There are some people who are unwilling to suffer at all in their duties, who always complain whenever they encounter a problem and refuse to pay a price. What kind of attitude is that? It is a perfunctory one. If you perform your duty perfunctorily, and approach it with an irreverent attitude, what will the result be? You will perform your duty poorly, though you are capable of performing it well—your performance will not be up to standard, and God will be very dissatisfied with the attitude you have toward your duty. If you could have prayed to God, sought the truth, and put your whole heart and mind into it, if you could have cooperated in this way, then God would have prepared everything for you in advance, so that when you were handling matters, everything would fall into place, and get good results. You would not need to exert a vast amount of energy; when you did your utmost to cooperate, God would have already arranged everything for you. If you are slippery and slack off, if you do not attend properly to your duty, and always go down the wrong path, then God will not act upon you; you will lose this opportunity, and God will say, “You are no good; I cannot use you. Go stand off to the side. You like being wily and slacking off, don’t you? You like being lazy, and taking it easy, do you not? Well then, take it easy forevermore!” God will give this grace and opportunity to someone else. What do you say: Is this a loss or a win? (A loss.) It is an enormous loss!

God perfects those who truly love Him, and all those who pursue the truth, in a variety of different environments. He enables people to experience His words through different environments or trials, and to thereby gain an understanding of the truth, true knowledge of Him, and to ultimately gain the truth. If you experience God’s work in this manner, your life disposition will change, and you will be able to gain the truth and the life. How much have you gained through these years of experience? (A lot.) So, is enduring a bit of suffering and paying a bit of a price when performing your duty not worthwhile? What have you gained in return? How much of the truth have you understood? This is a priceless treasure! What do people want to gain through belief in God? Is it not to gain the truth and the life? Do you think you can gain the truth without experiencing these environments? You absolutely cannot. If, when some special difficulties befall you or you encounter some particular environments, your attitude is always to avoid them or to flee from them, to desperately try to reject them and get rid of them—if you do not want to put yourself at the mercy of God’s orchestrations, are unwilling to submit to His orchestrations and arrangements, and do not want to let the truth take charge of you—if you always want to call the shots and to control everything about yourself according to your satanic disposition, then the consequences will be that, sooner or later, God will certainly set you aside or deliver you to Satan. If people understand this matter, they must quickly turn back and follow their road in life according to the correct path that God requires. This path is the right one, and when the path is right, that means that the direction is right. There may be bumps on the road and difficulties during this period, they may stumble or sometimes get a bit disgruntled and become negative for several days. As long as they can persist in performing their duties and not delay things, these problems will all be insignificant, but they must promptly reflect on themselves, seek the truth to resolve these issues, and they absolutely must not procrastinate, throw in the towel, or give up on their duties. This is crucial. If you think to yourself, “Being negative and weak isn’t a big deal; it’s an internal matter. God doesn’t know about it. And considering how I’ve suffered in the past and the prices I’ve paid, He will surely be lenient toward me,” and if this weakness and negativity continues, and you do not seek the truth or learn lessons in the environments that God has orchestrated for you, you will lose your chances again and again, and as a result, you will miss, sabotage, and ruin all of the opportunities in which God intended to perfect you. What will be the consequence of this? Your heart will become darker and darker, you will no longer feel God in your prayers, and you will become negative to the point where your thoughts are filled with evil and betrayal. Then you will be trapped in extreme misery, feeling completely powerless and deeply upset. You will feel that you have no path or direction, and that you cannot see any light or find any hope. Is it tiring to live like this? (Yes, it is.) Those who don’t walk the bright path of pursuing the truth will forever live under Satan’s power, in perpetual sin and darkness, and with no hope. Can you understand the meaning of these words? (I must pursue the truth and perform my duty with all my heart and mind.) When a duty befalls you, and it is entrusted to you, do not think of how to avoid facing difficulties; if something’s difficult to handle, don’t put it to one side and ignore it. You must face it head-on. You must remember at all times that God is with people, and they need only pray and seek from Him if they have any difficulties, and that with God, nothing is hard. You must have this faith. Since you believe that God is the Sovereign of all things, why do you still feel afraid when something befalls you, and that you have nothing to rely on? This proves that you do not rely on God. If you do not take Him as your support and as your God, then He is not your God. In real life, regardless of what situations you encounter, you must come before God often to pray and seek the truth. Even if you understand the truth and gain something with regard to just one matter each day, it will not have been time wasted! How much time in a day are you able to come before God right now? How many times do you come before God a day? Have you attained any results? If a person seldom comes before God, their spirit will be dried up and very dark. When all is well, people stray from God and ignore Him, only seeking Him out when difficulties arise. Is this believing in God? Is this experiencing God’s work? These are the manifestations of disbelievers. With this kind of belief in God, it is impossible to gain the truth and life.

