In Believing in God, What Is Most Important Is to Practice and Experience His Words (Part One)
When it comes to your faith in God, in addition to performing your duty properly, what is key is to understand the truth, enter the truth reality, and make more effort with life entry. No matter what happens, there are lessons to be learned, so do not let it lightly pass you by. You should fellowship about it with each other, and then you will be enlightened and illuminated by the Holy Spirit, and you will be able to understand the truth. Through fellowship, you will have a path of practice and know how to experience God’s work, and without you realizing it, some of your problems will be resolved, there will be fewer and fewer things you cannot see clearly, and you will understand more and more of the truth. In this way, your stature will grow without you realizing it. You must take the initiative to strive for the truth and put your heart into the truth. Some people say, “I have believed in God for several years and understood much doctrine. I now have a foundation. Now, life in our church overseas is good, the brothers and sisters gather to fellowship matters of faith in God all day long, and I am thus influenced by what I see and hear, and am nourished by it—and that’s enough. I don’t need to put effort into solving the problems of my own life entry, or problems of my own rebelliousness. If each day, I abide by my schedule to pray, eat and drink the words of God, sing hymns, perform my duty, and fulfill the duty I am supposed to, I will naturally grow in life.” This is what those confused believers think. These people do not accept the truth at all. They merely engage in religious rituals, speak eloquently, shout empty slogans, speak words and doctrines and feel that they have done well. As a result, while other people can practice some truth and achieve some change, these confused believers have no experiential testimony at all. They can’t even speak about any knowledge of themselves. They end up empty-handed and gaining nothing. Aren’t they impoverished and pitiful? No path to achieving salvation is more real or practical than accepting and pursuing the truth. If you cannot gain the truth, your belief in God is empty. Those who speak empty words and doctrines, who always parrot slogans, say high-sounding things, follow regulations, and never focus on practicing the truth gain nothing, no matter how many years they believe. Who are the people who gain something? Those who perform their duty sincerely and are willing to practice the truth, who treat what God has entrusted to them as their mission, who gladly spend their whole lives expending for God and do not scheme for their own sakes, whose feet are firmly on the ground and who obey God’s orchestrations. They are able to grasp the truth principles while performing their duty and try hard to do everything properly, allowing them to achieve the effect of testimony to God, and satisfy God’s will. When they encounter difficulties while performing their duty, they pray to God and try to fathom God’s will, they are able to obey the orchestrations and arrangements that come from God, and in all they do, they seek and practice the truth. They do not parrot slogans or say high-sounding things, but focus only on doing things with their feet firmly on the ground, and on meticulously following principles. They put their heart in everything they do, and learn to appreciate everything with their whole heart, and in many matters, they are able to practice the truth, after which they acquire knowledge and understanding, and they are able to learn lessons and truly gain something. And when they have incorrect thoughts or mistaken states, they pray to God and seek the truth to resolve them; no matter what truths they understand, they have an appreciation of them in their hearts, and are able to speak of their experiential testimony. Such people ultimately gain the truth. Those who are careless and shallow never think about how to practice the truth. They only focus on exerting effort and doing things, and on exhibiting themselves and showing off, but they never seek how to practice the truth, which makes it difficult for them to obtain the truth. Think about it, what kind of people can enter into the truth realities? (Those with their feet on the ground, who are pragmatic and put their heart into things.) People with their feet on the ground, who put their heart into things, and have a heart: such people pay more attention to reality and to the usage of the truth principles when they act. Also, in all things they pay attention to practicalities, they are pragmatic, and they like positive things, the truth, and practical things. It is people like this who ultimately understand and gain the truth. Which type of person are you? (Not practical, one who always wants to do things for the sake of appearances, and relies on guile.) Can anything be gained by doing this? (No.) Have you found a way to solve your problems? If you can realize it and start to turn things around, will you know if your notions, imaginings and perspective on things have changed? (I feel they have changed somewhat.) As long as there are results and progress, you should fellowship on it and let others be edified. Although your experience is limited, it is still an experience of growth in life. The process of growth in life is your experience of believing in God, of your life growing through experiencing the word of God. These experiences are the most precious.
