living sacrifice

I feel like I'm a free man, but I don't know that the church expects me to ask for leave.When I told You Yan not to go to church this week, she told me, "You have to ask for leave with Qian Junru and Sister Zhao."

"Why should I ask for leave?"

"They are all your pastors. Lin Xiao, if you don't attend the Lord's Day in the future, you will ask for leave with them."

I really hate these things, especially these artificial rules.I have read in the Bible, "Don't dominate the flock, be an example to them." Why don't these so-called shepherds have any self-awareness?

But in order not to quarrel, I thought it would not be difficult to ask for leave, so I compromised.

Qian Junru said on the phone: "Lin Xiao, you go to visit your parents. This kind of love for your parents is acceptable. May the Lord be with you and make your journey safe."

"Thank you, Lord." I learned to behave myself and stopped thanking others.

My parents traveled to a new place, where the natural environment is very good, I heard that it is very refreshing, but their accommodation conditions are very poor.

My dad told me on the phone: "When you come this time, bring the new toilet seat from our house. The toilet seat here is so dirty that it can't be used at all."

I am a little girl, and I have to take a car from S City to my parents' place with a toilet seat. Thinking about it, I feel that I will encounter many strange looks along the way.But I obeyed because I felt that the incident itself was caused by my own sin, that they lived in that place because of me.My suffering was originally my own fault, but my parents were implicated by me.

So I didn't say a word, found the toilet seat, took the toilet seat with me and hit the road.

The weather was 35 degrees, and there were no people on the street.

I walked around the streets carrying the toilet seat and came to a completely strange place.There are no high-rise buildings here, there are mountains, mountains and mountains.There are very few cars here, only a few buses a day.

I want to cry when I walk on the street. On the one hand, it’s because of my parents. They live in such a place because of me, and they have no complaints. On the other hand, it’s because of myself. I know that I have sinned, and God will punish me. , but when will such days come to an end?

When I got there, my parents were standing on the side of the street waiting for me under the scorching sun.When I saw the gray hair of the second elder again after a year, I couldn't help but shed tears.

Chatted or not along the way, I followed them to a private house that looked like a construction site.

While carrying my luggage, my dad reminded me to pay attention to my feet: "Look at the ground, the stairs here are of different heights..."

Before he could finish his sentence, I tripped over the stairs under my feet.

My mother grabbed me, and she held the toilet seat and said, "It's such a hot day, it's hard work. I'll ask your dad to buy you a cold drink later. We don't seem to know where to buy cold drinks here."

My dad said: "I know, it's right next to the place where you buy water. I'll buy water when I go back, and I'll bring it back by the way. You give me a wet towel to wrap a bag."

I asked: "I still need to buy water here? You live on the fifth floor, who will bring it up for you?"

My dad said: "Who else will give it to you? Of course I have to carry it by myself. Fortunately, there is a ramp in front of the door, and I can push it up with a cart, otherwise it would be very tiring to carry it all the way."

My mother opened the door and said to me: "The accommodation conditions here are much worse than we previously imagined. But fortunately, it is only a friend's house, and there is no need to spend money, otherwise it will be distressing to live in. Our water pipes are all aging. It’s useless at all, and you have to buy water at the water station. By the way, you can’t take a hot shower like at home when you’re here, we can only boil water for you and pour it into a bucket.”

Open the big rusty iron door of the [-]s, and there is a green wooden door inside.Amidst all kinds of "squeaky" sounds, I finally saw the true face of Lushan in this room.

The owner must have been in a hurry when he left, and there were piles of rubbish covered with white cloths everywhere.The pipes were exposed outside the wall, and the sultry and humid atmosphere came to the face.

My mother said: "This is your aunt's neighbor's own house. We heard her introduce it as beautiful and beautiful, but we didn't expect it to look like this when we came here. Now that we have come here, we will leave it for the time being. The water is fine. If you buy barrels, you can make do with sleeping, but we are really not used to the climate of this place.”

I looked out the window, and there was a sloping field outside the window, and a dilapidated elementary school was just below the window.The green hills in the distance surrounded the house.

My dad pointed out the window and said, "This is a basin, and we live right in the middle of the basin, so it's already so sweltering before the hottest day in this season."

My mother, on the other hand, packed up her things and happily said, "I'll take you to the Fuchun River in two days, it's right next to us. It's a pity that it's a fishing moratorium, but we can go to Yanziling to fish at the platform."

My mother asked: "How are you doing recently? You and Wang Xuanhuan."

I said, "Very good."

My mother asked: "I heard from You Yan that you went to church? Why did you suddenly want to go to church?"