When people do not understand or practice the truth, they often live amid the corrupt dispositions of Satan. They live within various satanic traps, thinking about their own future, pride, status, and other interests, and racking their brains over these things. But if you apply this attitude to your duty, to seeking and pursuing the truth, then you can gain the truth. For example, you rack your brains for the sake of a trifling personal gain, you think about it carefully and meticulously, planning everything to perfection, putting a great deal of thought and energy into it. If you were to put this same energy into performing your duty and into seeking the truth to resolve problems, you would see that God has a different attitude toward you. People constantly complain about God: “Why is He good to others but not to me? Why does He never enlighten me? Why am I always weak? Why am I not as good as them?” Why is this? God does not show favoritism. If you do not come before God, and always want to resolve things that befall you on your own, He will not enlighten you. He will wait until you come to pray and beseech Him, then He will grant it to you. What kind of people does God like? What is God waiting for people to ask from Him? Does He want them to ask for money, comfort, fame, gain, and pleasure, like those shameless people? God dislikes it when people ask Him for such things. Those who seek these things from God are shameless, they are the lowest of all people, and God does not want them. He wants people who are able to awaken from sin, and to seek and accept the truth from Him—these are the kinds of people who He finds acceptable. You should pray like this: “Oh God, I have been deeply corrupted by Satan, and I often live amid my corrupt dispositions. I am unable to overcome the various temptations of reputation and status, and I do not know how to handle them. I lack understanding of the truth principles. I beg You to enlighten and guide me,” and “I am willing to perform my duty, but I feel that I am inadequate—for one thing, my stature is too small, and for another, I lack an understanding of this field. I am worried that I won’t do things well. I beg You for Your guidance and help.” God is waiting for you to come and seek the truth. When you come before God seeking with an honest heart, He will enlighten and illuminate you, and you will then have a path and know how to perform your duty. If you always put in effort with regard to the truth, and bring your true state before God in prayer, and ask for God’s guidance and grace, then in this way you will gradually come to understand and practice the truth, and what you live out shall have human likeness, and normal humanity, and the truth reality. If you are not considerate of God’s intentions, and do not pursue the truth, and often plan, contemplate, put thought and hard work into, and even give your life for your various interests, doing whatever it takes for them, then you might gain people’s respect, as well as different benefits and forms of pride—but which is more important, these things or the truth? (The truth.) People understand this doctrine, yet they do not pursue the truth, they value their own interests and status. So, do they truly understand it, or is this a false understanding? (It is a false understanding.) They are, in fact, foolish. They do not see the matter clearly. When they are capable of seeing this clearly, they will have gained a little stature. This requires them to pursue the truth, to expend effort on the word of God; they cannot be muddleheaded and careless. If you do not pursue the truth and a day comes when God says, “God has finished speaking His words, He wishes to say nothing more to this mankind, and to do nothing more, and the time has come to inspect the work of man,” then you are destined to be eliminated. No matter how great your backers are, how many gifts and talents you possess, how educated you are, or how much prestige you have, or how prominent your position in this world is, none of these things will be of any use. At that time, you will realize the preciousness and importance of the truth, you will understand that if you have not gained the truth, you have nothing to do with God, and you will know how pitiful and tragic it is to believe in God without gaining the truth. Nowadays, many people already have a faint sense of this in their hearts, but this feeling has not yet aroused a determination in them to pursue the truth. They have not felt the preciousness and importance of the truth deep within their hearts. A little awareness is not enough; one must truly see the essence of this matter clearly. When you do so, you will know which aspect of the truth to use to resolve this problem. Only the truth can resolve the various difficulties that people face, and resolve their various distorted thoughts, narrowed-minded views, depraved dispositions, as well as various problems to do with corruption. By just pursuing the truth and continually using the truth to resolve problems, you will be able to cast off your corrupt dispositions and achieve submission to God. If you only rely on human methods and human restraint to resolve whatever problems befall you, you will never be able to resolve these difficulties and corrupt dispositions. Some people say, “If I read God’s words more, and spend several hours each day reading them, will I definitely be able to achieve dispositional change?” It depends on how you read God’s words and whether you can understand the truth and put it into practice. If you merely go through the motions when reading His words and do not pursue the truth, then you will not gain the truth, and if you do not gain the truth, your life disposition absolutely will not change. In summary, one absolutely must pursue the truth, and one must pursue the truth and practice it in order to achieve dispositional change. Simply reading God’s words without practicing the truth will never do. Being like the Pharisees, who specialized in preaching the word of God to others and telling them how to put it into practice, but did not do so themselves, is the incorrect path. God demands that people read His word more so that they can understand the truth, practice the truth, and live out the truth reality. God asking people to enter into the truth reality, follow His way, and walk the correct path in life of pursuing the truth, relates directly to His demand that people practice giving all of their hearts and strength when performing their duties. In following God, people must experience His work through the performance of their duties in order to be able to attain salvation and be perfected.