By Chen Xu, China

I was born in a rural town, and my father was a dutiful and hardworking man. Though he didn’t talk much with me, he took on all the heavy labor at home, and he also bore any hardships that came our way. He was the pillar of our household. I remember when I was 11 or 12, I heard a song that went, “A father is his son’s ladder to the sky, a father is the ox pulling the cart….” That made me feel even more that a father is his son’s support, that a father should give everything for his child, stay by his side, and protect him, and that these things are the responsibilities of a father. In 2008, I became a father myself. I had a lovely son, and I felt a great sense of responsibility. To give my son a better life, I worked wherever I could to earn money, and I bought a house in the city to support his education there. I also had my wife stay at home to care for him full-time. In 2012, a colleague preached Almighty God’s gospel of the last days to my wife and me, and by reading God’s words, we came to understand that Almighty God is the Creator and the source of human life, and that in the last days, God has again become flesh to express the truth and do the work of saving mankind. My wife and I were overjoyed to be able to come before God. My wife and I got up early every day to read God’s words and train in our duties in the church. To bring more people before God, 6 months after finding God, I quit my job to do my duty full-time.

Later, I took on text-based duties. Unexpectedly, in June 2017, our church was persecuted and raided by the CCP. Dozens of brothers and sisters were arrested, and the police got hold of my personal information, so I hurriedly moved to another city. Later, I received a letter from my wife saying that the police back home were investigating my whereabouts, and she warned me to be very careful. I thought about how my son was only 9. He had been diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome in first grade. The doctor said his condition would worsen with fear and stress, and that in severe cases, he could lose control of his body, moving and shouting uncontrollably. If the police stormed in, wouldn’t that terrify him? What if his condition worsened due to this fear? If the police couldn’t catch me, would they take my wife instead? As a husband and father, not only was I unable to protect them but I was also bringing worry and fear upon my wife and son. Thinking of this, I felt I was letting them down and really wanted to go home to protect them. But I was also worried that if I got arrested, it would implicate the brothers and sisters, so I didn’t dare to go home. But I had no heart for doing my duty, and I’d toss and turn at night, unable to sleep. So I prayed to God, seeking, “God, my heart is in turmoil right now. I’m worried the police will go to my home to arrest me, terrifying my child. Please lead me and guide me so I can understand Your intention and know how to practice.” I thought of God’s words: “Why do you not entrust them into My hands? Do you not have sufficient faith in Me? Or is it that you are afraid I will make inappropriate arrangements for you? Why do you always worry about the family of your flesh and feel concerned for your loved ones? Do I have a certain place in your heart? You still talk about allowing Me to have dominion within you and occupy your entire being—these are all deceptive lies!” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Utterances of Christ in the Beginning, Chapter 59). It felt as if God were asking me these things directly. Why couldn’t I entrust my child into God’s hands? Was I truly a believer? I was always quick to say that God is the Creator, that He is sovereign over everything, and that Satan is also in God’s hands and dares not meddle without His permission, but now that something had actually happened, why did I lack faith? I kept fearing that the police would go to my house to arrest me, frightening my child, and I worried that they would take my wife as well. I just wanted to hurry home to protect them. But even if I did go home, once the police arrested me, not only would I be unable to protect them, but I would make them even more worried and afraid. This kind of thinking of mine was truly foolish. In fact, a person’s fate, health, and what they will experience in life have all been preordained by God before they were even born. Even if I stayed home with my child every day, protecting him from bumps and scares, his condition would still worsen if it was meant to worsen. Just like before, when my wife and I were at home, did our child not fall ill even though he wasn’t frightened? Everything is in God’s hands. Without God’s permission, nothing would happen to him. This showed that I didn’t believe in God’s sovereignty and ordination. I’d believed in God for years, yet He held no place in my heart at all, and my faith in Him was too small. At this moment, my heart calmed, and I no longer thought about going back home. I became willing to entrust my child to God and submit to His sovereignty and arrangements.

