By Ronald, Myanmar

In October 2019, I accepted the work of Almighty God of the last days. At gatherings I saw brothers and sisters were able to fellowship on their experiences and understanding. They were able to open up about all their corruption and shortcomings without any misgivings, and I was so envious. I wanted to be an honest person too and to simply open up like they did, but when it actually came down to it, I just couldn’t speak honestly. One time, my brothers and sisters asked me, “You’re young, are you still a student?” The truth was I hadn’t been a student for quite a while, and I just cooked and cleaned at a restaurant, but I feared that the others would look down on me once they knew this, so I told them I was still a student. I didn’t think much of it once I’d said it, and I just moved on. One day, I saw a passage of God’s word in an experiential testimony video that made me reflect on myself. God’s word says: “You ought to know that God likes those who are honest. In essence, God is faithful, and so His words can always be trusted; His actions, furthermore, are faultless and unquestionable, which is why God likes those who are absolutely honest with Him. Honesty means giving your heart to God, being genuine with God in all things, being open with Him in all things, never hiding the facts, not trying to deceive those above and below you, and not doing things only to curry favor with God. In short, to be honest is to be pure in your actions and words, and to deceive neither God nor man” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Three Admonitions). After reading God’s words, I understood that God likes honest people, that honest people can simply open up to God, that they are unequivocal in the things they do and say, and that they do not try to deceive either God or other people. But as for me, when others asked me “Are you still a student?” I couldn’t even tell the truth, let alone be an honest person before God. I wasn’t honest at all! So I wanted to open up to the others, but I was scared they would mock me, yet, at the same time, not speaking up made me feel deeply uneasy. So I prayed to God, asking Him to help me practice telling the truth and being an honest person. At a later gathering, I opened up about my corruption and exposed my intention to use lies and deceit. Not only did the others not look down on me, they even messaged me saying my experience was good. This gave me more confidence to be an honest person. Despite having practiced being an honest person and telling the truth on this occasion, I still had no awareness of my satanic disposition, and when it came to things concerning my reputation and interests, I still couldn’t help but disguise myself.

After a period of time, I was chosen to be a preacher and I was responsible for the work of three churches. During a co-worker gathering, a leader wanted to know the specifics of how newcomers were being watered in each church, and asked us why some newcomers hadn’t been supported properly. I started to get a little flustered, as I only knew how things were going in one of the churches and not in the other two. So what was I supposed to say? If I told the truth, what would everyone think of me? Would they wonder if I could be a preacher if I couldn’t even get this straight? Or would they say that I didn’t do real work and that I was incapable of this duty? It’d be so embarrassing if I were transferred or dismissed! I just wanted to run away, but if I signed off early, I was afraid of being found out. So I had no choice but to stay and listen as other preachers talked about the work they were responsible for. I was like a cat on a hot tin roof and didn’t know what to do. When the leader called my name, I was so nervous, and pretended I hadn’t heard him, asking, “What did you say?” The leader said, “We were just talking about watering newcomers, and you heard what everyone said just now. Would you care to tell us about your newcomers?” My heart was in turmoil. I had no choice but to talk about the church I did know about first, but I didn’t want to talk about the other two. However, I feared everyone would know I hadn’t done follow-up work, so I gritted my teeth and lied, saying “A lot of the newcomers in the second church aren’t being supported properly, and because of the pandemic, we can’t reach them. I’m not too sure about the situation in the third church because I’ve been following up on the work of the other two churches this whole time.” I felt very uneasy to have said this, and I was terrified of everyone seeing through my lie, which would have been even more humiliating. I was on edge for the whole gathering and was only able to breathe a sigh of relief after it ended. To my surprise, the leader then asked me separately, “About those newcomers that aren’t being supported properly because of the pandemic, have you asked the waterers to call them and check up on them?” I was stumped by the leader’s question. I didn’t know the specifics of the situation. If I told the truth, wouldn’t the leader realize I had lied? I couldn’t say I didn’t know. So I just kept on lying, “I’ve talked to them about it, but some of the newcomers didn’t answer their phones.” The leader then asked, “Which newcomers?” I thought to myself, “Does the leader keep questioning me because he found out I lied?” I replied hastily, “I think it’s some of those who have just accepted God’s work.” Seeing that I couldn’t explain clearly, the leader resignedly said, “Well, when you do find out, let me know.” When I got off the call, I felt a deep sense of guilt. I’d lied and deceived once again. Once I told a lie, I had to use several more lies to patch up it. What a hassle it is to use lies to cover up other lies. Thinking back on the gathering, one preacher had said that of the three churches he was responsible for, he hadn’t looked into one of them. He’d been able to speak the truth, so why couldn’t I say a single honest word? I lied, deceived, and put up a false appearance like this, but I couldn’t deceive God, as God scrutinizes all. I was so perfunctory in my duty, and sooner or later I would be revealed. So I prayed to God, “God, in the gathering today, when the leader was inquiring about the work, I didn’t tell the truth. I feared that everyone would look down on me and say I didn’t do real work if they knew the truth. God, please guide me to know myself and cast off my corrupt disposition.”

