A Corrupt Disposition Can Only Be Resolved by Accepting the Truth (Part Two)
The process of people gaining the truth is like a brave warrior stepping onto the battlefield, ready to fight against all manner of enemies at any moment. The enemies of those pursuing the truth are the various corrupt dispositions of Satan. These people are fighting with their corrupt flesh; in essence, they are battling with Satan. And what weapon is used to fight with Satan? Of course, it’s the truth, it’s following the word of God. To defeat Satan, what aspect of the truth must one first practice? It’s submitting to God, to His word, and to the truth. This is the lesson that one must enter into first when battling Satan. If you are unable to accept things that befall you from God, you won’t be able to submit before God, and therefore you won’t be able to quiet yourself before God to pray or to seek the truth. If you can’t pray to God or seek the truth, you will not understand the truth, or why God would place you in those situations, with those people, events, and things—you will be mired in confusion. If you cannot seek the truth, you cannot overcome your corrupt disposition. Only by defeating your corrupt disposition and your corrupt flesh may you humiliate Satan and devils of the spiritual realm. Battling Satan mostly depends on seeking the truth; if you do not understand the truth, then any problem or notion that arises in you can make you weak and negative. If your revelations of corrupt dispositions are never resolved, you are likely to fall down and fail, and it will be hard for you to stand up again. Some stumble when they encounter temptation, some become negative when faced with a painful illness, and some fall flat on their face when met with a trial. These are the consequences of never pursuing the truth, and of not seeking the truth to resolve the corrupt dispositions that one reveals. What do you think: Do satanic dispositions cause people a lot of trouble? (Yes.) How much trouble? (They hinder people from coming before God, and render them unable to submit to God.) If people cannot submit to God, what will they live by? (They will live by satanic, corrupt dispositions.) When people live by satanic, corrupt dispositions, they often reveal notions and become hot-headed. For instance, if you do something wrong and a brother or sister exposes you or prunes you, how should you submit to God and seek the truth? There’s a lesson to be learned here. Perhaps you start pondering on this, thinking: “That person usually looks down on me, and this time they’ve found something to use against me. They’re targeting me, so I’m not going to play nice. I’m not to be messed with!” Is this not hot-headedness? (It is.) What is hot-headedness? (It is when a person’s satanic disposition bursts forth when their interests are hurt or their fame, gain and status are harmed, and they say something or do something impulsively. That is my understanding of what hot-headedness means.) That understanding is basically correct. Who can add to that? (When something befalls a person, and they don’t seek the truth, and instead release those things that naturally exist within them, that is hot-headedness.) The word “naturally” she used is very apt. After people were corrupted by Satan, when their most natural, most primitive disposition that comes from their very root is exposed, it’s called hot-headedness. It’s the thing that doesn’t go through thought, mental processing, pondering, or packaging, but just comes out. That is hot-headedness. Hot-headedness is what pours forth from people who live within corrupt dispositions. So why is it the things that are naturally revealed from man’s nature are not in line with the truth? Why do people reveal hot-headedness? What’s the reason? It is caused by man’s satanic nature. Man’s innate disposition belongs to hot-headedness. When damage is done to a person’s interests, vainglory, or pride, if they do not understand the truth or have the truth reality, they will let their corrupt disposition dictate their treatment of that damage, and they will be impulsive and act rashly. What they manifest and reveal then is hot-headedness. Is hot-headedness a positive thing or a negative thing? It is obviously a negative thing. For a person to live in a hot-headed manner is no good thing; it is liable to bring about disaster. If someone’s hot-headedness and corruption are exposed when things befall them, is that a person who seeks the truth and submits to God? Obviously, it is certain that such a person is not submissive to God. As for the various people, events, things, and environments that God arranges for people, if someone cannot accept them from God, instead coping with them and resolving them in a human way, what will result from that in the end? (God will spurn that person.) God will loathe that person, so will that be edifying for people? (No, it won’t.) They will not only lose out in their own life but will also be of no edification to others. More than that, they will humiliate God and have Him spurn them. Such a person has lost their witness and is unwelcome wherever they go. If you are a member of God’s house, yet you are always hot-headed in your actions, always expose what is natural in you, and always reveal your corrupt disposition, doing things with human means and with a corrupt, satanic disposition, the final consequence will be your doing evil and your resisting God—and if you remain unrepentant all the