Do you know what the greatest wisdom is? Based on your current stature, do you know what you should focus on in your faith, and what the greatest wisdom is in terms of how you should pursue and practice? Some people do not appear to be very skilled on the outside, and they are silent and reserved all the time. They do not speak much, but they have in their hearts a great wisdom that others do not. Most people cannot see it, and even when they can, they will not think of it as wisdom. They will think that it is unnecessary and that it has no value. Can you think of what this greatest wisdom of theirs is? (Having a heart that is always quiet before God, always praying to God, and always drawing near to Him.) You have touched a little on the right answer. What is the purpose of drawing close to God? (To seek God’s will.) What is the point of seeking God’s will? Is it to rely on Him? (Yes.) The point is to rely on God. If you rely on God in everything, God will enlighten you, lead you, and guide you. You will not have to feel your way in the dark like a blind man, and you can simply act according to God’s words. Is that not far easier? You will not need to bumble about anymore, you can just do as God indicates. This is easy and quick, and it does not require you to exhaust yourself by taking roundabout paths. God has spoken His words very clearly, so you don’t need to worry about deciding how you ought to act. Is this not wisdom? Do you understand now? Let Me tell you: The greatest wisdom is to look to God and rely on God in all things. This is not recognized by ordinary people. People all think that attending more gatherings, listening to more sermons, fellowshipping more with their brothers and sisters, forsaking more, suffering more, and paying more of a price will earn them God’s approval and salvation. They think practicing this way is the greatest wisdom, but they neglect the biggest matter: looking to God and relying on God. They regard petty human cleverness as wisdom, and ignore the ultimate effect that their actions are supposed to achieve. This is a mistake. Regardless of how much truth one understands, how many duties one has performed, how much one has experienced while performing those duties, how great or small one’s stature is, or what sort of environment one is in, what one cannot do without is that one must look to God and rely on Him in everything one does. This is the greatest sort of wisdom. Why do I say this is the greatest wisdom? Even if one has come to understand some truths, will it do if one does not rely on God? Some people have believed in God for many years, and they have experienced several trials, have some practical experience, understand some truth, and have some practical knowledge of the truth, but they do not know to rely on God, nor do they understand how to look to and rely on Him. Do such people possess wisdom? They are the most foolish of people, and are the sort who think themselves clever; they do not fear God and shun evil. Some people say, “I understand many truths and possess the truth realities. It’s okay just to do things in a principled manner. I am loyal to God, and I know how to get close to Him. Isn’t it enough that I practice the truth when things befall me? There isn’t any need to pray to God or look to God.” Practicing the truth is correct, but there are many times and situations wherein people do not know what truth and what truth principles are being touched upon. All those with practical experience know this. For example, when you encounter some issue, you might not know what truth this issue touches on, or how the truth relevant to this issue should be practiced or applied. What should you do at times like these? No matter how much practical experience you have, you cannot understand the truth principles in all situations. No matter how long you have believed in God, how many things you have experienced, and how much pruning or disciplining you have experienced, even if you understand the truth, do you dare to say that you are the truth? Do you dare to say that you are the source of the truth? Some people say, “I know by heart all those well-known utterances and passages in the book, The Word Appears in the Flesh; I don’t need to rely on God or look to Him. When the time comes, I’ll do just fine by relying on these words of God.” The words you have memorized are static, yet the environments you encounter—as well as your states—are dynamic. You are able to spout words and doctrines, but can do nothing with them when something happens to you, which proves that you do not understand the truth. No matter how good you are at reciting words and doctrines, this does not mean that you understand the truth, much less that you are able to practice the truth. Thus, there is a very important lesson to be learned here. And what is this lesson? It is that people need to look to God in all things, and that by doing so, they can achieve a reliance on God. Only by relying on God will they have a path to follow and the work of the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, you can do something correctly and without violating the truth, but if you do not rely on God, then your actions are but good deeds of man, and cannot satisfy God. Because people have such a shallow comprehension of the truth, they are likely to follow regulations and cling obstinately to words and doctrines by using that same truth when facing various situations. It is possible that they may complete many matters in general conformity with the truth principles, but God’s guidance cannot be seen in this, nor can the work of the Holy Spirit. There is a serious problem here, which is that people do many things in dependence on their experience and the regulations they have understood, and on certain human imaginings. It is hard to achieve true prayer to God and to truly look to God and rely on Him in all that they do. Even if one understands the will of God, it is hard to achieve the effect of acting as guided by God, and according to the truth principles. For this reason, I say that the greatest wisdom is to look to God and rely on Him in all things.

