By Reese, USA

In early 2021, with a number of new churches being established, the leader decided to reallocate churches among co-workers and myself. I didn’t have an opinion about this at first, but when I learned more about the situation I saw that I would be overseeing some of the more problematic churches, where members were not yet established in the faith and leaders and deacons were still being selected. The churches that Sister Lilly was taking charge of, however, were doing a lot better than mine. They had new believers of good caliber, who were fairly well established, and had responsible leaders and deacons. I couldn’t help but envy her. I was wondering why the better churches went to her, while mine were full of problems. It was going to cost me so much effort! If I couldn’t get things up and running, what would the leader think of me? Would she say I had no aptitude and couldn’t get anything done? She certainly wouldn’t think much of me. I felt really disaffected. Later, whenever I attended those churches’ gatherings, there were multiple problems and they took a lot of time to deal with. This meant I wasn’t getting much downtime, and I was struggling in my duty. I was thinking that a task Lilly could take care of in an hour was taking me two or three hours. My own caliber and skills were limited to begin with, but these churches had so many problems. If I wasn’t making noticeable progress in spite of all the time and effort I was putting in, then when the leader came to compare my results to Lilly’s she was bound to feel I was mediocre, and that I wasn’t doing well and didn’t match up to Lilly. I was in a pretty bad state during those days and felt vexed and aggrieved whenever problems came up. I was tired, both physically and emotionally. So, I came before God to pray and seek, saying, “God, I know You’ve allowed this allocation of work responsibilities and I should submit to Your orchestrations, but I still feel resistant. Please enlighten me to understand Your intentions and my own corruption.”

Later, I saw God’s words: “If you have learned much and been given much by God, you should be given a heavier burden—not to make life difficult for you, but because it is an exact fit for you. It is your duty, so don’t try to pick and choose, or say no, or try to get out of it. Why do you think it is hard? The fact is that if you put some heart into it, you would be entirely up to the task. Your thinking that it is hard, that it is biased treatment, that you are being deliberately picked on—that is the revelation of a corrupt disposition. It is refusal to do your duty, not accepting from God. That is not practicing the truth. When you pick and choose in performing your duty, doing whatever is light and easy, only doing what makes you look good, this is a corrupt satanic disposition. That you cannot accept your duty or submit proves that you are still rebellious toward God, that you are opposing, refusing, and avoiding Him. This is a corrupt disposition. When you come to know that this is a corrupt disposition, what should you do? If you feel that the tasks given to others can be completed easily while those given to you keep you busy for a long time and require you to put effort into research, and this makes you unhappy, is it right of you to feel unhappy? Certainly not. So, what should you do when you sense that this is not right? If you are resistant and say, ‘Every time they mete out jobs, they give me the ones that are hard, dirty, and demanding, and give others the ones that are light, simple, and high-profile. Do they think I’m just someone they can push around? This isn’t a fair way to distribute jobs!’—if that is your thinking, it’s wrong. Irrespective of whether there are any deviations in the distribution of jobs, or whether they are distributed reasonably or not, what is it that God scrutinizes? What He scrutinizes is a person’s heart. He looks at whether someone has submission in their hearts, if they can take on some burdens for God, and if they are a lover of God. As measured by God’s requirements, your excuses are invalid, your performance of your duty is not up to standard, and you lack the truth reality. You have no submission at all, and you complain when you do a few demanding or dirty tasks. What is the problem here? First of all, your mentality is wrong. What does that mean? It means that your attitude toward your duty is wrong. If you are always thinking of your own pride and interests, and are inconsiderate of God’s intentions, and have no submission at all, then that is not the correct attitude you should have toward your duty. If you expended sincerely for God and had a God-loving heart, how would you treat tasks that are dirty, demanding, or hard? Your mentality would be different: You would choose to do whatever is difficult and seek out heavy burdens to shoulder. You would take up what other people are unwilling to do, and you would do it solely for the love of God and to satisfy Him. You would be filled with joy to do so, without any hint of complaints” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. Part Three). Reading God’s words, I reflected on what I’d shown of myself over the previous few days. Seeing how the members of the churches I’d taken on didn’t have much grounding, with few of them ready to perform a duty, I felt really resistant. Leaders and deacons hadn’t been selected for all the posts, and the various projects were hard to manage. It required time and energy to sort them out, but still things might not turn out well, which wouldn’t look good for me. I just wanted to manage good churches where I didn’t have to worry and could get results more easily, so that others would think highly of me. I kept thinking it wasn’t fair the way the work had been reallocated; that Lilly got an easy job that would make her look good while I got a job that was hard and tiring, and where I couldn’t stand out. I felt resistant about this and didn’t want to simply submit. Through the revelation of God’s words I saw that I was being finicky, and objecting to a duty that didn’t benefit me. I was rejecting duty and not being remotely submissive. I’d always thought I was conscientious and responsible in my duty, and never expected to be shown up in that way. I saw I was bringing the wrong intentions and perspectives to my duty. Instead of submitting to God and repaying His love, I wanted admiration and praise from others. Approaching my duty in that way was abhorrent to God.

