Tasting God’s Love Under the Guidance of Awakening

Tasting God’s Love Under the Guidance of Awakening

Janice    Germany

Editors’ note:

Janice, Nigerian, moved to Germany together with her husband and two young children in 2014. In Germany, she suffered the betrayal of her husband and the pain and helplessness of being parted from her children. Just when she lost all hope for life, Awakening, a gospel movie from the Church of Almighty God, guided her to find God’s work and word of the last days. Almighty God’s words brightened her heart, allowed her to be reunited with the Creator, to gain the watering of the living water of life, to know the source of man’s corruption and suffering, and finally to find out the bright path to getting rid of corruption and pain and attaining God’s salvation. Starting from then, she has been made anew.

After the arrival of our family in Germany, my husband and I lived a hard life in the beginning. We had to take care of our children and earn a living, but we loved each other and led a life of mutual support. At least we were both devoted to our family and children then. However, I found gradually that my husband changed. He often complained about the hardships in life, grew ill-tempered, and spent fewer nights at home. As a Christian, I only prayed to the Lord, hoping that I could get help from the Lord Jesus. I also communicated with my husband and tried to straighten him out. In the end, nonetheless, he still betrayed me, and even took away my two beloved children by contemptible means. He filed a lawsuit and falsely accused me of child abuse, demanding deprivation of my custody of our children. What surprised me most was that my best friend should stand on my husband’s side and bear false witness. Eventually, my husband, my friend abandoned me, and I was also separated from my children.

All this just happened too suddenly, like hailstones falling from the sky hitting me. I did not understand why my husband was so cruel and heartless, nor did I know what I had done wrong, why I must suffer such pain, or where the meaning of my life lay since I had lost everything. I was devastated, having no heart to anything, and began a decadent life. Every day I did nothing but go on a drinking binge to paralyze myself and pass the time with movies in futility and boredom. As the days passed, my anguish did not lessen; instead, I felt increasing emptiness and agony. I had no more courage to live on, and thought about suicide. However, as soon as I thought about dying, I would feel particularly scared, and I just had no idea of where this vague feeling of fear came from.

Gospel movie “awakening“

One day, I thought of my belief all of a sudden, as well as the Lord Jesus. I googled “ChristianMovie” with a view to seeking help from gospel movies and ending my agony. When I browsed on Youtube, I saw “Voice of God ‘Awakening’,” which seemed kind of appealing to me: awakening from what? I opened the link and watched the movie for two minutes, feeling it similar to other gospel movies. Then I dropped it and continued to browse African movies. But there was always a moving inside me: Go on with Awakening. It came up several times, and I felt it was from the guidance of the Lord. So I returned to the movie Awakening and watched it seriously from the beginning. When I saw the part where the heroine refused to listen to the gospel preached by two sisters, I was very curious: What gospel were they preaching? Why did the heroine cast them out without even listening to it? I wondered what was going on, so I continued with it. Then I saw the desolate scenes in the church in the movie, and I felt they were exactly what happened in the practical church life: The believers intrigued against each other, the pastors preached and worked for the offerings, and so on. Following that, when I saw the preachers communicate that the reason for the desolation in the church was that God has done a new work, I was even more curious: God has done a new work? What is it? I kept on watching the movie with wonder.

The heroine said, “But you said that God comes again to do the work of saving man. That’s impossible. As long as we obey the Lord’s teachings to confess and repent and rely on the Lord Jesus’ redemption, we got saved.”

The preacher from the Church of Almighty God replied, “Sisters, although we’re not of sin due to the Lord Jesus’ redemptive work, it doesn’t mean that we’ve broken away from sins and always got saved. Because we haven’t broken away from sins, we still live in the fallen life of committing sins in the day and confessing them at night, and still can’t break free from the bondage and restriction of sins. This is the state of us believers in the Lord. As Paul said, ‘… for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do” (Romans 7:18-19). Although the apostle Paul was forgiven of his sins due to the Lord Jesus’ salvation, the biggest misery in his heart was that he still often committed sins and resisted God in spite of himself because of being unable to break free from the bondage and restriction of sins. So he said helplessly, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24). Sisters, isn’t Paul’s misery the misery of the brothers and sisters believing in the Lord today? Isn’t the salvation that Paul eagerly wished to receive what we believers in the Lord eagerly wish to receive today? Sister, especially believers in the end time have a deep experience of it. Man’s heart is taken by various poisons and philosophies of Satan and man is filled with arrogance, selfishness, craftiness, greed, evil, and so on. So, we can still go with the world trend and associate with Satan, seeking after position, fame and gain, and money and enjoying the pleasure of sin. Even if one is familiar with the Bible, he can in no way break free from the bondage of sin. So, in the Age of Grace, all believers in the Lord who have been redeemed by the Lord Jesus haven’t truly broken away from Satan’s influence of darkness and their heart hasn’t been completely gained by God. Even if they have some changes in their outward behaviors and sometimes they can do some good things, their inner sinful nature still rules and controls them within, so that what they live out is still the corrupt satanic disposition and they haven’t broken away from the bondage of sin.