Not long after, I received another letter from my wife, saying that she’d taken our son back to our hometown so that my parents could help care for him, and that they’d rented a 20-square-meter garage to live in. When I heard this, I was quite upset. We had a home, yet our situation had deteriorated to the point where our child had to live in a garage. I really felt pity for my son. As his father, I’d failed to provide him with a good environment in which to live. He was so young, but had been roped into suffering. If other kids found out that he lived in a garage, would they laugh at him? Since no one ever saw his father around, would others bully him? Thinking about this, I felt that I’d really failed him and that I hadn’t fulfilled my responsibilities as a father. Sometimes, when I heard the sounds of parents next door helping their children with homework or playing with them, my heart would drift, and I’d wonder how my son was doing. At times like this, I would pray to God, and only this would calm my heart a bit.

One day in December 2018, I received a letter from my wife saying that the police had been following her for over a month in an attempt to arrest me. She had been arrested by the police when getting off work, but in the early morning, she’d managed to escape while the officers were asleep. She didn’t dare go home and instead fled directly to a host home. She told me to be careful, as the police were still looking for me. When I thought about how the police had torn our family of three apart, forcing my wife and me to be unable to return home, I felt furious. My son was only 10 years old, and I couldn’t be there with him, and now even his mother was gone. He also had his illness, and with my parents being nearly 70 years old, how could they take care of him? Also, with my wife having fled, since the police hadn’t caught her, they would be sure to search our home again to arrest her. How could such a young child endure all this? Thinking about how my child had to face all this alone at such a young age, I was filled with pain and guilt. If I hadn’t left my job and home to do my duty, no one would have known I believed in God, and my son wouldn’t have had to face all of this. This had all happened because of me. I felt this particularly strongly when I read about an elderly sister’s experience. She and her son were hunted by the CCP for their belief in God and had to flee from place to place. When the police couldn’t get them, they kept going to her grandson’s school, trying to get information on her son’s whereabouts from the child. They even got his teachers and classmates to isolate and bully him, and in the end, the child couldn’t take it anymore and hanged himself at home. After reading this, my heart clenched up. These police officers are truly wicked. How could they treat a child like that? I clenched my teeth in anger and became even more worried about my son. Would he also be threatened and intimidated by the police? Would his teachers and classmates isolate and bully him? Would he become withdrawn? If he kept living in such repressive emotions for a long time, his condition would surely worsen. If my son couldn’t handle the pressure, would he also choose to take his own life? Thinking about all this, I felt deep pain and distress. As his father, I had failed to take care of him. I couldn’t protect him when he faced hardships, and I wasn’t fulfilling my responsibilities as a father. I felt that I was really letting him down. During that time, my duty yielded no results, and I went three months without being able to write a single script. I just worried about my child constantly. I even thought that if I hadn’t believed in God back then, none of this would have happened, and my child wouldn’t have had to suffer like this. When these kinds of thoughts arose, I felt afraid. How could I regret believing in God? Was this not betrayal? I realized my state was dangerous and immediately prayed to God, “God, I cannot stop believing in You! Please do not abandon me or hide Your face from me. God, though I miss my son, I cannot leave You. Please lead and guide me to break free from my state of being worried and concerned.”