I found a passage from God’s word: “If you wish to give all your loyalty in all things to satisfy God’s intentions, you cannot do it by just performing one duty; you must accept any commission God bestows upon you. Whether it is to your tastes and matches your interests, or is something you do not enjoy, have never done before, or is difficult, you should still accept it and submit. Not only must you accept it, but you must also proactively cooperate, and learn about it, while experiencing and entering. Even if you suffer hardship, are tired, humiliated, or are ostracized, you must still give it all your loyalty. Only by practicing in this way will you be able to give all your loyalty in all things and satisfy God’s intentions. You must regard it as your duty to perform, not as personal business. How should you understand duties? As something that the Creator—God—gives someone to do; this is how people’s duties come about. The commission that God gives you is your duty, and it is perfectly natural and justified that you perform your duty as God demands. If it is clear to you that this duty is God’s commission, and that this is God’s love and God’s blessing coming upon you, then you will be able to accept your duty with a God-loving heart, and you will be able to be considerate of God’s intentions as you perform your duty, and you will be able to overcome all difficulties to satisfy God. Those who truly expend themselves for God could never refuse God’s commission; they could never refuse any duty. No matter what duty God entrusts you with, regardless of what difficulties it entails, you should not refuse it, but accept it. This is the path of practice, which is to practice the truth and give all your loyalty in all things, in order to satisfy God. What is the focus here? It is on the words ‘in all things.’ ‘All things’ does not necessarily mean things that you like or are good at, much less things with which you are familiar. Sometimes they will be things you are not good at, things you need to learn, things which are difficult, or things where you must suffer. However, regardless of what thing it is, as long as God has entrusted you with it, you must accept it from Him; you must accept it and perform the duty well, giving it all your loyalty and satisfying God’s intentions. This is the path of practice. No matter what happens, you must always seek the truth, and once you are certain what sort of practice is in line with God’s intentions, that is how you should practice. Only by doing this are you practicing the truth, and only in this way can you enter the truth reality” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. Part Three). A duty is God’s commission for us and it’s our responsibility and obligation. No matter how hard it is, or whether it brings any glory, we are obligated to accept it. That’s the way we should approach our duty, and it’s the sense that a created being should have before God. The churches I now managed weren’t what I wanted and my desire for status wouldn’t be met, but I needed to accept this commission from God and stop approaching my duty from the wrong perspective. So, I came before God to pray, wanting to submit to His orchestrations, to do everything I could in my duty, to water new believers properly and to help them soon establish themselves on the true way. I felt more composed, after praying, and was no longer so vexed by the issues of work reallocation.

With the spread of the gospel, and more and more churches opening up, the leader once again reallocated our responsibilities. From the churches within my remit, one that was doing a little better than others, and a sister who was doing well in her watering work, were assigned to other co-workers. I was upset and displeased about this. I felt like they understood my situation well, that I’d taken on the churches with the most problems and I’d already been working really hard. I finally had a watering sister who was doing well, and now she was being taken away. How could I ever have anything to show for my work? What would everyone think of me if I kept having poor results? They’d think I was inept and couldn’t get things done. That would be awful! How could I show my face in co-worker meetings after that? Turning this over in my mind brought me to tears. I realized I was feeling disaffected and disobedient toward work reallocation again. Right away I prayed to God and reflected on myself. Then I read a passage of God’s words: “Regardless of what work they undertake, antichrists never give any thought to the interests of the house of God. They only consider whether their own interests will be affected, only think about the little bit of work in front of them that benefits them. For them, the primary work of the church is just something they do in their spare time. They don’t take it seriously at all. They only move when they’re prodded into action, only do what they like to do, and only do work that is for the sake of maintaining their own status and power. In their eyes, any work arranged by God’s house, the work of spreading the gospel, and the life entry of God’s chosen people are not important. … no matter what duty antichrists are doing, all they think about is whether it will allow them to step into the limelight; as long as it will boost their reputation, they rack their brains to come up with a way to learn how to do it, to carry it out; all they care about is whether it will set them apart. No matter what they do or