By Xinxin, China

I am an ordinary worker. At the end of November 2013, a work colleague saw that my wife and I were always getting into arguments about little things, and that we were worried and vexed all the time, so he preached Almighty God’s work of the last days to us. From the word of Almighty God, we learned that the heavens and earth and all things were created by God, and that man’s life is bestowed on him by God. We also understood such truths as the mystery of God’s six-thousand-year management plan, the mystery of the incarnation, God’s three stages of work to save mankind, and the significance of God’s work of judgment in the last days. My wife and I felt it was a great blessing to have happened upon God incarnate working to save mankind during our lifetimes. We happily accepted God’s work in the last days and began to lead the church life. Under the guidance of the word of God, we both pursued the truth and sought to transform ourselves, and whenever something happened and we started to argue, we no longer found fault with each other like we used to, but rather we would reflect on ourselves and try to know ourselves. We would then forsake our flesh and act in accordance with God’s requirements. Our marital relations became better and better, and our hearts felt peaceful and at ease. We felt that believing in God was great. However, just as we were joyously and happily following God and enjoying a life of happiness, we were subjected to a vehement assault by our families…. But just when I was losing my way, it was the word of Almighty God that led me to see through Satan’s deceitful scheme, and to break through the fog and embark upon the radiant path of a virtuous life.

I had just retired in February of 2014, when my daughter-in-law asked us two elderly folks to travel to Sichuan to look after our grandson. I felt as though we’d been placed in a very awkward position, and so I prayed to God: “Almighty God! My daughter-in-law has asked me to look after my grandson, but I’ll have trouble adjusting to life in that place, and it will be difficult to believe in You and read Your words there. Please open up a way out for us….” Not long after that, my daughter-in-law called me again to say that she would bring my grandson to us. I was overjoyed to hear this news, and felt how almighty God is. God had heard my prayer and opened up a way out for me. A few days later, my daughter-in-law and her parents came with my grandson. As it happened, the day after that I was going to a church gathering, and I told them that I believed in Almighty God. My daughter-in-law said unhappily, “Dad, how can you believe in Almighty God? I’m sure you know that the government doesn’t allow people to believe in Almighty God, and in recent years they have constantly been arresting believers in Almighty God. You can’t continue to believe in Him.” I retorted, “When we believe in God, we don’t participate in politics. We just attend gatherings, read the word of God, pursue the truth, and follow the right path. How can they not let us believe?” My daughter-in-law said, “No matter what you say, and even if believing in God is the right path, as long as the government opposes it, you can’t believe in Him!” I thought to myself, “No matter what you say, it is the true God whom I believe in. Even if the CCP government doesn’t allow it, I will still believe.” Later, my daughter-in-law went and found my wife and urged us not to believe in God anymore, and after that, my son in faraway Sichuan called me up and said, “Dad, I heard you believe in Almighty God. That’s something the CCP government opposes, so you mustn’t believe in Him anymore.” When I heard my son say this, I felt perturbed, and thought: “Believing in God is an unalterable law of heaven and earth, so why are you all trying again and again to stop me from believing in God? It’s so hard to believe in God and follow the right path!” I then prayed silently to God to protect me from my son and daughter-in-law’s attempts to disrupt my faith. After praying, my heart gradually became tranquil. Although my son and daughter-in-law did not understand, I knew perfectly well that it was right to believe in God and follow the right path, and I knew I must not allow myself to be influenced by them. After three days, my daughter-in-law came running home in a hurry, and I saw that she had two stacks of printed materials in her hands. She urged me to hurry and look at them, and I saw that they were filled with rumors and falsehoods put out by the CCP government vilifying, condemning, and defaming The Church of Almighty God. For a moment I felt a little confused, and I thought: “It can’t be, I’ve been attending meetings for several months and I’ve never seen any brothers or sisters missing arms or legs! Why does the CCP government want to spread rumors and discredit The Church of Almighty God? What is really going on here?” That night, I couldn’t sleep because I kept turning this over in my mind. “Oh, the CCP government persecutes believers in God so frantically, and my son and daughter-in-law are also trying so hard to stop me from believing in God. What should I do?”