How can people practice looking to God and relying on God in all things? Some people say, “I am young, my stature is small, and I’ve believed in God for a short time. I don’t know how to practice looking to God and relying on God when something happens.” Is this a problem? There are many difficulties in believing in God, and you need to go through many tribulations, trials, and pains. All these things require looking to God and relying on God to get through the difficult times. If you cannot practice looking to God and relying on God, you won’t be able to get through difficulties, and you won’t be able to follow God. Looking to God and relying on God is not an empty doctrine, nor is it a mantra for believing in God. Rather, it is a key truth, a truth you must possess to believe in and follow God. Some people say, “Looking to God and relying on God only applies when a major event happens. For example, you only need to look to God and rely on God when faced with tribulations, trials, arrest, and persecution, or when you encounter difficulties in your duties, or when you are pruned. There is no need to look to God and rely on God for the trivial matters of personal life, because God doesn’t care about them.” Is this statement right? It is definitely not right. There is a deviation here. It is necessary to look to God in major matters, but can you handle the trivial things and small matters in life without principles? In matters such as dressing and eating, can you act without principles? Certainly not. What about in your dealings with people and matters? Certainly not. Even in daily life and trivial matters, you must at least have principles to be able to live out a human likeness. Problems involving principles are problems involving the truth. Can people solve them by themselves? Of course not. So, you have to look to God and rely on God. Only when you gain God’s enlightenment and understand the truth can these trivial problems be solved. If you don’t look to God and rely on God, do you think these issues involving principles can be resolved? Certainly not easily. It can be said that in all things that people can’t see clearly and that require people to seek the truth, they must look to God and rely on God. No matter how big or small, any problem that needs to be solved with the truth requires looking to God and relying on God. This is a necessity. Even if people understand the truth and can solve problems on their own, these understandings and solutions are limited and superficial. If people don’t look to God and rely on God, their entry can never be very deep. For example, if you are sick today, and it affects the performance of your duty, you need to pray on this matter and say, “God, I don’t feel well today, I can’t eat, and this is affecting the performance of my duty. I have to examine myself. What is the real reason I am sick? Am I being disciplined by God for not being loyal in my duty? God, I ask You to enlighten and guide me.” You must cry out like this. This is looking to God. However, when you look to God, you cannot simply follow formalities and abide by regulations. If you don’t seek the truth to resolve problems, you will delay things. After you pray to God and look to God, you should still live your life as you ought to, without delaying the duty that is yours to perform. If you are sick, you should see a doctor, and this is proper. At the same time, you must pray, reflect on yourself, and seek the truth to resolve the problem. Only practicing like this is completely appropriate. For certain things, if people know how to do them properly, then they should do them. This is how people should cooperate. However, whether the desired effect and goal can be fully achieved in these matters depends on looking to God and relying on God. In problems that people can’t see clearly and can’t handle well by themselves, they must all the more look to God and seek the truth to solve them. The ability to do this is what people with normal humanity should possess. There are many lessons to be learned in looking to God. In the process of looking to God, you may receive the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, and you will have a way, or if God’s word comes upon you, you will know how to cooperate, or perhaps God will arrange some situations for you to learn lessons, in which there are God’s good intentions. In the process of looking to God, you will see God’s guidance and leadership, and these will help you learn many lessons and gain a better understanding of God. This is the effect achieved by looking to God. Therefore, looking to God is a lesson that those who follow God must often