By Musheng, China

Before I found the Lord Jesus, I suffered many pains, ordeals, failures, and setbacks. First, I had a pair of twin sons who were born prematurely and didn’t survive, then I suffered several business failures and people schemed against me, to the point where I could no longer stay in business. But the hardest thing for me to bear was my husband’s betrayal. All these blows one after another tortured me to the point where I nearly lost the courage to go on living. It wasn’t until 2001, when I found the Lord Jesus, that I saw hope. After finding the Lord, I began reading the Bible, attending gatherings, praying to the Lord every day, entrusting my burdens and pains to Him, and without realizing it, my pain and worries disappeared, and my heart had a sense of peace and ease I had never experienced before. I also became much happier and more relaxed. Later, I had another son, and life gradually became smoother. These changes made me feel that the Lord Jesus is truly faithful and wonderful, and I was so happy to have found the Lord and I was truly grateful for the Lord Jesus saving me.

In May 2003, I accepted Almighty God’s work of the last days and welcomed the return of the Lord. I learned that this is the final stage in God’s work of saving mankind, and that this aims to resolve the root of man’s sin and their corrupt dispositions, and ultimately bring those saved into God’s kingdom. I felt truly blessed and was extremely excited and happy, and I made up my mind to pursue diligently. After that, I prayed and read the words of Almighty God every day, and I attended gatherings without fail, rain or shine. Even though my husband opposed my faith, I wasn’t constrained, I did hosting duty at home, and I preached the gospel whenever I had time. I thought that by pursuing with such enthusiasm, God would surely approve of me, grace and bless me even more, and grant me a life of peace and safety in the future.

Later, my one-year-old son kept getting fevers, with some reaching as high as 39 degrees Celsius, along with severe asthma. Sometimes he’d vomit, the fever medicine would have no effect, and he’d have to go to the hospital for continuous IV treatment for several days or even half a month before getting better. The sight of my child getting either injections or taking medicine each day, of his chubby face having lost its previous rosy color and glow, and his increasingly thin body, broke my heart and made me cry, and I just wished that this illness could come upon me instead. The doctor said it was congenital allergic asthma, and they said this illness was quite troublesome. My son was too young and had weak immunity. There was no special treatment plan available, only conventional treatment to control the condition, but they said that as he grew older, his condition might improve. Listening to the doctor’s vague words filled me with pain and feelings of helplessness. I often prayed to God, asking Him to heal my child’s illness. But my child’s illness never improved, and I began to have notions, thinking, “I have always been fervent in my pursuit, praying and reading God’s words every day, and I’ve never delayed gatherings and I’ve been doing my duties actively. God should bless me, right? When I believed in the Lord Jesus, I had grace, blessings, peace, and joy. But now that I believe in Almighty God, why hasn’t He healed my child’s illness? God is almighty, so couldn’t He just heal my son’s illness with a single word? Why doesn’t God listen to my prayers?” I was particularly reminded of the child of a relative who became brain-damaged because of delayed treatment for a high fever. My son was still so young, and I wondered if his frequent high fevers would damage his brain and affect his intelligence. Just thinking about this filled me with heart-wrenching pain. My twins from before were already gone, and the doctor said my body had difficulty getting pregnant, so if something happened to my son, how would I go on? Thinking about all this, I couldn’t help but weep bitterly, and I cried as I desperately prayed to God, asking Him to have mercy and protect my son, and to heal him quickly. But no matter how much I prayed, it seemed like God wasn’t listening to me. After a while, not only did my child’s illness not improve, but he began to get fevers even more frequently, and whenever he became feverish, he couldn’t breathe properly, he couldn’t eat anything, and he’d vomit after eating. Seeing my child having to endure so much suffering at such a young age was almost too much heartbreak to take, and I began to have doubts about God, thinking, “When I believed in the Lord Jesus, He always provided healing when I prayed about illness, but now that I’ve come to believe in Almighty God, why aren’t my prayers working? Am I believing in the wrong thing? Is Almighty God really the Lord Jesus returned?” Because my child was sick so often, all my attention was on taking care of him. I hadn’t been attending gatherings regularly, I couldn’t concentrate on eating and drinking God’s words, and I had nothing to say in my prayers. My heart was drifting from God.

