By Haoyue, China

When I was six years old, my mom found out that my father was having an affair and developed a mental illness due to the emotional shock from that discovery. Two years later, my father passed away from illness and the medical and funeral bills left us penniless. Yet, my uncle and aunt from my father’s side saw no point in helping their brother’s widow and his child. My mother and I were exposed to a lot of bullying and coldness and suffered greatly in our lives. By then, my mother had already started believing in God and she often said to me, “If we don’t believe in God, we will not be long for this world.” She also said that her mental illness somehow disappeared after believing in God. As a result, I was very thankful to God. When I was ostracized and bullied by classmates I quietly prayed to God. To my surprise, after that, a classmate who I didn’t get along with before began proactively helping me and wouldn’t let others bully me. My young soul felt at that time that it was truly good to believe in God, and that God was my pillar whenever I needed Him, and I wanted to expend myself for God and do a duty like my mom when I grew up. When I began high school, I started formally attending gatherings. Sometimes I would ask for leave from class to attend gatherings even if it meant falling behind in class. I had always been illness-prone and would get dizzy spells and often needed injections and medication, but after believing in God I began to get better. This was an even deeper experience of God’s grace and blessings. Once during a gathering, when I heard the brothers and sisters talking about how now was the crucial time to do duties, I thought to myself, “I am truly lucky to have lived in the time of God’s incarnation, expression of truth and salvation of mankind. I have to seize this opportunity, put everything into my faith and do my duty well.” At that time, I didn’t hesitate in deciding to withdraw from the elite high school I was attending, and started doing my duty with my brothers and sisters. I thought that as long as I practiced faith well and enthusiastically performed my duty, God would certainly bestow me with grace and make sure all went well and smoothly for me. From then on, I attended gatherings and performed my duty, rain or shine. During winter, there was no direct bus to the place where I was watering newcomers, so I would ride my bike several hours to get there. My body suffered to a degree, but I thought that the suffering was all worth it as long as I received God’s care and blessings.

In April 2020, I performed my duty away from home. One midday, I suddenly felt my heart beating rapidly and wildly, my chest felt so tight that I couldn’t get a breath in, and I began shuddering and felt weak. I could barely hold the chopsticks I was using to eat lunch. I was uncomfortable, but I wasn’t that worried. I thought, “I’ve always had heart issues since I was young. I get palpitations when I’m tired but it’s never a big issue, so it probably isn’t this time either. What’s more, God is almighty and my body and health are in His hands. As long as I remain steadfast in my duty, God will certainly protect me and make sure nothing happens to me.” That night, I felt a bit better. For the next few days, I prayed to God and put my illness in His hands. I would get palpitations and feel fatigued if I spoke too much, but I could still eat and drink God’s words regularly and continue doing my duty. I thought God was probably testing me with this situation and as long as I performed my duty more, God would treat me with grace and I’d slowly get better. But to my surprise, soon after that, I had yet another episode. I was eating dinner, when all of a sudden, I started getting palpitations, my hands began shaking and I couldn’t hold food with my chopsticks. Soon after that, I began trembling and my heart fluttered constantly. My face became blushed, my hands and feet went cold and numb, and I shook uncontrollably. I began gasping for air and had a suffocating feeling unlike I’d ever had before. I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to continue breathing and so I continually prayed to God saying, “Oh God, I don’t want to die yet, please save me.” A sister began pressing an acupoint used in emergencies and gave me some emergency medicine. After about ten minutes, I stopped convulsing, but I felt incredibly weak and it was very taxing for me to speak. The sister took me to the hospital for tests and the doctor told me I had a congenital heart illness. As I got older and waste built up in my blood and my blood vessels became increasingly blocked, my cardiac output would diminish and my condition would become increasingly severe. There was no medicine for my illness and all I could do was take certain Chinese herbs and get more rest. If there were no further episodes I’d be fine, but if I had a relapse, it could be very bad. If I often had relapses, I’d be in very bad shape and at worst, might need surgery. I couldn’t help but worry, thinking, “I’ve been consistently and enthusiastically doing my duty, so why isn’t God protecting me? Why has my condition worsened?” I silently prayed to God, “Oh God, You are almighty and my health is in Your hands. I don’t ask to be as fit as a normal, healthy person, and it doesn’t matter if I’m a bit weaker, as long as I don’t have a relapse and can slowly get better. My body just can’t take all these relapses. If my health were really to fail, what would I do then?” After that, even though I was taking medicine, I was always worried I’d have another episode and would pray to God daily about my health. However, I continued to have frequent heart problems. I would be good for a couple of days and then suddenly have another episode, after which I’d feel quite weak. Seeing that I was in poor health, the church had me go home to rest and do whatever duty I was capable of doing.