Almighty God says, ‘A sinner such as you, who has just been redeemed, and has not been changed, or been perfected by God, can you be after God’s heart? For you, you who are still of your old self, it is true that you were saved by Jesus, and that you are not counted as sinners because of the salvation of God, but this does not prove that you are not sinful, and are not impure. How can you be saintly if you have not been changed? Within, you are beset by impurity, selfish and mean, yet you still wish to descend with Jesus—you should be so lucky! You have missed a step in your belief in God: You have merely been redeemed, but have not been changed. For you to be after God’s heart, God must personally do the work of changing and cleansing you; if you are only redeemed, you will be incapable of attaining sanctity. In this way you will be unqualified to share in the good blessings of God, for you have missed out a step in God’s work of managing man, which is the key step of changing and perfecting. And so you, a sinner who has just been redeemed, are incapable of directly inheriting God’s inheritance’ (“Concerning Appellations and Identity” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

‘Though man has been redeemed and forgiven of his sins, it is only considered as God not remembering the transgressions of man and not treating man in accordance with man’s transgressions. However, when man lives in the flesh and he has not been set free from sin, he can only continue to sin, endlessly revealing the corrupt satanic disposition. This is the life that man leads, an endless cycle of sin and forgiveness. The majority of men sin in the day only to confess in the evening. As such, even if the sin offering is forever effective for man, it would not be able to save man from sin. Only half the work of salvation has been completed, for man still has corrupt disposition’ (“The Mystery of the Incarnation (4)” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). Sisters, God speaks very clearly that it is because of God’s salvation that man is forgiven of sins after being redeemed by the Lord Jesus. God says that man is no longer of sin, but it doesn’t mean that man won’t commit sins. It just means that God doesn’t remember man’s sins and doesn’t treat man as a sinner. But the Lord Jesus’ work just achieved the result of redeeming man’s sins, and it didn’t solve the problem about the root of man’s sinning. So, man’s sinful nature still roots in his heart. In this regard, even if the Lord Jesus’ sin offering is forever effective for man, it can’t save man from sin thoroughly. So, those who have received the Lord Jesus’ redemption still commit sins and resist God. They need God’s further work of salvation, and only thus can they thoroughly break away from sin and receive God’s full salvation.”

The dialogue in the movie made me clearly understand that God’s new work stems from our living in the cycle of sinning and confessing without breaking free from the bondage of sin. We’re only redeemed by the Lord Jesus, yet our sinful nature has not been rid of. So we can still commit sins in spite of ourselves, and we really need God to do a new work to thoroughly get rid of our sins. It’s quite likely that Almighty God is the returned Lord Jesus. Though I’d believed in the Lord for years, I lost my faith and began to degenerate in the face of trials. I was simply not a strong and good Christian. The pastors also committed sins, and even stole the offerings. They lived in sin without being able to extricate themselves from it, so they were truly in need of God’s salvation. Suddenly I felt as if I had seen the sun, and that all my agony and helplessness could be resolved there. Then I watched several other movies of the Church of Almighty God where many truths were fellowshiped about. I felt that God’s words had come into my heart, and my intuition in the spirit told me that it is the true way. I prayed to God silently in my heart, asking Him to lead me to understand more. Many movies I watched before seemed made up, whereas these movies did not. They were preaching the gospel, were under the guidance of God’s work, and were preaching Almighty God’s words to let more people hear them and recognize that the Lord Jesus has returned. Almighty God’s words were something I had never heard before, and they had deeply attracted me. I kept watching the movies. It was not until the dawn broke that I realized that I did not sleep the whole night.

