Let us fellowship about one matter that is most at odds with human notions. Moses lived in the wilderness for forty years. Forty years is most of a person’s life. If someone lives to be eighty, forty years is half their life. What kind of living environment is the wilderness? Not only was the wilderness an extremely poor environment in which to live with many difficulties that Moses had to face, but the more important problem was that he had no contact with the Israelites during these forty years, and God did not appear to him either. God arranged this environment for Moses in order to refine him. Does this accord with human notions? If people lack genuine faith, how will this generally show itself? In the first two years, they will still have some strength in their hearts and think, “God is testing me, but I am not afraid. I have God! As long as God doesn’t let me die, I can live as long as I have even one breath left. I live by God. I have trust. I must satisfy God!” They have this bit of determination because they still have sheep as companions. However, after a few years pass, the sheep grow fewer and a howling wind blows throughout the day. In the stillness of night, people will feel alone. They have no one with whom to share what is in their hearts. When they raise their eyes to the sky, all they see are stars and the moon. They feel even more lonely on cloudy and rainy nights when even the moon is hidden from view. Unconsciously, their trust gradually grows cold. When their trust becomes cold, a heart full of complaints and misunderstandings shows itself. Right after that, their internal state becomes increasingly depressed and life gradually becomes meaningless. Constantly, they feel that God takes no notice of them and has abandoned them. They draw a question mark on the existence of God, and their trust shrinks smaller and smaller. If you lack genuine faith, you will not stand the test of time or the test of the environment. If you cannot stand the test God gives you, God will not speak to you or appear to you. God wants to see whether you believe in His existence, whether you acknowledge His existence, and whether you have genuine faith in your heart. This is how God scrutinizes the depths of people’s hearts. Are the people living between heaven and earth in the hands of God? They are all in God’s hands. This is exactly how it is. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the wilderness or on the moon, you’re in the hands of God. That’s the way it is. If God has not appeared to you, how can you see the existence and sovereignty of God? How can you allow the truth that “God exists and is sovereign over all things” to take root in your heart and never fade away? How can you make this statement your life, the driving force of your life, and the trust and strength that allows you to keep on living? (Pray.) That is practical. That is the path of practice. When you are at your most difficult time, when you are least able to feel God, when you feel most painful and lonely, when you feel as if you are far from God, what is the one thing you should do above all else? Call out to God. Calling out to God gives you strength. Calling out to God lets you feel His existence. Calling out to God lets you feel God’s sovereignty. When you call out to God, pray to God, and put your life in God’s hands, you will feel that God is by your side and that He has not abandoned you. When you feel that God has not abandoned you, when you truly feel that He is by your side, will your trust grow? If you have real trust, will it wear down and fade away with the passage of time? Absolutely not. Is the problem of trust now solved? Can people possess real trust simply by carrying around the Bible and rigidly memorizing verses word for word? You still have to pray to God and rely on God to solve this problem. How did Moses get through those forty years in the wilderness? At that time, there was no Bible, and there were few people around him. He only had sheep with him. Moses was certainly led by God. Although the Bible does not record how God led him, whether God appeared to him, whether God spoke to him, or whether God allowed Moses to understand why He made him live in the wilderness for forty years, it is an undeniable fact that Moses did survive living in the wilderness for forty years. No one can deny this fact. With no one around him with whom to share what was in his heart, how could he survive alone in the wilderness for forty years? Without genuine faith, this would be impossible for anyone. It would be a miracle! No matter how people ponder over this matter, they feel that this could never happen. It is too inconsistent with human notions and imaginings! But this is not a legend, not a fantastic tale, it’s a real, unchangeable, and undeniable fact. What does the existence of this fact show to people? If you have genuine faith in God, as long as you have even one breath left, God will not abandon you. This is one fact of God’s existence. If you have such real trust and such a true understanding of God, then your trust is great enough. No matter what environment you find yourself in, and no matter how long a time you are in this environment, your trust will not wear away.

