By Fang Hui, China

In April 2021, I was watering new believers in the church. When I first did this duty, I had a sense of burden and paid attention to working hard on the principles. Whenever I encountered problems that I didn’t understand, I prayed and sought, fellowshipping often with my brothers and sisters. Gradually, I grasped some of the principles and my work started producing results. A few months later, as more and more people were seeking and investigating the true way, many people accepted God’s work of the last days. In order to get these new believers watered as soon as possible, the leader put me in charge of three more groups of them. When I saw that there were so many more new believers, I balked at the idea, thinking, “I already have plenty to worry about with the groups of new believers I’m currently watering, who have many notions, problems and difficulties that need resolving. Sometimes it takes repeated fellowshipping to achieve results with them. Now that there are so many more believers, it will take much time and effort to water them all properly so that they can establish a firm foundation on the true way. This is too much trouble. How could I physically cope if things continue like this? I’m in poor shape as it is! When I fall ill with exhaustion, I’ll really be in trouble.” I knew that the supervisor had been watering new believers for a long time and had a firm grasp on the principles of this task, so I told myself, “In the future, for more complicated problems, I should just ask the supervisor to resolve them. Then I wouldn’t have to make an effort looking for God’s words and fellowshipping on them with the new believers. Not only could their problems be resolved quickly, but I’ll still have some respite and save myself time and effort. Would that not be having the best of both worlds?” So from that point onward, whenever I was watering new believers and encountered difficulties or problems that I couldn’t see through clearly, I didn’t seek the truth principles, but instead offloaded the problems directly onto the supervisor and asked her to do the fellowshipping and resolve them.

At a gathering, the supervisor exposed me, “What’s going on with you lately? You’re not diligent in your duty. Every time a new believer runs into a problem or a difficulty, you don’t seek the truth to resolve it, but just get me to fellowship on it. This way, you might not need to suffer physically, but can you gain the truth? If you do your duty without any sense of burden, and continue to crave the comforts of the flesh, it’s easy to lose the work of the Holy Spirit, and sooner or later you will be revealed and eliminated. You must carefully reflect on yourself!” On hearing the supervisor’s words, I felt upset and contrite, realizing that it really was dangerous to continue on like I was. So, I prayed to God, asking Him to guide me to reflect and gain a better understanding of myself.

One day, I read a passage of God’s words. Almighty God says: “No matter what work some people do or what duty they perform, they are incompetent in it, they cannot shoulder it, and they are incapable of fulfilling any of the obligations or responsibilities that a person ought to. Are they not trash? Are they still worthy of being called human? With the exception of simpletons, the mentally incompetent, and those who suffer from physical impairments, is there anyone alive who ought not to do their duties and fulfill their responsibilities? But this kind of person is always slippery and slacking off, and does not wish to fulfill their responsibilities; the implication is that they do not wish to be a proper human being. God gave them the opportunity to be a human being, and He gave them caliber and gifts, yet they cannot use these in doing their duty. They do nothing, but wish to relish enjoyment at every turn. Is such a person fit to be called a human being? No matter what work is given to them—whether it be important or ordinary, difficult or simple—they are always perfunctory and slippery and slacking off. When problems arise, they try to push responsibility for them onto other people, taking no responsibility, and they wish to keep living their parasitic lives. Are they not useless trash? In society, who does not have to depend on themselves to make a living? Once a person becomes an adult, they must provide for themselves. Their parents have fulfilled their responsibility. Even if their parents were willing to support them, they would be uneasy with it. They ought to be able to realize that their parents have finished their mission of raising them, and that they are an able-bodied adult, and should be able to live independently. Is this not the minimum reason that an adult ought to have? If someone truly has reason, they could not possibly continue mooching off their parents; they would be afraid of others’ laughter, of losing face. So, does one