Relevant Words of God:
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.
Excerpted from “How Is Your Relationship With God?” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
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. That is to say, people are able to have God in their hearts, not seek personal benefits, not think about their personal future (referring to thinking of the flesh), but rather they bear the burden of entering life, do their best to pursue truth, and submit to God’s work. This way, the objectives you seek are correct, and your relationship with God is normal. 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.
Excerpted from “How Is Your Relationship With God?” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
The way that people believe in God, love God, and satisfy God is by touching the Spirit of God with their heart and thereby obtaining His satisfaction, and by using their heart to engage with God’s words and thus being moved by the Spirit of God. If you wish to achieve a proper spiritual life and establish a proper relationship with God, then you must first give your heart to Him. Only after you have quieted your heart before Him and poured your whole heart into Him will you gradually be able to develop a proper spiritual life. If in people’s belief in God, they do not give their heart to Him and if their heart is not in Him and they do not treat His burden as their own, then everything they do is an act of cheating God, an act typical of religious people, and cannot receive God’s praise. God cannot gain anything from this kind of person; this kind of person can only serve as a foil to God’s work, like a decoration in the house of God, something superfluous and useless. God does not make use of this kind of person. In such a person, not only is there no opportunity for the work of the Holy Spirit, there is not even any value in their being perfected. This type of person is, in truth, a walking corpse. Such people have nothing that can be used by the Holy Spirit, but on the contrary, all of them have been appropriated and deeply corrupted by Satan. God will weed these people out. Currently, in making use of people the Holy Spirit not only employs those parts of them that are desirable in order to get things done, He also perfects and changes their undesirable parts. If your heart can be poured into God and remain quiet before Him, then you will have the opportunity and the qualifications to be used by the Holy Spirit, to receive the enlightenment and illumination of the Holy Spirit, and even more, you will have the opportunity for the Holy Spirit to make good your shortcomings. When you give your heart to God, on the positive side, you can attain deeper entry and attain a higher plane of insight; on the negative side, you will have more understanding of your own faults and shortcomings, you will be more eager to seek to satisfy God’s will, and you will not be passive, but will actively enter in. Thus, you will become a correct person.
Excerpted from “It Is Very Important to Establish a Proper Relationship With God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
If you want to have a proper relationship with God, then your heart must turn to God. With this as a foundation, you will also have a proper relationship with other people. If you do not have a proper relationship with God, then 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 all just pertain to a human philosophy for living. You are maintaining your position among people through a human perspective and a human philosophy so that people will praise you, but you are not following the word of God to establish proper relationships with people. If you do not 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, then naturally your relationships with all people will become proper. This way, these relationships are not established in the flesh, but on the foundation of God’s love. There are almost no fleshly interactions, but in the spirit there is fellowship, mutual love, mutual comfort, and provision for one another. This is all done on the foundation of a heart that satisfies God. These relationships are not maintained by relying on a human philosophy for living, but are formed very naturally through carrying a burden for God. It does not require man-made effort. You need only practice according to the principles of the word of God. Are you willing to be considerate of the will of God? Are you willing to be a person who is “without reason” before God? Are you willing to completely give your heart to God and to disregard your position among people? Of all the people you have contact with, with whom do you have the best relationships? With whom do you have the worst relationships? Are your relationships with people proper? Do you treat all people equally? Are your relationships with others maintained according to your philosophy for living, or are they built on the foundation of God’s love? When a person does not give their heart to God, then their spirit becomes obtuse, numb and unconscious. This kind of person will never understand God’s words and will never have a proper relationship with God; this kind of person’s disposition will never be changed. Changing one’s disposition is the process of giving one’s heart completely to God, and of receiving enlightenment and illumination from the words of God. God’s work can allow a person to actively enter in, as well as enable them to purge their negative aspects after gaining knowledge about them. When you reach the point of giving your heart to God, then you will be able to perceive every subtle movement within your spirit, and you will know every enlightenment and illumination received from God. Hold onto this, and you will gradually enter into the path of being perfected by the Holy Spirit. The quieter your heart can be before God, the more sensitive and delicate your spirit will be and the more your spirit will be able to perceive how the Holy Spirit moves it, and then your relationship with God will become ever more proper. A proper relationship between people is established on the foundation of giving their hearts to God, and not through human effort. Without God in their hearts, interpersonal relationships between people are merely relationships of the flesh. They are not proper, but rather, are an abandonment to 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 you like, with whomever you think highly of, and if another person is seeking but you do not like them, even hold a bias against them and will not engage with them, this is more proof that you are subject to your emotions 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 yet you carry wrong intentions, then 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 philosophy for living, but it will be before God, living in a way that is considerate of His burden.
Excerpted from “It Is Very Important to Establish a Proper Relationship With God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
For every utterance of God, after you have read it and you have gained an understanding, you shall put it into practice. Regardless of how you used to practice before—perhaps in the past your flesh was weak, you were rebellious, and you resisted—this is not a big deal, and it can’t obstruct your life from growing today. As long as you are able to have a normal relationship with God today, then there is hope. If for every time that you read God’s words, you have changes and allow other people to see that your life has transformed for the better, it shows that you have a normal relationship with God and that it is put right. God does not treat people based on their transgressions. As long as you are able to not rebel again and not resist again after you have understood and are aware, then God will still have mercy on you. When you have this understanding and the will to pursue being perfected by God, then your condition in God’s presence will be normal. No matter what you do, consider: What will God think if I do this? Will it benefit the brothers and sisters? Will it be beneficial to the work of God’s house? Examine your intentions in your prayer, fellowship, speech, work, and contact with people, and examine whether your relationship with God is normal or not. If you are unable to distinguish your intentions and thoughts, then you have no discrimination, which proves that you understand too little about truth. If you are able to have a clear understanding of everything that God does, see things according to God’s word and see things by standing on the side of God, then your viewpoints will be correct. Therefore, to build a good relationship with God is a top priority for anyone believing in God; everyone should treat it as the most important task and as their major life event. Everything you do should be weighed against whether or not you have a normal relationship with God. If your relationship with God is normal and your intentions are correct, then do it. In order to maintain a normal relationship with God, you can’t be afraid of losing out on personal interests, you can’t allow Satan to prevail, you can’t allow Satan to find anything against you, and you can’t allow Satan to make you into a laughing stock. Such an intention is a manifestation that your relationship with God is normal. It is not for the flesh, but rather it is for peace of spirit, it is for obtaining the work of the Holy Spirit and for satisfying the will of God. If you are to enter into a correct state, you must build a good relationship with God, you must set right your viewpoint of belief in God. It is to allow God to obtain you, to allow God to reveal the fruits of His words in you, and to enlighten and illuminate you even more. This way you will enter into the correct manner. Continuously eat and drink God’s current words, enter into the current way of the Holy Spirit’s work, do according to God’s current requirements, not follow old-fashioned practices, not cling to old ways of doing things, and quickly enter into the manner of today’s work. This way your relationship with God will be completely normal and you will enter into the right track of believing in God.
Excerpted from “How Is Your Relationship With God?” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
Source: Grow in Christ - The Second Coming of Christ
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