How many people were in the straight path but eventually deviated away from Allah?

I hope you’re not that person and I hope you’re not a person when you see a sinner sinning, you make fun of them and you mock them while you think you’re so holy and you’ll always live upon the Straight Path.

There was a man who was known to be practicing at least externally speaking, performed Umrah, used to pray and he used to be his Islamic teacher right hand in everything that he does.

After several years, and I’m telling you this story because I witnessed it personally, heard it with my own ears and seen it with my eyes, that brother kept leaving Islam and the teaching of Allah and the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) to the extent that one time he was passing by a poster that has the Name of Allah on it. As he was passing by, he looked at it and said: “Who put my name here!” We seek Allah’s refuge from such an attitude.

There are many lessons that can be taken from this story but I want to take one lesson which you never know where will you die, and how will you die, and at what state will your heart will be at. We shall not take Allah’s guidance to us for granted.

When Umm Salamah, the Prophet’s wife and the Mother of the Believers, was asked what was the most common dua that the Prophet has ever said, she replied:

“The most dua I have ever heard the Prophet (peace be upon him) make was:

O turner of the hearts hold my heart steadfast upon your deen.

This is a dua of a man who was promised the highest level of Paradise, the man who was promised that Allah will forgive and overlook any shortcoming or any sin that he has done in the past, had he ever done any, and every shortcoming that he will ever do in the future is already forgiven.

With all of this, he still made that dua asking Allah to hold his heart steadfast upon the deen.

So brothers and sisters, what about the poor people like me and you who sin day and night?

We ask Allah to allow us to be steadfast and the only time me and you are to be confident we’re going to Jannah (as narrated in sahih Muslim) is when the angel of death comes right by your head and is about to extract your soul from your body and the angel of death says to you:

O safe and believing soul return back to your Lord while you are pleased with Him and He is pleased with you. And enter among my righteous slaves and enter my Paradise. (Quran 89: 27-30)