Since they all believe in God, read the words of God, and do their duties, why is it that after a few years people become different from one another, highs and lows emerge, and people’s true colors are revealed? Truly, each becomes sorted according to its kind. Some people can talk about their experiential testimony, while others have no experiential testimony at all. Some people are able to understand many truths and enter into reality, while others have not obtained any of the truth or changed their disposition in the slightest. Some people get results in their duties, they are able to seek the truth to solve problems, and they gradually perform their duties adequately. Some people are slippery and slack off while performing their duties, merely going through the motions, and do not put the truth into practice even if they understand it. Since they all attend gatherings, read the words of God, and do their duties, why are the results different? Why are some people able to embark on the path of pursuing the truth while others go their own way? Why are some people able to accept the truth while others cannot? How can this be? Why are some people able to be accepting and obedient when faced with being pruned, while others feel resistant, argue, rebel, and even make a scene? They all eat and drink God’s words at gatherings, listen to sermons and fellowship, live church life, and perform their duties, so why is there such a large difference between them? Can you see through to this problem? This is the difference between good and bad humanity, and it is directly related to whether or not people love the truth. In fact, regardless of how a person’s caliber is, so long as they can accept the truth, do their duty diligently, and reflect and know themselves, they will have life entry, experience true change, and be able to perform their duty adequately. If you are not assiduous in reading God’s words, and you do not understand the truth, then you cannot reflect on yourself; you will merely be satisfied with making a token effort and committing no evils or transgressions, and use this as capital. You will pass each day in a muddle, live in a state of confusion, merely do things on schedule, never use your heart to examine yourself or put effort into knowing yourself; you will always be perfunctory. In this way, you will never perform your duty to an acceptable standard. To put all your effort into something, you must first put all your heart into it; only when you first put all your heart into something can you put all your effort into it, and do your best. Today, there are those who have begun to be assiduous in performing their duty, they have begun to think about how to properly perform the duty of a created being in order to satisfy God’s heart. They are not negative and lazy, they do not passively wait for the Above to issue orders, but take some initiative. Judging by your performance of your duty, you are a little more effective than before, and although it is still below standard, there has been a little growth—which is good. But you must not be satisfied with the status quo, you must keep searching, keep growing—only then will you perform your duty better, and reach an acceptable standard. However, when some people perform their duty, they never pull out all the stops and give it their all, they only give 50 to 60 percent of their effort, and just make do until what they are doing is done. They can never maintain a state of normalcy: When there’s no one to keep an eye on them or offer support, they slacken off and lose heart; when there’s someone to fellowship the truth, they perk up, but if the truth isn’t fellowshipped to them for a while, they become indifferent. What is the problem when they always go back and forth like this? This is how people are when they haven’t gained the truth, they all live by passion, which is incredibly difficult to maintain: They must have someone preach and fellowship to them every day; once there is no one to water and provide for them, and no one to support them, their hearts go cold again, they slacken once more. And when their hearts slacken, they become less effective in their duty; if they work harder, effectiveness increases, their results in performing their duties are better, and they gain more. Is this your experience? You might say, “Why do we always have trouble performing our duty? When these problems are solved, we are invigorated; when they aren’t, we grow indifferent. When there is some outcome when we perform our duty, when God approves of us for our growth, we are delighted, and we feel that we have finally grown up, but before long, when we encounter a difficulty, we become negative again—why is our state always inconsistent?” In fact, the main reasons are that you understand too few truths, lack depth in experiences and entry, you still do not understand many truths, you lack will, and are satisfied with just being able to perform your duty. If you do not understand the truth, how can you perform your duty adequately? In fact, what God asks of people is all attainable by people; as long as you engage your conscience, and are able to follow your conscience in performing your duty, then it will be easy to accept the truth—and if you can accept the truth, you can perform your duty adequately. You must think in this way: “Believing in God during these years, eating and drinking God’s words during these years, I have gained a huge amount, and God has bestowed great graces and blessings upon me. I live in God’s hands, I live under His dominion and sovereignty, and He has given me this breath, so I should engage my mind, and strive to fulfill my duty with all my strength—this is what’s key.” People must have a will; only those who have a will can truly strive for the truth, and only once they have understood the truth can they perform their duty properly, and satisfy God, and bring shame upon Satan. If you have this kind of sincerity, and do not plan for your own sake, but only to gain the truth and perform your duty properly, then your performance of your duty will become normal, and will remain constant throughout; no matter what circumstances you encounter, you will be able to persist in performing your duty. Regardless of who may come to mislead or disturb you, and no matter whether your mood is good or bad, you will still be able to perform your duty normally. In this way, God can set His mind at rest about you, and the Holy Spirit will be able to enlighten you in understanding the truth principles, and guide you in entering the truth reality, and as a result, your performance of your duty will be sure to be up to standard. As long as you sincerely expend for God, do your duty in a down-to-earth way, and not act in a slippery way or play tricks, you will pass muster with God. God scrutinizes people’s minds, thoughts, and motives. If your heart longs for the truth and you can seek the truth, God will enlighten and illuminate you. In any matter, God will enlighten you so long as you seek the truth. He