learn, and it is something they will never finish experiencing in a lifetime. There are many people whose experience is too shallow and cannot see God’s actions, so they think, “There are many small things that I can do myself and in which I don’t need to look to God.” This is wrong. Some small things lead to big things, and God’s will is hidden in some small things. Many people ignore the small things, and as a result, they find themselves having major setbacks due to small matters. Those who truly have God-fearing hearts, in both big and small matters, will look to God, pray to God, entrust everything to God, and then see how God leads and guides them. Once you have such experience, you will be able to look to God in all things, and the more you experience this, the more you will feel that looking to God in all things is very practical. When you look to God on a matter, it is possible that God will not give you a feeling, clear meaning, or much less, clear instructions, but He will make you understand an idea with an exact relevance to the matter, and this is God guiding you using a different method and giving you a way. If you can sense and understand this, you will benefit. You may not understand anything in the moment, but you must continue to pray and look to God. There is nothing wrong with this, and sooner or later you will be enlightened. Practicing this way does not mean abiding by regulations. Instead, it is meeting the needs of the spirit, and it is how people should practice. You may not receive enlightenment and guidance every time you pray to God and look to God, but people must practice this way, and if they want to understand the truth, they need to practice this way. This is the normal state of life and spirit, and only in this way can people maintain a normal relationship with God, so that their hearts are close to God. It can therefore be said that looking to God is the normal interaction with God in people’s hearts. Regardless of whether you can receive God’s enlightenment and guidance, you should pray to God and look to God in all things. This is also the inevitable way to live before God. When people believe in God and follow God, they should have the state of mind of always looking to God. This is the state of mind that people with normal humanity should possess. Sometimes, looking to God does not mean asking God to do something using specific words, or asking Him for specific guidance or protection. Rather, it is that when people encounter some issue, they are able to call on Him sincerely. So, what is God doing there when people call on Him? When someone’s heart stirs and they have this thought: “Oh God, I can’t do this myself, I don’t know how to do it, and I feel weak and negative…,” when this thought arises in them, does God not know about it? When this thought arises in people, are their hearts sincere? When they call on God sincerely in this way, does God assent to help them? Despite the fact that they may not have spoken a word, they show sincerity, and so God assents to help them. When someone encounters an especially thorny difficulty, when they have no one to turn to, and when they feel particularly helpless, they put their only hope in God. What are their prayers like? What is their state of mind? Are they sincere? Is there any adulteration at that time? It is only when you trust God as though He were the last straw that you clutch onto, hoping that He will help you, that your heart is sincere. Though you may not have said much, your heart has already stirred. That is, you give your sincere heart to God, and God listens. When God listens, He sees your difficulties, and He will enlighten you, guide you, and help you. When is man’s heart at its most sincere? It is most sincere when man looks to God when there is no way out. The most important thing to possess in looking to God is a sincere heart. You must be in a state of truly needing God. That is to say, people’s hearts must at least be sincere, not perfunctory; they should not move only their mouths and not their hearts. If you muddle through the act of speaking to God, but your heart isn’t moved, and what you mean is, “I have made my own plans already, and God, I’m just notifying You. I will go through with them regardless of whether or not You agree. I’m just going through the motions,” then this means trouble. You are deceiving and toying with God, and this is also an expression of irreverence for God. How will God treat you after this? God will ignore you and put you aside, and you will be completely humiliated. If you don’t actively seek God and don’t make an effort in the truth, you will be eliminated.

