“Except for those who have faith and do good deeds – for them is a reward, never ending”

You may have been lead to believe that knowledge is power. This is incorrect. In the information age, knowledge is potential power. How that knowledge is used and the action that results from it is ultimately what determines whether it empowers or is merely stored. The early Islamic thinker al-Ghazali said it most concisely:

“Knowledge without action is insane. Action without knowledge is in vein.”

However, there is a missing link in this equation. What does it take to go from having knowledge on a matter to taking action, and so becoming ‘powerful’, in the purest sense of the word?

You cannot go from knowledge to action, without first passing through a level of emotion. It’s emotion that drives us to action, not knowledge.

We all have a practically infinite supply of information at our finger tips, courtesy of Google, however this doesn’t make us all instantly all-powerful.

If I ‘Google’ fitness, even though I’ll come across an abundance of information on how to get fit, the outer world (my body) will not change. At least not until something ‘clicks’ and I tap into the power of my inner driving force.

The same is of course true for your Quran studies. You can Google & Facebook all you like, but until you tap into a sense of your inner inspiration and motivation, you won’t take action.

This is probably what brought on one of the biggest challenges standing between you and understanding the Quran in Arabic: YouTube. It’s much easier to scan through YouTube than to actually study the Quran. On YouTube you can watch videos of people who seem to already be ‘powerful’. People who follow their reading with action. People who are inspired and inspiring.

The only problem with this approach is that the nature of YouTube is that it becomes addictive in and of itself. Whilst you might be entertained for a while, and whilst your spirits may be lifted for a short time, ultimately you are in the Zone of Delusion.

You are not achieving anything worthwhile, but you are deluding yourself into thinking that you are. If you manage to spend hours watching YouTube Islamic lectures, but not even minutes studying the Quran itself, something, somewhere has gone terribly wrong.

YouTube lectures are a quick-fix of emotional buzz. For the few minutes you’re watching the video you may be inspired, but unless you use that inspiration to fuel your real goals – your Quran goals – it becomes time wasted. (Not to mention the chances that you’ll soon skip from an Islamic lecture to a video of a cat urinating in a toilet.)

I want you to have a better, longer lasting source of true motivation. It’s within you right now. It’s the power Allah (swt) gave you to control your mind, direction, focus, and emotional state. Of course, your mind didn’t come with an instruction manual. But intelligent humans have done their best over the ages to create one.

When you learn to master your emotional states, you’ll no longer be watching Islamic lectures on YouTube. You’ll have empowered yourself to study the Quran enough to actually deliver them. If you want to know how to create your personal Quran plan to connect with Allah in just 11 minutes a day, click here to watch the free web-class.