What topic will we fellowship today? We will fellowship a very important topic, a topic that we have fellowshiped ever since God began His work. It is a topic that is very important to every single person, and is also an issue that everyone must come into contact with, and will come into contact with, during the course of their belief in God. It is a very important issue and it is both unavoidable and inseparable from man. Speaking of importance, what is the most important thing to every single believer? Some will say that the most important thing is understanding God’s will; some will say that the most important thing is eating and drinking more of the words of God; some will say that the most important thing is to know yourselves; some will say that the most important thing is to know how to be saved by God, how to follow God and how to be able to satisfy God’s will. But we will set these topics aside for today. What will we talk about? The topic we will talk about concerns God. Isn’t this a topic of paramount importance to everyone? (Yes.) What things does a topic about God involve? Of course, this topic is assuredly inseparable from God’s disposition, God’s essence and God’s work, so today let’s talk about “God’s Work, God’s Disposition and God Himself.”
God’s work is not a topic that anyone will be strangers to, and people come into contact with it from the day they begin to believe in God. Some people will say, “We experience God’s work every day. We’re not strangers to it! How could it be possible that we are strangers to God’s work?” Some will also say, “God’s disposition is a topic that we spend our lives researching, investigating and focusing on, so we’re not strangers to that either. As for God Himself, He is the One whom we follow, we believe in and we adhere to; we’re also not strangers to Him.” Since the creation of the world, God has not stopped His work. As He works, He constantly expresses His own disposition, conveys His own essence and expresses His word in all manner of ways, unceasingly conveys Himself, His will and His essence to mankind, and expresses His will and His requirements for mankind. Therefore, in a literal sense, these topics will not appear strange to anyone, but in actual fact those who now follow God are indeed strangers to God’s work, God’s disposition and God Himself. Why do I say this? Whilst man experiences God’s work, they come into contact with God, and so they think they understand God’s disposition and that they have knowledge of a part of God’s disposition. They think they are on familiar terms with God and that they understand a lot about Him. But looking at the current situation, it seems that many people’s understanding is confined only to books, to their own personal scope of experience and even more their understanding is confined to facts they can see with their own eyes, and there lies a gulf between their understanding and the true God Himself. How big a gulf exactly? You may not be clear about this in your heart, or you may have some awareness and some feeling, but as far as God Himself is concerned, man’s understanding of Him is very far removed from the essence of true God Himself. So, there is a great need for us to bring up this topic of “God’s Work, God’s Disposition and God Himself” and fellowship about it.
In actual fact, God’s disposition is open to each and every person; it’s not hidden. For God has never consciously tried to evade anyone, nor has He ever consciously tried to conceal Himself, not allowing man to know Him or to understand Him. Instead, since the beginning, God’s disposition has been open and has been in plain view for everyone to see. This is because, in God’s management, God works before everyone and on everyone. At the same time as He does this work, He continually reveals His disposition, and continually leads every single person by means of His essence and by means of what He has and is. Within every age, every period of time, whether in good environments or terrible environments, generally speaking, God’s disposition is open to everyone and what He has and is is open to everyone, just as His life provides and supports man in an unending flow. Yet, to some people, God’s disposition is hidden. Why do I say this? For although these people live within God’s work and although they follow God, they have never tried to understand God, they have no desire to know God and even less do they wish to draw close to God. As far as these people are concerned, an understanding of God’s disposition would signify the beginning of their end, and it would signify their judgment and condemnation by God’s disposition. Therefore, these people have never wanted to understand God or understand His disposition, never tried to have an in-depth understanding of God’s will or to comprehend His will, and they have no desire to consciously cooperate trying to grasp His will. They just never grow tired of doing the things they want to do, believing in the God they wish to believe in, believing in the God of their own hearts who exists within their imaginings and conceptions and believing in the God of their daily lives that is with them everywhere they go. As for the true God Himself, they treat Him with a contemptuous disregard; they have no desire to understand Him or to pay Him any attention, much less draw close to Him. Instead, they gloss over themselves and wrap themselves up with the words God expresses and, in this way, they think their belief in God is