Be Thankful and I will give You increase in Blessings

[ابوالوليد المسلم]

Be Thankful and I will give You increase in Blessings

Shaikh Abdur-Razzaaq ibn Abdul-Muhsin al-Abbaad




“And remember when Your Lord proclaimed, ‘If you give thanks will give you increase in blessings, but if you deny the favours and are thankless, then I shall punish you severely." [Soorah Ibraheem (14): 7]
So the servant must give thanks to Allah for His favours with his heart, his tongue and his actions. He praises and gives thanks for the blessing and he expresses his thanks by obedience to Allah.
With respect to the saying of the Prophet (Peace be upon him) "I admit my sin..." the people of knowledge mention two meanings. The first of these is, ‘I admit my sin in not fully giving thanks for Your favors,’ and since, ‘I admit my sin ...' immediately follows the sentence, "I acknowledge Your favors upon me ..." it means, ‘My sin in falling short ...' - ‘I admit that I fall short in giving thanks for Your favors.'
The other explanation is that his saying, ‘I confess my sin...' may mean, ‘I confess all my sins,' unrestrictedly, that is, all my acts of disobedience and every sin that I have committed.
By this admission that he has sinned, the servant acknowledges that he has fallen short with regard to Allah's rights upon him; that he has not performed Allah's rights as he should. It is this acknowledgement that is the beginning of the road to repentance. However, if he commits acts of disobedience and falls into destructive sins, yet does not feel that he is a sinner, then repentance is something far away from him unless he is guided to its causes and granted the success of being put upon its path.
So there are two meanings of his saying, "I confess my sins ..." and perhaps the more correct of the two, and Allah knows best, is the second. The servant’s admission of having sinned and fallen short; having erred and been deficient should lead to his seeking forgiveness and this is the core meaning of the hadeeth.
Then, his saying, "I acknowledge Your favours upon me and I confess my sins..." contains an indication of a matter that is mentioned by the people of knowledge. It is that the servant, in this life, continually passes back and forth throughout the day and the night between two affairs. These are either a blessing newly granted to him by Allah, and all blessings are from Allah, and this requires that he gives thanks. Alternatively, he falls into a sin and this requires him to repent and to seek forgiveness. Therefore some of the Salaf used to say, ‘I enter the morning in between blessings and sins, so I want to put forth thanks for the blessings and to seek forgiveness for the sins.
A further point of great benefit to be taken from the hadeeth is that, whatever sin the servant has committed, if he acknowledges the fact that he has sinned and then truly repents, Allah accepts his repentance, whatever the sin, and forgives him. This meaning is clearly stated in another hadeeth, the long hadeeth of the doubt (al-Ifk)', and the evidence here is the saying of the Prophet (Peace be upon him), "If the servant acknowledges his sin and repents, then Allah accepts his repentance."
Then his saying at the end of the hadeeth of Shaddaad ibn Aws, "None forgives sins except You," is an acknowledgement that Allah Alone is the One who forgives sins, and that He is the One who accepts repentance from His servants. Therefore the servant turns - in repentance, obedience, seeking forgiveness and pardon - to Allah Alone, since none forgives sins except Him.
Amongst the benefits to be obtained from the explanation and clarification of this hadeeth is that it makes apparent to us the fact that it contains two affairs: Tawheed and at-Istighfaar (seeking forgiveness). These two are the greatest and most important of affairs and they are similarly combined in many texts of the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Prophet (Peace be upon him).