I later read a passage of God’s word: “In their everyday lives, people often talk nonsense, tell lies, and say things that are ignorant, foolish, and defensive. Most of these things are said for the sake of vanity and pride, to satisfy their own egos. Speaking such falsehoods reveals their corrupt dispositions. If you were to resolve these corrupt elements, your heart would be purified, and you would gradually become purer and more honest. In reality, people all know why they lie. For the sake of personal gain and pride, or for vanity and status, they try to compete with others and pass themselves off as something that they’re not. However, their lies are eventually revealed and exposed by others, and they end up losing face, as well as their dignity and character. This is all caused by an excessive amount of lies. Your lies have become too numerous. Every word you say is adulterated and insincere, and not a single one can be considered true or honest. Even though you don’t feel that you’ve lost face when you tell lies, deep down, you feel disgraced. Your conscience blames you, and you hold a low opinion of yourself, thinking, ‘Why am I living such a pitiful life? Is it so difficult to speak the truth? Must I resort to lies for the sake of my pride? Why is my life so exhausting?’ You don’t have to live an exhausting life. If you can practice being an honest person, you will be able to live a relaxed, free, and liberated life. However, you have chosen to uphold your pride and vanity by telling lies. Consequently, you live a tiresome and miserable existence, which is self-inflicted. One may gain a sense of pride by telling lies, but what is that sense of pride? It is just an empty thing, and it is completely worthless. Telling lies means selling out one’s character and dignity. It strips away one’s dignity and one’s character; it displeases God, and He detests it. Is this worthwhile? It is not. Is this the correct path? No, it is not. People who frequently lie live according to their satanic dispositions; they live under Satan’s power. They do not live in the light, nor do they live in the presence of God. You constantly think about how to lie and then after you lie, you have to think about how to cover up that lie. And when you do not cover up the lie well enough and it is exposed, you have to rack your brain to try and straighten out the contradictions and make it plausible. Is it not tiring to live in this way? Exhausting. Is it worth it? No, it is not worth it. Racking one’s brain to tell lies and then to cover them up, all for the sake of pride, vanity, and status, what meaning is there in that? Finally, you reflect and think to yourself, ‘What’s the point? It’s too exhausting to tell lies and to have to cover them up. Conducting myself in this manner won’t work; it’d be easier if I just became an honest person.’ You desire to become an honest person, but you cannot let go of your pride, vanity, and personal interests. Therefore, you can only resort to telling lies to uphold these things. … If you think that lies can uphold the reputation, status, vanity, and pride you desire, you are completely mistaken. In reality, by telling lies, not only do you fail to maintain your vanity and pride, and your dignity and character, more grievously, you miss the opportunity to practice the truth and be an honest person. Even if you manage to protect your reputation, status, vanity, and pride at that moment, you have sacrificed the truth and betrayed God. This means you have completely lost your chance for Him to save and perfect you, which is the greatest loss and a lifelong regret. Those who are deceitful will never understand this” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. Only an Honest Person Can Live Out True Human Likeness). What God’s words exposed was exactly my state. The leader wanted to know about the watering situation in each church, which was clearly a simple matter, and it would have been fine just to tell the truth, but for me nothing could have been harder. I was filled with misgivings, and feared that after the leader and other preachers found out the truth, they would say I didn’t do real work, and couldn’t even get to grips with this small matter. And if I was dismissed, that would be humiliating! To protect my reputation, status, and the good impression others had of me, I lied about having looked into two churches, when I only had an understanding of one. I even went into detail on the second church, saying that the newcomers there weren’t being supported properly because of the pandemic. Wasn’t this just a barefaced lie? When the leader asked me if I’d asked the waterers to call the newcomers, I feared the leader finding out about the lie I’d just told, so I cooked up a second lie to cover for the first, and I made up an excuse to fob him off. To protect my name and status, I used one lie to patch up another. I was truly deceitful! I thought about a dialogue between God and Satan recorded in the Bible. God asked Satan where it came from, to which Satan replied, “From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it” (Job 1:7). Satan is so cunning. It didn’t answer God’s question directly and talked in a winding and meandering way. It’s impossible to tell where Satan came from. Its mouth is filled with only lies, it never speaks honestly, and it only ever talks equivocally and ambiguously. With my lying and deception, was I not the same as the devil Satan? Even though I gave an answer to the leader, it was all vague and unclear, full of lies and deceit. Having heard my answer, the leader was still unclear on the exact state of the watering work I was responsible for, and he couldn’t judge if I was following up properly. In fact, my lying and deceiving like this only preserved my reputation and status temporarily, but what I really lost was my integrity, dignity, and the trust of others. If I kept going on like this, sooner or later, everyone would see that I wasn’t an honest person and was untrustworthy. Nobody would believe in me, and moreover, God would not trust in me. Wouldn’t I be completely bereft of integrity and dignity then? Wouldn’t this be stupid of me?