Moses was in the wilderness for forty years. God never appeared to him, nor provided him with the truth. Moses had no books containing God’s words in his hands, he had none of God’s chosen people by his side, and no one with whom to share what was in his heart. Living alone in the wilderness, he could only live by relying on praying to God. Ultimately, this achieved Moses’ real trust. So why did God do this? God was to entrust Moses with a commission, making great use of him, and God needed to do work on him, so He tempered him. What did God temper in Moses? (His trust.) God wanted to perfect his trust, not temper his trust. What God tempers are man’s good intentions, what are called man’s resoluteness and his abilities and skills, and his hotheadedness. Why did Moses leave Egypt at that time? (Because he killed an Egyptian due to hotheadedness.) Could God have used him at that time? (No.) What would have happened if God had used him then? He hated the Egyptians and always intended to act impulsively. If he killed another person, wouldn’t that create problems? If God asked him to go and lead the Israelites out of Egypt, and Moses acted impulsively when Pharaoh would not agree, wouldn’t that cause trouble? God would say, “Can you represent God if you act this way?” Therefore, because of his hotheadedness, God could not use him. Hotheadedness is a major taboo for humans. If you are hotheaded, if you always want to do things based on your naturalness and your impulse, and if you always want to solve problems using human methods; if you don’t have genuine faith in God and you don’t rely on God and believe in His sovereignty out of such genuine faith, God will not be able to use you. Should God try to use you, not only will you accomplish nothing, but you will actually mess things up. Therefore, after Moses killed the Egyptian, he fled to the wilderness. God used the environment of the wilderness to temper his will, hotheadedness, his good intentions, zeal, and impulse as well as the heroism that made him defend the interests of his people and fight against injustice. These are all things that belong to human will, hotheadedness and naturalness. Why didn’t God arrange for a few Israelites to accompany him? If he had one more person with him, he might not have relied on God but on another person. What kind of person was Moses ultimately refined into in such an environment? He could submit to God and had real trust. This shows that his natural hotheadedness had been worn away. When he emerged from the wilderness, did he still have his hotheadedness and heroism? (No.) What showed this? (Moses said that he was no longer a good speaker.) He could no longer speak, so did he still have his own intentions and impulses? (No.) Looked at in this way, when God wants to perfect a person, to perfect a person’s trust in God, regardless of whether He uses this person or not, God will perfect this person’s understanding of the truth and understanding of God’s will and allow this person to submit to God truly and completely without any adulteration, without what is called human heroism, impulse, ambition and lofty passions, without hotheadedness, and without human good intentions and enthusiasms—without these so-called beliefs. Everyone admires and pursues these things that come out of human will, these are things that, relatively speaking, people’s hearts call positive, good, and right. These are the things everyone is willing to live by. These are people’s beliefs. When people do not have these things, they can truly submit to God and they will not do things and speak based on human imaginings and human goodness. When people come before God again, they will have more of the elements of genuine faith in God. What are the elements of genuine faith? Will they still advise God and say, “God, the things You do are not in accord with human notions, and people have a hard time accepting Your acts. You really need to do it like this,” and “God, what You said doesn’t sound right. The tone is off, the approach is wrong, and the words You use are incorrect”? These things are worn out of them and they will no longer advise God. They will be able to truly submit to God, possess reason, and possess fear of God. With forty years of tempering in the wilderness, Moses truly felt the existence of God. In an environment where simple survival was impossible for an individual, he relied on God to survive day by day and hold on to hope year after year, and lived through to the end. He really did see God. It was not happenstance and not a legend. There was nothing accidental or sudden about it. It was all true. He saw the real existence of God and saw that God’s sovereignty over all things is real. Once God’s work in people achieves such an effect, their hearts will undergo a change. Their notions and imaginings will vanish and they will feel that they themselves are nothing, and they can’t do anything without God. As a result, they will be unwilling to do things their own way. At this time, will people say things like “Lord: this shall not be to You”? (No.) We can say that, at this time, people will not speak based on human notions to hinder God, nor will they do things out of human will or as they themselves see fit. At this time, what is the basis on which people live? What do they live out? Subjectively, they can submit to God’s sovereignty and arrangements. Objectively, they can allow nature to take its course, wait and seek God’s will, and submit to God in everything He asks them to do without making individual choices.

