How to Get Closer to Allah: An Easy 10-Step Guide

You’re lying in bed scrolling your phone at midnight, and out of nowhere the thought hits: I used to feel something when I prayed. Now it’s just movements. Or maybe the opposite: things are going fine, prayer is consistent, and you’re wondering if there’s actually more to this than checking a box five times a day. Both of these are the same real question, just from different starting points: how do I actually get closer to Allah, not just go through the motions of religion?

What follows is built on how the Quran and hadith actually describe closeness to Allah, starting with what’s obligatory before anything voluntary, because that order genuinely changes how well the rest of it sticks.

What Closeness to Allah Actually Means

Closeness to Allah isn’t primarily a feeling, though feelings are part of it. It’s a relationship built through obedience, remembrance, and turning to Him consistently.

The Quran describes Allah as being near to His servants, while Islamic scholarship explains this nearness in a way that does not mean Allah is physically contained in a place. For a believer, getting closer to Allah means drawing nearer to Him through faith, obedience, remembrance, worship, and sincere repentance. The foundations are shared, but the practical steps can look different depending on a person’s circumstances and what they most need to improve. A person who’s been practicing for twenty years and someone who said the Shahada last month are both working with the same basic tools: obligation first, then remembrance, dua, and gradual voluntary effort, even if what that looks like day to day differs.

1. Start With What’s Obligatory

This is the part that’s easy to skip in favor of something that feels more spiritually exciting, but obligatory acts take priority over voluntary worship. Before extra dhikr, extra fasting, or long nightly duas, the foundation is the obligatory acts required of you: the five daily prayers, and fulfilling the rights Allah and other people have over you, including honoring parents and family ties. Voluntary acts build on top of this foundation. They don’t replace it.

It’s easy to feel drawn toward something extra, an additional night prayer, a fasting streak, while a specific obligatory prayer keeps slipping. If you’re the kind of person who’s downloaded three dhikr apps but still prays Dhuhr rushed and late because work meetings run over, that’s the actual place to look first, not another app.

Leaving What Allah Has Forbidden

The foundation isn’t only about what you do — it’s also about what you stop doing. Closeness built through prayer is undermined by things left unaddressed elsewhere: backbiting, dishonest income, relationships or habits that keep pulling you toward sin, or knowingly neglecting an obligation. This doesn’t require memorizing a long list of fiqh rulings. It usually means being honest about the one or two things you already know are a problem, and doing something about them instead of working around them with more worship.

2. Love Allah, Not Just Obey Him

Obedience without love can become mechanical fairly quickly; love is what keeps it sustainable. Reflecting on what Allah has given you, His mercy, His patience with your mistakes, is what turns worship from a duty into something you actually want to do.

This is also where hope belongs. When you make a mistake, the goal isn’t to let shame turn into distance. It’s to let it turn into tawbah. A hardship or an unanswered dua isn’t evidence that Allah has rejected you. Thinking well of Allah, expecting His mercy rather than assuming the worst, is itself part of drawing closer to Him, not just a comforting afterthought.

3. Keep Your Tongue and Heart in Dhikr

Dhikr, remembering Allah, is one of the few acts of worship you can do almost anywhere: stuck in traffic, standing in line, folding laundry, walking to your car. It doesn’t require a special setting or a set-aside block of time. The five minutes you’d otherwise spend refreshing the same three apps is enough.

A practical starting point is remembering Allah with phrases such as SubhanAllah, Alhamdulillah, La ilaha illallah, and Allahu Akbar, said a handful of times after each prayer.

4. Talk to Allah Directly Through Dua

Dua is a direct act of supplication to Allah; a person does not need an intermediary to ask Him. You can make it in Arabic or your own language, about something as specific as a job interview or as broad as guidance. “Ya Allah, I don’t even know what I’m asking for right now, just help me” is a completely valid dua.

Our full guide to making dua covers etiquette and specific duas if you want a structured starting point.