think, they are only concerned with their own fame, gain, and status. No matter what duty they are doing, they only compete over who is higher or lower, who wins and who loses, who has the bigger reputation. They only care about how many people worship and look up to them, how many people obey them, and how many followers they have. They never fellowship the truth or solve real problems. They never consider how to do things according to principle when doing their duty, nor do they reflect on whether they have been loyal, have fulfilled their responsibilities, whether there have been deviations or oversights in their work, or if any problems exist, much less do they give thought to what God asks, and what God’s intentions are. They pay not the slightest attention to all these things. They only put their head down and do things for the sake of fame, gain, and status, to satisfy their own ambitions and desires. This is the manifestation of selfishness and vileness, is it not? This fully exposes how their hearts brim with their own ambitions, desires, and senseless demands; everything they do is governed by their ambitions and desires. No matter what they do, the motivation and source is their own ambitions, desires, and senseless demands. This is the archetypal manifestation of selfishness and vileness” (The Word, Vol. 4. Exposing Antichrists. Excursus Four: Summarizing the Character of Antichrists and Their Disposition Essence (Part One)). God’s words talk about how selfish and vile antichrists are, that they have their own ambitions and desires in their duty, and that their primary concern is always to protect their own interests. No matter what duty they do, they never think about how to be mindful of God’s intentions, or how to do their duty well, or how to make sure the work of the church doesn’t suffer. They think only about prestige and status, with no regard for the interests of the church. As for what I revealed, the first thing on my mind on seeing how many issues there were with the churches under my care, was how dreadful it would be to have others look down on me for getting poor outcomes, rather than thinking about how to lean on God and do my best to support those churches. I was resistant and indignant about how the work had been reallocated, and even eased off in doing my duty. When I learned that a capable sister in my area of work was being transferred to another church, my first reaction was that I was now short of a strong partner and results would slip, causing the leader to think I wasn’t up to the job. All I thought about was protecting my own reputation and interests, and how I could skate by without too much effort while still making a good impression and earning admiration. I wasn’t looking at the big picture of the church’s work. I was selfish and vile, and this betrayed in me the disposition of an antichrist. Really thinking about it, I knew that there was God’s intention behind my being put in charge of the more challenging churches. These difficulties—churches with multiple problems, and newcomers who weren’t yet established—required me to lean more on God and seek truth to resolve them. I also had to pay more of a price to support and water the newcomers so that they’d quickly come to know the truth of God’s work and have a grounding in the true way. It was good practice for me. And the harder things got, the more it forced me to seek the truth and find solutions, and in this way I could end up picking up lots of truths. It was good for my life entry. Then I realized that this duty wasn’t anyone trying to make things hard for me. It had God’s approval and was beneficial. I needed to accept it and submit, and put my heart into it. This realization helped change my attitude, and I didn’t feel so bad about things.

After that, I read another passage of God’s words that helped me understand my problem better. Almighty God says: “If someone says they love the truth and that they pursue the truth, but in essence, the goal they pursue is to distinguish themselves, to show off, to make people think highly of them, to achieve their own interests, and the performing of their duty is not to submit to or satisfy God, and instead is to achieve fame, gain, and status, then their pursuit is illegitimate. That being the case, when it comes to the work of the church, are their actions an obstacle, or do they help move it forward? They are clearly an obstacle; they do not move it forward. Some people wave the banner of doing the work of the church yet pursue their own personal fame, gain, and status, run their own operation, create their own little group, their own little kingdom—is this kind of person doing their duty? All the work they do essentially disrupts, disturbs, and impairs the work of the church. What is the consequence of their pursuit of fame, gain, and status? First, this affects how God’s chosen people eat and drink God’s word normally and understand the truth, it hinders their life entry, stops them from entering the right track of faith in God, and leads them onto the wrong path—which harms the chosen ones, and brings them to ruin. And what does it ultimately do to the work of the church? It is disturbance, impairment, and dismantlement. This is the consequence brought about by people’s pursuit of fame, gain, and status. When they do their duty in this way, can this not be defined as walking the path of an antichrist? When God asks that people put aside fame, gain, and status, it is not that