Section: People’s acknowledgement of the oneness of Lordship comes earlier and is more widespread than their acknowledgement of the oneness of Divinity.

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Because souls sense their neediness and poverty before the Lord sooner than they grasp their neediness and poverty before the One who alone deserves worship, and because they seek to remove their immediate necessities before their distant ones, their confession of Allah from the standpoint of His Lordship precedes their confession of Him from the standpoint of His Godhood. Accordingly, among them supplication, seeking aid, and relying upon Him occur more often than acts of worship and turning back to Him in devotion.

For this reason the messengers were sent to call people to worship Allah alone with no partner— the ultimate aim that necessarily entails admitting His Lordship. Allah tells us about them: “If you ask them who created them, they will surely say, ‘Allah’” (Q 43:87); and that when harm touches them, everyone they invoke vanishes except Him. He also says: “When waves overwhelm them like canopies, they call upon Allah, devoting the religion exclusively to Him” (Q 31:32). Thus He has made it clear that they acknowledge His Lordship and that, when distress befalls them, they make their supplications and pleas for help sincerely to Him alone—yet thereafter they turn away from worshipping Him at other times.