Relevant Words of God:

The work of an up-to-standard worker can bring people to the right way and help them enter more deeply into the truth. Their work can bring people before God. In addition, the work they do can vary from individual to individual and is not bound by regulations, allowing people liberation and freedom, gradual growth in life, and to progressively have more profound entry into the truth. The work of a worker who is not up to standard falls far short. Their work is foolish. They can only bring people into regulations, and what they demand of people does not vary from individual to individual; they do not work according to people’s actual needs. In this type of work, there are too many regulations and too many doctrines, and it cannot bring people into reality, nor into normal practice of growth in life. It can only enable people to adhere to a few worthless regulations. Such guidance leads people astray. They lead you to become like them, bringing you into what they have and are. For followers to discern whether leaders are up to standard, the key is to look at the path they lead others onto and the results of their work, and to see whether followers receive principles in accordance with the truth, and whether they receive ways of practice suitable for their transformation. You should have discernment toward the different work of different types of people; you should not be a muddled follower. This bears on the matter of people’s entry. If you are unable to discern which person’s leadership has a path and which does not, you will easily be misled. All of this has a direct bearing on your own life.

—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. God’s Work and Man’s Work

You need to have an understanding of the many states that people will be in when the Holy Spirit performs work on them. In particular, those who cooperate in service to God must even more so have a grasp of these states. If you only talk about a lot of experiences or ways of attaining entry, it shows that your experience is overly one-sided. Without knowing your true state and grasping the truth principles, it is not possible to achieve a change in disposition. Without knowing the principles of the Holy Spirit’s work or understanding the fruit it bears, it will be difficult for you to discern the work of evil spirits. You must expose the work of evil spirits, as well as the notions of man, and penetrate straight to the heart of the issue; you must also point out many deviations in people’s practice and difficulties they might have in their faith in God, so that they may recognize them. At the very least, you must not make them become negative or passive. However, you must understand the difficulties that objectively exist for most people, you must not be unreasonable or try to force a fish to live on land; that is foolish behavior. To resolve many difficulties people experience, you must understand the dynamics of the work of the Holy Spirit; you must understand how the Holy Spirit performs work on different people, you must have an understanding of the difficulties people face and of their deficiencies, and you must see through to the crux of the problem and get to its source, without deviating or making any errors. Only then are you a person who is up to standard in regard to cooperating in service to God.

—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. What a Shepherd That Is Fit for Use Should Possess

Those who serve God should be God’s intimates, they should be pleasing to God, and capable of undivided loyalty to God. Whether it’s in private or in public, in the presence of God your actions should be able to please Him, and they should all be able to stand firm before Him; regardless of how other people treat you, you should always walk the path you ought to walk to show consideration for God’s burden. Only people like this are intimates of God. That God’s intimates are able to serve Him directly is because they have been given God’s great commission and God’s burden, they are able to make God’s heart their own, and take God’s burden as their own, and they give no consideration to the gain or loss of their future prospects—even when their prospects are that they will have nothing, and they stand to gain nothing, they will always believe in God with a God-loving heart. And so, this kind of person is God’s intimate. God’s intimates are also His confidants; only God’s confidants could share His urgency, and His thoughts, and although their flesh is painful and weak, they are able to endure pain and forsake that which they love to satisfy God. God gives more burdens to such people, and that which God desires to do is borne out in such people’s testimony. Thus, these people are pleasing to God, they are people who serve God and accord with His intentions, and only people such as this can wield power as kings together with God.

—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. How to Serve in Accordance With God’s Intentions

They always harbor an attitude of hostility toward the new work of God; they never have the slightest inclination to submit, nor have they ever gladly submitted or humbled themselves. Before others, they are the ones who are the most self-important, and they never submit to anyone. Before God, they consider themselves the best at preaching “sermons,” and the most skillful in doing work on others. Never do they let go of the “treasures” in their possession; instead they treat them as family heirlooms to be worshipped and preached about to others, and they use them to lecture those dimwits who idolize them. There are indeed a certain number of people like this in the church. It can be said that they are “a dynasty of indomitable heroes,” generation after generation sojourning in the house of God. They take preaching “sermons” (doctrines) to be their highest duty. Year after year, generation after generation, they go about rigorously carrying out their “sacred and inviolable” duty. No one dares to touch them; not a single person dares to openly reproach them. They become “kings” in the house of God, running rampant as they tyrannize others from age to age.

