I

Within people's notions, people think that so long as their aspirations are good, positive and proactive, the Creator should grant them, and that they should not be deprived of the right to strive toward a beautiful life. This is a notion. Regardless of who you are, and regardless of what you have planned, how perfect and honorable your imaginings are, or to what extent they match the reality of your life, God does not look at any of these things, nor does He pay attention to them; rather, things are accomplished, orchestrated, and arranged according to God's ordained methods and laws. This is God's righteous disposition.

II

The life the Creator arranges for the majority of people is one of hardship, with too many difficulties and too much pain. What is the Creator's purpose in arranging hardships for people during their whole life? What's the significance of this? In one sense, such arrangements are meant to allow people to experience and know God's sovereignty, arrangements, and authority; in another sense, His primary purpose is to let people experience what life really is, and thereby to realize that man's destiny is controlled in God's hand, and is neither decided by any person nor changed in the wake of changes in people's subjective will.

III

Whatever the Creator does and whatever sort of life or fate He has arranged for people, He makes them reflect on life and on what man's destiny really is, and, as they reflect on all these things, He makes them come before God. When God expresses the truth and tells people what all this is, He has people accept and experience what He says. He lets people verify the practicality, accuracy, and validity of these truths, after which they gain them and acknowledge that man is controlled in the hand of the Creator, and that man's destiny is ruled and arranged by God.

IV

Once people have understood all this, they will no longer have any impractical plans for their life, and they will not have plans that go against the wishes of the Creator nor what He has ordained and arranged; rather, they will have an increasingly accurate assessment and understanding, or a comprehension and plan, of how their life should be lived and the road they should take. This is the purpose and significance of the many hardships that the Creator arranges in people's lives.

from The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. Only by Resolving One's Notions Can One Embark on the Right Track of Belief in God (2)