By Liang Xin, China

In 2005, I turned sixty-eight years old, and one day in early October of that year, a friend preached Almighty God’s gospel of the last days to me. By eating and drinking God’s words, I became certain that Almighty God is the one true God who saves humanity, and I accepted God’s work of the last days. Less than a year after I started believing in God, the leader arranged for me to manage the church’s books of God’s words. I thought to myself, “Since I’ve taken on this duty, I have to be diligent and responsible. I mustn’t make any mistakes. Only by doing my duty well can I gain God’s salvation.” After that, I actively did my duty, organizing and numbering all the books, and recording everything clearly. I thought, “As long as I devote myself fully to my duty, not only will the leader and brothers and sisters be pleased, but God will surely be satisfied and bless me as well.” The thought of being blessed and saved in the future made me very happy. Two years later, the leader arranged for me to deliver books and letters to two nearby churches. Although this duty was a bit strenuous for someone of my age, as soon as I thought that doing this duty would allow me to satisfy God and earn His blessings, and especially when I thought of the beauty of the kingdom in the future, I felt particularly joyful, so even when I was tired, I didn’t complain.

The years passed, 2024 came, and I was now at the advanced age of eighty-seven years old. My health was declining year by year, and I suffered from several illnesses, such as premature heartbeats, hyperlipidemia, high blood pressure, and high blood sugar, and three years before, I developed degenerative lumbar disease, and when it really flared up, my lower back hurt so much that I couldn’t stand up, and every movement brought excruciating pain. But to be honest, these illnesses didn’t affect my mood much because they didn’t hinder me from doing my duty, and they didn’t affect my pursuit of salvation through my faith in God. What caused me the most pain was that I had gone deaf in both ears. I couldn’t hear my family’s normal conversations at all, and they would have to shout in my ear for me to hear even a little. My family bought me several different hearing aids, but none worked for long. I went to the hospital and was diagnosed with age-related hearing loss, which is incurable. After that, I felt as if I were living in a silent world. I couldn’t hear God’s sermons or fellowship, nor could I clearly hear hymns of God’s words. At gatherings, I couldn’t follow what others fellowshipped about their experiences or their understanding of the truth of God’s words, and even when I tried to read their lips, I couldn’t make out what they were saying. In light of my physical condition, the church stopped assigning me duties. I felt deep sorrow, and I cried countless times when I was by myself. I thought, “It’s really all over. Without doing any duties, can I still hope for blessings or a good destination? Has it all just become an illusion? Has God abandoned me? Now that I’m deaf, am I not just a decoration, a useless person? What duty can I still do? Some elderly people in the nonbelieving world live to be over a hundred and still have good hearing and vision. I’ve followed God for eighteen years; and over all these years, I’ve been eagerly expending myself and actively doing my duties. No matter what duties the church arranged for me, I always did them earnestly and responsibly, and I never let my age hinder my duties. So God should have blessed and protected me, and kept me from going deaf. How could I have become deaf? Now I can’t hear God’s voice or do my duties. How can I pursue the truth like this? I have no hope of salvation and the beauty of the kingdom is out of reach. It’s all over. It seems God no longer wants me. Anyway, I’m almost ninety and don’t know how many days I have left. I’ll just muddle through and take it day by day.” I lived in complaints and misunderstanding about God, feeling really negative and restless. I started spending time on my phone to pass the time, and I didn’t want to pray or read God’s words anymore. My daughter, seeing my bad state, often shouted in my ear, “Aren’t you still a believer in God? Shouldn’t we accept situations that come to us from God? Whether or not we can gain God’s salvation depends on whether we pursue the truth. God has spoken so many words and expressed so much truth, and for every problem, there’s a path of resolution in God’s words. Your eyes are fine, so you can read more of God’s words. Read what God asks of elderly people and what His intentions are when illness comes upon us. Only by equipping ourselves with more truth can our problems be solved. What good does just being negative and restless do?” My daughter’s words woke me up. My heart had been distant from God, I was praying less, I wasn’t focused when reading God’s words, and I just spent time on my phone to kill time. I was stuck in negativity and couldn’t break free. I knew that my illness came under God’s sovereignty, but I just couldn’t submit. I then remembered a line from God’s words: “The simplest precept in pursuing the truth is that you must accept all things from God and submit in all things. That’s part of it” (The Word, Vol. 6. On the Pursuit of the Truth. Why Man Must Pursue the Truth). I understood that God’s intention is that we accept everything that happens from Him, and that we must have absolute submission. The facts revealed that I wasn’t submitting to God, and that I wasn’t someone who pursued the truth. I bowed before God and prayed, “Oh God, ever since I lost my hearing, my state has been terrible. I feel that with my deafness, I can no longer gain salvation or blessings, and I’ve been living in pain. I’ve unreasonably made demands of You and complained about You. I’ve been truly lacking in conscience and reason! Oh God, please enlighten and guide me out of this wrong state.”