Later, some sisters came to help and support me, and they found some passages of God’s words for me to read. I read these words of Almighty God: “In every step of work that God does on people, externally it appears to be interactions between people, as if born of human arrangements or from human disturbance. But behind the scenes, every step of work, and everything that happens, is a wager made by Satan before God, and requires people to stand firm in their testimony to God. Take when Job was tried, for example: Behind the scenes, Satan was making a wager with God, and what happened to Job was the deeds of men and the disturbance of men. Behind every step of work that God does in you is Satan’s wager with God—behind it all is a battle. … Everything people do requires them to pay a certain price in their efforts. Without actual hardship, they cannot satisfy God; they do not even come close to satisfying God, and they are just spouting empty slogans! Can these empty slogans satisfy God? When God and Satan do battle in the spiritual realm, how should you satisfy God, and how should you stand firm in your testimony to Him? You should know that everything that happens to you is a great trial and the time when God needs you to bear testimony” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Only Loving God Is Truly Believing in God). One of my sisters said, “Many disappointing things will happen in our lives, and behind each one is a spiritual battle. From God’s side, God is testing us, seeing if we have faith in Him and can stand firm in our testimony; from Satan’s side, Satan is attacking and tempting us, with the goal being to make us doubt God’s work, making us deny and betray God. Just like Job. On the surface, it just seemed like robbers had taken his property, and that he was covered in sore boils, but in reality, this was Satan making a bet with God, just to see which side Job would stand on. Today, Almighty God has come to express the truth to save us, and Satan can’t stand this, so Satan uses our children’s illnesses to attack and disturb us, trying to make us doubt God, or even deny and leave Him. We need to pray and rely on God more to see through Satan’s schemes.” After hearing the sister’s fellowship, I reflected on my behaviors and the things I was revealing, and I saw that I had no real faith or submission to God, and that I also had no discernment of Satan’s schemes. I was just relying on my enthusiasm in my faith, and I thought with my notions and imaginings that the Lord Jesus healed the sick, cast out demons, and gave grace and blessings, and that since Almighty God is the Lord Jesus returned, He can surely display signs and wonders to heal the sick and cast out demons, so I kept praying to God, asking Him to heal my child. I thought that God would surely take into account my passionate pursuit and quickly heal my child. But when reality was the complete opposite of what I thought, and my child’s condition not only didn’t improve, but became worse, I started to doubt God, and I lost my motivation to pray, attend gatherings, and do my duties. I revealed so much corruption without even realizing it. I’d even thought my ideas were wholly correct, but I realized that I had been utterly muddled in my faith in God! Realizing my shortcomings, I consciously ate and drank more of God’s words and attended more gatherings, and I also prayed to God, asking Him to give me faith and strength so I could stand firm in this situation and learn lessons from my child’s illness.

One day, I read a few passages of God’s words. Almighty God says: “In the notions of man, God must always display signs and wonders, must always heal the sick and cast out demons, and must always be just like Jesus. Yet this time, God is not like that at all. If, during the last days, God still displayed signs and wonders, and still cast out demons and healed the sick—if He did exactly the same as Jesus—then God would be repeating the same work, and the work of Jesus would have no significance or value. Thus, God carries out one stage of work in every age. Once each stage of His work has been completed, it is soon imitated by evil spirits, and after Satan begins to follow on the heels of God, God changes to a different method. Once God has completed a stage of His work, it is imitated by evil spirits. You must be clear about this. Why is the work of God today different to the work of Jesus? Why does God today not display signs and wonders, not cast out demons, and not heal the sick? If Jesus’ work were the same as the work done during the Age of Law, could He have represented the God of the Age of Grace? Could He have completed the work of the crucifixion? If, as in the Age of Law, Jesus had entered into the temple and kept the Sabbath, then He would have been persecuted by none and embraced by all. If that were so, could He have been crucified? Could He have completed the work of redemption? What would be the point if God incarnate of the last days displayed signs and wonders, like Jesus did? Only if God does another part of His work during the last days, one that represents part of His management plan, can man gain a deeper knowledge of God, and only then can God’s management plan be completed” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Knowing God’s Work Today). “The work done by God during this age is chiefly the provision of the words of life for man; the exposure of man’s nature essence, and his corrupt disposition; and the elimination of religious notions, feudal thinking, outdated thinking, and the knowledge and culture of man. These things must all be cleansed through being exposed by God’s words. In the last days, God uses words, not signs and wonders, to make man perfect. He uses His words to reveal man, to