If people are to know God, they must first know that God is the real God, and must know God’s words, God’s real appearance in the flesh, and God’s real work. Only after knowing that all of God’s work is real will you be able to actually cooperate with God, and only through this path will you be able to achieve the growth of your life. All those who have no knowledge of reality have no means of experiencing God’s words, they are ensnared in their conceptions, they live in their imagination, and thus they have no knowledge of God’s words. The greater your knowledge of reality, the closer you are to God, and the more intimate you are with Him; the more you seek vagueness and abstraction, and doctrine, the further you will stray from God, and so the more you will feel that experiencing God’s words is strenuous and difficult, and the more you will be incapable of entry. If you wish to enter the reality of God’s words, and onto the right track of your spiritual life, you must first know reality and separate yourself from vague and supernatural things—which is to say, first you must understand how the Holy Spirit actually enlightens and guides you from within. In this way, if you can truly grasp the Holy Spirit’s real work within you, you will have entered onto the right track of being made perfect by God.

Today, everything starts from reality. God’s work is the most real, and can be touched by people; it is what people can experience, and achieve. In people there is much that is vague and supernatural, which stops them from knowing God’s present work. Thus, in their experiences they always deviate, and always feel difficult, which is all caused by their conceptions. People are unable to grasp the principles of the Holy Spirit’s work, they do not know reality, and so they are always negative in their path to entry. They look at God’s requirements from afar, unable to achieve them; they merely see that God’s words really are good, but cannot find the path to entry. The Holy Spirit works by this principle: Through people’s cooperation, through them actively praying, searching and coming closer to God, results can be achieved and they can be enlightened and illuminated by the Holy Spirit. It is not the case that the Holy Spirit acts unilaterally, or that man acts unilaterally. Both are indispensable, and the more that people cooperate, and the more they pursue the attainment of the standards of God’s requirements, the greater the work of the Holy Spirit. Only people’s real cooperation, added to the work of the Holy Spirit, can produce real experiences and the substantive knowledge of God’s words. Gradually, through experiencing in this way, a perfect person is ultimately produced. God does not do supernatural things; in people’s conceptions, God is almighty, and everything is done by God—with the result that people wait passively, do not read the words of God or pray, and merely await the touch of the Holy Spirit. Those with a correct understanding, however, believe this: God’s actions can only go as far as my cooperation, and the effect that God’s work has in me depends on how I cooperate. When God speaks, I should do all I can to seek and strive toward God’s words; this is what I should achieve.

—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. How to Know Reality