Then, I read another passage of God’s word: “That God asks for people to be honest proves that He truly loathes and dislikes deceitful people. God’s dislike of deceitful people is a dislike of their way of doing things, their dispositions, their intents and their methods of trickery; God dislikes all of these things. If deceitful people are able to accept the truth, admit to their deceitful dispositions, and are willing to accept God’s salvation, then they too have a hope of being saved—for God treats all people equally, as does the truth. And so, if we wish to become people who please God, the first thing we must do is change our principles of comportment. No longer can we live according to satanic philosophies, no longer can we get by on lies and trickery. We must cast off all our lies and become honest people. Then God’s view of us will change. Previously, people always relied on lies, pretense, and trickery while living among others, and used satanic philosophies as the basis of their existence, their lives, and the foundation for their comportment. This was something that God loathed. Among nonbelievers, if you speak frankly, tell the truth, and are an honest person, then you will be slandered, judged, and forsaken. So you follow worldly trends and live by satanic philosophies; you become more and more skilled at lying, and more and more deceitful. You also learn to use insidious means to achieve your goals and protect yourself. You become more and more prosperous in Satan’s world, and as a result, you fall deeper and deeper into sin until you cannot extricate yourself. In God’s house, things are precisely the opposite. The more you lie and play deceitful games, the more God’s chosen people will become sick of you and forsake you. If you refuse to repent and still cling to satanic philosophies and logic, if you use ploys and elaborate schemes to disguise and package yourself, then you are very likely to be revealed and eliminated. This is because God loathes deceitful people. Only honest people can prosper in God’s house, and deceitful people will eventually be forsaken and eliminated. All of this is preordained by God. Only honest people can have a share in the kingdom of heaven. If you do not try to be an honest person, and if you don’t experience and practice in the direction of pursuing the truth, if you don’t expose your own ugliness, and if you don’t lay yourself bare, then you will never be able to receive the Holy Spirit’s work and gain God’s approval” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. The Most Fundamental Practice of Being an Honest Person). Thinking over God’s words, I realized God does not like deceitful people, and He does not save them. Because they belong to Satan, deceitful people use deceit and tricks in all the things they do, and they speak without honesty all to protect their reputation, status, and interests. The intents these people harbor and the methods they use are odious and disgusting to God. Though I believed in God, I hadn’t gained any truth and still lived by satanic philosophies such as “Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost,” and “People need their pride just as a tree needs its bark.” These satanic philosophies had already rooted themselves in my heart, misleading and corrupting me, and making me walk the path of pursuing fame, gain, and status. I’d thought that people should live for themselves, stand out among others, and gain renown and profit, and that only then will a person not be looked down on. I’d thought that if a person only ever told the truth and never lied, then that person was a fool. Because of this, I’d always deceived, and sewn a web of lies for the sake of my own interests, becoming more and more deceitful, fake, and lacking in normal human likeness. I’d viewed reputation and status as more important than the truth, and was willing to lie and go against the truth to protect my reputation and status. Satan is a liar, so when I lie and deceive like this, am I not the same? In this evil world, being an honest, guileless person just doesn’t cut it. But in the house of God it’s quite the opposite. In the house of God, righteousness and the truth reign supreme, and the more a person deceives, the more likely they are to fall, and eventually, all deceitful people will be revealed and eliminated by God. God says: “If people wish to be saved, then they must start by being honest” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. Six Indicators of Life Growth). “Only honest people can have a share in the kingdom of heaven” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. The Most Fundamental Practice of Being an Honest Person). God is holy, and filthy people are not allowed to enter the kingdom of heaven. When I realized this, I felt that God’s holy and righteous disposition does not tolerate offense, and I truly regretted lying to my brothers and sisters. I truly hated myself and I never wanted to lie or deceive again. I wanted to practice the truth, be an honest person, and speak honestly with everyone. I wanted to pull the lies from my mouth and the deceit from my heart. Only by doing so would I be worthy of God’s approval and have an opportunity to gain the truth and be saved.