While at home, my health didn’t improve despite taking herbs. I continued to have palpitations and numbness in my hands, accompanied by convulsions and shortness of breath. My chest would get so tight I’d feel like I was going to suffocate. The emergency medicine I had could relieve symptoms temporarily, but they’d always come back. While I was ill, even turning over in bed made me so exhausted that I would get palpitations. Half or more of my day would be spent in bed. I felt terribly isolated and helpless. The tears would come streaming down ceaselessly, and complaints and misunderstandings would creep up in my mind. I’d never seen anyone else with such frequent heart episodes. I was already so weak. If this kept up, wouldn’t I be done for? My family had no money to pay for my surgery, so was I supposed to keep enduring? I was only a little over 20 years old, was I just going to have to spend the rest of my life continually relapsing and basically disabled? Perhaps one day I’d just keel over and die. “Oh God, these years I’ve given up schooling and sacrificed my youth to follow You. I haven’t asked for anything else, all I wish is that You keep me safe and sound, so why has my condition worsened? Even after falling ill, I continued to do my duty. Why haven’t You protected me? When will I ever get better?” The more I thought, the more wronged and saddened I felt and I’d often lie on my bed and cry. I would often buy medicines that I heard were beneficial for heart disease. I only used Chinese medicine so as to avoid side effects from western medicine. But after taking herbs for a while, I still wasn’t getting any better. I would often sink into negativity. Some brothers and sisters who saw what I was going through would fellowship God’s intentions with me, telling me that I should learn from the situation and seek the truth to resolve my corrupt disposition. Some would also find experiential testimony videos about going through illness to share with me. This had a bit of an impact on me: I hadn’t sought God’s intention in my illness, and had just made complaints instead of gaining truth. Where was my testimony? I had to stop being so depraved and start seeking the truth to resolve my problems. Realizing this, I prayed to God, saying, “Almighty God, I understand in theory that Your good intentions are behind my illness, and everything You do is good. But the constant relapses are really causing my flesh to suffer greatly. I feel really depressed and down. Oh God, I know that I am in a bad state, and I’m willing to turn toward You and stop being so negative. Please enlighten and guide me to a true understanding of myself and deliver me from this negative state.”

After that, I began looking for passages of God’s words related to my state. One day, I came upon this passage: “‘Belief in God’ means believing that there is a God; this is the simplest concept as regards believing in God. What’s more, believing that there is a God is not the same as truly believing in God; rather, it is a kind of simple faith with strong religious overtones. True faith in God means the following: On the basis of the belief that God holds sovereignty over all things, one experiences His words and His work, purges one’s corrupt disposition, satisfies the intentions of God, and comes to know God. Only a journey of this kind may be called ‘faith in God.’ Yet people often see belief in God as a simple and frivolous matter. People who believe in God in this way have lost what it means to believe in God, and though they may continue to believe until the very end, they shall never gain God’s approval, because they tread upon the wrong path. There are still those today who believe in God according to words and in hollow doctrine. They do not know that they lack the essence of belief in God, and they cannot receive God’s approval. Still they pray to God for blessings of safety and sufficient grace. Let us stop, quiet our hearts, and ask ourselves: Can it be that believing in God really is the easiest thing on earth? Can it be that believing in God means nothing more than receiving much grace from God? Are people who believe in God without knowing Him or who believe in God and yet oppose Him really able to satisfy the intentions of God?” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Preface). God asks: “Can it be that believing in God really is the easiest thing on earth? Can it be that believing in God means nothing more than receiving much grace from God? Are people who believe in God without knowing Him or who believe in God and yet oppose Him really able to satisfy the intentions of God?” Each of God’s questions made me feel so ashamed. Despite believing in God for so long, I didn’t have any idea what real faith was. God says that true faith requires experiencing God’s work and words, submitting to each situation God presents, and seeking the truth and His intentions from within them, reflecting on one’s corrupt disposition and impurities in one’s faith to achieve understanding of the truth and knowledge of God and enter into the truth reality. Only this kind of faith can earn God’s commendation. If people only wish to obtain grace and blessings from God but don’t seek God’s intentions when faced with undesirable situations and don’t experience God’s words and work, then this is faith in name alone, it is religious faith. God does not accept such faith. God does the work of judgment, chastisement, trial and refinement in the last days. Only by experiencing the judgment of God’s words, being tried by the various environments God orchestrates, seeking the truth, and coming to know oneself and God through these things, does one’s life progress. I thought of how some brothers and sisters were sicker than me, and had even been pronounced incurable by hospitals, but they still sought the truth through their illnesses, gained knowledge of their corruption, rectified their mistaken views on belief in God and made some progress. Though I’d claimed to believe in God these years, and had often fellowshipped with others about the need to experience God’s words and work in faith, when I fell ill myself, I didn’t seek God’s intention, and lived in a negative state from which I could not escape. So after falling ill, I didn’t gain any truth at all. I realized that I wasn’t suffering due to the environment God had orchestrated, but because I didn’t seek the truth. Given that I believed in God, I should submit, seek the truth through my illness and stand firm in my testimony to satisfy God. This was the reason I ought to have. Realizing all this, I prayed to God, saying, “No matter what happens with my illness, I am willing to submit and focus on seeking the truth to resolve my issues.”

