How to Experience Trials and Tribulations (II)

Relevant Words of God:

If you do not know God’s disposition, then you will inevitably fall during trials, because you are unaware of how God makes people perfect, and by what means He makes them perfect, and when God’s trials come upon you and they don’t match your conceptions, you will be unable to stand firm. God’s true love is His entire disposition, and when God’s entire disposition is shown to you, what does this bring to your flesh? When God’s righteous disposition is shown to you, your flesh will inevitably suffer much pain. If you don’t suffer this pain, then you cannot be made perfect by God, nor will you be able to devote true love to God. If God makes you perfect, He will surely show His entire disposition to you. From the time of creation until today, God has never shown His entire disposition—but during the last days He reveals it to this group of people whom He has predestined and selected, and by making people perfect He lays bare His dispositions, through which He makes complete a group of people. Such is God’s true love for people. Experiencing God’s true love for them requires that people endure extreme pain, and pay a high price. Only after this will they be gained by God and be able to give their true love back to God, and only then will God’s heart be satisfied. If people wish to be made perfect by God, and if they wish to do His will, and fully give their true love to God, then they must experience much suffering and many torments from the circumstances, to suffer pain worse than death, ultimately they will be forced to give their true heart back to God. Whether or not someone truly loves God is revealed during hardship and refinement. God purifies people’s love, and this is also only achieved amid hardship and refinement.

from “Only Loving God Is Truly Believing in God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh

It used to be that people would all make their resolutions in front of God and say: “No matter who doesn’t love God, I must love Him.” But now, you are faced with refinement. It is not in line with your notions, so you lose faith in God. Is this genuine love? You have read many times about the deeds of Job—have you forgotten about them? True love can only take shape from within faith. You develop real love for God through your refinements, in your actual experiences you are considerate of God’s will through your faith, and through faith you forsake your own flesh and pursue life—this is what people should do. If you do this you will be able to see God’s actions, but if you lack faith you will not be able to, and you will not be able to experience His work. If you want to be used and perfected by God, you must be possessed of everything: the will to suffer, faith, endurance, obedience, as well as the ability to experience the work of God, gain a grasp on His will, be considerate of His sorrow, and so on. Perfecting a person is not easy, and every single refinement that you experience requires your faith and love. If you want to be perfected by God, just hitting the streets is not enough, and only expending yourself for God is not enough either. You must possess many things to be able to become someone who is perfected by God. When you face sufferings you must be able to not consider the flesh and not complain against God. When God hides Himself from you, you must be able to have the faith to follow Him, to maintain your previous love without allowing it to falter or disappear. No matter what God does, you must submit to His design, and be more willing to curse your own flesh than to complain against Him. When you are faced with trials you must satisfy God in spite of any reluctance to part with something you love, or bitter weeping. Only this can be called true love and faith. No matter what your actual stature is, you must first possess the will to suffer hardship as well as true faith, and you must have the will to forsake the flesh. You should be willing to personally endure hardships and suffer losses to your personal interests in order to satisfy God’s will. You must also have a heart of regretting yourself, that you weren’t able to satisfy God in the past, and be able to regret yourself now. Not a single one of these can be lacking and God will perfect you through these things. If you lack these conditions, you cannot be perfected.

from “Those Who Are to Be Made Perfect Must Undergo Refinement” in The Word Appears in the Flesh

God is eager for man to love Him, but the more man loves Him, the greater man’s suffering, and the more man loves Him, the greater man’s trials. If you love Him, then every kind of suffering will befall you—and if you don’t, then perhaps everything will go smoothly for you, and all will be peaceful around you. When you love God, you will feel that much around you is insurmountable, and because your stature is too small you will be refined; moreover, you are incapable of satisfying God, and you will always feel that God’s will is too lofty, that it is beyond the reach of man. Because of all this you will be refined—because there is much weakness within you, and much that is incapable of satisfying the will of God, you will be refined inside. Yet you must clearly see that purification is only achieved through refinement. Thus, during these last days you must bear testimony to God. No matter how great your suffering, you should go on to the very end, and even at your last breath, still you must be faithful to God, and at the mercy of God; only this is truly loving God, and only this is the strong and resounding testimony. When you are tempted by Satan, you should say: “My heart belongs to God, and God has already gained me. I cannot satisfy you—I must devote my all to satisfying God.” The more you satisfy God, the more God blesses you, and the greater the strength of your love for God; so, too, will you have faith and resolve, and will feel that nothing is more worthy or significant than a life spent loving God.

from “Only by Experiencing Painful Trials Can You Know the Loveliness of God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh

Relevant Fellowship:

All kinds of suffering, trials and refinement appear from the outside to be just suffering, as though a disaster has befallen, and they are all bad things in the eyes of man. But they can enable us to know our own corruption, they can expose us, expose us as being without the truth, expose us as still living by our satanic natures and, ultimately, they enable us to recognize the pitiful truth of our corruption by Satan, and then begin to repent, be new people and pursue the truth. You see, this trial, this refinement brings us salvation, and it is life entry and an entry into the truth. To man, these trials and refinements are not good things, and yet they are experiences of life entry and they bring us such great benefits. It is therefore unacceptable to take a view on things merely relying on your own conceptions. As we experience God’s work in the last days, there are many experiences of life entry that are painful and that don’t seem like good things to us. But in fact, they are all good things, and to us, they are the most meaningful things.

from “What Is Entry Into Life and the Path for Entry Into Life?” in Sermons and Fellowship on Entry Into Life II

We are clear about the path to seeking the truth in our trials, and how to stand witness. First of all it is to submit absolutely to God, in this submission we will unconsciously understand God’s will. If you are always wondering and analyzing, you will not understand God’s will. You must first submit. You must first dedicate yourself to God, placing yourself in God’s hands, not scheming for yourself. In this way your heart will be at peace before God, and God will enlighten you, letting you understand the truth, letting you understand God’s will, and you will know how to experience, how to enter, your path will be clear and distinct. Having experienced a trial, your life disposition will undergo some change, your understanding of the truth will deepen and become more practical. Your knowledge of God will become deeper. Therefore, experiencing a trial, your stature will make new progress. In every trial you will make new progress, and make new gains. That is, in every trial you will get opportunities to be perfected and attain some perfection. In each trial you make gains. In each trial you make progress, so after experiencing tens of trials, hundreds of trials, won’t your stature become mature? And doesn’t a mature stature mean that you have been perfected? Having experienced hundreds of trials in which you stood witness, will there be any later trials that you can’t withstand? Will there be any tests that can overcome you? Then Satan will have no way to corrupt you again, no way to deceive you again. No matter what the test is, it won’t overcome you, then you will become a perfected person, or in the words of the Book of Revelation “the overcoming man-child.” Now we are clear about the path to salvation, we will have a clear path before us when later we encounter trials, won’t we? When facing a trial, first submit to God, don’t make a study of it, do not hesitate to submit, dedicate yourself, pray in a thorough way, and stand witness. When you submit to God’s work, when your heart is at peace before God, you will ultimately understand God’s will. From the results achieved through your trials, in your knowledge of God and the progress of stature, you will know that it is God’s love you have encountered, that these trials are extremely beneficial to you. You will discover that in each trial you have understood a truth, that you have entered deeper into the truth, and you will have a new knowledge of God. You will feel that God’s work is so good, that the experience of trials is no hardship, and that it is the opportunity to enjoy God, the opportunity to enjoy God’s love. This is a chance to join God’s feast! Tell me, is it a good thing or a bad thing to experience trials? It is a good thing. If we submit to God’s work like this, no matter what trials we face, always submitting before God, then trials to us mean perfection, mean salvation. If we cannot submit before God in our trials, and always struggle to free ourselves from hardship and trials in our own way, in the end we will get nothing, not the least bit of testimony, and we will be detested and rejected by God. Then the trial becomes a person’s chastisement.

from “The True Process of Corrupt Humanity’s Salvation” in Sermons and Fellowship on Entry Into Life III

Where is practicing the truth carried out? It is carried out in learning all the lessons there are to learn from all kinds of people, matters and things, and by seeing God’s deeds, God’s sovereignty and God’s almightiness within them. In this way, no matter what environment we find ourselves in, we will always be able to obey, follow God normally and fulfill the duty of a created being well, and thus our spiritual lives will grow. Therefore, all kinds of environment are in the service of our life growth. We cannot do without even one of them, for if even one of them is not present, then our lives will not be perfect. Although in the environments God arranges for us we suffer much pain and torment, and in our hearts we don’t want to live in this environment, yet because we know God’s good intention and we see God’s almightiness, we can calmly serve God in this kind of environment, perform the duty of a created being, and ultimately become a testimony for God. In this way, we become people who are perfected by God. All kinds of environment and all kinds of people, matters and things are in the service of God so that He may perfect us—you must have a thorough understanding of this point! The things that are in the service of our life growth are not just positive people, there are also negative people; they are not just all the things we like, but are also all the things we don’t like; they are not just the things that make us happy and glad when we see them, but there are also many kinds of people, matters and things that make us sad and pained when we see them, and that we don’t want to see. And so God places all these things in our surrounding environment apparently to make us suffer, but actually He does it to temper our will, to achieve a more perfect life for us and make us into more perfect people. If we are able to learn these lessons, then we will be people who are perfected by God; if we are not able to learn these lessons, then that shows that we don’t understand God’s will, that we don’t pursue the truth, that we haven’t learned anything and that we’re just muddling along in confusion. Does God only use His words to perfect people? On the one hand, He uses His words to perfect people, and on the other He perfects people by means of the various people, matters and things that render service in our living environment. Of course, the effects of being perfected are ultimately that God’s words become our lives, and that the truth becomes our lives.

from “Sermons and Fellowship About God’s Word ‘God Himself, the Unique III’ (VIII)” in Sermons and Fellowship on Entry Into Life XIII