who loves ease and hates work have reason? (No.) They always want something for nothing; they want to never fulfill any responsibility, wishing sweets would just fall from the sky and drop into their mouths; they always want to get three square meals a day, to have someone wait on them, and to enjoy good food and drinks without doing the slightest bit of work. Is this not the mindset of a parasite? And do people who are parasites have conscience and reason? Do they have integrity and dignity? Absolutely not. They are all freeloading good-for-nothings, all beasts without conscience or reason. None of them are fit to remain in God’s house” (The Word, Vol. 5. The Responsibilities of Leaders and Workers. The Responsibilities of Leaders and Workers (8)). Reflecting on myself with respect to God’s words, I recognized that my attitude toward my duty was too contemptuous and perfunctory. I couldn’t even fulfill the responsibilities and obligations I should do. I really was no different from trash. Every time my workload increased and I needed to suffer and pay a price, my first consideration was my flesh. I thought that since there were more new believers to water, there would be more problems to deal with and resolve. If I had to patiently fellowship with and support each new believer, I’d have too much to worry about and tire myself out. I was afraid of suffering and making myself ill from exhaustion, so I started slacking off and being perfunctory. Whenever I encountered a problem that was even the slightest bit complicated, I offloaded it straight onto my supervisor, without making any effort to seek the truth and resolve it. I really was selfish and deceitful! I only cared about being idle and not getting physically tired. I didn’t think about other people’s work and difficulties at all, or whether my behavior would delay others in doing their duties. Even though this way my flesh was idle and didn’t suffer much, my life wasn’t progressing at all because I wasn’t seeking the truth, so what could I really gain in the end? Was I not harming myself? God says that lazy and slippery people are useless trash, and is trash not spurned and eliminated by God? At this thought, I felt somewhat remorseful and afraid, so I prayed to God, saying I wanted to change my attitude toward my duties and do them diligently.

After that, whenever I encountered difficulties while watering new believers, I consciously prayed and relied on God, sought the truth, and patiently fellowshipped to resolve their difficulties, rather than offloading them onto others. But some of the new believers had strong religious notions, which in some cases they held onto so fervently that I needed to fellowship with them several times before they would let go of them. After a while, this started causing me worry and taking up a lot of my energy. By this point, I felt somewhat agitated and thought to myself, “If things continue like this, how much effort will I have to expend in order to water the new believers properly? It’s so tiring. I can just look up some relevant passage of God’s words in light of their notions, send it to the new believers and let them read it, then fellowship with them if there is something they don’t understand. That would take away a few of my worries.” But I felt slightly uneasy whenever I did this. “It’s difficult enough to get them to abandon their notions even when I fellowship with them face to face in great detail,” I told myself. “If I just leave them to read everything themselves, how could they possibly understand? Ah, whatever. I’ll just leave the fellowshipping until problems occur.” Just like that, I let it go without giving it too much thought. After a while, some new believers no longer wanted to gather because their religious notions hadn’t been resolved promptly, and some even stopped believing and quit after being misled and disturbed by pastors and elders. When I saw this kind of thing happening, I felt a bit guilty, but then I thought, “It’s not all my responsibility. I sent them relevant passages of God’s words to read; it’s just that these new believers are too arrogant and self-righteous. They’re always stubbornly adhering to their own notions and not accepting the truth, so I can’t do anything to help them.” Because I had been persistently lazy and perfunctory in doing my duty, I felt that God had hidden His face from me, and my thoughts became increasingly cloudy. I couldn’t see a way through many problems, and my fellowshipping with new believers was dull and boring. Doing my duty became laborious and the results were getting increasingly worse. Later, the supervisor saw that my state hadn’t changed and was seriously affecting my duty, so she asked me to stop doing it and instead practice spiritual devotion to reflect on myself. When I heard this I collapsed, and tears started streaming uncontrollably down my face. I knew full well that this