Back when God sent Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, what was Moses’ reaction to God’s having given him such a commission? (He said he was not eloquent, but slow of speech and tongue.) He had that one, slight misgiving, that he was not eloquent, but slow of speech and tongue. But was he resistant to God’s commission? How did he treat it? He fell down prostrate. What does it mean to fall down prostrate? It means to submit and accept. He prostrated his whole self before God, heedless of his personal preferences, and did not mention any difficulties he might have had. Whatever God would have him do, he would do it at once. Why was he able to accept God’s commission even when he felt there was nothing he could do? Because he had real trust inside him. He had had some experience of God’s sovereignty over all things and matters, and in the forty years he experienced in the wilderness, he had come to know that God’s sovereignty is almighty. So, he accepted God’s commission with alacrity, and set off to do what God had commissioned of him without another word about it. What does it mean that he set off? It means that he had real trust in God, true reliance on Him, and true submission to Him. He was not cowardly, and he did not make a choice of his own or try to refuse. Instead, he fully believed, and he set off to act with God’s commission upon him, filled with trust. He believed this: “If God has commissioned this, then it will all be done as God says. God has told me to bring the Israelites out of Egypt, so I will go. Since this is what God has commissioned, He will go to work, and He will give me strength. I need only cooperate.” This is the insight Moses had. People who lack spiritual understanding think that they can do the things God entrusts them with on their own. Do people have such abilities? Absolutely not. If people are cowardly, they will lack even the courage to meet the Egyptian Pharaoh. In their hearts, they will say: “The Egyptian Pharaoh is a devil king. He has an army at his command and could kill me with one word. How can I lead away so many Israelites? Would the Egyptian Pharaoh listen to me?” These words constitute refusal, resistance, and rebellion. They demonstrate no belief in God, and this is not real trust. Circumstances at the time were not favorable for the Israelites or for Moses. Leading the Israelites out of Egypt was, in the human view, simply an impossible task, because Egypt was cut off by the Red Sea, and crossing that would be a great challenge. Could Moses really not have known how difficult it would be to fulfill this commission? In his heart, he knew, yet he said only that he was slow of speech and tongue, that no one would heed his words. He did not, at heart, reject God’s commission. When God told Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, he lay prostrate and accepted it. Why did he not mention the difficulties? Was it that, after forty years in the wilderness, he did not know the perils of the world of men, or the state to which things had progressed in Egypt, or the current plight of the Israelites? Could he not see those things clearly? Is that what was happening? Certainly not. Moses was intelligent and wise. He knew all those things, having personally undergone and experienced them in the world of men, and he would never forget them. He knew those things all too well. So, did he know how difficult the commission was that God had given him? (Yes.) If he knew, how was he able to accept that commission? He trusted in God. With his lifetime of experience, he believed in God’s almightiness, so he accepted this commission of God with a heart full of trust and without the slightest doubt. What experiences did he have? Tell Me. (In his experience, every time he called out to God and every time he drew near to God, God led and guided him. Moses saw that God had never gone back on His word, and he had real trust in God.) This is one aspect. Anything else? (During his forty years in the wilderness, Moses had indeed seen God’s sovereignty by calling out to and praying to God. He was able to survive and come through it, and he possessed genuine faith in God’s sovereignty.) Anything else? (God had already done a lot of work on Moses. Moses knew something about how God created the heavens, the earth, and all things, how God used a flood to destroy the world in the time of Noah, and about Abraham and other such things. He wrote these things in the Pentateuch, which proves that he gained insight into all these deeds of God and knew that God is almighty and omniscient. Therefore, he believed that as God would lead him, the undertaking would certainly be successful. He wanted to watch God’s deeds, see what God would do through him, and how God would help and guide him. This was the trust he had.) That is how it was. Tell Me, in his forty years in the wilderness, was Moses able to experience that, in God, nothing is difficult and that man is in God’s hand? Very much so—that was his truest experience. In his forty years in the wilderness, there were so many things that posed mortal danger to him, and he did not know whether he would survive them. Every day, he would have struggled for his life and prayed to God for protection. That was his only wish. In those forty years, what he experienced most deeply was God’s sovereignty and protection. Later, then, when he was accepting God’s commission, his first feeling must have been: “Nothing is difficult in God. If God says it can be done, then it certainly can. Since God has given me such a commission, He will certainly see to it—it is He who will do it, not any man.” Before taking action, people must plan and make preparations in advance. They must handle the preliminaries first. Must God do these things before He acts? He has no need. Every created being, no matter how influential, no matter how capable or powerful, no matter how frenzied, is in God’s hand. Moses had trust, knowledge, and experience of this, so there was not a shred of doubt or fear in his heart. As such, his trust in God was particularly genuine and pure. He may be said to have been filled with trust.