judge man, to chastise man, and to make man perfect, so that in the words of God, man comes to see the wisdom and loveliness of God, and comes to understand the disposition of God, and so that through the words of God, man beholds the deeds of God” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Knowing God’s Work Today). “Today, it should be clear to all of you that, in the last days, it is principally the fact of ‘the Word becomes flesh’ that is accomplished by God. Through His actual work on earth, He causes man to know Him and to engage with Him, and to see His practical deeds. He causes man to clearly see that He is able to display signs and wonders and that there are also times when He is unable to do so; this depends on the age. From this, you can see that God is not incapable of displaying signs and wonders, but instead changes His way of working according to the work to be done and according to the age. In the current stage of work, He does not show signs and wonders; that He showed some signs and wonders in the age of Jesus was because His work in that age was different. God does not do that work today, and some people believe Him incapable of displaying signs and wonders, or else they think that if He does not display signs and wonders, then He is not God. Is that not a fallacy? God is able to display signs and wonders, but He is working in a different age, and so He does not do such work. Because this is a different age, and because this is a different stage of God’s work, the deeds revealed by God are also different. Man’s belief in God is not the belief in signs and wonders, nor the belief in miracles, but the belief in His practical work during the new age. Man comes to know God through the manner in which God works, and this knowledge produces in man the belief in God, which is to say, the belief in the work and deeds of God. In this stage of work, God mainly speaks. Do not wait to see signs and wonders; you will not see any! This is because you were not born during the Age of Grace. If you had been, you could have seen signs and wonders, but you were born during the last days, and so you can see only the practicality and normality of God. Do not expect to see the supernatural Jesus during the last days. You are only able to see the practical God incarnate, who is no different from any normal human being. In each age, God reveals different deeds. In each age, He reveals part of His deeds, and the work of each age represents one part of the disposition of God, and one part of the deeds of God. The deeds that He reveals vary with the age in which He works, but they all give man a knowledge of God that is deeper, a belief in God that is truer and more down-to-earth. Man believes in God because of all of the deeds of God, because God is so wondrous, so great, because He is almighty and unfathomable” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Knowing God’s Work Today).

After reading God’s words, my heart became much brighter. I gained some understanding of the work God is doing in the last days. When God does the work of the last days, it isn’t that He cannot display signs and wonders, but rather that, in this final age, God no longer works in that way. What God is doing now is the work of using words to perfect and purify people. Through His words, He exposes things such as people’s satanic corrupt dispositions, people’s old thoughts, and people’s various religious notions about God, enabling people to cast off their satanic corrupt dispositions. If God’s work in the last days were still about healing the sick, casting out demons, and displaying signs and wonders, allowing people to see God as being especially supernatural, people’s corrupt dispositions would not easily be revealed, and they would not rebel against or resist God. In this way, we would never come to realize the things within us that rebel against and resist God, much less be purified or perfected. Just like with me, if my child’s illness were to have been healed right after I prayed, I wouldn’t have any notions about God, nor would I have any doubts about Him, and I would think that I had great faith in God and that I was truly pursuing. But when my child’s illness was not healed, I developed misunderstandings and notions about God, and I complained that God wasn’t listening to my prayers, and I even doubted God. I didn’t want to pray or attend gatherings, and my initial enthusiasm quickly faded away. Through these real and practical revelations, my corruption, rebelliousness, and notions about God came to be fully revealed. Only then did I realize that I had been measuring whether the work was from God based on whether signs and wonders were displayed or whether people’s diseases were healed, and demons were cast out, but this viewpoint is fallacious. God does a stage of work in each age, and a new age requires new work. In the Age of Grace, the Lord Jesus carried out the work of redemption, and He healed the sick, cast out demons, and showed some signs and wonders. But now is the Age of Kingdom, the final age, and God is carrying out the work of judgment and purification of people through His words, thus classifying all people according to their kind, then rewarding the good and punishing the evil, and ending this old age. If Almighty God still worked like the Lord Jesus, displaying signs and wonders, healing the sick, and casting out demons, wouldn’t He be repeating His work? How could the age be ended then? Moreover, evil spirits can also imitate the work God has done, and if I measured whether the work is from God by whether signs and wonders are displayed or whether people’s diseases are healed, I would end up treating the work of Satan and evil spirits as the work of God, and I would be blaspheming against