Later, I reflected, asking myself, “Why did my deafness cause me such pain? Why couldn’t I have a heart of submission to God?” I read a passage of God’s words: “In their belief in God, what people seek is to obtain blessings for the future; this is their goal in their faith. All people have this intent and hope, but the corruption in their nature must be resolved through trials and refinement. In whichever aspects you are not purified and reveal corruption, these are the aspects in which you must be refined—this is God’s arrangement. God creates an environment for you, forcing you to be refined there so that you can know your own corruption. Ultimately, you reach a point at which you would rather die in order to give up your schemes and desires and to submit to God’s sovereignty and arrangement. Therefore, if people do not have several years of refinement, if they do not endure a certain amount of suffering, they will not be able to rid themselves of the constraints of corruption of the flesh in their thoughts and in their hearts. In whichever aspects people are still subject to the constraints of their satanic nature, and in whichever aspects they still have their own desires and their own demands, these are the aspects in which they should suffer. Only through suffering can lessons be learned, which means being able to gain truth, and understand God’s intentions. In fact, many truths are understood by experiencing suffering and trials. Nobody can understand God’s intentions, recognize God’s almightiness and wisdom, or appreciate God’s righteous disposition when in a comfortable and easy environment or when circumstances are favorable. That would be impossible!” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. Part Three). Through the enlightenment and guidance of God’s words, I realized that I had always believed in God for the sake of blessings. I believed that as long as I did my duty properly, I would have hope for salvation. For a good destination and to receive blessings, I would accept and obey, and diligently treat any duty the church arranged for me. Although I was old and managing the books was challenging, I never complained about the hardship or let my age affect my duty. But after I went deaf, I couldn’t hear God’s sermons or fellowship or learn hymns of God’s word anymore, and when I gathered with brothers and sisters, I couldn’t hear their fellowship about their understanding of God’s words. So I felt that when I accepted this stage of work, I was already old, and now that I couldn’t hear anything, I would gain even less truth. Especially when the church stopped arranging duties for me, I became worried that I wouldn’t receive blessings anymore, and I felt really pained. I stopped praying and seeking the truth, and I just spent time on my phone. I adopted a negative, resistant attitude, just trying to muddle through. If I hadn’t been revealed through this, I wouldn’t have reflected on and known myself, and I would still think I was doing a good job in my duties. Now I saw that everything I did was for my blessings and a good destination, and not at all to satisfy God. Through this reflection, I realized how hideous and despicable my nature was. How could I claim to be a human being? How could I have had the nerve to say, “I’ve believed in God for eighteen years, so He should bless and protect me”? I felt so ashamed. I’d been truly shameless! My disposition hadn’t changed at all; never mind my eighteen years of belief—even if I’d believed for twenty-eight or thirty-eight years, it would still have been useless.

During my devotionals, I read this passage of God’s words: “Upon what basis do you—a created being—make demands of God? People are not qualified to make demands of God. There is nothing more unreasonable than making demands of God. He will do what He ought to do, and His disposition is righteous. Righteousness is by no means fairness or reasonableness; it is not egalitarianism, or a matter of allocating to you what you deserve in accordance with how much work you have completed, or paying you for whatever work you have done, or giving you your due according to what effort you expend. This is not righteousness, it is merely being fair and reasonable. Very few people are capable of knowing God’s righteous disposition. Suppose God had eliminated Job after Job bore witness for Him: Would this be righteous? In fact, it would be. Why is this called righteousness? How do people view righteousness? If something is in line with people’s notions, it is then very easy for them to say that God is righteous; however, if they do not see that thing as being in line with their notions—if it is something that they are incapable of comprehending—then it would be difficult for them to say that God is righteous. If God had destroyed Job back then, people would not have said He was righteous. Actually, though, whether people have been corrupted or not, and whether they have been profoundly corrupted or not, does God have to justify Himself when He destroys them? Should He have to explain to people upon what basis it is that He does so? Must God tell people the rules He has ordained? There is no need. In God’s eyes, someone who is corrupt, and who is liable to oppose God, is without any worth; however God handles them will be appropriate, and all are the arrangements of God. If you were displeasing to God’s eyes, and if He said that He had no use for you after your testimony and therefore destroyed you, would this, too, be His righteousness? It would. You might not be able to recognize this right now from the facts, but you must understand in doctrine. … Everything that God does is righteous. Though humans may not be able to perceive God’s righteousness, they should not make judgments at will. If something He does appears to humans as unreasonable, or if they have any notions about it, and that leads them to say that He is not righteous, then they are being most unreasonable. You see that Peter found some things to be incomprehensible, but he was sure that God’s wisdom was present and that His good will was in those things. Humans cannot fathom everything; there are so many things that they cannot grasp. Thus, to know God’s disposition is not an easy thing” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. Part Three). Pondering God’s words, I realized that I didn’t understand God’s righteous disposition. When God’s actions aligned with my notions, I could accept them and call God righteous, but when they didn’t, I couldn’t accept that God was righteous. I always believed that after finding God, no matter what duty the church arranged for me, I could submit, and that I did my duties diligently and never let my old age delay them, so I thought that God should bless me and shouldn’t have allowed me to go deaf, and that only by doing so would He be righteous. Now that I couldn’t do my duties because of my deafness and my goal of receiving blessings wasn’t being met, I felt that God wasn’t righteous. But after reading God’s words, I realized that what I believed were just my notions and imaginings, and that they didn’t align with the truth. I was using the worldly viewpoint of “The more you work, the more you get; the less you work, the less you get; no work, no reward” to measure God’s righteous disposition. My viewpoint was wrong. Whether or not God’s actions align with human notions, His good intentions are always within them. Whatever God does toward any created being is righteous. Because God’s essence is righteousness. I shouldn’t measure it by my notions. God says: “In God’s eyes, someone who is corrupt, and who is liable to oppose God, is without any worth; however God handles them will be appropriate, and all are the arrangements of God.” I am just an ordinary created being, what right did I have to make demands of God? When I thought about my unreasonable demands of God, I felt deeply sorrowful and regretful, and tears streamed down my face. I was 87 years old and could still read God’s words, this was already God’s protection and grace. From then on, I couldn’t make demands of God anymore, and I had to submit to His orchestrations and arrangements.

