By Ruyi

Facing temptations, I was in two minds.

When I wanted to cast off the bondage of fame and gain, I came up against Satan’s testing. One of my old friends suddenly called me and said, “I have a good friend, who manages a large Wealth Management Company in Hong Kong. And he has branch offices in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou. Now he is preparing to expand the business, so he wants an experienced account director. I think you should have a try. You can’t miss such a good opportunity.” After hanging up, I was wild with joy and thought: This is indeed a good opportunity. If I get this job, I can pay off my debts straight away. After that, I specially spared three days and flew to Hong Kong and Guangzhou to inspect the company. Before I went back, the superiors invited me to have dinner with them and we talked about our rosy prospects together. They invited me to take this job with an annual salary of 2.5 million NT dollars.

After returning to Taiwan, I felt very conflicted inside: “Should I go or should I not go? If I go to work in China, where the atheist CCP persecutes religious beliefs, I may give up believing in God and then I would miss this precious opportunity to be saved.” However, I also couldn’t bear to give up such a high salary. Therefore, I lived in torments.

One day when driving home, I picked up a call from a debt collector and so my mind was disturbed and I was distracted. When crossing an intersection, I almost hit someone. Thanks to God’s protection, at the last second I turned the wheel sharply. In order to calm myself down, I pulled over to the side of the road and kept calling out to God. Then I played a recitation of God’s word. I heard God’s words saying: “The question of most concern to Me is exactly to whom your hearts are loyal. I hope, too, that each of you will try to marshal your thoughts, and ask yourself to whom you are loyal and for whom you live. Perhaps you have never given careful consideration to these questions, so how about I reveal the answers to you?”

“Anyone with a memory will acknowledge this fact: Man lives for himself and is loyal to himself. I do not believe your answers to be entirely correct, for you each exist in your respective lives and each are struggling with your own suffering. As such, you are loyal to the people you love and the things that please you; you are not entirely loyal to yourselves. Because you are each influenced by the people, occurrences, and objects around you, you are not truly loyal to yourselves.”

On the way home, I listened to this recitation of God’s word three times. After I arrived home safely, these words had deeply been branded onto my heart. I kept asking myself: Whom am I loyal to? Whom do I live for? These questions kept me up all night. Through reflecting on myself, I realized I wasn’t loyal to God, for I didn’t lay aside my pursuit of fame and fortune. In the face of this temptation, my faith in God was revealed: Between the truth and fame, I preferred fame to the truth. I thought that as long as I took that job, I could rise again. If God hadn’t reminded me in a timely manner, I would have possibly betrayed God and returned to Satan’s camp. Being exposed by God’s words made me deeply ashamed.

Then I saw God’s words saying, “When one does not have God, when one cannot see Him, when one cannot clearly recognize God’s sovereignty, every day is meaningless, worthless, miserable. Wherever one is, whatever one’s job is, one’s means of living and the pursuit of one’s goals bring one nothing but endless heartbreak and suffering without relief, such that one cannot bear to look back on one’s past. Only when one accepts the Creator’s sovereignty, submits to His orchestrations and arrangements, and seeks true human life will one gradually begin to break free from all heartbreak and suffering, and to be rid of all the emptiness of life.” “There is an exceedingly simple way to free oneself from this state, which is to bid farewell to one’s former way of living; to say goodbye to one’s previous goals in life; to summarize and analyze one’s previous lifestyle, view of life, pursuits, desires, and ideals; and then to compare them with God’s will and demands for man, and see whether any of them is consistent with God’s will and demands, whether any of them delivers the right values of life, leads one to a greater understanding of the truth, and allows one to live with humanity and the likeness of a human being. When you repeatedly investigate and carefully dissect the various goals that people pursue in life and their myriad ways of living, you will find not one of them conforms to the Creator’s original intention with which He created humanity. All of them draw people away from the Creator’s sovereignty and care; they are all traps which cause people to become depraved, and which lead them to hell. After you recognize this, your task is to lay aside your old view of life, stay far from various traps, let God take charge of your life and make arrangements for you; it is to try only to submit to God’s orchestrations and guidance, to live without individual choice, and to become a person who worships God.”

God’s words gave me a direction in my life and the way of practice: I should entrust everything to God and submit to His orchestrations and arrangements. Only in this way, can I live freely and without restraints. God used this temptation to test me in order to see what I would choose in the face of fame and fortune: to satisfy God or to satisfy my fleshly desires and betray God. I also thought of Job’s experience. He had no personal ambition or desire for fame and gain, because he knew how much wealth one could have does not depend on his own struggles but is predetermined by God. When Job was possessed of great wealth, he didn’t seek to make more money but faced God’s blessings with calmness; when he lost his fortune, he still praised God’s name. Because of his true knowledge of God’s authority and his true reverence for and obedience to Him, whether he was possessed of vast wealth or had nothing, he was able to face both calmly. At the time, I was greatly encouraged. I was willing to imitate Job, to be a person who truly submitted to God, and to live for satisfying God.

After a struggle, I politely declined the good intentions of my friend and the leaders and told them, “I don’t want to take this job because I have more important things to do for the rest of my life.” Hearing my words, my friend couldn’t understand me, but I knew clearly what I should pursue—contributing my own tiny effort to God’s work in the last days and living a meaningful life. After I arrived home, I felt as if a heavy burden was unloaded from my heart.

After casting off the bondage of fame, I saw God’s deeds.

In the following days, I committed the matter of finding a job to God and asked Him to lead me and guide me. Afterward, I found a night job as well as a part-time job on financial transaction during the daytime. That way, apart from our daily expenses, I could have some extra money to pay my debts. Besides, in my life I saw God’s wondrous deeds and His blessings to me. Once, as our company folded, I needed to go to mainland China to take care of some procedural tasks, but I didn’t have the budget of travel expenses. Just as I was fretting over this issue, one of my old customers suddenly called me and wanted to buy some financial products from me. What he paid me was exactly enough to buy the round-trip ticket. Afterward, every time I met difficulties, God would provide a way out for me. There was an unspeakable feeling that moved my heart and I could only keep thanking and praising God in my heart.

Although I lead an ordinary life now, I live by God’s words every day and so I feel very released and free. Thank God for His salvation toward me. It is God who gives me a significant life and it is He who allows me to fulfill my duty as a created being. I’m willing to pursue the truth properly to repay His love. Thank God. All the glory be to God.

The End.

Part One: God’s Words Free Me From the Bondage of Fame and Fortune (I)