In believing in God, you must at least resolve the issue of having a normal relationship with God. Without a normal relationship with God, then the significance in believing in God is lost. Establishing a normal relationship with God is entirely attained through quieting your heart in God’s presence. A normal relationship with God means being able to not doubt or deny any of God’s work and submit to it, and furthermore it means having the right intentions in the presence of God, not thinking of yourself, always having the interests of God’s family as the most important thing no matter what you are doing, accepting God’s observation, and submitting to God’s arrangements. You are able to quiet your heart in God’s presence whenever you do anything; even if you do not understand God’s will, you must still fulfill your duties and responsibilities to the best of your ability. It is not too late to wait for God’s will to be revealed to you and then put this into practice. When your relationship with God has become normal, then you will also have a normal relationship with people. Everything is established on the foundation of God’s words. Through eating and drinking the words of God, practice in accordance with God’s requirements, put your viewpoints right, and do not do things that resist God or disturb the church. Do not do things that do not benefit the lives of the brothers and sisters, do not say things that do not contribute to other people, do not do shameful things. Be just and honorable when doing all things and make them presentable before God. Even though the flesh is weak sometimes, you are able to attach the highest importance to benefiting God’s family, not covet your own benefits, and carry out righteousness. If you can practice in this way, your relationship with God will be normal.
Whenever you do anything, you must examine whether your motivations are right. If you are able to act according to the requirements of God, then your relationship with God is normal. This is the minimum criterion. If, when you examine your motivations, there emerge those that are incorrect, and if you are able to turn your back on them and act according to the words of God, then you will become someone who is right before God, which will show that your relationship with God is normal, and that all that you do is for the sake of God, and not for yourself. Whenever you do or say anything, you must put your heart right, be righteous, and not be led by your emotions, or act according to your own will. These are the principles by which believers in God conduct themselves. A person’s motivations and stature can be revealed in a small thing, and thus, for people to enter onto the path of being made perfect by God, they must first resolve their own motivations and their relationship with God. Only when your relationship with God is normal will you be able to be made perfect by God, and only then will God’s dealing, pruning, discipline, and refinement in you be able to achieve their desired effect.
from “How Is Your Relationship With God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
It can be said that fixing one’s relationship with God is the first step on entry into one’s spiritual journey. Although man’s destiny is in God’s hands, and has been predestined by God, and cannot be changed by themselves, whether or not you can be made perfect or gained by God depends on whether or not your relationship with God is normal. Perhaps there are parts of you that are weak or disobedient—but as long as your outlook is right and your motivations are correct, and as long as you have put right your relationship with God and made it normal, then you will be qualified to be made perfect by God. If you do not have the right relationship with God, and act for the sake of the flesh, or your family, then regardless of how hard you work it will all be for nothing. If your relationship with God is normal, then everything else will fall into place. God looks at nothing else, but He looks only at whether your views on the belief in God are right: who you believe in, for whose sake you believe, and why you believe. If you are able to see these things clearly, and are able to put right your views and practice, then your life will make progress, and you are sure to be able to enter onto the right track. If your relationship with God is not normal, and your views on the belief in God are deviant, then these will preclude all else. No matter how you believe in God, you will gain nothing. Only if your relationship with God is normal will you be approved by God when you turn your back on the flesh, pray, suffer, endure, obey, help your brothers and sisters, devote more effort to God, and so on.