Most people who believe in God are in this state. Most of the time, they live in an unthinking, unconscious condition, and when nothing out of the ordinary has happened, when they are not in any great difficulty, they do not know to pray to God or rely on Him; they do not seek the truth in the face of regular problems, but live by their own knowledge, doctrines, and inclinations. They are well aware that the right thing to do is to rely on God, but most of the time they rely on themselves and the beneficial conditions and environments around them, as well as on any people, events, and things that are to their advantage. This is what people are best at. What they are worst at is relying on God and looking to Him, because they feel looking to God to be too much of a bother, that no matter how they pray to God, they will still receive no enlightenment, illumination, or immediate answer; so they figure they’ll save themselves the trouble and go and find a person to fix the problem. Thus, in this aspect of their lessons, people perform the worst, and their entry into it is the shallowest. If you do not learn how to look to and rely on God, you will never see God work in you, guide you, or enlighten you. If you cannot see these things, then questions such as “whether God exists and whether He guides everything in the life of mankind” will, in the depths of your heart, end with a question mark rather than a period or an exclamation point. “Does God guide everything in the life of mankind?” “Does God scrutinize the depths of man’s heart?” If that is how you think, you’re in trouble. For what reason do you make these into questions? If you do not truly rely on or look to God, you will not be able to give rise to genuine faith in Him. If you cannot give rise to genuine faith in Him, then for you, those question marks will forever be there, accompanying everything God does, and there will be no periods. When you are not busy, ask yourself: “‘I believe that God is the Sovereign of all things’—is that followed by a question mark, a period, or an exclamation point?” When you ponder on this, you will not be able to say exactly which state you are in for some time. After you’ve gained some experience, you will be able to see things clearly and say with certainty: “God is indeed the Sovereign of all things!!!” This will be followed by three exclamation points, and it will be because you truly have knowledge of God’s sovereignty, without any doubts. Which of these states are you in? Looking at your current states and statures, it is clear that there are mostly question marks, and there are quite a lot of them. This signifies that you don’t understand any of the truth, and that there are still doubts in your heart. When people have a lot of doubts about God, they are already on the brink of danger. They have the potential to fall and betray God at any time. And why do I say that people are small in stature? On what basis is the size of a person’s stature determined? It is determined by how much true faith in God you possess and how much real knowledge you have. And how much do you have? Have you examined these things before? There are many young people who have come to believe in God through their parents. They have learned some doctrines about belief in God from their parents, and they think that believing in God is a good thing, that it is a positive thing, but they have yet to really understand, or experience and verify the truths that believers in God ought to understand. Therefore, they have so many question marks and notions. Most of the words that come from their mouths are not affirmations or exclamations, they are questions. This is because they have too many deficiencies, and cannot see through to things, and it is hard to say whether they will be able to stand firm. It is normal for you to have many question marks in your 20s and 30s, but after you have performed your duty for some time, how many of these question marks will you be able to get rid of? Will you be able to change these question marks into exclamation points? This will depend on your experience. Is this important or not? (It’s important.) This is so important! What did I just say is the greatest wisdom? (To look to God and to rely on Him in all things.) When they hear this, some people say: “That answer is too simple and too common. It is a worn-out saying, and nobody says it nowadays.” Looking to God may sound like an obvious way of practicing, but it is a lesson that every follower of God should study and enter into during their lifetime. Did Job look to God when he was in his 70s? (Yes.) And how did he look to God? What were the specific manifestations of him looking to God? When his possessions and his children were taken from him, how did he look to God? He prayed in his heart, and he did some things externally, and what is written in the Bible about it? (“Then Job … rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down on the ground, and worshiped” (Job 1:20).) He dropped to the ground and worshiped. That is a manifestation of looking to God! This was incredibly devout. Is this something that you could do? (We are not able to do it yet.) Then are you willing to do it? (Yes.) If one can rise to the level of Job, fear God and shun evil, and become a blameless person, then they are perfect! But while you are doing your duty, you must have the will to endure hardship. You must keep striving toward the truth. Once you can understand the truth and handle matters according to the principles, you will have fulfilled God’s requirements. You just have to remember this.

January 1, 2015