5. Let the Quran Talk Back

The Quran isn’t only something to be recited; it’s meant to be understood and responded to. Reciting the Quran and understanding its meaning can work together. If you don’t understand Arabic yet, reading a reliable translation alongside your recitation can help you reflect on what Allah is teaching. Our guides on how to read the Quran correctly and how to understand the Quran can help you build a rhythm that includes actually reflecting on what you’re reading.

6. Practice Real Gratitude

Gratitude in Islam isn’t a vague positivity exercise. It’s a direct act of worship connected to recognizing Allah as the source of what you have. A simple, sustainable habit: naming one specific thing you’re grateful for at the end of each day, rather than a general “thanks” that doesn’t stick. Specificity matters here — “thank You for my health” tends to land more than “thank You for everything,” simply because it forces you to actually notice something instead of gesturing at it.

7. Learn Before You Add More

Worship without understanding tends to stay shallow, and shallow worship is harder to do sincerely. Before adding new voluntary practices, make sure you understand the ones you already perform: the basics of Salah and purification, the essential beliefs underneath them, enough of the Quran to know what you’re reciting, and how to tell an authentic hadith from an unreliable one. Our guide to learning Islam properly lays out a starting order.

8. Add Voluntary Worship, Gradually

Once the obligatory foundation is steady, voluntary acts — extra prayers, voluntary fasting, extra charity — are what a well-known hadith qudsi describes as the path to a deeper closeness.

Notice the order: this hadith describes drawing near through what’s voluntary after the obligatory has already been established, not instead of it. Add one voluntary habit at a time, keep it small enough to actually sustain, and let it grow from there.

9. Choose an Environment That Helps

How you treat people is itself part of closeness to Allah, not separate from it. Who you spend time with shapes this whole process more than most people expect. A mosque you actually attend, a friend who asks how your Salah is going, or a beneficial class, online or in person, all make consistency easier. It’s also worth noticing environments, certain group chats, certain content, certain company, that reliably pull you toward the things covered earlier under what to leave behind. Reducing exposure to the worst offenders and adding one good environment is a realistic place to start.

10. When You Feel Spiritually Distant

Every step above will be inconsistent sometimes. That’s not a footnote to this guide, it’s part of it. Many believers experience periods when worship feels dry or distant. That doesn’t mean you’ve failed. Maybe you’ve caught yourself praying on autopilot, thinking about dinner or a work email, and afterward felt a quiet guilt about it. That gap between what you’re doing and what you’re actually present for is what this section is about.

The pattern in this hadith is generous, not strict: a small, honest step back toward Allah is met with more than it deserves. If a specific sin or habit is what’s creating the distance, our guide to repentance in Islam covers how to actually turn that around.

If nothing specific comes to mind and the distance just feels like general dryness, going back to the basics, one prayer prayed slowly instead of rushed, a few honest minutes of dua, is a reasonable place to start. The feeling itself may return quickly, or it may take time. The goal is to stay sincere and keep turning to Allah either way, not to chase a specific feeling on a schedule.

The point of this story isn’t that sin doesn’t matter. It’s that a man who had done about as much damage as a person can do still wasn’t considered beyond return. If your own distance feels far smaller than that and still feels unforgivable, it’s worth sitting with what this story actually says.

Common Misconceptions

Closeness to Allah isn’t reserved for a spiritual elite or people with some special status. The foundation, obligatory acts followed by consistent voluntary ones, is shared by everyone, even though the practical path can look different depending on circumstances. It also isn’t the same as a constant emotional high. Many people who are genuinely close to Allah still have flat or distracted days; the measure is closer to consistency and sincerity than to how intensely something is felt in a given moment.

Signs Worth Noticing, Instead of Waiting for a Feeling

Rather than waiting for a dramatic emotional shift, it helps to notice smaller signs: pausing before a wrong you’d normally excuse, feeling a pull to make dua before checking your phone in the morning, or genuinely wanting to hear more of a verse instead of skimming past it. These are quieter than a spiritual high, but they tend to be more durable evidence that something real is changing.

Common Mistakes

7-Day Reflection Exercise

One reflection per day, matched to a step above, small enough to actually do.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to Get Closer to Allah Today

Reading about all ten steps at once can feel like a lot. Here’s a smaller, concrete place to begin right now, and what to build on this week.