Discussing Church Life and Real Life

People feel that they are only able to transform during their church life, and that transformation is not possible outside of church life, that they are unable to achieve transformation in their real life. Can you recognize what the issue is? I used to talk about bringing God into real life, and this is the path for those believing in God to enter into the reality of God’s words.

Regarding a Normal Spiritual Life

A believer must have a normal spiritual life—this is the foundation for experiencing God’s words and entering into reality. Currently, can all of the prayers, the getting close to God, the singing, praising, meditation, and the trying to figure out God’s words that you practice meet the standards of a normal spiritual life? None of you are very clear on this. A normal spiritual life is not limited to prayer, song, church life, eating and drinking the words of God, and other such practices, but it means to live a spiritual life that is fresh and lively. It’s not about the method, but the result. Most people think that in order to have a normal spiritual life one must pray, sing, eat and drink the words of God, or try to figure out the words of God. No matter whether there is any result, or whether there is a true understanding, these people just focus on going through the motions on the outside, and do not focus on the result—they are people living within the rituals of religion, and are not people living within the church, and even less are they people of the kingdom. This kind of person’s prayers, songs, and eating and drinking of the words of God are all abiding by the rules, they are compelled to do them, and they are done in keeping with trends; they are not done willingly or done from the heart. No matter how much these people pray or sing, there will be no result at all, because all they practice are religious rules and rituals, and they are not practicing the word of God. By only focusing on the method, and taking the words of God as rules to keep, this kind of person is not practicing the word of God, but is satisfying the flesh, and is doing things to show off to others. This kind of religious ritual and rule comes from man, not from God. God does not keep rules, does not abide by any laws; He does new things every day and He does practical work. Like the people in the Three-Self Church who are limited to daily morning watch, evening prayers, giving thanks before meals, expressing thanks in everything, and other such practices, no matter how much these people do, or how long they practice, they will not have the work of the Holy Spirit. If people live within rules, with their hearts poured into practice, then the Holy Spirit has no way to work, because people’s hearts are taken up with rules, are taken up with human conceptions; therefore God has no way to do work; people will just always be living under control of the law, and this type of person will never be able to receive the praise of God.

Utterances of Christ of the Last Days (Selections) | How to Know Reality

From: The Church of Almighty God - Lord Jesus

God is the God of reality: All of His work is real, all of the words He speaks are real, and all of the truths He expresses are real. Everything that is not His words is vacuous, non-existent, and unsound. Today, the Holy Spirit is to guide people into the words of God.

How to Serve in Harmony With God’s Will

Today, we will primarily be communing how people should serve God in their belief in God, what conditions should be fulfilled and what should be understood by those who serve God, and what deviations there are in your service. You should understand all of this. These issues touch upon how you believe in God, how you walk onto the path of guidance by the Holy Spirit, and how your all is arranged by God, and they will allow you to know every step of God’s work in you. When you reach that point, you will appreciate what faith in God is, how to properly believe in God, and what you should do to act in harmony with God’s will. This will make you completely and utterly obedient to God’s work, and you will have no complaints, you will not judge, or analyze, much less research. Furthermore, you will all be capable of obedience to God unto death, allowing God to steer you and slaughter you like a sheep, so that you can all become the Peters of the 1990s, and can love God to the utmost even upon the cross, without the slightest complaint. Only then will you be able to live as Peters of the 1990s.

Everyone who has resolved to can serve God—but it must be that only those who give every care to God’s will and understand God’s will are qualified and entitled to serve God. In your experiences, it can be seen that many people believe that serving God means fervently spreading the gospel for God, going on the road for God, spending and sacrificing for God, and so on; even more religious people believe that serving God means running around with a Bible in their hands, spreading the gospel of the kingdom of heaven and saving people by making them repent and confess; there are many religious officials who think that serving God is preaching in chapels after studying at the seminary, teaching people by reading chapters of the Bible; many fellow brothers and sisters believe that serving God means never getting married or raising a family, and dedicating their entire being to God; there are also people in impoverished regions who believe that serving God means healing and casting out demons, or praying for the brothers and sisters, or serving them; amongst you, there are many who believe that serving God means eating and drinking the words of God, and praying to God every day, and visiting churches everywhere; so, too, are there people who say that living the life of the church is serving God. Yet few people know what it actually means to serve God. Although there are as many who serve God as stars in the sky, the number of those who can serve directly, and who are able to serve God’s will, is paltry—pifflingly small. Why do I say this? I say this because you do not understand the substance of the phrase “service to God,” and you understand so little of how to serve God’s will. Today, we are mainly communing how to serve in accordance with God’s will, how to serve in order to satisfy God’s will.