During one of my devotionals, I read a passage of God’s word: “Practicing honesty covers many aspects. In other words, the standard for being honest is not merely achieved through one regard; you must be up to standard in many regards before you can be honest. Some people always think that they need only manage not to lie in order to be honest. Is this view correct? Does being honest merely involve not lying? No—it also relates to several other aspects. Firstly, no matter what you are faced with, be it something you have seen with your own eyes or something someone else has told you, be it interacting with people or sorting out a problem, be it the duty you ought to be performing or something that God has entrusted to you, you must always approach it with an honest heart. How should one practice approaching things with an honest heart? Say what you think and speak honestly; do not speak empty, pompous, or pleasant-sounding words, do not say flattering or hypocritical false things, but speak the words that are in your heart. This is being someone honest. Expressing the true thoughts and views that are in your heart—this is what honest people are supposed to do. If you never say what you think, and the words fester in your heart, and what you say is always at odds with what you think, that is not what an honest person does” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. Only an Honest Person Can Live Out True Human Likeness). God’s word gave me a path of practice. Whether it was interacting with others or doing my duty, I must have an honest heart in my approach. Since I had not done follow-up work, I should just say so and be honest about it. I shouldn’t be thinking about whether my reputation would be harmed. Practicing being an honest person is key. At the next co-worker gathering, I wanted to take the initiative and expose my corruption, but I worried about what everyone would think of me. I realized that I was wanting to safeguard my reputation and status again, and so I said a silent prayer to God, asking Him to guide me, give me strength, and grant me the courage to expose my corruption, practicing the truth and being an honest person. I remembered a passage of God’s word I’d read before: “If you do not practice according to God’s words, and never dissect your secrets and your challenges, and never open yourself in fellowship to others, neither fellowshipping nor dissecting nor bringing to light your corruption and fatal flaws with them, then you cannot be saved” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. The Most Fundamental Practice of Being an Honest Person). I realized that if I wasn’t an honest person, kept covering up my corruption and shortcomings, didn’t open up, reveal, or dissect myself, then I would never cast off my corrupt disposition, and I would never be saved. I said another prayer to God in my heart, “God! Please give me strength so that I can simply open up and be an honest person.” After my prayer, I took the initiative to come clean to the other brothers and sisters, saying that I lied and deceived everyone at the last gathering when the leader was asking about the watering of the newcomers…. After I said this, they neither rebuked nor looked down on me. On the contrary, they said it was good that I was able to simply open up and be an honest person. Having practiced like this, I felt much more settled and at ease.

Not long after, an upper leader asked me, “Do you currently have an understanding of the states of the church leaders?” I felt a little unconfident at this question, as I was only aware of the state of one church leader, but not of the states of the other two. I thought to myself, “If I tell the truth, will the leader say I haven’t done real work?” And so I wanted to say I did have an understanding. I then realized I was wanting to lie again, so I said a prayer to God. Then I told the truth, “I only know of the state of one church leader, and not of the states of the other two.” At this, the leader didn’t criticize me, and gave me some suggestions instead, saying that I should care more regularly about the states of the church leaders, and help promptly resolve their difficulties if they had any, and the leader also fellowshipped with me about some paths for doing the work. I learned that when I spoke the truth, was being an honest person, and dared to expose my corruption and shortcomings, not only was I able to be helped by my brothers and sisters and make gains, but it was also beneficial to the church’s work and to my life growth. Before, I lied and used deceit to safeguard my reputation and status, but after I said each lie, my heart felt burdened and my conscience felt accused, and most importantly, I lost my integrity and my dignity, and I was also loathed and hated by God. Through this experience, I have come to understand that honest people are liked by both God and man, and that the more honest we are, the more harmonious our relations with others will be, and the more settled and at peace we will be. Not only will others not look down on us, but we will be helped by our brothers and sisters instead. Being an honest person is truly great!