In Believing in God, You Should Establish a Normal Relationship With God
Relevant Words of God:
In your faith in God, at the very least you should make sure you have a normal relationship with God. Without a normal relationship with God, you lose the meaning of your belief in God. Establishing a normal relationship with God is totally dependent upon quieting your heart before God. A normal relationship with God means not doubting or denying any of God’s work, but being able to obey God’s work, it means having the right motivations before God, not thinking for yourself, it means putting the interests of the house of God first no matter what you’re doing, and accepting being looked upon by God, and obeying the arrangements of God. It means being able to quiet your heart before God in all you do, and even when you don’t understand God’s will, still performing your duty and responsibilities as best you can; when God’s will is made clear to you, then it is not late to abide by it in your practice. When your relationship with God is normal, your relationship with people will be normal. All is built upon the foundation of God’s words: Through eating and drinking the words of God, you must practice according to what God asks, you must put right your views, you must not do things that oppose God or interfere with the church, or do things that have no benefit to the lives of your brothers and sisters, or say words that are unedifying to others, or do anything reprehensible; all that you do must be bright and honest, and able to be brought before God. Although there will be times when your flesh is weak, you must be able to put the interests of the house of God first, you must not seek personal profit, and you must be able to act with righteousness. If you are able to practice in this way, then 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. You must put your heart right, be righteous in your actions, and you must not be led by your emotions, or act according to your own will whenever you do or say anything: These are the principles by which those who believe in God conduct themselves. A person’s motivations and stature can be revealed in a small thing, and thus, if people wish 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”
It can be said that fixing your relationship with God is the first step on entry into your spiritual journey. Although your destiny is in God’s hands, and has been predestined by God, and cannot be changed by yourself, 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 able to 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 praised 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”
If you wish to achieve a normal spiritual life and establish a normal relationship with God, you must first give your heart to God, and quiet your heart before God. Only after you have poured your heart into God can you gradually have a normal spiritual life. If, in their belief in God, people do not give their heart to God — if their heart is not in God, and they do not treat God’s burden as their own — then everything they do is cheating God, and is the actions of religious people, unable to receive God’s praise. …
In your experience you see that one of the most important issues is quieting your heart before God. It is an issue that concerns people’s spiritual life, and the progression 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, 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, 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 passive state). Only people such as this are qualified to accept the enlightenment of God’s words and be touched 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 the enlightenment and illumination of God, 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 side of His righteous disposition. In real life, most people have yet to attain this realm. At the very least, their hearts have yet to completely turn to God, and thus there has still not been any great change in their life disposition, which is because they only live amid God’s graces, 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, their heart yearns, and they have the resolve to seek the truth. Only people such as this can gain the work of the Holy Spirit and be often enlightened and illuminated.
from “It Is Very Important to Establish a Normal Relationship With God”
Begin from prayer: Praying at peace before God is most fruitful. After that, there is eating and drinking the words of God, being able to fathom the light in God’s words, being able to find the path to practice, knowing what the aims of God’s utterances are, and understanding without deviation. Ordinarily, your heart must be able to draw close to God normally, must be able to be mindful of God’s love, to ponder the words of God, and be unaffected by the interference of the outside world. When your heart is at peace before God such that you are able to meditate, when, within yourself, you are mindful of God’s love, and truly draw near to God, regardless of what environment you are in, and when, ultimately you have 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 state described above, then this will prove that your heart is truly at peace before God. This is the first step; it is a basic skill. 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 you will be followed by enlightenment and illumination of the Holy Spirit.
from “On Quieting Your Heart Before God”
The most direct relationship with God is through prayer, and during prayer is when people’s relationship to God is the most intimate. Usually, when you’re doing things, can you immediately fall to your knees to pray? No, you can’t. Getting down on your knees and praying is when your relationship with God is the closest. When you read the word of God, you’ll have a different kind of feeling if you read it after prayer. If you read the word when you haven’t prayed for a period of time you won’t understand it; once you’ve read it you won’t know what it means.
… The purpose of prayer is for people to come in front of God and accept what He wants to give them. When you pray frequently, when you come to God frequently, then you frequently have a relationship with God. You are always moved by Him in your heart and you always accept what He is supplying you with. As you always accept His supply you will change, and your conditions will become better and better and you’ll no longer feel downcast. Particularly after brothers and sisters have prayed together, there’s an incredible amount of energy, faces are covered with sweat and you feel that you have gained a great deal. Actually you haven’t shared anything special in fellowship for several days, and it’s a prayer that is so energizing that you feel eager to throw aside your family and the world, that is so energizing that you desire nothing — God alone is enough. That’s how great this energy is.
from “The Significance and Practice of Prayer”
A proper spiritual life means living your life in front of God. When you pray you can quiet your heart in front of God, and through prayer you can seek enlightenment from the Holy Spirit, know the word of God, and understand God’s will. When you eat and drink the word of God, what He wants to do now will become clearer and more transparent to you. It can also provide you with a new way of practice without clinging to the old. All of these things that you do are done to achieve progress in your life. Just like prayer, it’s not to say a few things that sound nice or to have a good cry in front of God to show your indebtedness, but to practice using the spirit, to quiet your heart before God, to practice seeking guidance in all things, so that your heart can be drawn toward new light every day, and so that you will not be passive or lazy, and can enter the right track of carrying out God’s word.
from “On a Proper Spiritual Life”
Leading a proper spiritual life requires you to be able to accept new light and pursue true knowledge of the word of God every day. You need to achieve clarity regarding the truth, and to find the path to practice in everything. When you read the word of God every day, you should be able to discover new problems and your own personal shortcomings, and from this develop a heart of longing, a heart of seeking. This kind of heart drives your entire being — you are always able to quiet yourself before God and you deeply fear falling behind. When someone is able to have this heart of longing, this heart of seeking, and is willing to continuously have entry — that is walking on the right track of a spiritual life. There are those who are able to be moved by the Holy Spirit, who are motivated and willing to pursue being made perfect by God, who long to have a deeper knowledge of the word of God, and do not seek the supernatural but actually pay the price and are considerate of God’s will, who actually make entry — this makes their own experience more authentic and more practical. They do not seek hollow letters and doctrines and they do not pursue a feeling of the supernatural, nor do they worship any great men. This kind of person has entered a proper spiritual life and everything they do is to further progress in their life, to maintain a spirit of freshness rather than stagnation, and to always be able to enter enthusiastically.
from “On a Proper Spiritual Life”
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”
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 your trials, you cannot let go of your proper 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 states are proper, and it doesn’t feel difficult to practice the truth, and you feel that God’s work is great. But if your conditions are 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 conditions aren’t proper, God cannot work in them, and they cannot achieve changes in their disposition.
from “You Ought to Maintain Your Devotion to God”
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 put into it, it still belongs 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 supply 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 your 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 physical desires — they are relationships that God detests, that He loathes. If you say that your spirit has been touched, 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 wrongness in your heart, 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 encounter others, it will not be according to a life philosophy, but it will be living in front of God, considerate of His burden.
from “It Is Very Important to Establish a Normal Relationship With God”
Source: Walk in the Light
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