1420 Only Those Who Love the Truth Can Live Before God
I
If everything you think about during your available hours each day has to do with how to resolve your corrupt disposition, how to practice the truth, and how to understand the truth principles, then you’ll learn to use the truth to resolve your problems according to God’s words. You will thus gain the ability to live independently, you’ll have life entry, and gradually, you’ll enter into the truth reality. If, in your heart, you are still fixated on prestige and status, still preoccupied with showing off and making others look up to you, then you are not someone who pursues the truth, and you are walking down the wrong path.
II
What you pursue is not the truth, nor is it the life, but the things that you love, it is fame, gain, and status—in which case, nothing you do relates to the truth, it is all evildoing, and laboring. If, in your heart, you love the truth, and always strive for the truth, if you pursue dispositional change, are able to achieve true submission to God, and can fear God and shun evil, and if you are restrained in everything you do, and are able to accept God’s scrutiny, then your state will keep improving, and you will be someone who lives before God.
III
People who love the truth walk a different path from those who do not: People who don’t love the truth always focus on living by the philosophies of Satan, they’re satisfied merely with outward displays of good behavior, but in their hearts there are still ambitions and desires, and they still pursue fame, gain, and status, still wish to be blessed and to enter the kingdom—but because they do not pursue the truth, and their corrupt dispositions have not been cast off, they always live under Satan’s power. Those who love the truth seek it in all things, they reflect on themselves and try to know themselves, they focus on practicing the truth, they always have a heart of submission to God and fear of God in their hearts, and they pursue knowledge of God. These are people who always live before God.
from The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. Good Behavior Does Not Mean One’s Disposition Has Changed