I have just talked about what genuine faith is. Tell Me, in the end, does God want people’s beliefs or people’s genuine faith? (He wants people’s genuine faith.) What God wants is people’s genuine faith. What is genuine faith? In the simplest and most direct terms, it is people’s real trust in God. What does real trust look like in practice? What does it have to do with all the activities in people’s real lives? (People believe that God is sovereign over and ordains all things. They believe in God’s sovereignty over all they encounter and believe that nothing is difficult for God.) (People believe that every word God says will come to pass.) Ponder this over further. How else will real trust show itself? (The trust of Moses is different from that of ordinary believers. When he wrote Genesis, he believed that God created the heavens and earth and all things by His words, he believed that the heavens and earth and all things were brought about through God’s words, he believed that whatsoever God says is actually is and that which God ordains will come to be, and he believed that God’s words would all come to pass and be fulfilled. In this regard, he had real trust in God. He didn’t just believe in the fact that God truly exists. He believed that the heavens, the earth, and all things were created by God. In his heart, he absolutely believed that God’s words accomplished everything, and he believed in God’s almightiness. If he lacked such trust in God, he could never have written Genesis. These words were also inspired or revealed by the Holy Spirit, and he could see clearly.) Tell Me, is God’s real existence a fact because people believe it? (No.) What kind of fact is God’s real existence? (Whether people believe it or not, God exists, and God is self-existent and eternal.) At the very least, trust in God must be based on this foundation: God does not exist due to your verbal acknowledgment of Him, nor would He not exist if you did not acknowledge Him. Rather, God exists regardless of whether you believe in Him or acknowledge Him. God is eternally the Creator and eternally sovereign over all things. Why do people need to come to this understanding? What can it change in people? Some people say, “If we believe in You, You are God, but if we don’t believe in You, You are not God.” What are these words? These are rebellious and fallacious words. God says, “If you don’t believe in Me, I am still God and I am still sovereign over your destiny. You cannot change this.” This is a fact that no one can deny. No matter how much an atheist denies or resists God, their fate is still under God’s sovereignty, and they cannot escape God’s punishment. If you fully accept and submit to God’s orchestration and arrangements and can accept all the truths expressed by God, God’s words can change your way of life, change your life goals and the direction of your pursuit, change the path you choose, and change the meaning of your life. With their mouths, some people say that they believe in the existence of God and that God is sovereign over all things and everything that is, but they cannot submit to God’s orchestrations and arrangements and they cannot see that God makes different arrangements for each individual. These people always want to pursue their own ambitions and desires and always want to do great things, but they encounter repeated setbacks and are ultimately beaten down and left broken and bleeding. Only then do they surrender. If they really believed in the sovereignty of God, would they act in this way? It would be impossible for them. How should they proceed? First of all, they should understand God’s will. In God’s work for the salvation of mankind, He helps people to cast off their corrupt dispositions and break free from Satan’s influence, walk down the right path of life, and live by God’s words. If people really understand God’s will, they will follow God’s requirements in their pursuit of the truth and quest to understand God, achieving submission to God’s sovereignty and arrangements. Only in this way can they conform to God’s will. There are many people who believe in God but are unable to submit to God. They always want to pursue their own wants, but they all fail in the end. Only then do they say what is in their hearts, “This is destiny, and no one can change what God has ordained!” At this time, when they again say, “I believe in the existence of God and believe that God holds everything in His hands,” are these words different from those they spoke before? They are much more practical than the doctrines they talked about before. Previously, they just verbally acknowledged and believed that God was sovereign over all things, but when things would happen to them, they couldn’t submit to God and couldn’t practice the truth based on God’s words. In their hearts, they thought that they could realize their ideals on their own. In this way, the words of God they believed in their hearts and the doctrines that were on their tongues could not become the principles of their actions. That is, they did not believe that God’s words are all the truth and can accomplish all things. They thought that they understood the truth, but they could not submit to God’s sovereignty and arrangements, so what they understood were only doctrines and words, not the truth reality. With their mouths, they said they believed in God’s sovereignty, but in real life, they could not submit to God. They always went down their own paths, always wanted to pursue their own wants, and violated God’s requirements. Is this true submission? Is there real belief and real trust here? (No.) There is none at all, which is really pitiful! What are the manifestations of real trust in God? People with real trust at least believe that God’s words are the truth and that they will come to pass and be fulfilled, and they believe that practicing according to God’s requirements is the correct path in life. In their lives, they pray to God and rely on God, bring God’s words into their real lives, practice according to God’s words in all things, seek to be honest people, and live out the reality of God’s words. They not only believe in the existence and sovereignty of God, but also seek to submit to God’s orchestrations and arrangements in their real lives. If they are rebellious, they can reflect on themselves, accept the truth, accept God’s discipline, and achieve submission to God. If you practice in this way, the truth you believe and acknowledge will become your life reality. This truth will be able to guide your thoughts, guide your life, and guide the direction that your entire life takes. At this time, you will be able to bring forth real trust in God. When you possess real belief in God and true submission, this produces trust. This trust is genuine faith in God. Where does this genuine faith come from? It is obtained by practicing and experiencing God’s words and thereby coming to understand the truth. The more people understand the truth, the greater their trust in God, the more they know of God, and the more they truly submit to God. This is how people come to have genuine faith.