The next day, I went out for a stroll in the neighborhood, and saw rumors slandering and condemning Almighty God posted on a bulletin board. I thought: “What I believe in is the true God, so why does the CCP government oppose my belief in this way? It seems that in this state controlled by the atheistic CCP government, believing in God really isn’t easy!” When I thought about this, I began to feel spiritually weak, and I returned home downcast and dejected. As soon as I got home, my daughter-in-law said to me again, “Dad, I’m begging you to give up your faith. If the government finds out that you believe in God, I won’t be able to keep my job. Your son will soon get his doctorate, but I’m afraid that he won’t even be able to find a job because of your belief in Almighty God. Even your little grandson might get caught up in this, and it’s possible that in the future he won’t be able to attend school.” It all sounded so terrible—believing in God can even compromise the future of one’s children! I got more and more scared, as I knew that the CCP government’s ways of punishing people are extremely cruel, so cruel that they kill people without batting an eye. I also thought about how difficult it had been to support my son through his studies until he graduated with his doctorate, so now what would I do if my faith in God affected my son? The price I had to pay for believing in God and following the right path was too high, so I thought it would be best if I just forgot about it. Just at that moment, my daughter-in-law threatened me, saying, “My dad said that if you continue to believe in God, he will report you to the police. You know that my dad is a Party Secretary and has given more than thirty years of his life to the Communist Party. He hears and obeys whatever the CCP says. He’s as good as his word, so this isn’t just to try to scare you.” The defenses in my heart then completely collapsed and toppled over, and I felt that it was too hard to believe in God, that the pressure was too much. With my son and daughter-in-law taking it in turns to attack me like this, if they really reported me to the CCP police and I was arrested and imprisoned, an old man like me could not bear such a thing. “Forget it,” I thought. “It’s better to just give up my faith.” After that, I didn’t attend gatherings anymore, and sisters came many times to my house looking for me but I always hid and avoided them.

But during that time when I was not attending gatherings, I had only to think about how it was God’s immense love that saved me from my suffering and about the sweetness and joy of being together with the brothers and sisters, singing hymns and praising God, and I would miss and yearn for the church life a lot. But still I feared my daughter-in-law reporting me to the police, and I felt terrible pain and torment in my heart. I didn’t know how things would come right. At that time, a colleague at work (a brother who also believed in God) came to visit me to see why I hadn’t been attending gatherings recently. I explained to him how my daughter-in-law had been harassing me about my faith in God and, after he heard this, he fellowshiped with me, “When we are beset by these things, it’s actually a battle being waged in the spiritual realm. It’s just like the disaster that Job was faced with in that, on the surface, it seemed like it had been caused by thieves robbing him, but actually what lay behind it was Satan tormenting people and fighting over mankind with God. Job was someone who feared God and was able to shun evil, and in the end he could stand witness for God, and Satan was humiliated in defeat. So when we are beset by these things, God’s intention is to get us to discern Satan’s essence of evil. When we believe in God, all we need to do is rely on God in all things and seek the truth. Only then will we be able to see through Satan’s scheme and stand witness, and only then will we be able to avoid being captured by Satan. If we do not do this, we will lose our chance to attain full salvation!”

After that, my colleague read to me from the word of Almighty God: “God works, God cares for a person, looks upon a person, and Satan dogs His every step. Whoever God favors, Satan also watches, trailing along behind. If God wants this person, Satan would do everything in its power to obstruct God, using various evil ways to tempt, harass and wreck the work God does in order to achieve its hidden objective. What is its objective? It does not want God to have anyone; it wants all those that God wants, to occupy them, control them, to take charge of them so they worship it, so they commit evil acts alongside it. Is this not Satan’s sinister motive? Normally, you often say that Satan is so evil, so bad, but have you seen it? You can only see how bad man is and have not seen in reality how bad Satan actually is. But have you seen it in this issue concerning Job? (Yes.) This issue has made Satan’s hideous countenance and its essence very clear. Satan is at war with God, trailing along behind Him. Its objective is to demolish all the work God wants to do, to occupy and control those whom God wants, to completely extinguish those whom God wants. If they are not extinguished, then they come to Satan’s possession to be used by it—this is its objective” (“God Himself, the Unique IV” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). “You must be awake and waiting at every moment, and you must pray more before Me. You must recognize the various plots and cunning schemes of Satan, know the spirit, know people and be able to discern all kinds of people, matters and things; you must eat and drink more of My words and, more importantly, you must be able to eat and drink them by yourselves. Equip yourselves with all the truth, come before Me so that I may open your spiritual eyes and allow you to see all the mysteries that lie within the spirit” (“Chapter 17” of Utterances of Christ in the Beginning in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

To be continue…

Source From: The Church of Almighty God

Recommended for you:

1.  Why Does God Put Us Through Trials

2. How to overcome sin and temptations? Look at how they relied on God and stood testimony.Get motivated by Christian Testimonies.