Later, during one of my devotionals, I read a passage where God answered the questions of brothers and sisters in fellowship: “(I’m still being constrained by my affection for my family while performing my duty. I often miss them, and it affects the performance of my duty. My state has improved a bit lately, but I still sometimes worry about the great red dragon arresting my family members in order to threaten me, and I’m afraid that I won’t be able to stand firm then.) These are groundless fears. When you think about these things, you need to seek the truth for a resolution. You need to understand that whatever circumstances you face, God has orchestrated and arranged it. You must learn to submit to God and be able to seek the truth and stand firm when faced with situations. This is a lesson that people have to learn. You should contemplate often: How are you experiencing God’s watering and shepherding during this period of time? What is your actual stature? How should you fulfill the duty of a created being? You have to figure these things out! If you can think about the great red dragon threatening you, then why don’t you think about how to enter into the truth? Why don’t you contemplate on the truth?” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. Part Three). God’s words immediately reminded me—what would my worrying about my child solve? If one day my son really were coerced and intimidated by the police and his condition worsened, or if he were harmed and killed, how should I face that? I thought about how Job faced trials at the age of 70. When Satan took away all of Job’s possessions and children, Job stood firm in his testimony for God, and said: “Jehovah gave, and Jehovah has taken away; blessed be the name of Jehovah” (Job 1:21). But I hadn’t faced such a situation yet. I was just so worried after seeing how the old sister’s grandson was driven to his death by the CCP’s police force, and I was afraid my son might face such things too, so I couldn’t focus on my duty. My stature was truly pitifully small. Before, I thought that since I’d given up my job and devoted myself fully to my duties after believing in God for just half a year, I was earnest in my pursuit in my faith, and I had some loyalty to Him, but today, in light of the facts, I was completely revealed. Even after believing in God for many years, I still didn’t have a true understanding of His sovereignty, and what I understood were just words and doctrines. I even regretted leaving home to do my duty, thinking that if I hadn’t, my child wouldn’t have suffered the things he had. Though outwardly I was still doing my duties, inwardly I had already betrayed God, and I had already lost my testimony before God. When I left my job to devote myself to my duties, I prayed to God, saying that I was willing to expend myself for God and that I’d never regret my decision! But the vow I’d made to God became a lie, and I became someone who deceived God. I was filled with remorse and guilt, hating that I didn’t have the truth and couldn’t satisfy God. I prayed to God, “God, my stature is truly too small. Please guide me to understand the truth and come out of my worries and concerns. I am willing to entrust my child into Your hands and calm my heart to do my duties.”

I thought about the six junctures in a human’s life that God had fellowshipped about, so I looked them up and read about them. Almighty God says: “Besides birth and childrearing, the parents’ responsibility in their children’s lives is simply to provide them with a formal environment to grow up in, for nothing except the predestination of the Creator has a bearing on a person’s fate. No one can control what kind of future a person will have; it is predetermined long in advance, and not even one’s parents can change one’s fate. As far as fate is concerned, everyone is independent, and everyone has their own fate. So, no one’s parents can stave off one’s fate in life or exert the slightest influence on the role one plays in life. It could be said that the family into which one is destined to be born and the environment in which one grows up are nothing more than the preconditions for fulfilling one’s mission in life. They do not in any way determine a person’s fate in life or the kind of destiny within which a person fulfills their mission. And so, no one’s parents can assist one in accomplishing one’s mission in life, and likewise, no one’s relatives can help one assume one’s role in life. How one accomplishes one’s mission and in what kind of living environment one performs one’s role are entirely determined by one’s fate in life. In other words, no other objective conditions can influence a person’s mission, which is predestined by the Creator. All people become mature in the particular environments in which they grow up; then gradually, step by step, they set off down their own roads in life and fulfill the destinies planned for them by the Creator. Naturally, involuntarily, they enter the vast sea of humanity and assume their own posts in life, where they begin to fulfill their responsibilities as created beings for the sake of the Creator’s predestination, for the sake of His sovereignty” (The Word, Vol. 2. On Knowing God. God Himself, the Unique III). Pondering God’s words, I realized that each person’s fate, how much suffering they will endure in life, and the environment in which they grow up, have already been preordained by God, and no one can change them, and that not even parents can change their children’s fate. But I did not understand the truth. I always thought that as a father, I should not let my son suffer, and that I had to protect him, allowing him to grow up happily in a comfortable and problem-free environment, and that this was my responsibility as a father. This view of mine doesn’t align with God’s words. We are all created beings, and God has arranged for each of us a specific environment in which to grow up, and whether it is problem-free or laden with obstacles, we all need to experience it. Although I am the father of my child, my responsibility is only to bring him into the world and raise him. The fate he will have, and the environment in which he will grow up are beyond my control, and have already been preordained by God. Though I didn’t know what my son’s fate would be, I believed that whatever happens to him had been preordained by God. Whether his classmates would mock him, whether the police would intimidate him, whether his condition would worsen, and whether he would choose to take his life—these are all things beyond my control. Even if I were with him every day, I would be unable to protect him. And if his time has come, his life must end when it is meant to. But if his life is not meant to end, then no matter how dangerous the situations he faces are, he will be unharmed. Also, experiencing these difficult circumstances will strengthen his perseverance and make him stronger. After realizing this, my heart felt much brighter, and I no longer worried about my son.