I read more of God’s words: “I decide the destination of each person not on the basis of age, seniority, amount of suffering, and least of all, the degree to which they invite pity, but according to whether they possess the truth. There is no other choice but this” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Prepare Sufficient Good Deeds for Your Destination). From God’s words, I understood that God doesn’t judge someone’s destination based on how much suffering they seem to have endured or how much they have done, but on whether their disposition has changed. Over all these years, though I had always done my duty and endured some hardship, I didn’t know much about my corrupt disposition, and when God’s work didn’t align with my notions, I could still complain about and resist Him. I saw that after all these years of believing in God, my disposition still hadn’t changed, yet I was still hoping for salvation and a good destination, which was nothing more than wishful thinking. Though I’d become deaf, my eyes were still fine, and I could still read God’s words, so in the future, I needed to focus more on God’s words, seek the truth more to understand and resolve my corrupt disposition, and achieve a change in disposition.

Later, after a sister listened to my experience, she pointed out that I hadn’t understood the correlation between doing one’s duty and receiving blessings or misfortune. She also shared a passage of God’s words for me to read. Almighty God says: “There is no correlation between the duty of man and whether he receives blessings or suffers misfortune. Duty is what man ought to fulfill; it is his heaven-sent vocation, and should not depend on recompense, conditions, or reasons. Only then is he doing his duty. Receiving blessings refers to when someone is made perfect and enjoys God’s blessings after experiencing judgment. Suffering misfortune refers to when someone’s disposition does not change after they have experienced chastisement and judgment; they do not experience being made perfect but are punished. But regardless of whether they receive blessings or suffer misfortune, created beings should fulfill their duty, doing what they ought to do, and doing what they are able to do; this is the least that a person, a person who pursues God, should do. You should not do your duty only to receive blessings, and you should not refuse to act for fear of suffering misfortune. Let Me tell you this one thing: Man’s performance of his duty is what he ought to do, and if he is incapable of performing his duty, then this is his rebelliousness” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. The Difference Between the Ministry of God Incarnate and the Duty of Man). As I read and pondered, I realized that one’s duty is a commission given by God, and that this is man’s duty-bound responsibility, unrelated to the receiving of blessings or misfortune. Being able to do my duty as a believer was a blessing and an honor, and only by pursuing the truth and achieving a change in disposition while doing my duty could I gain God’s approval. If my disposition didn’t change, no matter how many duties I had done or how many roads I had traveled, if I didn’t pursue the truth, it would all be in vain, and I wouldn’t attain salvation. Paul did more work than anyone, but his disposition didn’t change. His sacrifices and efforts in his work weren’t to satisfy God, but to gain crowns and rewards. This was contrary to God’s requirements, and he walked a path of resisting God. As a result, he was punished and ended up in hell. I had to give up my intention to pursue blessings, and whether or not I were to attain a good destination, I had to pursue the truth. Although I had become deaf and temporarily unable to do my duty, I could still practice writing experiential testimonies to testify to God. I read these words of God: “Since being blessed is not an appropriate objective for people to pursue, what is an appropriate objective? The pursuit of the truth, the pursuit of changes in disposition, and being able to submit to all of God’s orchestrations and arrangements: these are the objectives that people should pursue” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. Only in the Practice of the Truth Is There Life Entry). After reading God’s words, I came before God in prayer, “Oh God! For many years, I’ve done my duties only to gain blessings, walking a path that resists You. I am willing to repent to You, give up my desire for blessings, and focus on pursuing the truth. I will pursue a change in disposition and submit to Your orchestrations and arrangements.” Afterward, I ate and drank God’s words every day, and I would write down what I came to understand about my corrupt disposition. I also watched experiential testimony videos to see how brothers and sisters experience God’s work. Sometimes, I would fellowship with my daughter, and I felt that each day was fulfilling and meaningful. Now, my state and condition are very good, and I no longer live in pain because of my deafness. Thanks be to God!