was the consequence of me being too considerate of the flesh and persistently perfunctory in doing my duty. I thought that I was finished. I had been suspended from my duty just as God’s work was coming to an end. Was I not being eliminated? Those few days were an ordeal and I was unable to eat or sleep properly. In the midst of my anguish, I knelt down and prayed earnestly to God, “Oh God, I know that what I have done makes You detest and hate me, but I want to repent. Please enlighten me and guide me to gain a greater understanding of myself.” After praying, I read a passage of God’s words: “There are some people who are unwilling to suffer at all in their duties, who always complain whenever they encounter a problem and refuse to pay a price. What kind of attitude is that? It is a perfunctory one. If you perform your duty perfunctorily, and approach it with an irreverent attitude, what will the result be? You will perform your duty poorly, though you are capable of performing it well—your performance will not be up to standard, and God will be very dissatisfied with the attitude you have toward your duty. If you could have prayed to God, sought the truth, and put your whole heart and mind into it, if you could have cooperated in this way, then God would have prepared everything for you in advance, so that when you were handling matters, everything would fall into place, and get good results. You would not need to exert a vast amount of energy; when you did your utmost to cooperate, God would have already arranged everything for you. If you are slippery and slack off, if you do not attend properly to your duty, and always go down the wrong path, then God will not act upon you; you will lose this opportunity, and God will say, ‘You are no good; I cannot use you. Go stand off to the side. You like being wily and slacking off, don’t you? You like being lazy, and taking it easy, do you not? Well then, take it easy forevermore!’ God will give this grace and opportunity to someone else. What do you say: Is this a loss or a gain? (A loss.) It is an enormous loss!” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. Part Three). After reading God’s words, I understood that God does not have high requirements of people; He simply wants them to wholeheartedly perform their duty as best they can. As long as they perform their duties to the best of their ability, they will be approved by God. As for people who always go through motions when performing their duty—people who are wily and opportunistic, and seek to be idle and comfortable instead of doing what they should and can do—such people are spurned by God and will not be saved by Him. Contemplating God’s words and looking back over my actions, was I not the kind of person whom God spurned? It was an honor for me to be put in charge of watering new believers by the church. How meaningful it was to be able to do such an important duty at this critical time, when the gospel of God’s kingdom was spreading! But I had been unappreciative, perfunctory in my duties, and constantly craved comfort. With a little effort and sacrifice I could have done a good job of watering the new believers, but I didn’t want to suffer that bit more hardship. Even though I was well aware that new believers would have a limited understanding if they read God’s word on their own, I still didn’t want to fellowship with them. As a result, some new believers did not want to attend gatherings because their religious notions hadn’t been resolved, and some were misled and disturbed by pastors and elders, causing them to fall away from the faith. Only now that the facts were exposed did I recognize that I wasn’t doing my duty at all, but rather disrupting and disturbing the church’s work. Back then, I didn’t recognize myself at all. Instead, I shirked responsibility and blamed the problems on the new believers themselves. How irresponsible I was! How could this not make God detest and hate me? I realized that the church had assigned me such an important job in the hope that I could fulfill my responsibilities and water the new believers properly, so they could establish a firm foundation on the true way as quickly as possible and accept God’s salvation. Yet I had been lazy, evasive, and solely intent on hiding, enjoying a life of leisure and doing as little as possible whenever I could. I didn’t consider God’s intention in the least, and couldn’t even fulfill my duty. How could I be so totally lacking in conscience or reason? Even dogs know how to be loyal to their master and watch over the home, whereas I was enjoying God’s abundant provision and yet couldn’t even fulfill my own responsibilities. Was I even worthy of being called human? God’s disposition is righteous and unoffendable. It was all my own fault that I had been dismissed and stopped from doing my duty. I had ruined the opportunity to do my duty and obtain the truth.