He is depriving people of the right to choose; rather, it is because, while pursuing fame, gain, and status, people disrupt and disturb the work of the church and the life entry of God’s chosen people, and can even have an influence on more people’s eating and drinking God’s words, understanding the truth, and thus achieving God’s salvation. This is an indisputable fact. When people pursue their own fame, gain, and status, it is certain that they will not pursue the truth and that they will not faithfully fulfill their duty. They will only speak and act for the sake of fame, gain, and status, and all the work they do, without the least exception, is for those things’ sake. To behave and act in such a way is, without question, to walk the path of antichrists; it is a disruption and disturbance of God’s work, and all its various consequences are hindering the spread of the kingdom gospel and the carrying out of God’s will within the church. So, one may say with certainty that the path walked by those who pursue fame, gain, and status is the path of resistance against God. It is intentional resistance against Him, naysaying Him—it is to cooperate with Satan in resisting God and standing in opposition to Him. This is the nature of people’s pursuit of fame, gain, and status. The problem with people pursuing their own interests is that the goals they pursue are the goals of Satan—they are goals that are wicked and unjust. When people pursue personal interests such as fame, gain, and status, they unwittingly become a tool of Satan, they become an outlet for Satan, and, moreover, they become an embodiment of Satan. They play a negative role in the church; toward the work of the church, and toward the normal church life and normal pursuit of God’s chosen people, the effect they have is to disturb and impair; they have an adverse and negative effect. When someone pursues the truth, they are able to be considerate of God’s intentions and His burden. When they do their duty, they uphold the work of the church in every regard. They are able to exalt God and testify to God, they bring benefit to the brothers and sisters, and support them, and provide for them, and God gains glory and testimony, which brings shame upon Satan. As a result of their pursuit, God gains a created being that is truly capable of fearing God and shunning evil, that is able to worship God. As a result of their pursuit, too, God’s will is carried out, and the work of God is able to progress. In the eyes of God, such pursuit is positive, it is aboveboard. Such pursuit is of tremendous benefit to God’s chosen ones, as well as being wholly beneficial to the work of the church, it helps push things forward, and is approved by God” (The Word, Vol. 4. Exposing Antichrists. Item Nine (Part One)). God’s words helped me better understand my pursuit of self-interest. I realized that when people pursue self-interest they’re acting on behalf of Satan, becoming a tool for it to disrupt the church’s work. Before then, I’d thought it was only by doing things that were obviously evil, like clearly obstructing church work and life, that one would be acting as a minion of Satan. But now I saw that just pursuing selfish interests in our duty and disregarding the church’s interests, negatively impacts the work of the church by obstructing and disrupting it. I thought about how I’d exposed myself in doing my duty. Even though it appeared that I never slacked, that I could endure suffering and work all hours, and that I never did anything clearly disruptive, my intention was wrong. I wasn’t doing a good job to satisfy God, but rather to distinguish myself and be admired. When I was displeased about the churches allocated to me, I became negative and slacked off. I couldn’t just submit and think about how best to get on with doing my duty, or how I could promptly support the brothers and sisters. Unwittingly, I’d already hindered our watering work. The truth was that I had more experience than my co-workers. Some of the other sisters were new to the job and were unfamiliar with much of the church’s work, so it was right—from the overall perspective of the church—to assign better churches and personnel to them. But I was being selfish, wanting the better churches and personnel to remain under my remit. Doing things the way I wanted, however, by allocating problematic churches to newer co-workers, would have impacted our work and reduced efficiency, and that would have been to the church’s detriment overall. My churches had more issues, but this was actually good training for me. By putting in just more effort I could get some good work done, to the benefit of our overall efficiency. Wasn’t that the best arrangement? At this, I realized how my selfish, despicable mindset had been exposed by the matter of reallocating churches. I saw that involving self-interest in my duty could only disrupt the work of the church. I thought of how, in the past, I’d transgressed by going after prestige and status, and by protecting my personal interests. If I didn’t make a change and kept stubbornly serving my own interests, I knew I’d once again disrupt the work of the church and would be spurned by God. This realization scared me. I prayed to God, repenting: “God, in my duty I’ve done nothing but protect my own interests without any thought for the overall work of the church or being mindful of Your intentions. With humanity like mine, I’m not worthy of taking on a duty. God, I want to truly repent.”