Later, I read more of God’s words, and I began to understand the root cause of my feeling of indebtedness toward my son. Almighty God says: “Born into such a filthy land, man has been infected by society to a severe extent, he has been influenced by feudal ethics, and he has been taught at ‘institutes of higher learning.’ The backward thinking, corrupt morality, mean view on life, despicable philosophy for worldly dealings, utterly worthless existence, and depraved lifestyle and customs—all of these things have severely intruded upon man’s heart, and severely undermined and attacked his conscience. As a result, man is ever more distant from God, and ever more opposed to Him. Man’s disposition becomes more vicious by the day, and there is not a single person who will willingly give up anything for God, not a single person who will willingly submit to God, nor, moreover, a single person who will willingly seek the appearance of God. Instead, under the power of Satan, man does nothing but pursue pleasure, giving himself over to the corruption of the flesh in the land of mud” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. To Have an Unchanged Disposition Is to Be in Enmity to God). “All these generations have believed that traditional culture is right and good. Nobody dissects the origins or source of these so-called good and right things—this is what gives the problem its severity. Even some believers who have read the words of God for many years still think these are correct and positive things, to the extent that they believe these can replace the truth, can replace the words of God” (The Word, Vol. 4. Exposing Antichrists. Item Six). “We must know ourselves, and everything from the academic education we have received down to our pursuits and preferences, from our thoughts and views down to the paths we choose and walk, are all worthy of deep excavation and dissection. Some of them are inherited from one’s family; some come from one’s schooling; some come from the influence and conditioning of social environments; some are learned from books; and some come from our imaginings and notions. These are the most frightening things, for they dominate our minds, and govern the motives, intents, and goals of our actions. They also bind and control our words and actions. If we do not unearth these things and reject them, we will never fully accept God’s words, and we will never unreservedly accept His requirements and put them into practice” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. Only by Recognizing One’s Own Misguided Views Can One Truly Transform). After pondering God’s words, I realized that because I often lived in negativity as I felt I hadn’t fulfilled my responsibility as a father, I couldn’t focus on my duty. I even thought of returning home to care for my child to make up for my feelings of indebtedness toward him. The root cause of this was that I’d always lived by the thoughts and views that “To feed without teaching is the father’s fault” and “To have children but not raise them is to fail as a father.” I thought being a father meant giving everything for one’s child and being responsible for their future. These ideas were deeply rooted in my heart, and even though after I’d found God I’d come to understand that doing a duty as a created being is perfectly natural and justified, I was still bound by traditional cultural ideas. I mistakenly thought that as a father, my responsibility was to take care of my child, and so when I failed to care for him properly, my conscience would condemn me, and I felt that I wasn’t up to standard as a father. I even thought about how my young son being left without his parents by his side at such a young age, and even having to face the threats and intimidation of the police had been caused by my belief in God. I even started regretting believing in God and choosing to leave home to do my duty. Though I didn’t abandon my duty and return home, my heart had already betrayed God. In reality, the reason I wasn’t fulfilling my responsibilities as a father wasn’t because I didn’t want to care for and raise my son, but because the CCP is so wicked, and doesn’t allow us to believe in and worship God. It was the CCP that had torn our family apart by hunting us, leaving my son with no home he could go back to, and to suffer from his condition without any parental care and concern. All of this was because of the CCP’s opposition to God. But I didn’t hate the CCP, and instead, I’d thought all this had been caused by my belief in God and my doing my duty. Was I not calling black white, and unable to distinguish good from evil? God gave me the opportunity to do my duty in order for me to pursue the truth and gain life, but I didn’t cherish this or give thanks. Instead, I wallowed in guilt and feelings of indebtedness, and so I was unable to do my duty with peace of mind. This led to me not completing a single script for three months, delaying the work. I didn’t fulfill my duty as a created being, and not only did I not feel any remorse or guilt, but I even wanted to betray God and return home to care for my child. I was truly without conscience, reason, or humanity. I saw how traditional culture had distorted my perspective and almost led me to leave God, and I knew I could no longer live according to traditional thoughts and views. The Lord Jesus in the Age of Grace asked people to forsake everything to follow Him, and God approves of people choosing to do their duty. The fact that I could do my duty as a created being was God’s grace and elevation, so I should devote myself to fulfilling my duty, entrust my son to God’s hands, and submit to God’s sovereignty and arrangements in all things.