while and cannot tread upon the path of pursuing truth, you will have to be revealed and eliminated. Is the problem of living in reliance on a satanic disposition and not seeking the truth to resolve it not a grave one? One aspect of the problem is that one does not grow or change in their own life; beyond that, one will adversely influence others. They will not serve any good purpose in the church, and in time, they will bring great trouble to the church and to God’s chosen people, like a stinking fly that flies back and forth above a dining table, courting disgust and loathing. Do you want to be this kind of person? (No.) Well then, how should you act in order to please God, and edify others? Regardless of what corrupt disposition you have revealed, you must first calm yourself down, hurry before God in prayer, and seek the truth to resolve it. You absolutely must not continue to reveal corruption by following your own will and hot-headedness. In every second of every minute of every day of your life, whatever you do and whatever you’re thinking, God is scrutinizing and watching you. What is God observing? (What a person thinks and how they respond when they encounter the people, events, or things that God has arranged for them.) That’s right, and what is God’s objective in observing these things? (To see if this person is someone who fears God and shuns evil.) That is part of the reason. What is the main reason? Ponder on this carefully. (To see if they have a heart for seeking the truth and submitting to God.) Whether it’s fearing God and shunning evil, or seeking the truth and having a heart that submits to God, these things all touch on the question of what path one has chosen to walk. Why is God constantly scrutinizing people? It’s to see what sort of path you are walking, what your life goals and direction are, whether you’ve chosen the path of pursuing the truth or the path of the hypocritical Pharisees. It’s to see which of these paths you are on exactly. If you’ve chosen the right path, God will guide you, enlighten you, supply you and support you. If you’ve chosen the wrong road, it shows that you’ve completely turned your back on God, so He will naturally abandon you.
There are people who always preach the words and doctrines and violate the truth principles in everything they do, even doing things that hurt the interests of the house of God, but why are they not disciplined or reproached? Some people cannot understand this issue. Let Me tell you, God has already given up on people like this. No matter how many years a person has been a believer, if God decides to abandon this person, then that is a gravely serious matter! What is God’s will and desire, regarding the sort of path He hopes people will walk? When God puts people in certain situations, does He hope they will submit or rebel? Does He hope that they will seek and gain the truth, or ignore it and come to a standstill? What is God’s attitude toward this? What does He expect of people? He hopes that they will be able to submit and actively cooperate with His work, without becoming negative, slacking off, or ignoring it. Some people are lukewarm in their duties: When they are assigned a task, they will do it as they see fit, but they will not seek the truth or God’s will. They feel that there is nothing wrong with this approach—since they are not violating any administrative decrees, offending God’s disposition, or disrupting or disturbing the church’s work, and they are still doing their duty, they feel that they will not be condemned. What do you think of this sort of attitude? (It’s not good. It’s a negative, passive, lukewarm attitude, which God detests.) What is a lukewarm attitude? Why does God detest it? What is the essence of this kind of attitude? (I can share a little bit of my experience of this. In my duty recently, I was following my own will and violating the principles. After being pruned, I didn’t self-reflect, and I misunderstood God and guarded against Him. My heart was closed off to God, I didn’t want to get close to Him, and I didn’t pray to Him. My attitude was lukewarm, and it made me negative, passive, and miserable during that time. Because once my heart was closed to God, it was as if the most important pillar of my life had crumbled and I was left feeling miserable. From the outside, I appeared to be doing my duty without engaging in any clearly rebellious behavior, but I received no enlightenment from the Holy Spirit and I did not have a mindset of actively cooperating with God. Maintaining this lukewarm, negative, and unmotivated attitude was the same as slowly killing myself. People who turn away from God are like a tree whose roots have died. With its life-supply cut off, the branches and leaves gradually wither away until the entire tree is dead.) That was very well explained. Perhaps the majority of people are in this state: They do whatever is asked of them, without causing trouble, or doing evil, or disturbing things—they are just lukewarm. Why does God detest this kind of attitude? What is the essence shown by such an attitude? It’s negative, defiant, and a rejection of the truth. Would you say it’s God who renounces people first, or people who first renounce God? (People do it first.) If you renounce God first, your heart becomes closed off to God, which is a serious problem. “Closed off” is one way of putting it. What’s really happening is people sealing off their hearts, locking God out, which means: “I