Later, I read another passage of Almighty God’s word that says: “To reach an understanding of natures, in addition to unearthing the things people are fond of in their natures, several of the most important aspects pertaining to their natures also need to be unearthed. For example, people’s viewpoints on things, people’s methods and goals in life, people’s life values and outlook on life, as well as views and ideas on all things relating to truth. These are all things deep within people’s souls and they have a direct relationship with the transformation of disposition. What, then, is corrupt mankind’s outlook on life? It can be said to be this: ‘Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.’ People all live for themselves; to put it frankly, they are living for the flesh. They are living just to put food in their mouths. How does this existence differ from that of the animals? There is no value whatsoever in living like this, let alone any meaning. One’s outlook on life is about what you rely on to live in the world, what you live for, and how you live—and these are all things to do with the essence of human nature. Through dissecting people’s natures, you will see that people all resist God. They are all devils and there is no genuinely good person. Only by dissecting people’s natures can you truly know the corruption and essence of man and understand what people actually belong to, what people truly lack, what they should be equipped with, and how they should live out a human likeness. Truly dissecting a person’s nature is not easy, and cannot be done without experiencing God’s words or having true experiences” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. What Should Be Known About Transforming One’s Disposition). Reading God’s words made me realize that satanic philosophies and laws such as “Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost,” “Drink today’s wine today, and worry about tomorrow, tomorrow” and “Live life on autopilot” had poisoned me too deeply. Living according to these rules had made me extremely selfish, despicable, treacherous and deceitful. No matter what I did, I only considered my own physical interests, coveted comfort, despised labor, and bore no sense of burden or responsibility in doing my duty. I lived day-to-day without any goals and direction, my life devoid of the slightest value or meaning. Thinking back to before I believed in God, I paid great consideration to the flesh and craved comforts. No matter what I did, I always did it in a perfunctory way whenever possible, doing whatever it took to satisfy my own fleshly interests, and living a despicable and wretched life. Even after I started believing in God, I still lived by these fallacious views. Whenever I became overloaded with duties, requiring me to suffer and pay a price, I was afraid of physical exertion and constantly sought to offload the laborious and mentally taxing jobs onto others. I didn’t want to worry or trouble myself any more than necessary. Because I was slapdash in my duty, the problems of new believers weren’t resolved promptly, which made some of them unwilling to gather, and this in turn disturbed and hindered the watering work. I realized that I was living by satanic philosophies and laws, totally lacking in conscience or reason. I was selfish, despicable, and only cared about myself. I didn’t even consider whether the difficulties of new believers could be resolved, or whether they suffered losses in their life entry. I had been living in a state of reveling in comfort, rebelling against and resisting God without even knowing it. How dangerous that was! At this point, I read this passage of God’s word: “God does not give people a load too heavy for them to bear. If you can carry one hundred pounds, God certainly will not give you a load heavier than one hundred pounds. He will not put pressure on you. This is how God is with everyone. And you will not be constrained by anything—any person or any thought and view. You are free” (The Word, Vol. 6. On the Pursuit of the Truth I. What It Means to Pursue the Truth (15)). The loads that God gives to people are all things that they can bear, and can be achieved with just a little effort. Sometimes there may be more new believers to be watered than usual, with correspondingly more problems and difficulties that require more time and energy to seek the truth and fellowship to resolve them, but with a little more effort and sacrifice I can keep up. It won’t make me collapse or fall ill from exhaustion at all. During gatherings, my brothers and sisters often fellowship on the fact that doing our duties is a good opportunity for us to understand the truth. We encounter various problems and difficulties in doing our duties, but by seeking the truth we can learn lessons from them and gradually understand some truths, and enter the truth reality. But I had always felt that doing my duty that way was too tiring, and even worried about falling ill from exhaustion, all because I craved comfort so much and had no will to suffer. I therefore complained and grumbled when going about my duty, neglected my work and even failed to fulfill my own responsibilities. I finally recognized that living by satanic philosophies would only be a waste of my life and would only harm and ruin me in the end. This realization made me feel somewhat afraid, so I prayed to God, “Oh God, thank You for Your enlightenment and guidance, which has made me understand myself a little bit better, and clearly see the harm and consequences of living by satanic philosophies. I have also realized that Your righteous disposition cannot be offended. Oh God, I want to repent. From now on I will do my duty with both feet on the ground. I will no longer be perfunctory in my duty and hurt You.”

