Love of God
Outline
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•
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• Consequences of this
Love
• How Do We Know
God Loves Us
• Pioneers of Love
Love is…
Reasons for Love
Degrees of Love
How to Love God
Love
Love is;
• The most essential
element of every
being,
• The most radiant light,
• The greatest power;
ULTIMATE GOAL OF LIFE
Love
of
GOD
Knowledge of GOD
Belief in GOD
Reasons for Love
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•
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Love for Pleasure
Love for Benefit
Love for Resemblance
Love for Excellence/Perfectness
Thus, since all God Almighty's perfections
and qualities and all the degrees in His
Beautiful Names are true perfections, they
are loved for themselves.
THE DEGREES OF LOVE
1- A person will sometimes love and
sometimes, by following his carnal soul, a
person will forget Allah.
2- A person will obey God’s commands,
but will make mistakes
3- A person loves God more than anyone
or anything else all the time
4- Intoxicated love of God.
HOW TO LOVE GOD
1.To follow the examples of His
messengers:
A man asked Bayazid, "Show me a
deed by which I will approach my Lord."
He said, “Love the friends of Allah.”
HOW TO LOVE GOD
2. Purifying the heart and doing what is beautiful.
“My earth and my heaven do not encompass
me, but the heart of My servant who has faith
does encompass me.”
The heart of a person of faith is the Throne of the
All-Merciful (Qalb al mumin ‘arsh ar-Rahman)
Heart is the house of God. Purify it from
whatever if other than Him so that the AllMerciful may descend into His palace at nights.
(Abraham Hakki of Erzurum)
HOW TO LOVE GOD
3.Remembrance
"Remember me, I shall remember you."
(2:152)
4.Service to the creations of God. Jesus, peace
be upon him, said, “I came not to be served,
but to serve.” (Matthew: 28)
5.Love needs to be tasted and experienced
6.Contemplation
7.Thinking about death and Hereafter
The Best Way to Know God
• Whosoever loves much performs much, and
can accomplish much, and what is done in love
is well done.
• One must always try to know deeper, better,
and more.
• That leads to God and unwavering faith.
With Open Hearts and Open Minds
“Come forth
and bring
with you,
a heart
that
watches
and
receives”.
Even the Animals Have Open Hearts and Minds.
Consequences of this Love
• Love elevates every soul that absorbs it,
and prepares these souls for the journey
to eternity
• Love guides a person to become idealistic.
An idealist person always succeeds.
•Love of Allah makes people
responsible.
•“He who loves to meet
Allah, Allah loves to meet
him too.” (Hadith, Sahih
HOW DO WE KNOW GOD
LOVES US
•
“If Allah loves His servant He will grant three
attributes that are the proofs of His Love:
1. Generosity like the generosity of the ocean
2. Favor like the favor of the Sun in its giving of light
3. Modesty like the modesty of the Earth
The true lover never considers any affliction too
great and never decreases his worship because
of his pure faith." Bayazid Al-Bistami
HOW DO WE KNOW GOD
LOVES US
“My servant draws near to Me through
nothing that I love more than what I made
obligatory for him. My servant never ceases
drawing near to Me through supererogatory
works until I love him. Then when I love
him, I am his hearing with which he hears,
his sight with which he sees, his hand with
which he grasps, and his foot with which he
walks."
Pioneers of Love
Rumi ( 1207-1271)
Yunus Emre (d.1321)
Said Nursi (1877-1960)
Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273)
• He is the greatest mystical poet of Islam.
• He attracted spiritual seekers from almost every religion in
the world.
• Even in his day, Rumi was sought out by merchants and
kings, devout worshippers and rebellious seekers, famous
scholars and common peasants, men and women.
• At his funeral, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Persians, Turks
and Romans honored him.
• Listen to his call for seekers of truth:
Rumi: The Poet of Love..
Come, come, whoever you
are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover
of leaving.
It doesn’t matter.
Ours is not a caravan of
despair.
Come, even if you have
broken your vow a
hundred times.
Come, yet again, come, come.
God and Creation
In Rumi’s understanding,
everything is alive.
God creates everything with a specific order,
duty, purpose, and meaning.
There is nothing like
lifeless matter in his system.
A Tree Opening Its Hands in Prayer Just Like a Believer
Yunus Emre
Yunus Emre
• He was a thirteenth century dervish from
Anatolia.
• He played an outstanding role in Turkish
culture, literature, and philosophy.
• Some writers regard him as the most
important poet in Turkish history: his poetry,
language, and philosophy, shaped Turkish
culture and still do so.
Love and Creation
O man of love,
open your eyes;
look at the face of earth.
See how these
lovely flowers, bedecking
themselves, came
[and then] passed on.
Every flower,
with thousand coquettish
air, praise God with
supplications.
These birds with pleasant
voices recite litanies
of the King.
Yunus Joins to the Universal Prayer of Creation to God
With the mountains and rocks, I call you out, my God,
With the birds as day breaks, I call you out, my God.
With Jesus in the sky, Moses on Mount Sinai,
Raising my scepter high, I call you out, my God.
Universal Love
He believed that every particle in the world,
animate and inanimate was manifesting the
beauty and greatness of God.
Come here, let's make peace, let's not be
strangers to one another.
“We love all creatures for the sake of their
Creator”!
Let Us All Be Friends
Come, let us all be friends for once,
Let us make life easy on us,
Let us be lovers and loved ones,
The earth shall be left to no one.
Said Nursi
Said Nursi
• Said Nursi was born in 1877 in eastern
Turkey and died in 1960.
• Nursi was a religious scholar of the
highest standing.
• He devoted his life to the revival of the
traditional Islamic understanding of
universe and its moral implications.
• In his emphasis on the spiritual aspects of
Islam, Nursi is regarded as a modern
representative of the Islamic Sufi legacy.
Said Nursi
• He had close ties with all the creatures around
him and called them as “my brethren”.
• He would give the cats and pigeons that came to
him part of his own food.
• He rebuked one of his students who killed a lizard,
saying, "Did you create it?"
• In one occasion, he was most upset when the flies were
killed by spraying, and wrote a short piece called The
Treatise on Flies.
• When going for excursions in the countryside, Nursi
would study ‘the Great Book of the Universe’, and urge
his disciples to read it.
The Mighty Qur'an of The Universe
• “Everything, from the heavens to the earth,
from stars to flies, from angels to fishes, and
from planets to particles, prostrates, worships,
praises, and glorifies, the Almighty God.
• Their worship varies according to their
capacities and the Divine Names that they
manifest; it is all different."
• There is no contradiction between the teachings
of the Qur’an and the book of nature.
How happy and prosperous are
those who follow the guidance of
love.
Thank You