Later on, I came across this passage of God’s words: “From the time when man first began to believe in God, he has considered God to be a cornucopia, a Swiss Army knife, and he has considered himself to be God’s greatest creditor, as if trying to get blessings and promises from God were his inherent right and obligation, while God’s responsibility were to protect and care for man, and to provide for him. Such is the basic understanding of ‘belief in God’ of all those who believe in God, and such is their deepest understanding of the concept of belief in God. From man’s nature essence to his subjective pursuit, there is nothing that relates to the fear of God. Man’s aim in believing in God could not possibly have anything to do with the worship of God. That is to say, man has never considered nor understood that belief in God requires fearing and worshiping God. In light of such conditions, man’s essence is obvious. What is this essence? It is that man’s heart is malicious, harbors treachery and deceit, does not love fairness and righteousness and that which is positive, and it is contemptible and greedy. Man’s heart could not be more closed to God; he has not given it to God at all. God has never seen man’s true heart, nor has He ever been worshiped by man. No matter how great the price God pays, or how much work He does, or how much He provides to man, man remains blind and utterly indifferent to it all. Man has never given his heart to God, he only wants to mind his heart himself, to make his own decisions—the subtext of which is that man does not want to follow the way of fearing God and shunning evil, or to submit to the sovereignty and arrangements of God, nor does he want to worship God as God. Such is the state of man today. Now let us look again at Job. First of all, did he do a deal with God? Did he have any ulterior motives in holding firm to the way of fearing God and shunning evil? At that time, had God spoken to anyone of the end to come? At that time, God had not made promises to anyone about the end, and it was against this background that Job was able to fear God and shun evil. Do the people of today stand up to comparison with Job? There is too much of a disparity; they are in different leagues. Although Job did not have much knowledge of God, he had given his heart to God and it belonged to God. He never did a deal with God, and had no extravagant desires or demands toward God; instead, he believed that ‘Jehovah gave, and Jehovah has taken away.’ This was what he had seen and obtained from holding true to the way of fearing God and shunning evil during many years of life. Likewise, he had also gained the outcome represented in the words: ‘Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?’ These two sentences were what he had seen and come to know as a result of his attitude of submission toward God during his life’s experiences, and they were also his most powerful weapons with which he triumphed during Satan’s temptations, and they were the foundation of his standing firm in testimony to God” (The Word, Vol. 2. On Knowing God. God’s Work, God’s Disposition, and God Himself II). God completely exposed people’s views regarding belief. People do not treat God as God, but rather as a cornucopia, a Swiss Army knife, they see themselves as God’s greatest creditors, and they try to greedily extract grace from Him. This kind of belief is impure and transactional and lacks the slightest bit of sincerity. God spoke directly to my current state. When my family was going through hardship and had nowhere to turn, I experienced God’s blessings and protection, so I thought that God would ensure that my mother and I lived a peaceful, untroubled life. I thought belief in God would grant me complete immunity throughout my life from hardship. If anything came up, God would protect me and be responsible for my well-being. During those years, I entertained this kind of wishful thinking in my pursuit and it was the attainment of God’s grace and blessings that served as my motivation to forsake everything to do my duty. When I fell ill and God didn’t heal me, I immediately changed. It was as if my long-held hope had been crushed. I began to argue with God based on what I’d forsaken and expended in the past years. I questioned God about why He treated me like that, and was even unwilling to pray or read His words. I lived in a negative and rebellious state. Those years God had protected and cared for me and bestowed me with material grace and blessings out of pity for my poor stature, but I wasn’t grateful at all and even became greedier. After expending just a little, I demanded God protect me for my whole life and when He didn’t, I became upset with Him. How shameless and unreasonable I was! Job never had any demands of God, he feared God and shunned evil no matter the situation or environment. When God blessed him, he thanked God, but when his situation changed and he lost his property, his kids were killed and he broke out in painful boils, he continued to have faith in and fear God and never said a single complaining word to Him. He even praised God’s name. No matter how his situation changed, he was able to stand in his place as a created being and submit to God. Job was a true believer in God. His humanity and reason made me feel shameful. I didn’t have true belief in God, and just treated Him like a Swiss Army knife. I wanted God’s grace and blessings to accompany me at all times. I couldn’t believe how selfish I’d become! I thought of the crowd that the Lord Jesus fed with five loaves of bread and two fish during the Age of Grace. They had no interest in His sermon, and just wanted to attain grace, blessings and perks from Him. They were just opportunists and nonbelievers. I saw that my greed was no different