don’t want You anymore. I am severing all ties with You, and putting a stop to all contact between us.” When a created being has this kind of attitude toward their Creator, how does God handle this? What is His attitude? When He sees people in such a state, does He feel joy, detestation, or sadness? First, He feels sadness. When He sees people become too numb and utterly unwilling to accept the truth, God feels disappointed, and then He detests them. When a person’s heart is sealed off from God, how will He approach this? (God will orchestrate some situations that allow them to understand His will and open their heart to Him.) Yes, this is one of God’s active approaches, He sometimes does things like that, but sometimes He does not. Sometimes, He will hide His face and bide His time, waiting for you to open your heart to Him. When you have admitted Him into your heart and are able to accept the truth, He will continue to have mercy on you and enlighten you. However, in general, if you have this sort of attitude, with your heart fully sealed off from God, rejecting a normal relationship with Him, rejecting all contact with Him, then you are rejecting God’s sovereignty over you and His guidance. This is the same as rejecting Him as your God, and not wanting Him to be your Lord. If you reject Him as your God and Lord, can He still work on you? (No.) Then all He can do is desert you. Only after you understand what has happened, and realize the error of your ways, and know to repent can God’s work on you begin again. So, when faced with a lukewarm attitude like this, God will certainly not work, He will set people like this aside. Do you have any experience of this? Is such a condition peaceful and joyous, or unbearable and miserable? (Unbearable and miserable.) How miserable? (It’s like being a walking corpse. It’s a thoughtless, soulless existence like that of a beast.) If God is not in someone’s heart, then their heart is empty; it is the same as them having no spirit. Doesn’t this mean that they have become a spiritless dead person? How terrifying! A person can betray God anywhere and at any time. With a little bit of carelessness, they can deny God in their heart, after which their condition immediately changes: The state of their spirit immediately declines, they no longer feel God’s presence, and their dependence on God and relationship with Him disappear entirely, just like a heart that has stopped beating. This is a dangerous situation. What can be done with such a state? You need to have the right attitude and promptly pray to God and repent. If a person always lives in a negative, defiant state, a state in which they have been completely deserted by God and cannot reach Him, that is dangerous! Have you realized what undesirable consequences this danger can lead to? It’s not only a matter of the losses one may experience—what other consequences might there be? (They might be possessed by evil spirits.) That is one. There are many other possibilities. (They might commit a grave evil and be revealed and eliminated by God.) This is also possible. Anything else? (They may become more and more distant in their relationship with God.) Now, if this condition persists, do you think this person will eventually consider not believing in God anymore? (They will.) Isn’t that terrifying? (It is.) If a person has this evil desire to abandon their belief, that is the most terrifying thing, because they have already betrayed God in their heart, and God will not save a person like this.
As a believer, one must maintain a normal relationship with God; this is very important. When a person’s relationship with God is normal, they will be in a good state; when their state is bad, their relationship with God will not be normal. A person’s heart will be in two completely different situations depending on whether they are in a good state or a bad state. When a person is in a good state, they will feel a certain strength in their heart, a strength that drives them to never marry, to follow God to the end no matter how much they suffer, and to remain loyal to God until the end, until death. How does this kind of resolve come about? (It comes from a sort of zeal that people possess.) Does God find this zeal acceptable? Is this sort of resolve a positive or negative thing? (Positive.) Does God find positive things acceptable? (Yes.) God scrutinizes people’s hearts. He scrutinizes what people think deep in their hearts and what their state is like there. So, when you express this kind of desire and resolve in your heart, God scrutinizes this too. Where does this resolve come from? Does it come from a person’s naturalness and hot-headedness? (No, it’s instilled in people by the work of the Holy Spirit.) That’s right. When people live in the correct state, the Holy Spirit gives them this kind of power, which allows them to have that resolve. This is a positive thing, and it is given to people by the Holy Spirit because of their cooperation and sacrifice. Do people ever happen to have this kind of faith on their own? Of course not, right? When people have just a bit of resolve to cooperate, the Holy Spirit gives them such powerful motivation! From this, what do you now see? (People must stay with God. Without God, there is only death.) “People must stay with God,” that is true. This is knowledge gained from experience. If you open your heart to God, if you have that small bit of resolve, and are able to lay your heart bare in prayer to