【126-A-3】
Why do we feel we only like to associate with honest people? Because associating with deceitful people is too dangerous, annoying and disgusting. When you hear deceitful people say something, it’s really disgusting. It puts you off your food. Actually you already know, “When you say this it isn’t sincere, what are you being pretentious about? What are you arguing about? What are you trying to show off? Do you imagine I don’t know what’s in your heart?” So deceitful people can upset you with just a few words, and it’s as though you are boiling over. It’s awful, horrible, as if you’re seeing right through them. And because it’s so awful, disgusting and boring to associate with deceitful people, people don’t enjoy it and don’t associate with them. But as soon as you associate with honest people you find it happy and bright. They say what they think. So you feel light-hearted, happy, excited. You can share openly something in common with them, and this creates a resonance. And you will feel peaceful and pleasurable. This is one side of it: the very real emotional enjoyment and happiness. Furthermore, it is not dangerous no matter how you deal with honest people: they won’t deceive you or cheat you. They certainly won’t harm you. You could happily go out and leave them in your home to look after things. Imagine, you could put your gold ring and gold necklace in a drawer and tell them, “Look after these for me, will you? I am putting them here.” “Fine, don’t worry!” When you come back and check the drawer, the ring and the necklace are gone. “What’s happened?” “They weren’t safe there, I hid them away in a safe place.” You check and there they are. “Fine, you’re more careful than I am!” You see how it is to associate with honest people? You feel secure. If you associate with evil people, if something goes wrong, they will scowl. “This guy is so ferocious, with such a horrifying expression. It’s best not to have anything to do with him. If you just say some small thing wrong and offend him, you don’t know whether he might take out a knife behind your back, and you don’t know what will happen to you. You just can’t associate with such an evil person, it’s like bumping into a poisonous snake!” Isn’t there this kind of feeling? To be with an evil person, first of all you won’t feel secure; secondly, you can’t fathom them out; thirdly, you never know when they will become devilish. It’s just too dangerous to deal with this kind of person. So after having experienced being an honest person for three to five years, or five to six years, you will have the likeness of an honest person, the likeness of mankind. People will like to see you as an honest person. Then won’t you enjoy this? You will. How will you enjoy it? “Now I know what the likeness of a real man is, and what kind of person I should be.” Surely to have insight into this is to understand a mystery of life, right?
The first mystery of life is that God is the Lord of creation and humankind comes from God. The second is that God is the source of the life of humankind. The third, that God likes honest people and it is honest people who are the likeness of true humanity. If you have grasped these three points, and understood the truth of being human, in the end through your experience, you will say: “Finally I have some likeness of humanity.” At this time you will see that God always leads you, God blesses you in many things. You may lack this or that, and you think about it, but before you become desperate for it, it has already been prepared by God. Sometimes I say, “I need this kind of clothing, it would be just right for this season.” While I am thinking, suddenly I find something, and then I like it and it suits me. There is only one garment left, the size is right, and it is discounted. I say: “This was prepared for me by God.” What is God’s “blessing”? If you are really pursuing truth and life, whatever you eat and wear will all be prepared for you, and wherever you go if there is danger there will be a way out, prepared for you by God. You have seen in your heart, “God blesses me, God protects me.” How good it is to enjoy this! Can unbelievers obtain this? No, they can’t. It’s such great happiness! So if you pursue truth and being an honest person, if you do your duty and are loyal to God, you are true to God, then God will bless you. This is absolutely true. The word of God says that God does this. God is so reliable, so faithful; the more you practice the truth the more you will receive the blessings of God. Some people say, “How come I haven’t received blessings from God? How come I haven’t tasted this?” You haven’t experienced this, because you haven’t practised so much of the truth. If you do a little more for God, give all your heart to God, then you will see this blessing. Some say, “Since I didn’t see God’s blessing, I can’t bring myself to continue.” But why haven’t you thought over this: “How much have I done for God? Have I been totally loyal to God? Have I been true to God?” Why don’t you examine your own mind? Why is it that you always ask too much of God? Are you being reasonable? How much have you done for God? Have you loved Him? How much of His word have you practiced? How much of His word have you listened to? How much have you satisfied Him? If you don’t examine your thinking, and still demand, “How come I haven’t seen God’s blessings,” this is not reasonable. When two people get on well it is like this. You respect the other person, and the other person will respect you; you are loving toward the other person, and the other person will also be loving to you. Good is rewarded by good, and evil is recompensed by evil. If you have no love for another person but still demand that that person be loving to you, is that fair? Is it reasonable to ask this of someone? Some say: “In the church how come no one loves me?” If you demand others love you, you have to first learn to love others. If you do enough for others, and do not seek a reward, one day your reward will come, whether you ask it to come or not. Doing your duties is like this: How much have you satisfied God? Have you carried out your duties well for the sake of God? If you truly love God, why don’t you repay God’s love, and satisfy Him during performing your duty? Why can’t you, in order to gain the truth and love God, suffer a little and pay a small price? See what hardship God has suffered for mankind, the price that He has paid. Why can’t you pay a true price to God, suffer a little real difficulty, true difficulty, to make people see that you really are suffering for God? It is this kind of person who is qualified to receive God’s blessings. Is it reasonable not to suffer anything for God, not have the heart to love God, but expect to still receive blessings from God and gain approval from God? Is it easy for you to learn lessons while suffering in performing your duties? What kind of people can suffer? It must be someone with a conscience, someone with a heart! Can heartless people who carry out their duties suffer? Can such selfish people suffer as they carry out their duties? If their suffering is for their own flesh, for their own gain, for their own position, and they are not suffering in order to follow the will of God, isn’t it an illusion for them to think of receiving blessings from God? This is really an extravagant desire!