from “How Is Your Relationship With God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
If you wish to achieve a proper spiritual life and establish a proper relationship with God, you must first give your heart to Him, and quiet your heart before Him. Only after you have poured your whole heart into God can you gradually develop a proper spiritual life. If people do not give their heart to God in their belief in Him, if their heart is not in Him and they do not treat His burden as their own, then everything they do is cheating God, and it is all the behavior of religious people—this cannot receive God’s praise. … It can be seen from experience that one of the most important issues is quieting one’s heart before God. It is an issue that concerns people’s spiritual life, and the growth of their life. Only if your heart is at peace before God will your pursuit of the truth and of changes in your disposition bear fruit. Because you come burdened before God and you always feel that you are lacking too much, that there are many truths that you need to know, much reality that you need to experience, and that you should give every care to God’s will—these things are always on your mind, and it is as if they are pressing down on you so hard that you can’t breathe, and thus you feel heavy of heart (but not in a negative state). Only people such as this are qualified to accept the enlightenment of God’s words and be moved by the Spirit of God. It is because of their burden, because they are heavy of heart, and, it can be said, because of the price they have paid and the torment they have suffered before God that they receive His enlightenment and illumination, for God does not give anyone special treatment. He is always fair in His treatment of people, but He is also not arbitrary in His provision to people, and does not give to them unconditionally. This is one aspect of His righteous disposition. In real life, most people have yet to attain this realm. At the very least, their heart has yet to completely turn to God, and thus there has still not been any great change in their life disposition. This is because they only live amid God’s grace, and have yet to gain the work of the Holy Spirit. The criteria for God’s use of people are as follows: Their heart turns to God, they are burdened by the words of God, they have a heart of yearning, and they have the resolve to seek the truth. Only people such as this can gain the work of the Holy Spirit and frequently gain enlightenment and illumination.
from “Establishing a Proper Relationship With God Is Very Important” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
Begin from prayer first: Praying at peace before God is most fruitful. After that, eat and drink the words of God, and ponder God’s words and try to obtain the light, find the path to practice, know what the aims of God’s utterances are, and understand without deviation. Ordinarily, draw close to God normally in your heart, contemplate God’s love, and ponder the words of God, without being disturbed by external things. When your heart is at peace to a degree that you are able to muse, so that, within yourself, you contemplate God’s love and truly draw near to God regardless of what environment you are in, and you have ultimately reached the point where you give praise in your heart, and it is even better than praying, then in this you will be possessed of a certain stature. If you are able to achieve the states described above, then this will prove that your heart is truly at peace before God. This is the first step; it is a basic exercise. Only after they are able to be at peace before God can people be touched by the Holy Spirit, and enlightened and illuminated by the Holy Spirit, only then are they able to truly commune with God, and able to grasp God’s will and the guidance of the Holy Spirit—and in this, they will have entered onto the right track in their spiritual lives. …
Pondering the words of God and praying over the words of God at the same time as eating and drinking the actual words of God—this is the first step to being at peace before God. If you can be truly at peace before God, then the enlightenment and illumination of the Holy Spirit will be with you.
from “On Quieting Your Heart Before God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
The relationship of prayer with God is the most direct relationship, and the relationship between people and God becomes the most intimate during prayer. Can you usually kneel and pray right away when you are doing something? You can’t. People’s relationship with God is the closest when they kneel and pray. When you are reading the words of God, if you pray and then read again, you will feel differently. If you don’t pray for a period of time, then you won’t understand God’s words when you read them. You won’t know their meaning when you have finished reading.
… The purpose of prayer is so that people can come into the presence of God and receive the things God intends to give them. If you frequently pray and frequently come into God’s presence, then you will have a continual relation with God, and you will always be moved by Him, always receive His provisions, and therefore you will be transformed; your conditions will continually improve and will not regress. Especially when brothers and sisters join together in prayer. When the prayer is over, there is an exceptionally large amount of energy, everyone’s face is full of perspiration and they feel they gain a lot of things. In fact, after a few days of being together they haven’t communicated much, it was prayer that aroused their energy, and they wish that they could abandon their families and the world all at once, they wish that they could give up everything, all except for God. You see that their energy is so great.
from “The Significance and Practice of Prayer” in Records of Christ’s Talks
A normal spiritual life is to live a life before God. When praying one can quiet one’s heart before God, and through prayer one can seek for enlightenment by the Holy Spirit, know God’s words, and can understand the will of God. When eating and drinking the words of God one can be clearer and more lucid on what God wants to do right now, and one can have a new path of practice and not be conservative, so that all one’s practice is for the purpose of achieving progress in life. For example, one’s prayer is not for the purpose of saying some nice words, or to bawl before God to express one’s debt, but rather it is to practice exercising one’s spirit, to quiet one’s heart before God, to practice searching for guidance in all things, to make one’s heart a heart that is drawn toward new light every day, to neither be passive nor lazy, and to enter onto the right track of practicing God’s words.
