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Daily Words of God | "How to Know God's Disposition and the Results His Work Shall Achieve" | Excerpt 18
The Starting Point for Fearing God Is to Treat Him Like God
Someone just raised a question: How is it that we know more of God than Job did, yet we still can’t fear God? We touched on this matter a little bit previously, right? In fact, the essence of this question has also been discussed before, that though Job didn’t know God back then, he treated Him like God, and regarded Him as the Master of all things in heaven and earth. Job did not consider God to be an enemy. Rather, he worshiped Him as the Creator of all things. Why is it that people nowadays resist God so much? Why can’t they fear God? One reason is that they have been deeply corrupted by Satan. With their satanic nature deeply ingrained, people become an enemy of God. Thus, even though they believe in God and acknowledge God, they can still resist God and place themselves in opposition to Him. This is determined by human nature. The other reason is that although people believe in God, they simply don’t treat Him as God. Instead, they consider God to be opposed to man, regarding Him as man’s enemy, and they are irreconcilable with God. It’s that simple. Wasn’t this matter broached during the previous session? Think about it: Is that the reason? Though you have a bit of knowledge of God, just what is this knowledge? Is this not what everyone is talking about? Is it not what God told you? You only know the theoretical and doctrinal aspects; have you ever experienced the real aspect of God? Do you have subjective knowledge? Do you have practical knowledge and experience? If God didn’t tell you, could you know this? Your knowledge of theory doesn’t represent real knowledge. In short, no matter how much you know and how you came to know it, prior to your attaining a real understanding of God, God is your enemy, and prior to your actually treating God as such, He is placed in opposition to you, for you are an embodiment of Satan.
When you’re together with Christ, perhaps you can serve Him three meals a day, perhaps serve Him tea, attend to His life’s needs, seemingly treating Christ as God. Whenever something happens, people’s viewpoints are always contrary to God’s. They always fail to understand God’s viewpoint, fail to accept it. Though people might get along with God on the surface, this doesn’t mean that they are compatible with Him. As soon as something happens, the truth of man’s disobedience emerges, confirming the hostility that exists between man and God. This hostility is not God opposing man; it’s not God wanting to be hostile to man, and it’s not God placing man in opposition and treating man as such. Rather, it’s a case of this oppositional essence toward God lurking in man’s subjective will, and in man’s subconscious mind. Since man regards all that which comes from God as the object of his research, his response toward that which comes from God and that which involves God is, above all, to guess, and to doubt, and then to quickly adopt an attitude that conflicts with God, and oppose God. After that, man will take these passive moods and dispute God or contest God, even to the point where he’ll doubt whether this kind of God is worth him following. Despite the fact that man’s rationality tells him he shouldn’t proceed like this, he will still choose to do so in spite of himself, such that he will proceed without hesitation to the very end. For example, what is the first reaction of some people when they hear some rumor or slander about God? Their first reaction is: I don’t know if this rumor is true or not, whether it exists or not, so I’ll wait and see. Then they start to ponder: There’s no way to verify this; does it exist? Is this rumor true or not? Though this person is not showing it on the surface, their heart has already started to doubt, already started to deny God. What is the essence of this kind of attitude, this kind of viewpoint? Is it not betrayal? Before they are faced with the matter, you can’t see what this person’s viewpoint is—it seems like they don’t conflict with God, like they don’t regard God as an enemy. However, as soon as they’re faced with it, they immediately stand with Satan and oppose God. What does this suggest? It suggests that man and God are opposed! It’s not that God regards man as an enemy, but that the very essence of man itself is hostile toward God. Regardless of how long someone follows God, how much they pay; regardless of how someone praises God, how they keep themselves from resisting God, even urging themselves to love God, they can never manage to treat God as God. Is this not determined by man’s essence? If you treat Him as God, you truly believe that He is God, can you still have any doubt toward Him? Can there still be any question marks concerning Him in your heart? There can’t. The trends of this world are so evil, this human race is so evil—how is it that you don’t have any conceptions about them? You yourself are so wicked—how is it that you don’t have any conceptions about that? Yet just a few rumors, some slander, can produce such big conceptions about God, can produce so many ideas, which shows just how immature your stature is! Just the “buzzing” of a few mosquitos, a few repulsive flies, that’s all it takes to deceive you? What kind of person is this? Do you know what God thinks about this kind of person? God’s attitude is actually very clear in how He treats these people. It’s only that God’s treatment of these people is to give them the cold shoulder—His attitude is to not pay any attention to them, and to not be serious with these ignorant people. Why is that? Because in His heart He never planned on obtaining those people who have pledged to be hostile toward Him to the very end, and who have never planned on seeking out the way of compatibility with Him. Perhaps these words I have spoken hurt a few people. Well, are you willing to always let Me hurt you like this? Regardless of whether you’re willing or not, everything I say is the truth! If I always hurt you like this, always expose your scars, will it affect the lofty image of God in your hearts? (It won’t.) I agree that it won’t. For there simply is no God in your hearts. The lofty God that inhabits your hearts, the one you strongly defend and protect, simply isn’t God. Rather it’s a figment of man’s imagination; it simply does not exist. So it’s all the better that I expose the answer to this riddle. Is this not the whole truth? The real God is not the imaginings of man. I hope you can all face this reality, and it will help in your knowledge of God.
Excerpted from The Word Appears in the Flesh
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