Later, I read another passage of God’s words that stirred me deeply. God’s words say: “Every word and phrase that God had uttered was inscribed on Noah’s heart like words carved upon a stone tablet. Heedless of the changes in the outside world, of the ridicule of those around him, of the hardship involved, or of the difficulties he encountered, he persevered, throughout, in what had been entrusted to him by God, never despairing or thinking of giving up. God’s words were inscribed upon Noah’s heart, and they had become his everyday reality. Noah prepared each of the materials needed for building the ark, and the form and specifications for the ark commanded by God gradually took shape with each careful strike of Noah’s hammer and chisel. Throughout wind and rain, and regardless of how people mocked or slandered him, Noah’s life proceeded in this manner, year after year. God secretly watched Noah’s every action, without ever uttering another word to him, and His heart was touched by Noah. Noah, however, neither knew nor felt this; from start to finish, he simply built the ark, and assembled every kind of living creature, in unwavering fealty to God’s words. In Noah’s heart, there was no higher instruction that he ought to follow and carry out: God’s words were his lifelong direction and goal. So, no matter what God said to him, no matter what God asked him to do, commanded him to do, Noah completely accepted it, and took it to heart; he regarded it as the most important thing in his life, and handled it accordingly. He not only did not forget, he not only kept it in his heart, but also realized it in his daily life, using his life to accept and carry out God’s commission. And in this way, plank by plank, the ark was built. Noah’s every move, his every day, were dedicated to the words and commandments of God. It might not have seemed that Noah was performing a momentous undertaking, but in the eyes of God, everything Noah did, even every step he took to achieve something, every labor performed by his hand—they were all precious, and deserving of commemoration, and worthy of emulation by this mankind. Noah adhered to what had been entrusted to him by God. He was unwavering in his belief that every word uttered by God was true; of this, he had no doubt. And as a result, the ark came to completion, and every manner of living creature was able to live upon it” (The Word, Vol. 4. Exposing Antichrists. Excursus Two: How Noah and Abraham Obeyed God’s Words and Submitted to Him (Part One)). I was very moved by Noah’s attitude toward God’s commission. God told Noah to build the ark, and he was absolutely obedient and submissive, leaving behind all the pleasures of the flesh to fulfill God’s commission. Although building the ark was difficult, Noah had faith in God and was not afraid of suffering. He persisted in the face of every hardship and deprivation, ultimately fulfilling God’s commission and receiving His approval. Compared with Noah, I realized that I was lacking humanity, disloyal and disobedient to my duty, lazy and deceitful. All I did was crave the comforts of the flesh, rather than taking my duty as an incumbent responsibility and trying my best to do it well. If things went on like this, my flesh would be at ease, free from suffering and fatigue, but I would not gain the truth. Without the truth, would I not be a walking corpse? What is the point of living like this? Recognizing that my attitude toward my duty was so contemptuous, and that there was no way to atone for the losses I had caused to the church’s work, I was filled with remorse and contrition. I secretly made up my mind that I could no longer indulge the flesh. I had to follow Noah’s example and do my duty wholeheartedly and make it my personal responsibility to comfort God’s heart, no matter what difficulties I encountered.

One month later, the leader decided to have me resume watering new believers. I was grateful and resolved that this time I would definitely do my duty properly and stop doing things based on corrupt dispositions. Worried that I would fall back into my old ways, I often prayed to God, asking Him to guide me and scrutinize me, and frequently reminding myself to treat my duty diligently. Thereafter, every time I held gatherings with new believers, I would patiently fellowship with them based on their problems and difficulties, helping them to understand the truth and resolving their religious notions. On the odd occasion when repeated fellowshipping failed to achieve results, I considered what I could say to make them understand. Gradually, my work started producing results, which made me feel at ease and at peace.

Being dismissed enabled me to better understand my own satanic nature, and changed my attitude toward doing my duty. I saw clearly that the consequences of being perfunctory toward one’s duty and not pursuing the truth are perdition and destruction, and I had some fear of Him in my heart. This was all because of God’s enlightenment and guidance. Thanks be to God!