I read two more passages of God’s words and understood what my true responsibility is. Almighty God says: “What does God mean when He says that ‘God is the source of man’s life’? It is to make everyone realize this: Our lives and souls all come from God and were created by Him—not from our parents, and certainly not from nature, but given us by God. Only our flesh was born of our parents, as our children are born of us, but their fate is entirely in God’s hands. That we can believe in God is an opportunity given by Him; it is ordained by Him and is His grace. There is therefore no need for you to fulfill your obligation or responsibility to anyone else; you should only fulfill your duty to God as a created being. This is what people must do above anything else, the main thing that should be done as the primary affair of one’s life. If you do not fulfill your duty well, you are not a qualified created being” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. Only by Recognizing One’s Own Misguided Views Can One Truly Transform). “As someone who believes in God and pursues the truth and salvation, the energy and time you have left in your life should be spent performing your duty and on whatever God has entrusted to you; you shouldn’t spend any time on your children. Your life does not belong to your children, and it should not be consumed for their lives or survival, nor to satisfy your expectations of them. Instead, it should be devoted to the duty and entrusted task that God has given you, as well as the mission you should fulfill as a created being. This is where the value and meaning of your life lie” (The Word, Vol. 6. On the Pursuit of the Truth. How to Pursue the Truth (19)). I came to understand that we are created by God, and that our lives come from God. My being born in the last days, and my coming before God to believe in and worship Him were all preordained by God, and I should do my duty and expend myself for God diligently. My son’s life also comes from God, and he was merely born through our flesh. Though we have a father-son relationship, we each have our own mission, and how long we live together or when we part are not things I can decide. If we can live together, I will take good care of him and lead him before God, but without such an environment, I should prioritize my duty. This is my true responsibility and obligation. If I hadn’t fulfilled my duty, even if I took good care of my son and everyone called me a good father, in God’s eyes, I wouldn’t be up to standard as a created being, and instead, I’d have betrayed God, and God would find me repulsive and detestable. Living like this would have no value. Now, I can do my duty of a created being in God’s house, and I can understand more truth and worship the Creator, and seek to live out the true human likeness. This is the most valuable and meaningful thing! After understanding this aspect of the truth, my heart felt completely liberated, and I secretly resolved in my heart, “In the future, I will devote all my time and energy to my duty, and I will live to fulfill the duty of a created being!”

I haven’t seen my son in seven years since I left home, nor have I heard any news of him recently. Sometimes when I’m not busy with my duty, I still think of him, but my state isn’t disturbed as it was before, and before long I’m able to focus on my duty again. I’ve become able to let go of my worries about my son and feelings of indebtedness toward him and I thank God for His guidance.