I found a path of practice in God’s words after that: “For all who perform a duty, no matter how profound or shallow their understanding of the truth is, the simplest way to practice entering into the truth reality is to think of the interests of God’s house in everything, and to let go of one’s selfish desires, personal intents, motives, pride, and status. Put the interests of God’s house first—this is the least one should do. If a person who performs a duty cannot even do this much, then how can they be said to be performing their duty? That is not performing one’s duty. You should first think of the interests of God’s house, be considerate of God’s intentions, and consider the work of the church. Put these things first and foremost; only after that can you think about the stability of your status or how others regard you. Do you not feel that this becomes a little easier when you divide it into two steps and make some compromises? If you practice like this for a while, you will come to feel that satisfying God is not such a difficult thing. Furthermore, you should be able to fulfill your responsibilities, perform your obligations and duty, and set aside your selfish desires, intents, and motives; you should show consideration for God’s intentions, and put the interests of God’s house, the work of the church, and the duty that you are supposed to perform first. After experiencing this for a while, you will feel that this is a good way to comport yourself. It is living straightforwardly and honestly, and not being a base, vile person; it is living justly and honorably rather than being despicable, base, and a good-for-nothing. You will feel that this is how a person should act and the image that they should live out. Gradually, your desire to satisfy your own interests will lessen” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. Freedom and Liberation Can Be Gained Only by Casting Off One’s Corrupt Disposition). Reading God’s words taught me that the interests of the church, not personal benefit, have to come first in everything. Reputation and status are temporary, and pursuing those things is meaningless. The only way to earn God’s approval is to not live with a corrupt disposition, to practice the truth, and to satisfy God’s intentions. Understanding this was enlightening for me. No matter how responsibilities were allocated, I couldn’t keep considering my personal interests and protecting my reputation and status. I had to submit, and do my duty well. I had to focus on living before God and accepting His scrutiny. No matter what others might think of me, I should put my heart into my duty and fulfill my responsibilities. This was in line with God’s intentions.

In the days that followed, I threw myself into my duty, not thinking of my own interests. By doing that, I felt like I wasn’t so constrained and influenced by my corrupt disposition. One day, when a sister was discussing work with me, she said her spoken English wasn’t that great and she needed an interpreter when she checked in on one of her churches, so she was struggling and the work was being affected. Since my English was okay, I thought maybe we could switch and I could take charge of that church. Right away, however, it occurred to me that hers was a church with lots of issues, and that taking it on would probably involve a lot of effort for little progress. And then what would people think of me? Better not to switch, I thought. But then I realized I was being calculating again, thinking of my own pride and status, so I prayed to God, ready to rebel against myself. I knew I couldn’t keep living in corruption, thinking only of my own interests like before. If this change would benefit the work of the church, then I had to do it. Afterward, I gave some thought to the remits of other co-workers and concluded it really was best for me to switch with that sister. I shared my thoughts with the leader and after giving the matter some consideration, she and the other co-workers agreed. I was at ease after we made the necessary changes, and felt an inexpressible sense of gladness. Just as God says: “You should be able to fulfill your responsibilities, perform your obligations and duty, and set aside your selfish desires, intents, and motives; you should show consideration for God’s intentions, and put the interests of God’s house, the work of the church, and the duty that you are supposed to perform first. After experiencing this for a while, you will feel that this is a good way to comport yourself. It is living straightforwardly and honestly, and not being a base, vile person; it is living justly and honorably rather than being despicable, base, and a good-for-nothing. You will feel that this is how a person should act and the image that they should live out” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. Freedom and Liberation Can Be Gained Only by Casting Off One’s Corrupt Disposition).

After that, I stopped being negative about the churches I was in charge of, and did my best to take care of every church’s work. When waterers complained about their work struggles, I fellowshipped with them on God’s words to correct their wrong perspectives, leaning on God and seeking truth together to tackle those difficulties. When I saw that there were plenty of issues with newcomers, and that some of them weren’t attending gatherings normally, I stopped complaining about the work and instead made a point of talking personally with the brothers and sisters to get an understanding of their struggles, and fellowshipping with them on God’s words. As for not having enough leaders and deacons in place, I did more work on cultivating talented individuals. I fellowshipped with brothers and sisters who had the caliber to take on those roles, on the significance and principles of performing a duty, and spent time working alongside them. When I noticed some fairly complicated tasks in the churches were being neglected, I stepped forward to take them on. I didn’t know at that point whether I could do a good job with those tasks, but I knew in my heart that I couldn’t just leave things as they stood. Instead of just selfishly considering my own remit, I had to be mindful of God’s will and uphold the overall work of the church. After a while there was progress in the work, and leaders and deacons were selected for all the churches I was managing. Twice as many people as before were taking on a duty, and some of the newly cultivated members were able to handle remits of their own. In churches that hadn’t been doing too well before, things were looking up in every aspect of work. I could really see God’s hand at work. I also truly experienced that what God wants from people is heart and obedience, so if we can be mindful of His intentions and think only of the work of the church, rather than our own interests, then we can obtain God’s guidance. Understanding this strengthened my faith in God. Thanks be to Almighty God!