God! In name, I accepted Almighty God’s work of the last days, but I had no true understanding of God, and I still viewed God’s latest work through the perspective of seeking to eat my fill of loaves in the Age of Grace. I was just trying to walk the old path in new shoes. This kind of faith does not meet with God’s approval. God’s work in the last days doesn’t aim to perfect people through signs and wonders, but rather through His words. This is truly the almightiness and wisdom of God! If signs and wonders were displayed, people would all believe when they saw them, and there would be no resistance, but then how would it be possible to discern between the goats and the sheep, the tares and the wheat, true believers and false ones, and good servants and evil servants? How could God do the work of perfecting, revealing, and eliminating people? Now Almighty God works by expressing the truth to conquer and save people, and He doesn’t display signs and wonders. He just looks at whether people can accept the truth, and in this way, only those who truly believe in God can be saved, and those who belong to the devil Satan will be revealed and eliminated. I see that the more normal and practical God’s work is, the more of His wisdom is in it. God’s way of working like this is truly wonderful! If it hadn’t been for the revelation of facts and the exposure of God’s words, I would never have realized that I was believing in God with vagueness and notions, nor would I have realized that I still resisted and rebelled against God, and much less would I have gained any understanding of God’s practical work. At that moment, I felt a great sense of ease and liberation in my heart, and I no longer desperately hoped for God to display signs and wonders to remove my child’s illness.

Later, I read more of God’s words: “Now do you understand what belief in God is? Does belief in God mean beholding signs and wonders? Does it mean ascending to heaven? Believing in God is not easy in the slightest. Those religious practices should be purged; pursuing the healing of the sick and the casting out of demons, focusing on signs and wonders, coveting more of God’s grace, peace and joy, pursuing the prospects and comforts of the flesh—these are religious practices, and such religious practices are a vague kind of belief. What is real belief in God today? It is the acceptance of God’s word as your life reality and the knowing of God from His word in order to achieve a true love of Him. To be clear: Belief in God is so that you may submit to God, love God, and fulfill the duty that should be fulfilled by a created being. This is the aim of believing in God. You must achieve a knowledge of the loveliness of God, of how worthy God is of reverence, of how, in His created beings, God does the work of salvation and making them perfect—these are the bare essentials of your belief in God. Belief in God is principally the switch from a life of the flesh to a life of loving God; from living within corruption to living within the life of God’s words; it is coming out from under the power of Satan and living under the care and protection of God; it is being able to achieve submission to God and not submission to the flesh; it is allowing God to gain your entire heart, allowing God to make you perfect, and freeing yourself from the corrupt satanic disposition. Belief in God is principally so that the great power and glory of God may be manifested in you, so that you may follow God’s will, and accomplish God’s plan, and be able to bear testimony to God before Satan. Belief in God should not revolve around the desire to behold signs and wonders, nor should it be for the sake of your personal flesh. It should be about the pursuit of knowing God, and being able to submit to God, and, like Peter, submitting to Him until one’s death. These are the main aims of believing in God. … If, in your belief in God, you are always trying to behold signs and wonders, then the viewpoint of this belief in God is wrong. Belief in God is principally the acceptance of the word of God as the life reality. The aim of God is only attained by putting into practice the words of God from His mouth and carrying them out within yourself. In believing in God, man should strive to be made perfect by God, to be able to submit to God, and for complete submission to God. If you can submit to God without complaint, be considerate of God’s intentions, achieve the stature of Peter, and possess the style of Peter spoken of by God, then that will be when you have achieved success in belief in God, and it will signify that you have been gained by God” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. All Is Achieved by the Word of God). From God’s words, I understood the correct perspective on faith. Faith isn’t for the sake of gaining grace and blessings, nor is it for a peaceful and smooth life of the flesh. This is not real faith. God hopes that we can pursue the truth, live by His words when things happen, and use our actual living out to bear testimony to and glorify God. This is what true faith is. I was solely focused on hoping for my child’s illness to be healed, yet I did not know what God’s intention was, or how I was supposed to stand firm in my testimony for God. I fully wallowed in my corrupt disposition, judging and delimiting God based on my own notions, and even doubting God and denying God’s work. In what way did I have any true faith in or submission to God? I truly had no testimony at all! When my child was sick, God was also scrutinizing my attitude, seeing if I had true faith in Him and true submission to Him. I had to put aside my own notions, and no matter what happened with my child’s illness, I couldn’t keep being so negative, weak, or straying from God.