I see now that some brothers and sisters have begun to be devoted to performing their duties, to be able to suffer, and to take it seriously. As soon as they are really earnest in performing their duties, and practice according to the principles of truth they have understood, won’t they have to suffer a little? For example, when you cook for yourself you cook any old way. But one day some church leaders and workers come to visit, and you meet someone that you like. “I’ll make a very nice snack for you!” What’s the issue here? Does it mean that you really put your heart into it? You can take the trouble for someone you like, but if it’s someone you don’t like then you just do what suits you. Now if it’s doing your duty to God, the point is whether you can suffer. Some people say, “For God? These are the duties that the leaders and workers arranged for me, so it seems I’ve done it for them.” Is this what you think? These people don’t say that it’s an entrustment from God, they don’t say that it is what God requires from those He has created, that each of them has a duty that they should perform. It doesn’t matter who arranged the duties that you have to perform, you are responsible to God for all of them, and you can’t connect this with other people. If your church leader or worker arranges a duty for you, if you feel, “So I am suited to this duty,” is this ordained by God? Yes, it is. What is ordained by God comes from what is dictated, arranged, ordained by God, no matter who arranges it. Since you accept that God has ordained it—“I can only perform this duty, and I am most suited to performing this duty”—then can you perform the duty well or not? This depends on whether you have a conscience, and whether you possess humanity. There are some whose reasoning ability is not normal, and who persist in saying that this is arranged by the leaders and workers. They say, “If God Himself tells me, ‘Perform this duty,’ then I will go and do it.” Now what is arranged by the leaders and workers, is that arranged and ordained by God? Is it led by God? It comes out of God’s management. To take a simple example, when Daniel was shut in a cave with a lion, was that arranged by God or arranged by man? It was arranged by God. Many things are arranged by man on the surface, done by man, but underneath they are all arranged and ordained by God. If this is inscrutable to people, it shows that they do not understand spiritual matters. Those without understanding the spiritual matters will tend to say, “If what the leaders and workers arrange suits what I like, I will do it nicely for them, but if it’s not to my liking I won’t be able to do it for them. When I have finished doing it for them the credit will go to them.” Is this way of thinking right or not? ‘Aren’t they absurd ones? They are absurd ones as a matter of fact. How can the credit go to them? As far as God is concerned, does the credit in fact go to them? Don’t you believe that God is just? The credit will go to anyone who fulfills his duty. What does it have to do with the leaders and workers? When the leaders and workers have led people to perform certain duties, how well these people perform their duties has nothing to do with the duties of the leaders and workers themselves. Each has his or her own separate task. But if the leaders and workers do not lead the brothers and sisters in performing their duties, that would be dereliction of duty on their part. If in communicating the truth they can lead the brothers and sisters to God, and they can use the truth to solve problems in the performance of duty, this is their duty. When the duties of God’s chosen people have been fulfilled adequately, this is the result achieved by life entry of God’s chosen people and the work of God. When the church leaders and workers have performed their duty well, this is their task, and it has nothing to do with the task of others. We must fully accept this. It’s an individual matter. God is just and He will judge each individual precisely according to what he or she has done. You should not think, “I dislike this church leader or worker. Does the credit for doing my duties well have to go to him or her?” Do you think it is the same as in the world outside? You are not making sense, this shows you don’t understand the spirit. Is there someone who is so absurd? Isn’t this causing disturbances? How will people who understand the spirit see it? Every person lives before God, and everyone carries out his or her duties, each with his or her individual task. This is the way God sees it. You should not be concerned about how the church leaders and workers see things; this has nothing to do with you. You should only think about carrying out your own duties. God is observing you, requiring you to act according to your actual stature. If you have carried out your duties well then this is your testimony; if not, you don’t have a testimony. If it is because “I just don’t want the church leaders and workers to take the credit for what I do, and that’s why I don’t carry out my duties well,” then you will be eliminated and you have no testimony. If you have done your duty well, and your work has been accepted before God, then you have testimony in experiencing the work of God. Bear your testimony, and you will be rewarded, you will enter the kingdom of God. If the church leaders and workers have not done their work well, but desire praise, and want the credit for everyone’s efforts in doing their duty, saying that they have done their work well, then God will bring retribution on them. God is just. This is how you must see it. So in speaking of these things, some people are absurd and have an erroneous understanding, thinking that this is done for the leaders and workers, “If I do well they will take the credit for it, and if I don’t do it well, there’s no credit to take. So this is what I do for them!” Aren’t people like this being very narrow? Very short-sighted? Aren’t they in fact blind, not knowing God? Can people like this attain the truth? I find people like these a nuisance, absurd. Whatever matter it is, you have to understand it clearly before the way you have chosen will be correct, before it will be in accord with God’s will. You must understand it clearly. And another thing: don’t compare matters of God’s house with the matters of the world. When workers do their work well, their bosses get reward, and they take the credit for it too. That is the world. God’s house isn’t like that. In God’s house, God judges each person according to what he or she has done. God is the Lord, God rules all. God is just. If you have met God’s demands, God rewards you, God commends you. If you have not met God’s demands, if you do not bear testimony, no matter what reasons you had, what constraints you had, God will not care these, and He will eliminate you. You have to see this. And so no matter what it is, you have to understand the will of God, what God demands of man. You can’t judge things by what the world thinks and what people of the world think. In the world people who are skilled in social relations and good at expressing themselves will be popular: “Maybe people will act the same way in God’s house, so here I’ll just concentrate on the social and verbal side.” Will that work? No. Flattery is useless, and duplicity is even more useless. Eventually duplicity will become known, and when that happens you’ll have to put up with the consequences and look stunned.
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