After the breakfast,I found the gospel hotline of the Church of Almighty God in Germany and called. Sister Zhenzhen received my call. Later, she invited Sister Liu Xin and me to an online fellowship on Skype. We really had a good talk. They read Almighty God’s words for me, “Mankind, who left the supply of life from the Almighty, does not know why they exist, and yet fears death. There is no support, no help, but mankind is still reluctant to close their eyes, braving it all, drags out an ignoble existence in this world in bodies without the consciousness of souls. You live like such, with no hope; he exists like such, with no aim. There is only the Holy One in the legend who will come to save those who moan in suffering and long desperately for His arrival. … When you are weary and when you begin to feel the desolation of this world, do not be perplexed, do not cry. Almighty God, the Watcher, will embrace your arrival any time” (“The Sighing of the Almighty” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

“From the time you were born all the way up to now, God has carried out much work on you, but He did not tell you every time He did something. You were not to know, so you were not told, … from the time you were born up to now, God must guarantee the safety of each one of you. You may feel as though you do not fully understand, saying ‘Is this safety so important?’ So what is the literal meaning of ‘safety’? Maybe you understand it to mean peace or maybe you understand it to mean never experiencing any disaster or calamity, to live well, to live a normal life. But in your hearts you must know that it is not that simple. So what on earth is this thing that I have been talking about, that God has to do? What does it mean to God? Is it really a guarantee of your safety? Just like right now? No. So what is it that God does? This safety means you not being devoured by Satan. … Once you have been devoured by Satan, neither your soul nor your flesh belongs to God any longer. God will no longer save you. God forsakes souls like that and forsakes people like that. So I say the most important thing that God has to do is to guarantee your safety, to guarantee that you will not be devoured by Satan. This is pretty important, isn’t it?” (“God Himself, the Unique VI” in A Continuation of The Word Appears in the Flesh).

Sister Zhenzhen said, “The emptiness and pain in man’s living in this world are all caused by Satan. However, Almighty God has mercy on everyone. He guarantees the safety of each one of us, and finds us back so that we will avoid being devoured by Satan. Our God has never left us. When we don’t know why we exist but fear death, God has seen all this. He knows our sufferings, so He miraculously arranged for us to follow His footprints. God loves man so much! Sister, as long as you read more of Almighty God’s words, you’ll become aware of God’s kind intention of saving man. In God’s six-thousand-year management plan, from the work of Jehovah to that of Jesus, from the work of Jesus to that of Almighty God, God’s work goes higher and deeper with each stage. In the last days, for us to completely cast off corruption, achieve purity, and enter His kingdom, God becomes flesh again to do the work of judgment beginning with the house of God to judge and purify us. All that is God’s practical love and salvation toward us. Praise God! We should cherish this salvation.”

Hearing the calls of Almighty God and the heartfelt words of the sister, I was deeply touched: This is God’s love, God’s great love! Tears flowing down, I did not know how to express my gratitude for God’s love and salvation. Then Sister Liu Xin combined my sufferings to communicate with me. She said, “Without your family, husband, and children, you lost the goals and direction of your life, felt no more the meaning and value of your existence, and even thought about ending your life with suicide. That is Satan’s affliction and trickery. Satan has been corrupting man, and it just wishes people to turn away from God and rebel against God, living in misery. Man’s fate is subject to God’s sovereignty and orchestration, so your children will grow up under God’s protection.”

Almighty God’s words and the two sisters’ fellowship made my heart lighter and lighter, and the long-forgotten expression of a smile appeared on my face. At that time, I had realized how and for whom I should live. I vowed to entrust my children to God and walk out of the harm of Satan thoroughly. No matter what happened, I would obey God and never blame Him, for all the sufferings befalling me were Satan’s mocking. Satan wished me to have misgivings and doubts about God’s sovereignty and orchestration and deny God, but I would never rise to its hook. Thank Almighty God! Since I accepted Almighty God’s work in the last days, I’ve been reading Almighty God’s words every day, and have had a renewed outlook. In my daily life, I try to practice according to God’s words. Every week I have two gatherings with my brothers and sisters, and we pray, sing hymns, and read God’s words together. Besides dealing with my own life affairs, I fulfill my duty as a creature, and preach to others Almighty God’s work of the last days so that more people who are struggling in Satan’s trickery and affliction can receive the salvation of God’s work of the last days. Thank Almighty God for His salvation toward me. All the glory be to Almighty God!

Source: Find the Shepherd  

Related movie: The Everlasting Gospel in the End Time “Awakening“