But resolutions are easy to make. It’s much harder to truly practice the truth. One afternoon, just as we were about to gather, my child had a fever again, and I clearly realized in my heart that this was Satan trying to tempt me, and trying to make me give up on the gathering. I thought of God’s words: “If you cannot bear testimony before Satan, Satan will laugh at you, it will treat you as a joke, as a plaything, it will often make a fool of you and drive you insane” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Only Loving God Is Truly Believing in God). Satan knew that what I worried about most was my child, so it kept using my child’s illness to try and disturb me and prevent me from gathering. In the past, I didn’t understand the truth and couldn’t see through Satan’s schemes, and every time there was a conflict between a gathering and my child’s illness, I would panic and quickly abandon the gathering to take my child to see a doctor, and as a result, Satan was leading me around by the nose. When I didn’t have a gathering, my child wouldn’t have a fever, but as soon as I did, he would. The more I thought about it, the clearer it became that this was wholly Satan’s scheme, and I knew that I could no longer be bound and controlled by Satan. I prayed to God in my heart, “God, I don’t want to be fooled or tormented by Satan anymore. I want to gather with my brothers and sisters. Please help me.” After praying, my heart became a little calmer. I checked on my son, and his fever was only mild, and he seemed in good spirits, so I left him with my mother-in-law, asked her to give him some fever medicine, and I went to the gathering. To my surprise, after the gathering, I came back to see my child happily playing with toys. My mother-in-law said the fever had gone down without medicine. I was so happy and moved that I burst into tears. I thought about how before, my son’s fever would never end, and about how we had to go to the hospital for IVs to make him better, but this time, the fever just went down without any medicine at all. I could hardly believe it, and in my heart, I kept thanking and praising God. Through this experience, I also understood that though at first when my child was sick I prayed to God, God didn’t heal my child, and there was God’s wisdom in this. At that time, my heart was full of notions, imaginings, and delimitations regarding God, and I had no understanding of God’s work in the last days which conquers and perfects people through His words, and I didn’t have any discernment regarding Satan’s temptations and disturbances. So God allowed Satan’s disturbances and temptations to keep coming to purify me, and so I could understand the truth and know God. In this process, I revealed notions, misunderstandings, complaints, and doubts toward God, and God then used His words to enlighten and guide me, exposing and judging my notions and corruption, allowing me to understand the normal and practical nature of God’s work in the last days, and to recognize my own rebellion and resistance, and also helping me see the spiritual battle clearly and learn to discern Satan’s schemes. Ultimately, I was able to put aside my notions, rebel against my flesh, and practice the truth. I saw that God working in this way is truly almighty and practical, and extremely wise. Through this experience, I really came to recognize the authority and power of God’s words, and I saw that God uses practical words and practical work to conquer and perfect people, and to gain their hearts. God working in this way in the last days is much more meaningful than displaying signs and wonders. This reminded me of a passage of God’s words: “In the work of the last days, the might of the word is greater than that of the manifestation of signs and wonders, and the authority of the word surpasses that of signs and wonders” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. The Mystery of the Incarnation (4)). These words are so real!