from that of the crowd who just wished to be fed and have their bellies full. I was terribly depraved and certainly made God disgusted and revolted. If I continued to believe based on such views, I would never attain truth and salvation even if I believed my whole life. I saw that my illness was the greater grace God had given me. If I had not been revealed through my illness, I wouldn’t have recognized how strong my desire for blessings was, how greedy and despicable I was. Then there would be no chance of my transforming. God did not treat me based upon my actions and even helped me through brothers and sisters and enlightened and guided me to understand His intentions through His words. I felt ashamed and guilty, unworthy of God’s love and salvation. I tearfully prayed to God, saying, “Oh God, through being revealed by illness, I have learned that I was only demanding grace from You these years, and made complaints when I didn’t get it. I have owed You too much and am not worthy to be a believer. I know that I have much corruption and I need this illness to refine and cleanse myself. Even if I must live with this illness for the rest of my life, I will submit to it and never complain about You again.” To my surprise, when my attitude changed, my body began to gradually heal. I didn’t have such frequent episodes and was gradually able to start doing my duty.

One day, I came across a passage of God’s words that gave me more of an understanding of my state. Almighty God says: “No matter how many things happen to them, the type of person who is an antichrist never tries to address them by seeking the truth in God’s words, much less tries to see things through God’s words—which is wholly because they do not believe that every line of God’s words is the truth. No matter how the house of God fellowships the truth, the antichrists remain unreceptive, and in consequence lack the correct attitude no matter what situation they are faced with; in particular, when it comes to how they approach God and the truth, the antichrists stubbornly refuse to put aside their notions. The god they believe in is a god that performs signs and wonders, a supernatural god. Any that can perform signs and wonders—be it Guanyin Bodhisattva, Buddha, or Mazu—they call gods. They believe that only those who can perform signs and wonders are gods that possess the identity of gods, and those who cannot, no matter how many truths they express, are not necessarily gods. They do not understand that expressing the truth is God’s great power and almightiness; instead, they think only performing signs and wonders is the great power and almightiness of gods. Therefore, regarding the practical work of God incarnate expressing the truth to conquer and save people, watering, shepherding, and leading God’s chosen people, enabling them to actually experience God’s judgment, chastisement, trials, and refinement, and come to understand the truth, cast off their corrupt dispositions, and become people who submit to and worship God, and so on—antichrists consider all this to be the work of man, and not of God. In the minds of antichrists, gods should hide behind an altar and get people to make offerings to them, eating the foods that people offer, inhaling the smoke of the incense that they burn, extending a helping hand when they are in trouble, showing themselves to be very powerful and providing immediate assistance to them within the bounds of what is understandable to them, and satisfying their needs, when people ask for help and are earnest in their entreaties. To the antichrists, only a god such as this is a true god. Everything that God does today, meanwhile, is met with the antichrists’ disdain. And why is that? Judging by the nature essence of the antichrists, what they require is not the work of watering, shepherding, and salvation that the Creator performs upon the created beings, but prosperity and the fulfillment of their aspirations in all things, to not be punished in this life, and to go to heaven in the next life. Their point of view and needs confirm their essence of hatred for the truth” (The Word, Vol. 4. Exposing Antichrists. Item Fifteen: They Do Not Believe in the Existence of God, and They Deny the Essence of Christ (Part One)). When I first read this passage, I was a bit startled: Wasn’t this describing my exact current state? Before, I only knew that my perspective on pursuit in my faith was wrong, but after reading this passage I realized that all this time I had been believing in the God of my notions and imaginings. In the past, I had enjoyed much of God’s grace and witnessed some of His deeds. This was God’s mercy and protection of us and His opening up a way for us according to our issues, allowing us to lead a normal life and have a suitable situation for following Him. When I gradually began to understand some truths, God would orchestrate suitable situations to cleanse and transform me based on what was needed in my life and would allow me to gain knowledge of Him. This is one way that God saves mankind. Yet, after enjoying so much of God’s grace, I delimited Him in my notions, believing that He was the God of bestowing grace and blessings. When God’s actions didn’t conform to my expectations, I judged Him based upon my notions, believing that He should protect me and not let me get so sick. I acknowledged God’s name in word, but I believed in the vague God of my notions and imaginings. This was blasphemy of God. Realizing this, I felt horrified and saw even more how this illness was a kind of grace for me, helping me to rectify my notions about God. It was all God’s love and salvation. I hurriedly prayed to God to repent. My illness wasn’t a one-time thing, it was chronic and unpredictable, so I needed to seek a path for entry.