from “Regarding a Normal Spiritual Life” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
If you want to live a normal spiritual life, you need to receive new light daily, seek true understanding of God’s words, and achieve a lucidity toward the truth. You need to have a path to practice in everything, and by reading God’s words every day you can find new questions and discover your own shortcomings. This will in turn bring forth a heart that thirsts and searches, that will set your whole being in motion, and you will be able to be quiet before God at any time, and have a deep fear of falling behind. If a person can have this thirsting heart, this searching heart, and is also willing to enter in continuously, then they are on the right track for a spiritual life. All those who can accept being moved by the Holy Spirit, who desire to make progress, who are willing to seek being perfected by God, those who long for a deeper understanding of the words of God, and who do not seek the supernatural but who pay a practical price, show practical consideration to God’s will, enter in practically, make their experience more true and more realistic, who do not seek the empty words of doctrine, and who also do not seek a feeling of the supernatural, nor worship any great man—this kind of person has entered into a normal spiritual life, and everything they do is for the purpose of achieving more progress in life, to keep their spirit fresh and not stagnant, and to always be able to enter in positively.
from “Regarding a Normal Spiritual Life” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
If you are unable to follow the light of today, then a distance has opened up in your relationship with God—it may even have been severed—and you are without a normal spiritual life. A normal relationship with God is built upon the foundation of accepting the actual words of God. Do you have a normal spiritual life? Do you have a normal relationship with God? Are you someone who follows the work of the Holy Spirit? If you are able to follow the light of the Holy Spirit today, and can grasp God’s will within His words, and enter into these words, then you are someone who follows the stream of the Holy Spirit.
from “Know the Newest Work of God and Follow the Footsteps of God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
When someone believes in God and seeks to enter into life and seeks a change in their disposition, they must pay a price and achieve a state where they will always follow God no matter what He does. This is something that people must do. Even if you follow all of this as a rule, you must stick to it, and no matter how great the trials, you cannot let go of your normal relationship with God. You should be able to pray, maintain your church life, and stay with brothers and sisters. When God tries you, you should still seek the truth. This is the minimum for a spiritual life. Always having a heart of seeking and striving to cooperate, applying all of your energy—can this be done? On this basis, discernment and entering into reality will be something that you can achieve. It’s easy to accept God’s word when your own state is normal, and it doesn’t feel difficult to practice the truth, and you feel that God’s work is great. But if your condition is poor, no matter how great God’s work is and no matter how beautifully someone speaks, you will pay no mind. When a person’s condition isn’t normal, God cannot work in them, and they cannot achieve changes in their disposition.
from “You Ought to Maintain Your Devotion to God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
If you don’t have a proper relationship with God, no matter what you do to maintain your relationships with other people, no matter how hard you work or how much energy you exert, it will still belong to a human philosophy of life. You are maintaining your position among people through a human perspective and a human philosophy so that they will praise you. You do not establish proper relationships with people according to the word of God. If you don’t focus on your relationships with people but maintain a proper relationship with God, if you are willing to give your heart to God and learn to obey Him, very naturally, your relationships with all people will become proper. This way, these relationships aren’t established on the flesh, but on the foundation of God’s love. There are almost no interactions based on the flesh, but in the spirit there is fellowship as well as love, comfort, and provision for one another. This is all done on the foundation of a heart that satisfies God. These relationships aren’t maintained by relying on a human philosophy of life, but they are formed very naturally through the burden for God. They don’t require human effort—they are practiced through the principles of the word of God. … A proper relationship between people is established on the foundation of giving their heart to God; it is not achieved through human effort. Without God, relationships between people are merely relationships of the flesh. They are not proper, but are indulgent of lust—they are relationships that God detests, that He loathes. If you say that your spirit has been moved, but you always want to have fellowship with people who appeal to you, with whoever you think highly of, and if there is another seeker who does not appeal to you, who you hold a bias against and will not engage with, this is more proof that you are an emotional person and you do not have a proper relationship with God at all. You are attempting to deceive God and cover up your own ugliness. Even if you can share some understanding but you carry wrong intentions, everything you do is good only by human standards. God will not praise you—you are acting according to the flesh, not according to God’s burden. If you are able to quiet your heart in front of God and have proper interactions with all those who love God, only then are you fit for God’s use. This way, no matter how you associate with others, it will not be according to a life philosophy, but it will be living in front of God, considerate of His burden.
from “Establishing a Proper Relationship With God Is Very Important” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
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