. Do not let the movie that Hollywood made or the television program direct your spiritual life. Do not let the ups and downs of this world direct your spiritual life. Take your spiritual life into your hands and make it what you want it to be. To do that you are going to have to give your life forces to Allah as a willing slave.

What God tells us that He has made us to be is a slave. He is telling us that if we give ourselves as slaves to anything else, we are going to destroy our life. If a thing works against itself, it destroys itself If God has said that my life is to work this way and I direct it the opposite way, I am going to destroy my life and I am going to destroy myself. We are destroyed because we are not operating this machinery as God designed it to be operated. Don't you know that it is impossible to stay out of bondage if you do not put yourself in bondage to God?

If your husband or your wife does not put you in bondage, a girlfriend or a boyfriend will put you in bondage. Your own child will put you in bondage, your job will put you in bondage, or your laziness will put you in bondage. If you do not give yourself to God as His slave, something is going to make you a slave. Why? Because God has made you by nature to be a slave. Every human being by nature is a slave. When you are in an environment or in a society and do not see any avenue towards self development or towards self leadership, what do you do? You accept what you have to work with. When you just accept what you have to work with, those forces overcome you and they put you in bondage. The only thing that can pull you out of bondage is service to God. Service to God does not just mean praying, or just going to the masjid (mosque), the church, or the temple. Service to God means obeying Him in all that He asks us to do. He has asked us to fulfill our obligation to ourselves, to our relatives, to our community, to our nation.

Thank you for honoring us with your time to read these few words.

Your brother in service to Allah,
Wallace D. Muhammad