The Expanded Heart: The Blessing of an Enlarged Chest and Why Bigger Hearts Meet Bigger Tests

Occasion: Transcript of an Isha khatira delivered on September 7, 2026 Source: Transcript of a video khatira by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif, watch the original video on YouTube

One of the greatest blessings God gave to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ is mentioned in the surah we recited in the second rak'ah. Do you remember it? What does the word sharh mean in Arabic? Expansion. And expansion carries two meanings: opening, and making bigger.^[1]

Here God asks the Prophet ﷺ, "Did We not do this?" He is reminding him of the blessings He gave him. If we read from the beginning, God says, "Did We not find you an orphan?" and He had already given him one, two, three blessings, and then He asks again. This is the fourth blessing.^[2]

Think about it. When I want to remind someone of the good things I did for him, where do I begin? With the biggest or with the smallest? I am reminding him of several things, so I start with the humbler ones and go up, and at the end I give him the best thing I did for him, because the last thing is what stays in the mind and sticks there. So God, after asking the Prophet ﷺ, reminds him in this order. The first blessing was spiritual, the second was intellectual, the third was financial. But the fourth is something quite different.

The chest that was made bigger

What does the chest mean here? The making of the chest bigger. Is it outside the body or inside it? It is inside; I mean the heart. God is telling the Prophet ﷺ that He made his heart bigger than the hearts of the rest of the people.

What is the benefit? When we say God gave him this blessing, it means He gave him the ability to take in, to contain, most things. Let me give a humble example. Say I have a small bottle and a huge amount of water, and I try to pour all of that water into the bottle. What happens? It overflows. The bottle cannot hold that amount. Without a big container, I cannot carry big matters.

When we look at the life of the Prophet ﷺ, we can say with certainty that every single day he faced some kind of problem. Am I right? Every day a different kind of problem, a different kind of struggle, a different challenge in life. Without that big heart he could not have stood firm through all of it, one thing after another, after another, after another.

Three kinds of challenge

I have given you one example before. When I look in the Quran, I find God speaking to the Prophet ﷺ directly about three different challenges he was facing. The first was the ignorance of the people, the mentality of disbelief from the beginning of life up to the time of Islam. That is the first challenge, and it was in Mecca. The second came with the hypocrites, who showed up in Medina.

And the third? God told the Prophet ﷺ to speak directly to his wives. Imagine the challenge coming from inside the house. They were human beings. They looked at their neighbors and the people around them: I need a bigger house, why are we like this, I need to change my clothes, I need more money. The choice put before them was: if you insist on that, come, and I will give you whatever you need, but then you cannot stay with me. He needed someone to help him with the challenge they were facing together.

So the Prophet ﷺ was facing all of these challenges, and God asked him this question. I can understand that if God makes my chest bigger, I will be at ease at that time, yes, for sure. But the problems will never stop. A bigger chest, a bigger heart, means more and more and more difficulties.

When nothing is hard, rethink

And if the difficulties come to me at zero, that is not a good sign. If everything comes to me in harmony, soft and smooth, that is not a good sign, actually. I need to rethink my position with God. The Prophet ﷺ taught that you are tested according to the level of your faith.^[3] What is the goal? To see whether your faith is strong enough. And we would think: once it is shown that his faith is strong enough, the tests will stop. That is our normal thinking. But what did the Prophet ﷺ say? If his faith is strong, he will have more tests.

Musa's first request

Now look at Musa, peace be upon him. When God appointed him a prophet and a messenger, what was the first thing he said?^[4] The humble translation of all of it: O God, expand my heart. The very thing God gave to our Prophet ﷺ from the beginning. Then: make the matter easy for me, give me the ability to speak to the people.

He spoke about himself first. Make me able. But he made another supplication for the recipients of the message: give them the ability to understand what I am telling them. Then: give me a strong assistant from my family, make me strong through him, like a partner with me. Why? Because we need to reach our goal. And what is the goal? At the end of the day, Musa's goal was only to glorify God.^[5] And God answered: We have already given it to you, do not worry about that.

What I understand from this is that anyone who asks God for the ability to deliver His message, with an expanded heart, will hear the same from Him: you already have it, We gave it to you. Any one of us who asks God the same request that Musa made will receive the same answer, that he already has it. Do not worry. We are not asking God to increase our money or raise our position. We are asking Him for the ability to deliver the message, as Musa did.

The lesson

The best gift you can receive from God is your heart. But how can we reach that position? God explained it in the surah.^[6] Try as much as you can to take off your sins. Put them down. Try to do something to raise your standing, to increase your points. Think of your credit history in this country: once it is high enough you are eligible, qualified to do whatever you want; below that, you need someone to help, maybe an accountant, someone to buy more points for you if you want a home. That is the point, that is the limit.

And God says that whatever difficulties you face, He will make them easy for you. Do not worry about anything. My last word is this: as close as you are to God, God will ease everything in your life; as far as you are from God, He will make everything in your life difficult. Short, sweet, humble. Stop with this and start thinking about how you can do it.

Each of us has a different personality and a different ability, and that will give each of us the power to do something different. I can pray more, you can give more, you can fast more, whatever suits your ability. But again and again and again: try, please try, to feel your responsibility for your religion, and to do something. At the end of the day you will be standing before God and receiving the question: what did you do? You will have your list ready in your pocket, and you will take it out and say, this is what I did: one, two, three. Maybe you will not have a piece of paper in your hand, but you will have a good memory, and even then, God will ask your hands, "Can you tell Us what he did?" and your hands will start speaking on your behalf. Your feet will say where he went. Your stomach will tell God what kind of food and what kind of money you earned. Every part of the body will tell God the reality, the fact, the truth.

Peace be upon you.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: The surah is not named in the transcript and the recitation is missing from it. The description matches Sūrat al-Sharḥ: ﴿أَلَمْ نَشْرَحْ لَكَ صَدْرَكَ﴾ [الشرح: 1]. ^[2]: Editor's documentation: The reminder "Did We not find you an orphan" matches Sūrat al-Ḍuḥā: ﴿أَلَمْ يَجِدْكَ يَتِيمًا فَآوَىٰ﴾ [الضحى: 6]. The transcript does not list the three earlier blessings individually; the speaker's classification (spiritual, intellectual, financial) is given as he stated it. ^[3]: Editor's documentation: The speaker relates the meaning of a hadith without citing it; no source is attributed here. ^[4]: Editor's documentation: The speaker's translation corresponds to Musa's supplication in Sūrat Ṭā Hā: ﴿قَالَ رَبِّ اشْرَحْ لِي صَدْرِي ۝ وَيَسِّرْ لِي أَمْرِي ۝ وَاحْلُلْ عُقْدَةً مِّن لِّسَانِي ۝ يَفْقَهُوا قَوْلِي ۝ وَاجْعَل لِّي وَزِيرًا مِّنْ أَهْلِي﴾ [طه: 25–29]. The Arabic was not recited in the transcript and is given for reference only. ^[5]: Editor's documentation: The transcript is unclear at this point (about 11:00); the phrasing "to glorify God" is the closest reading of the audible words, and the reply "We have already given it to you" is rendered as the speaker said it. ^[6]: Editor's documentation: The Arabic the speaker recited here is missing from the transcript. For reference, the surah continues with the removal of the burden and the promise of ease with hardship: ﴿وَوَضَعْنَا عَنكَ وِزْرَكَ﴾ [الشرح: 2] and ﴿فَإِنَّ مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا﴾ [الشرح: 5]. Which verse the speaker had in mind cannot be confirmed from the transcript.