God is a practical God: All of His work is practical, all of the words He speaks are practical, and all of the truths He expresses are practical. Everything that is not His words is vacuous, non-existent, and unsound. Today, the Holy Spirit is to guide people into the words of God. If people are to pursue entry into reality, then they must seek reality, and know reality, after which they must experience reality, and live out reality. The more that people know reality, the more they are able to discern whether the words of others are real; the more people know reality, the fewer notions they have; the more people experience reality, the more they know the deeds of the practical God, and the easier it is for them to break free from their corrupt, satanic dispositions; the more reality people have, the more they know God and the more they detest the flesh and love the truth; and the more reality people have, the closer they come to the standards of God’s requirements. People who are gained by God are those who are possessed of reality, who know reality, and who have come to know God’s practical deeds through experiencing reality. The more you cooperate with God in a practical way and discipline your body, the more you will acquire the work of the Holy Spirit, the more you will gain reality, and the more you will be enlightened by God, and thus the greater your knowledge of God’s practical deeds will become. If you are able to live in the present light of the Holy Spirit, then the present path to practice will become clearer to you, and you will be more able to separate yourself from the religious notions and old practices of the past. Today actuality is the focus: The more reality people have, the clearer their knowledge of the truth, and the greater their understanding of God’s intentions. Reality can overcome all words and doctrines, it can overcome all theory and expertise, and the more reality people focus on, the more they truly love God, and hunger and thirst for His words. If you always focus on reality, then your philosophy for worldly dealings, religious notions, and natural character will naturally be expunged following the work of God. Those who do not pursue reality, and have no knowledge of reality, are likely to pursue that which is supernatural, and they will be easily tricked. The Holy Spirit has no means of working in such people, and so they feel vacant, and that their lives have no meaning.

The Holy Spirit can only work in you when you practically train, practically search, practically pray, and are willing to suffer for the sake of searching the truth. Those who do not seek the truth have nothing but words and doctrines, and empty theory, and those who are without the truth naturally have many notions about God. People such as this long only for God to turn their fleshly body into a spiritual body so that they might ascend to the third heaven. How foolish these people are! All who say such things have no knowledge of God, or of reality; people such as this cannot possibly cooperate with God, and can only wait passively. If people are to understand the truth, and to clearly see the truth, and if, furthermore, they are to enter the truth and put it into practice, then they must actually train, actually search, and actually hunger and thirst. When you hunger and thirst, and when you actually cooperate with God, God’s Spirit will surely touch you and work within you, which will bring you more enlightenment, and give you more knowledge of reality, and be of greater help to your life.

If people are to know God, they must first know that God is a practical God, and they must know God’s words, God’s practical appearance in the flesh, and God’s practical work. Only after knowing that all of God’s work is practical will you be able to actually cooperate with God, and only through this path will you be able to achieve growth in your life. All those who have no knowledge of reality have no means of experiencing God’s words, are ensnared in their notions, 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, 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 that you are 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 that first you must understand how the Holy Spirit enlightens and guides you practically from within. In this way, if you can truly grasp the Holy Spirit’s practical work within man, then 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 practical, 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 that things are difficult, and this is all caused by their notions. 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 practical cooperation, added to the work of the Holy Spirit, can produce practical experiences and the essential 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 notions, 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.

In the examples of Peter and Paul you can clearly see that it was Peter who paid the most attention to reality. From what Peter went through, it can be seen that his experiences are a summary of the lessons of those who had failed in the past, and that he absorbed the strengths of the saints of the past. From this it can be seen just how practical Peter’s experiences were, that people are able to reach out and touch these experiences, and to attain them. Paul, however, was different: All that he spoke of was vague and invisible, things like going to the third heaven, the ascension to the throne, and the crown of righteousness. He focused on that which was external: on status and lecturing people, on showing off his seniority, being touched by the Holy Spirit, and so on. Nothing he pursued was realistic, and much of it was fantasy, and thus it can be seen that all that is supernatural, such as how much the Holy Spirit touches people, the great joy that people enjoy, going to the third heaven, or the extent to which they enjoy their regular training, the extent to which they enjoy reading God’s words—none of this is realistic. All of the Holy Spirit’s work is normal, and realistic. When you read God’s words and pray, inside you are bright and steadfast, the external world cannot disturb you; inside, you are willing to love God, are willing to engage with positive things, and you detest the evil world. This is living within God. It is not, as people say, experiencing great enjoyment—such talk is not realistic. Today, everything should begin from actuality. Everything God does is practical, and in your experiences you should pay attention to knowing God in a practical way, and to searching for the footprints of God’s work and the means by which the Holy Spirit touches and enlightens people. If you eat and drink the words of God, and pray, and cooperate in a way that is more practical, assimilating what was good from times gone by, and rejecting what was bad like Peter, if you listen with your ears and observe with your eyes, and often pray and ponder in your heart, and do all you can to cooperate with God’s work, then God will surely guide you.