Words on How to Experience Failures, Falls, Trials, and Refinement (Excerpt 61)
Every person, to a greater or lesser extent, has committed transgressions. When you do not know that something is a transgression, you will regard it with a hazy state of mind, and perhaps you will still cling to your own opinions, practices, and ways of understanding it—but, one day, whether through reading God’s words, fellowshipping with your brothers and sisters, or by God’s revelation, you will learn that this thing is a transgression, and an offense against God. What will your attitude be then? Will you be truly remorseful, or will you be reasoning and arguing, clinging to your own ideas, believing that although what you did does not accord with the truth, it also isn’t that big of a problem? This relates to the attitude that you have toward God. What attitude did David have toward his transgression? (Remorse.) Remorse—which means that he hated himself in his heart, and would never commit that transgression again. So, what did he do? He prayed, asking God to punish him, and said: “If I make this mistake again, may God punish me and cause me to die!” Such was his resolve; that was true remorse. Can ordinary people achieve this? For ordinary people, if they do not try to reason or if they can tacitly admit fault then that is already quite good. Is being unwilling to bring up the matter again for fear of losing face true remorse? It is being distressed and upset over losing face, not remorse. True remorse is hating oneself for having done evil, feeling pain and discomfort for having been capable of doing evil, blaming oneself, and even cursing oneself. It is being able to vow afterward to never do such evil again and being willing to accept God’s punishment and to suffer a miserable death if they ever do evil again. This is true remorse. If one always feels in their heart that they have done no evil, and that their actions merely didn’t accord with the principles or were caused by a lack of wisdom, and they believe that if they act in secret then nothing will go wrong, can they feel true remorse thinking this way? Absolutely not, because they do not know the essence of their own evil. Even if they loathe themselves a little bit, they only hate themselves for being unwise, and for not handling the situation well. They do not actually realize that the reason they are able to do evil is due to a problem with their nature essence, that it is due to their lack of humanity, their bad disposition, and immorality. People like this will never have true remorse. Why do people need to reflect on themselves before God when they have done something wrong or committed transgressions? This is because knowing one’s own nature essence is not easy. Admitting that one has made a mistake and knowing where the mistake lies is easy to do. However, it is not easy to know the source of one’s mistakes and exactly what kind of disposition was revealed. Therefore, when most people have done something wrong, they only admit that they were wrong, but they do not feel remorse in their hearts, nor do they hate themselves. In this way, they fall short of true repentance. To achieve true repentance, one must abandon the evil that they have done and be able to guarantee that they will never do it again. Only then can true repentance be achieved. If you always approach matters based on your own notions and imaginings, never reflecting or knowing yourself, and you just go through the motions in a perfunctory way, then you have not really repented and you have not truly changed at all. If God wants to reveal you, how should you approach this? What will your attitude be? (I will accept God’s punishment.) Accepting God’s punishment—this is the type of attitude you must have. At the same time, you must accept God’s scrutiny. It is better this way, so that you can truly know yourself and truly repent. If a person does not have true remorse, it will be impossible for them to stop doing evil. At any time and any place, they will be capable of returning to their old ways, of living according to their satanic disposition, and of even making the same mistakes time and time again. Thus, they are not a person who has truly repented. In this way, they are thoroughly revealed. So, what can people do to completely free themselves from transgressions? They must seek the truth to solve problems and they must also be able to practice the truth. This is the correct attitude for people to have toward the truth. How should people practice the truth, then? No matter what temptations or trials you encounter, you must truly pray to God in your heart and submit to God’s orchestrations. Some trials are also temptations—why does God allow you to encounter such things? It is not accidental nor by chance that God permits such things to happen to you. It is God testing and inspecting you. If you do not accept this inspection, if you do not pay attention to this matter, is your attitude toward God not revealed at this time? What is your attitude toward God? If you have an indifferent and contemptuous attitude toward the environments God furnishes for you and the trials God gives you, and you neither pray nor seek, nor find a path of practice through it, this reveals that you do not have a submissive attitude toward God. How can God save such a person? Is it possible for them to be made perfect by God? Absolutely not. This is because you do not have a submissive attitude toward God, and even if God arranges an environment for you, you will not experience it, and you will not cooperate with it. This shows your contempt for God, that you do not take God’s work seriously, and that you are even capable of putting aside God’s words and truths, which means that you are not experiencing the work of God. In that case, how can you achieve salvation? Those who do not love the truth cannot experience God’s work. There is no way to achieve salvation while believing in God in this manner. This means that one’s attitude toward God and the truth is very important and that it is directly related to whether one can be saved. People who do not pay attention to this are foolish and ignorant.
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