God, He will give you this power. This power will last your entire life and allow you to have such deep resolve, and to say, “I offer my entire life to God, I will spend it all expending myself for Him and living for Him!” It’s a fact; this is how people think, and what they want to do. However, if someone follows God and does their duty relying on their own mind, their own thoughts, and their own caliber and gifts, then how much strength will they have? If you don’t have the will to pursue the truth, then no amount of hard work will cut it. This inner strength cannot be achieved by man; it is given by God. How do people lose this strength? What causes this? When God is no longer in their hearts, this power disappears. When people have this strength, it is the work of the Holy Spirit, it is power given to people by God—it is all God’s doing. If your heart is sealed off from God, if you say “no” to God, and you reject His sovereignty over and orchestration of your life, as well as all the environments, people, events, and things that He has arranged around you, then you will not even have the heart to pursue the truth. When people lose God, it is indeed this terrible; this is a fact. Those who have lost God are nothing. If a person seals off their heart from God, they may even have second thoughts about believing in God, which they can reveal at any time and in any place. The most terrible part of this is that these thoughts of theirs will become stronger and stronger, to the extent that they may even regret all that they renounced and expended, and regret the resolve that they once possessed and the suffering that they endured. Their condition will be entirely different to how it was, as if they were a different person altogether. How does this happen? If a person can submit to the people, events, things, and environments that God has set out for them, they can live a peaceful and happy life. If they always try to escape the people, events, and things that God has set out, and are unwilling to submit to the environments they find themselves in, over which God has sovereignty, what condition will result from this? (Misery and darkness.) They will experience darkness, misery, agitation, constant anxiety, and sadness. Is this not a stark difference? (It is.) When people live in a good state, it’s like living in heaven, right before God. When they are in a bad state, their state grows ever darker, and God remains out of their reach. Living in a dark state is no different than living in hell. Have you ever felt the suffering of hell? Is it pleasant or unbearable? (Unbearable.) How would you describe it, in one sentence? (It’s worse than death.) Right, it’s worse than death. Dying would be much more pleasant than living, it is so torturous. You put it very well; that is the way that it is.
All of the difficulties that people face, and all of their negativity and weakness, directly relate to their corrupt dispositions. If their corrupt dispositions can be resolved, it can be said that all of the difficulties in their faith will be more or less resolved: There will be nothing holding them back from seeking the truth, they will encounter no difficulties in practicing the truth, and nothing will prevent them from submitting to God. So, resolving one’s corrupt dispositions is crucial. God asking people to pursue the truth and to be honest is related to resolving corrupt dispositions and to achieving dispositional change. The goal of seeking the truth is to resolve the problem of a corrupt disposition, and pursuing the truth is done to achieve dispositional change. So how does one seek the truth? How can one gain the truth? What did I say a while ago? (Have faith that God is sovereign over everything, and submit to the environments that He has laid out.) Yes, have faith, submit, try to learn lessons, seek the truth, and hold to your duty in the environments that God has created. If you can learn lessons from the environments that God has created, will it not be easy for you to submit? (It will.) When you seek the truth and learn your lessons, isn’t it true that you will avoid revealing a corrupt disposition and prevent yourself from exposing your hot-headedness? During this process, will you not avoid using human methods and human thinking to deal with the people, events, and things that God has set out for you? This way, will you not be in a normal state? And when you are in a normal state, will you not be able to live constantly before God? Then you’ll be safe. If you can come before God often, constantly live before Him, seek His will frequently in the environments that He has laid out for you, and submit to all the people, events, and things that He has arranged, then will you not always be living under the eyes of God, and under His care? (Yes.) When your fate is under God’s sovereignty, and being watched over and managed by Him, when you enjoy God’s protection every day, will you not be the happiest person? (That’s right.) That’s the end of our fellowship on this topic. Going forward, you can all fellowship on it together, and summarize and share your understanding of it. Figure out how to live a happy life and how to earn God’s acceptance, like Job did, so that God will hold you in His heart and say that you are a person that He loves; find out how to step onto the right path in life, like Job did, which is that of fearing God and shunning evil.
January 25, 2017
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