will make your heart open to the light and allow you a path of practice, and your performance of your duty will then bear fruit. God’s enlightenment is His grace and His blessing. Even for trivial matters, if God does not enlighten, people will never have inspiration. Without inspiration it is difficult for people to solve their problems, and they will not achieve results in their duty. With only human intellect, wisdom, and caliber, there are many things that people cannot surmount, even after many years of study. Why not? Because it is not yet the time appointed by God. If God does not act, no matter how capable a person is, it is useless. This must be clearly understood. You must believe that everything is in God’s hands, and that people are just cooperating. If you are sincere, God will see, and He will open up a way out for you in every situation. No difficulty is insurmountable; you must have this faith. Therefore, when you perform your duties, there is no need to have any misgivings. As long as you give it your all, with all your heart, God will not give you difficulties, nor will He give you more than you can handle. You should only worry if you say things without meaning it, are all talk and no action, and say things which are pleasing to the ears but do not properly perform your duties—then it’s over. If this is the attitude you have toward your duties and God, will you receive God’s blessings? Absolutely not. If you go through the motions and deceive God, God will not pay you any heed, and will eliminate you; that will be the outcome. If you deceive God, you deceive yourself. God will say, “This person’s heart is too deceitful, and has no trace of honesty. They cannot be trusted or entrusted with anything. Let them be put aside.” What does that mean? It means you will be left alone and ignored. If there is no repentance, you will be completely abandoned. You will be handed over to Satan, evil spirits, and unclean spirits for punishment. What sort of state is one in when they are left alone and ignored? It means that the Holy Spirit is no longer working in you. You will not see anything clearly, and while others will always be enlightened and illuminated, you will not; you will remain numb. You will always feel sleepy and doze off when someone fellowships on the truth and life entry. What kind of phenomenon is this? One where God is not working. If God is not working, won’t a person become a walking corpse? It is very frightening to believe in God but not feel His presence. Such a person loses their confidence to live, their motivation. They lose all their capital for living. What value does such a life have? Are you not worse off than pigs and dogs? Because of your actions and behavior, God sees that you are unreliable and untrustworthy. God loathes you from the bottom of His heart, and thus abandons you or temporarily sets you aside. I wonder, why doesn’t such a person know the pain and discomfort in their heart? What is wrong with their heart? Is there a sense of conscience? No matter how many years you have believed in God, or whether your faith is genuine or false, you have already understood some doctrines of conduct, and can live and survive without relying on anyone, but if you know that you have been revealed, that God has already abandoned you, can you still go on living? Does your life still have meaning? At that time, you will weep and gnash your teeth in the darkness. In the church, we often see people who, having been revealed and eliminated, with the church about to send them away, cry their eyes red and even have a mind to die, without a will to go on living. Crying, they swear that they will repent, but by then, it is too late. This is a case of not shedding a tear until you see the coffin. So, if you wish to repent, you must do so now. Hurry to reflect on what problems remain in your performance of your duty, on whether you are perfunctory, on whether there is any area in which you are irresponsible. Reflect on whether you have actually achieved results in performing your duty—if you have, reflect on why it is you achieved them, and if you have not, reflect on why it is you have not. Gain clarity on these things through reflection, and if problems do remain, seek the truth to resolve them. In doing so, there will be no difficulties in performing your duty. For all who are able to seek the truth to resolve problems when they have them, there will not only be increasingly fewer difficulties in performing their duties, but they will also grow more effective in performing them, gaining life entry in the meantime. By way of example, some people begin to understand the truth when they have been through several rounds of pruning. They are able to reflect on themselves often, and whenever they find they have done something wrong, they know they have violated the truth principles, and they pray to God, and they feel particularly regretful. At times, they even hate themselves, and slap themselves across the face, saying: “How could I have done something wrong again and caused God pain? I’m so heartless! God has said so much—why don’t I remember it for long? Why can’t I achieve submission to God and satisfy His will? I really have been so deeply corrupted by Satan. There’s no place for God in my heart, and I don’t treasure the truth. I’m always living by satanic philosophies, and I’m inconsiderate of God’s will. I really don’t have a conscience or reason. I’m so rebellious against God!” Thus, they set their will on repenting and are determined to put the truth into practice, perform their duty well, and satisfy God. They do indeed have a repentant heart, but casting off a corrupt disposition is no easy thing to do—one must undergo some trials and refinement before they are able to change a bit. There are now many people who have begun to put their focus on the truth, who are willing to enter the truth reality and become people who submit to God. How, then, should one with a truly repentant heart practice? Part of it is that they must pray to God and seek the truth more, resolving the problems they have and finding a path of practice in the performance of their duty. The other part is that they must find someone who understands the truth and fellowship with them, dissecting their own rebelliousness, their nature essence, and the areas in which they resist God. They must know about these problems clearly, then thoroughly consider God’s words and see how they apply to themselves; once and again, they must consider those words of God’s that are crucial, and aim their self-reflection at their own problems and their own nature essence, until they attain true knowledge. In this way, they can achieve true remorse and hate themselves. Then they should go on to disclose their difficulties in performing their duty and use the truth to resolve them. Thus, their difficulties in performing their duty grow fewer, and an effect has been achieved. If one wishes to repent truly, this is how they must practice. This is the only path to true repentance.