bearing fruit and that their belief has brought God into their hearts. Within their hearts, however, they are being led by their imaginations, their conceptions and even by their definitions of God, and they have nothing at all to do with the true God Himself. Because once they have understood the true God Himself and God’s true disposition and understood what God has and is, then this would signify condemnation of their behavior, their belief and their seeking, therefore they are very unwilling to try to understand God’s essence, and very unwilling, very reluctant, to actively seek or pray in a way that would allow them to further understand God, know more about God’s will and further understand God’s disposition. They would rather God was a fabrication, a thing hollow and vague, and they would rather God was just as they imagine Him to be, a God at their beck and call, inexhaustible and to be used without end. When they wish to enjoy the grace of God, God would be that grace; when they need to be blessed, God would be that blessing; when they encounter adverse[a] environments, God would give them courage and be their backup. But there are also some people who eagerly wish to understand God’s disposition, who wish to truly see God Himself and who wish to truly and genuinely understand God’s disposition and what He has and is. These people seek the reality of the truth, they seek to be saved by God and they seek for God’s conquest, salvation and perfection. These people read the word of God with their hearts and they use their hearts to experience every environment and every person, matter and thing God arranges for them—they pray and they seek with a true heart. The thing they most want to know is God’s disposition and the thing they most want to understand is God’s true essence, so that they may not offend God and may see even more of God’s loveliness and realness within their experience, so that there may be a true God existing in their hearts, that God may have a place in their hearts, and that they may no longer imagine, no longer live inside a vacuum and no longer live within imaginings and conceptions; they are unwilling to live in vagueness. These people wish urgently to understand God’s disposition and to understand His essence. To them, God’s disposition and essence provide for them at all times—they provide life. Once they understand God’s disposition, they are then able to fear God still further; once they understand God, they are then better able to cooperate with God’s work and better able to be considerate toward God’s will and to do their duty. These are the attitudes toward God’s disposition of two types of people. One type doesn’t want to understand God’s disposition. Though they may say they do, and say they want to know God Himself, that they want to see what God has and is and they want to truly experience what God is like, within their hearts they would rather God did not exist, for they have been rebelling against God and defying Him all along, because they jostle with God for position in their own hearts and because in their hearts they often doubt, and even deny, the existence of God. They don’t want God’s disposition or the true God Himself to occupy their hearts. They want only to satisfy their own desires, their own imaginations and their own wild ambitions. So you see, although these people believe in God and follow God, and although some even abandon their families and careers, their evil deeds never cease. There are even some who steal offerings, some who squander offerings freely, some who curse God on the quiet and some who use their positions to vie with God for people or for status, who use any method and resort to any artifice to get people to worship them, all the while bearing witness for themselves, exalting themselves, and always wanting others to think highly of them. There are even some who want others to mistake them for God, and to them it’s best if people treat them as though they were God. They never say to people, “I am a corrupt human being; I too am corrupt and arrogant, so don’t worship me. No matter how good my actions, it is all because God raises me up, they are all things I ought to do.” They never say anything like this. Why not? Because they are deeply afraid of losing their position in people’s hearts. So these people never exalt God or bear witness for God. And the reason why they don’t exalt God or bear witness for Him is because they have never tried to understand God. Can they know God when they don’t understand Him? Impossible. Therefore, although the words of the title of this topic—“God’s Work, God’s Disposition and God Himself”—are simple, they bear a different significance for every single person. As for those who are always rebelling against God, defying God and being hostile to God, they mean condemnation; whereas for those who seek the reality of the truth and who are always able to come before God to seek His will, then beyond all doubt they will have them be like a fish back in water. So, once you hear that I will be discussing God’s disposition and God’s work, there are some among you whose heads will begin to ache; and when some others hear this, they think,[b] “Mm, this is a good topic. I need to hear about it because it will be of great benefit to me, and it is a topic tfrom The Word Appears in the Flesh
Footnotes:
a. The original text omits “adverse.”
b. The original text omits “they think.”
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