—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Those Who Submit to God With a True Heart Shall Surely Be Gained by God

Work in the mind of man is too easy for man to achieve. Pastors and leaders in the religious world, for example, rely on their gifts and positions to do their work. People who follow them for a long time will be infected by their gifts and influenced by some of their being. They focus on people’s gifts, abilities and knowledge, and they pay attention to supernatural things and many profound, unrealistic doctrines (of course, these profound doctrines are unattainable). They do not focus on changes in people’s dispositions, but rather on training people’s preaching and working abilities, and on improving their biblical knowledge and spiritual theories. They do not focus on how much people understand the truth or how much their life dispositions change, and they do not concern themselves at all with people’s corrupt essence, much less do they try to become familiar with the normal and abnormal states that people have. They do not counter people’s notions, nor do they expose their notions, much less do they prune people for their deficiencies or corruptions. Most who follow them serve with their gifts, and all they release is religious notions and theological theories, which are out of touch with reality and which simply cannot help them gain life. In fact, the essence of their work is cultivating talented individuals, cultivating a person with nothing into an exceptional seminary graduate who later goes on to work and lead.

—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. God’s Work and Man’s Work

Serving God is no simple task. Those whose corrupt disposition remains unchanged can never serve God. If your disposition has not been judged and chastised by God’s words, then your disposition still represents Satan, which proves that your service to God is just you offering up your own good intentions, that your service is based on your satanic nature. You serve God with your natural character, and according to your personal preferences. What’s more, you always think that the things you are willing to do are what are delightful to God, and that the things you do not wish to do are what are loathsome to God; you work entirely according to your own preferences. Can this be called serving God? Ultimately, there will not be the slightest change in your life disposition; instead, your service will make it even more stubborn, thus deeply ingraining your corrupt disposition, and as such, there will be formed within you rules about service to God that are primarily based on your own character, and experience derived from your service according to your own disposition. These are the experience and lessons of man. It is man’s philosophy for worldly dealings. People like this are Pharisees and religious officials. If they don’t wake up and repent now, then they will surely turn into the false christs and the antichrists who mislead people in the last days. The false christs and the antichrists that were spoken of will arise from among such people. If those who serve God follow their own character and act according to their own will, they run the risk of being eliminated at any time. Those who rely on their many years of experience to serve God in order to win over the hearts of others, to lecture them and constrain them, and to stand on high—and who never repent, never confess their sins, never relinquish the benefits of status—these people shall fall before God. They are of the same kind as Paul, presuming upon their seniority and lording their credentials over others. God does not perfect people like this. Such service constitutes disrupting the work of God. People always cling to the old. They cling to the notions of the past, to everything from times gone by. This is a great obstacle to their service. If you do not throw them off, these things will ruin your whole life. Even if you break your legs running about, break your back with labor, or are even martyred for the sake of “serving” God, God will not approve of you in the slightest. Quite the contrary: He will say that you are an evildoer.

—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Religious Service Must Be Purged

Why is it that most people have spent much effort reading God’s words, but merely have knowledge and cannot say anything about a practical path afterward? Do you think that possessing knowledge amounts to possessing the truth? Is that not a confused point of view? You are able to speak as many pieces of knowledge as there are grains of sand on a beach, yet none of it contains any practical path. Are you not trying to fool people by doing this? Are you not making an empty show, with no substance to back it up? All such behavior is harmful to people! The higher the theory and the more it is devoid of reality, the more it is incapable of taking people into reality. The higher the theory, the more it makes you rebel against and oppose God. Do not cosset spiritual theory—it has no use! Some people have been talking about spiritual theory for decades, and they have become great spiritual figures, but ultimately, they still fail to enter the truth reality. Because they have not practiced or experienced the words of God, they have no principles or path for practice. People like this are themselves without the truth reality, so how can they bring other people onto the right track of faith in God? They can only lead people astray. Is this not harming others and themselves? At the very least, you must be able to solve real problems that are right in front of you. That is to say, you must be able to practice and experience the words of God, and to put the truth into practice. Only this is submission to God. Only when you have life entry are you qualified to work for God, and only when you expend yourself for God sincerely can you be accepted by God. Don’t always make grand statements and talk of bombastic theory; this is not real. Pontificating on spiritual theory to make people admire you is not bearing witness to God, but rather flaunting yourself. It is of absolutely no benefit to people and does not edify them, and can easily lead to them worshiping spiritual theory and not focusing on practicing the truth—and is this not leading people astray? Carrying on like this will give rise to numerous empty theories, as well as to lots of regulations that will constrain and entrap people; it’s truly mortifying.

—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Focus More on Reality

Those who don’t understand the purpose of God’s work are ones who resist God. This is even more the case for those who do understand the purpose of God’s work yet don’t pursue satisfying Him. There are those who read the Bible in grand churches and recite passages all day long, yet not one among them understands the purpose of God’s work, nor are there any among them who can know God—let alone any who can accord with God’s intentions. They are all worthless, vile people, who stand on high to lecture “God.” They are people who act under the banner of God yet deliberately resist God, who bear the label of believing in God while eating the flesh and drinking the blood of man. All such people are evil devils who devour human souls, head demons who deliberately disturb people from embarking on the right path, and stumbling blocks that obstruct people from seeking God. They may appear to be “physically robust,” but how are their followers to know that they are antichrists who lead people to resist God? How are their followers to know that they are living devils dedicated to devouring human souls?

—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. All People Who Do Not Know God Are People Who Resist God