What effect will come of pursuing the truth? Part of it is that pursuing the truth is meant to cast off one’s corrupt disposition; another part is that doing so is meant to allow one to put the truth into practice as they perform their duty and to become a person who truly submits to God. This is the testimony of true repentance. To repent truly, one must understand the truth and practice it before an effect is achieved. If you do not seek the truth to resolve the problem, and your repentance is merely something you say, then it cannot achieve an effect. You will not feel at peace or grounded in this way. If all you do is say in prayer that you want to repent truly, but in performing your duty, you do not seek the truth to resolve your problems and achieve the satisfactory performance of duty, you are trying to cheat God. True repentance mainly manifests as loyalty, as acting according to the principles, as practicing the truth, and as bearing true testimony in the performance of one’s duty. These are the signs of true repentance, and they are the testimony of true repentance, as well. If all one does is speak to God of repentance in prayer, without doing their duty well, are they not then trying to cheat God? If something cannot at least make it past one’s own conscience, how then could it make it past God? Whatever your present circumstances, so long as you cannot sincerely perform your duty for God, and so long as many problems remain in your performance of your duty, which you do not seek the truth to resolve, you have a big problem, and you should earnestly pray about it and reflect on yourself. If you cannot truly repent and are always performing your duty poorly, you assuredly face the danger of being eliminated. It does not matter how many years you have believed in God—so long as you are always perfunctory in performing your duty, always after benefits for yourself, always taking advantage of God’s house, without accepting or practicing the truth in the least, then you are not a true believer in God. You are one who is averse to the truth, a nonbeliever who means only to fill his belly. You may yet be living in God’s house, and you may yet say that you are a believer in God, but the fact is that you no longer have a relationship with God. God has long since put you off to one side, and you have become a soulless husk, a walking corpse. What is the point of living, then? Anyone who has reached this stage already has no destination to speak of. Their only way out is to quickly come before God to confess. If you are truly sincere and genuinely repent, God will forget your transgressions. However, there is one thing you must remember: No matter when, and regardless of whether you have knowledge of God, or have notions or misconceptions about Him, you should never fight or defy Him. Otherwise, you will absolutely suffer retribution. If you find your heart has hardened, and are in a state where you say, “I am going to do it this way, let’s see what God can do to me. I’m not afraid of anyone. I’ve always done it this way before,” then you are in trouble. This is an eruption of a satanic nature; this is intransigence. You already know perfectly well that what you’re doing is wrong, which is already dangerous, but you don’t take it seriously. Your heart is not afraid, it acknowledges no accusation or blame, and is not worried or sorrowful—you don’t even know to repent. This is a state of intransigence, and it will cause you trouble. It makes it easy for you to be set aside by God. If a person reaches this point and is still so numb, and does not know they should turn back, can their relationship with God be restored? It will not be restored easily. Then how can you restore a normal relationship with God that makes you feel that it is perfectly natural and justified for you to approach Him? Where you can submit, bow down, and offer everything you have to Him, fear Him and accept His words as truth regardless of whether you understand them or not, and then seek the truth and practice submission? When can you be restored to this state? How far do you have to go to restore this condition? I’m afraid it will certainly be difficult because it’s not a question of time, or the length of the journey or distance you travel. It’s a question of the state of your life, and whether you have truly entered into the truth reality. If you have believed in God for many years, yet are not at all able to use the truth to solve the problems that exist within you, and you are unaware of the seriousness of these problems, often joyfully living in a rebellious state without any awareness, doing the wrong things, saying the wrong words, opposing, resisting, and rebelling against God with a hardened heart, and stubbornly holding onto your own notions, imaginings, thoughts, and views, without being aware of it at all, then you don’t have any truth reality, are not a person who submits to God, and are still far from meeting God’s requirements. You should be clear about this in your heart. If you can’t see your true state clearly, and always assume the way you believe is fine, that you are capable of expending yourself for God, that you have suffered and paid a price, and believe you are guaranteed entry into the kingdom of heaven, then you have no reason whatsoever. You don’t possess any truth reality, but you don’t even know it. This means that you have an unclear mind, that you are confused, that you are a muddleheaded person, and that you are not of a caliber sufficient to understand the truth or know yourself, and thus you cannot be saved by God.
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