Later on, I saw these passages of God’s words: “You may think that believing in God is about suffering, or doing all manner of things for Him; you might think that the purpose of believing in God is so that your flesh may be at peace, or so that everything in your life runs smoothly, or so that you may be comfortable and at ease in all things. However, none of these are purposes that people should attach to their belief in God. If you believe for these purposes, then your perspective is incorrect, and it is simply impossible for you to be perfected. God’s actions, God’s righteous disposition, His wisdom, His words, and His wondrousness and unfathomableness are all things people ought to understand. Having this understanding, you should use it to rid your heart of all personal demands, hopes, and notions. Only by eliminating these things can you meet the conditions demanded by God, and it is only by doing this that you can have life and satisfy God. The purpose of believing in God is to satisfy Him and to live out the disposition He requires, so that His actions and glory may be manifested through this group of unworthy people. This is the correct perspective for believing in God, and this is also the goal that you should seek. You should have the right viewpoint about believing in God and you should seek to obtain God’s words. You need to eat and drink God’s words and you must be able to live out the truth, and in particular you must be able to see His practical deeds, His wonderful deeds throughout the entire universe, as well as the practical work He does in the flesh. People can, through their practical experiences, appreciate just how God does His work on them and what His intentions are toward them. The purpose of all of this is to eliminate people’s corrupt satanic disposition. … Only people who genuinely pursue the truth, seek knowledge of God, and pursue life are those who truly believe in God” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Those Who Are to Be Made Perfect Must Undergo Refinement). “You believe in God and follow God, and so you must have a God-loving heart. You must cast aside your corrupt disposition, you must seek to satisfy God’s intentions, and you must fulfill the duty of a created being. Since you believe in and follow God, you should offer everything to Him, and should not make personal choices or demands, and you should achieve the satisfaction of God’s intentions. Since you were created, you should submit to the Lord that created you, for you are inherently without dominion over yourself, and have no ability to control your own destiny. Since you are a person who believes in God, you should seek holiness and change” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Success or Failure Depends on the Path That Man Walks). Through God’s words I acquired some understanding of His demands. In our faith, we should not seek blessings and peace, but should rather stand in our place as created beings to experience God’s work, gain understanding of God’s intentions and His disposition through various situations, and reflect on and know ourselves and forsake our desire for blessings and our impurities through such situations. Only in so doing could we achieve dispositional transformation and attain salvation. In the past, my faith was based upon the attainment of grace. So despite being sick for so long, I never sought the truth and my life suffered losses. When I submitted, sought the truth and began experiencing God’s words and work, I began getting a sense of God’s good intentions. My flesh did suffer to a degree, but this situation rectified my mistaken views about faith and allowed me to recognize my contemptible intentions in my faith and rectify them in a timely fashion. This was an even greater instance of God’s mercy and love, greater even than the grace and blessings He imparted to my flesh. I still hadn’t fully recovered and sometimes had episodes. I couldn’t be content to just submit and not complain about God, I had to continue seeking His intention, reflect on what corruption I revealed, what aspects of me God still detested, and accept the judgment and chastisement of God’s words to resolve my corrupt disposition. This was the road that I had to travel. After realizing this, I felt less estranged from God, became more proactive in my duty, began focusing on reviewing the issues in my work, studied principles related to areas in which I was deficient, and I began to see some improvement in my professional skills. Gradually, my health has begun to improve and episodes have become less frequent. Thanks be to God for guiding me to achieve this understanding and transformation.