Later, I read two more passages of God’s words, and I gained some understanding of my corrupt disposition. Almighty God says: “So many believe in Me only that I might heal them. So many believe in Me only that I might use My power to drive unclean spirits out from their bodies, and so many believe in Me simply that they might receive peace and joy from Me. So many believe in Me only to demand from Me greater material wealth. So many believe in Me just to spend this life in peace and to be safe and sound in the world to come. So many believe in Me to avoid the suffering of hell and to receive the blessings of heaven. So many believe in Me only for temporary comfort, yet do not seek to gain anything in the world to come. When I grant My fury to people and seize all the joy and peace that they once possessed, they become doubtful. When I grant to people the suffering of hell and reclaim the blessings of heaven, they fly into a rage. When people ask Me to heal them, and I pay them no heed and feel abhorrence toward them, they depart from Me to instead seek the way of evil medicine and sorcery. When I take away all that people have demanded from Me, they all disappear without a trace. Thus, I say that people have faith in Me because My grace is too abundant, and because there are far too many benefits to gain” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. What Do You Know of Faith?). “You should understand why you believe in Me; if you only want to be My apprentice or My patient, or to become one of My saints in heaven, then your following Me will be meaningless. To follow Me in such a manner would simply be a waste of energy; to have this kind of faith in Me would be merely whiling away your days, squandering your youth. And in the end, you would receive nothing. Would that not be a labor in vain? I have long departed from among the Jews and am no longer a physician of man nor the medicine for man. I am no longer a beast of burden for man to drive or butcher at will; rather, I have come among man to judge and chastise man, so that man may know Me. You should know that I once did the work of redemption; I was once Jesus, but I could not remain Jesus forever, much as I was once Jehovah but later became Jesus. I am the God of mankind, the Lord of creation, but I cannot forever remain Jesus or Jehovah. I have been what man considers a physician, but it cannot be said that God is merely a physician for mankind. So, if you hold the views of old in your faith in Me, then you will attain nothing. No matter how you praise Me today: ‘How loving God is of man; He heals me and gives me blessings, peace, and joy. How good God is to man; if we just have faith in Him, then we need not worry about money and wealth…,’ I still cannot disrupt My original work. If you believe in Me today, you will receive only My glory and be worthy to bear Me witness, and everything else will be secondary. This you must clearly know” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. What Do You Know of Faith?). Pondering God’s words, I saw the despicable intentions in my faith. When I believed in the Lord Jesus before, I enjoyed the grace, peace, and joy given by the Lord, and so I thought that I was truly blessed in believing in the Lord. But after finding Almighty God, I saw how God expresses the truth to save people and ultimately brings them into the kingdom of heaven, and so I became even more active in my pursuit. Every day I ate and drank God’s words and prayed to God, I never arrived late for gatherings, and I also preached the gospel and did hosting duty. I did all of these things to please God, thinking that by doing so, God would grace and bless me even more. I saw that I was just believing in God to use Him to satisfy my desire for blessings. I didn’t care at all about what work God was doing, nor was I concerned about what God required of people, how people should believe in God to align with His intentions and satisfy Him, what kind of people can enter the kingdom, whether my way of believing met with God’s approval, or what the correct view of faith in God is. I didn’t know any of these things, nor had I ever thought about them. I only relied on my enthusiasm to gather and preach the gospel, thinking that by doing these things, I was satisfying God and should receive His blessings. When my child had a high fever that wouldn’t subside, the grace and blessings I prayed for were nowhere to be seen, but I didn’t seek the truth or reflect on myself. Instead, in my heart, I doubted God and denied His work. I saw that my desire for blessings was too strong. God is the Creator, and I am a created being, so it is perfectly natural and justified for a created being to believe in God and do their duty. I shouldn’t try to make deals with God, much less make unreasonable demands of Him. Now I truly understood that God’s good intentions were in my child’s illness. This allowed me to reflect and understand my satanic disposition and fallacious views of faith. I also realized that when evaluating whether something is really God’s work, this shouldn’t be based on whether signs and wonders are displayed, or whether healing of the sick and the casting out of demons occur, or whether grace and blessings are given, but rather whether truth can be expressed, whether this work can lead people to have ever more understanding of God, whether this work can cleanse and transform people’s satanic corrupt dispositions, and whether this work can save people and perfect them. If it can achieve these effects, then it is certainly the work of God.

Going through my child’s illness, I gained some understanding of His work, and I gained correct views and correct pursuit in my faith. This is God’s true salvation for me, and His great love for me. This love is countless times greater than the grace and blessings I ever asked or hoped for before. I thanked God from the bottom of my heart! Realizing this, I felt ashamed and guilty for only seeking grace and blessings in my faith and for not pursuing the truth, and that I had been truly foolish, ignorant, and blind! I must let go of my intentions to gain blessings and walk the right path in my faith.