How to Enter Into a Normal State

The more receptive people are of God’s words, the more enlightened they become and the more they pursue knowledge of God with a hunger and thirst for righteousness. Only those who receive God’s words are able to have deeper and richer experiences; they are the only ones whose lives blossom more and more. Everyone who pursues life must treat this as if it were their job, and should have the feeling that they can’t live without God, that there is no single success without God, and all is emptiness without God. They should have the resolution of doing nothing without the presence of the Holy Spirit, and being unwilling to do anything further if their actions do not bear fruit. They should not act to accommodate themselves. Life experiences come through God’s enlightenment and guidance, and they are also the fruition of your subjective efforts. You should have the requirement of not making excuses for yourself in your life experience.

The Wicked Must Be Punished

Inspecting whether you practice righteousness in all that you do, and whether all of your actions are observed by God, are the behavioral principles of those who believe in God. You will be called righteous because you are able to satisfy God, and because you accept God’s care and protection. In God’s eyes, all those who accept God’s care, protection, and perfection and who are gained by Him, are righteous and looked upon with cherishment by God. The more you accept the words of God in the here and now, the more you are able to receive and understand God’s will, and thus the more you can live out God’s words and satisfy His requirements. This is God’s commission for you, and what you ought to achieve. If you use conceptions to measure and delineate God, as if God were an unchanging clay statue, and if you delimit God within the Bible, and contain Him within a limited scope of work, then this proves that you have condemned God. Because, in their hearts, the Jews of the age of the Old Testament cast God in the mold of idol, as if God could only be called the Messiah, and only He who was called the Messiah was God, and because they served and worshiped God as if He were a (lifeless) clay statue, they nailed the Jesus of that time to the cross, sentencing Him to death—condemning innocent Jesus to death. God had committed no crime, yet man did not spare God, and unwaveringly sentenced Him to death. Thus, Jesus was crucified. Man always believes that God is unchanging, and defines Him according to the Bible, as though man has seen through to God’s management, as though all that God does is in the hands of man. People are ridiculous to the extreme, they are possessed of the utmost arrogance, and they all have a flair for turgid eloquence. Regardless of how great your knowledge of God, still I say that you do not know God, that there are none who are more opposed to God, and that you condemn God, for you are utterly incapable of obeying the work of God and walking the path of being made perfect by God. Why is God never satisfied with the actions of man? Because man does not know God, because he has so many conceptions, and because, instead of complying with reality, all of his knowledge of God is cut from the same cloth, and rigid and inflexible. Thus, having come to earth today, God has once more been nailed to the cross by man. Cruel, brutal mankind! The conniving and intrigue, the jostling with each other, the scramble for reputation and fortune, the mutual slaughter—when will it ever end? God has spoken hundreds of thousands of words, yet no one has come to their senses. They act for the sake of their families, and sons and daughters, for their careers, prospects, status, vanity, and money, for the sake of clothes, for food and the flesh—whose actions are truly for the sake of God? Even among those whose actions are for the sake of God, there are but few who know God. How many do not act for the sake of their own interests? How many do not oppress and discriminate against others for the sake of maintaining their own status? Thus, God has been forcibly condemned to death innumerable times, countless barbaric judges have condemned God and once more nailed Him to the cross. How many can be called righteous because they truly act for the sake of God?

Promises to Those Who Have Been Perfected

What is the path through which God perfects man? Which aspects are included? Are you willing to be perfected by God? Are you willing to accept the judgment and chastisement of God? What do you know of these questions? If you cannot speak of such knowledge, then this shows that you still know not of God’s work and have not been enlightened at all by the Holy Spirit. Such kind of man cannot be perfected. They can only receive a small amount of grace to enjoy briefly and it cannot be maintained in the long term. If one merely enjoys God’s grace, he cannot be perfected by God. Some may be satisfied with the peace and enjoyment of the flesh, a life of ease without adversity or misfortune, living in peace with their family without fights or quarrels. They may even believe this to be the blessing of God, but in truth, it is merely the grace of God. You cannot be satisfied merely with enjoying the grace of God. This kind of thinking is too vulgar. Even if you read the word of God daily, pray every day, and your spirit feels particular enjoyment and peace, yet in the end you cannot speak of any knowledge of God and His work or have no experience with such, and no matter how much of God’s word you have eaten and drunk, if you merely feel peace and enjoyment in your spirit and that the word of God is sweet beyond compare, as if you cannot enjoy it enough, but you have no real experience with and no reality of the word of God, then what can you receive from such manner of faith in God? If you cannot live out the essence of God’s word, your eating and drinking and prayers are entirely concerned with religion. Then such kind of man cannot be perfected and cannot be gained by God. All those gained by God are those who pursue the truth. What God gains is not man’s flesh nor his possessions, but the part within him that belongs to God. That is why I say that God perfects not the flesh of man but his heart, so that the heart of man may be gained by God. In other words, the essence of saying that God perfects man is that God perfects the heart of man so that it may turn to God and love Him.