One of the obstacles that we face that keep us from continuing making du’a is this:
We often times feel, “I’ve been making du’a and my du’a is not being answered. Allah is not hearing my du’a, or Allah is not answering my du’a. I feel like it’s not working… And sometimes when I feel that way then I want to give up.”
But let me give a scenario so I can make this point.
Imagine a person really badly wants a red Ferrari… and so what this person does because they want a red Ferrari, they know that Allah is the Hearer and Allah answers… so what they do is they wake up every single day for tahajjud to pray for the red Ferrari. But you wake up every single day for a year for tahajjud and you cry to Allah to give you this thing.
Now let me ask you this question… at the end of that year, whether you got the Ferrari or not, you actually got something better, and it was in the process of making the dua that you got that thing. And what was it?
What’s Better Than a Red Ferrari?
What’s that thing that you got that was better than the Ferrari?
It’s something you can’t buy with all the money in the world and that is the nearness to Allah.
The fact that the process of getting up for Tahajjud and crying, and begging Allah, praying and making du’a was in fact bringing you closer to Him. And that nearness to Allah itself is more valuable than whether or not you got the answer to your dua.
The process itself is better than what it was you were asking for.
So Allah sometimes delays the answer to dua for this reason.
Now in this example, the first night that I woke up and I prayed for my Ferrari, imagine if I had gotten the Ferrari the first night… I woke up the next day and outside of my house there was a Ferrari just sitting there. What would I have done? I would have stopped praying, I would have stopped getting up for tahajjud… I’d have done it once, and that’s it.
So actually, by delaying the answer to my dua, it pushed me to do what? To continue to get closer to Allah through the process of that begging. Through that process, by the very fact that Allah delayed the answer.
Do we should never lose hope when the answer to our dua has been delayed.
(From Discovering Islam archive)