I encountered a lot of problems because of my marriage, and I was forced by You Yan to go to church, and I experienced a lot of unusual things there, so I stayed.But if you talk about going to church because of marital problems, it sounds very different to others.

Some people even think that Christians only go to church because of family problems. I don’t want to give this impression.It is true that people are hardened. God desperately calls people, but people are unwilling to believe and enjoy life in the light of the sun. That is why God raises up various circumstances.But in this way, it will give people the illusion that "Christians have problems in their lives, so they go to church to find psychological comfort."

In my family, except for my grandfather, everyone else is against Jesus. During Chinese New Year, the whole family laughed at my grandfather at the dinner table.When I was young, I just watched from the sidelines.

Now, I have become the role of my grandfather, and I suddenly feel how painful my grandfather is.He must fully believe that God is real. He must fully believe that if he believes in Jesus, he will go to heaven, but if he does not believe in Jesus, he will go to hell. That is why he told his family members over and over again at home to repent and believe in Jesus.

However, our family not only did not believe him, but also laughed at him.Even when my grandfather passed away, no one in the family believed in the Lord. How much can I understand the great pain he experienced?

I used to be a loyal listener of my grandfather (or should be a listener, because no one else wants to hear about Jesus), and then my parents kept talking about my grandfather next to me, and they laughed at me, which made me not believe in Jesus , and turned against my grandfather.How can I tell them about the evil seeds they planted in my heart as a child?

I don't hate my parents in my heart, because they don't know what they did.But I hate myself, why should I believe such slander?Why am I not willing to believe in the God who saves me time and time again?Is it because my eyes can't see?

And why did I turn to hate my grandfather because I didn’t believe in God?What wrong has he done to me?Now that I think about it, I forsook him because I felt indebted. I never expected to believe in the Lord until he passed away.

Seeing my mother's strange eyes, I seemed to feel that she had suddenly changed from the closest person to the most distant person.I knew very well in my heart that my mother must be worried that I had encountered some difficult hurdles.

I said as calmly as possible, "Because God has called me."

Sure enough, my dad said first: "If you have anything to tell us. Did you encounter any difficulties in life? Or something about work?"

"It's really nothing."

"Okay then. If you have something to say, tell me." My dad urged again.

My mother said: "Actually, we don't object to your belief in that. It's a good thing to have religious beliefs. It's true, good and beautiful. But don't be obsessed with it like your grandfather."

"Hey, you don't understand." I was a little impatient when I heard "truth, goodness and beauty". I thought to myself that the way of God is much more profound than truth, goodness and beauty. Can just truth, goodness and beauty attract me?

But they didn’t listen to what I said. They had a prejudice against Jesus in their hearts, so they used that template to apply to Jesus and to me.According to their nature, they are very considerate people, as can be seen from my marriage, they can sacrifice their own interests for others.But when they encountered Jesus, they, like everyone else, were bewitched by the fact that they did not believe in the Holy One of Israel.

And me?Do I believe it?I also have some doubts.I have no idea.

During this trip to the Fuchun River, I had many things on my mind. Of course, the one that made me most anxious was the issue of renting a house.Because I can't bear to let my parents live in such a place anymore, so I must speed up the process and find a suitable residence in S City as soon as possible.

But I grew up with the help and care of my parents since I was a child, and I have never rented a house by myself.Everyone who has experienced the big and small pits of renting a house must know it.I don't have a little experience, and I don't know where to find a suitable house without being scammed.It made me really anxious.

At the same time, I was also recommended by my colleagues to do odd jobs outside. I wanted to earn some pocket money to subsidize my family. The rent in City S is high. If it was my original bank salary, I would probably have a few thousand yuan in savings, but now I am at a newspaper office, and my salary is stretched.I did the math, and according to the normal market, one month's salary is estimated to be gone after paying the rent and water and electricity.

When I came back from Fuchunjiang, I had a lot of worries in my heart, and I was busy with a lot of things outside.

Just like submitting a resume, I voted in Shanghai on various platforms, hoping to find a suitable and satisfactory house. City S also had more than 30-degree days at that time. I followed the agency around after work every day, and sometimes I skipped work in the middle of work.

I took all kinds of odd jobs, as long as there was money and morality, I did it.I went to places that recruited extras to apply for jobs, tried various products for people to shoot videos, and went to various places to do questionnaires for 30 yuan...

Once, a colleague at the front desk asked me mysteriously: "Would you do the work for the money?"

Looking at her, I knew it would not be a good thing, so I asked her: "What job?"

"At least one hundred per hour, let me tell you whether you want to do it or not? Let me tell you, if you miss this kind of job, there will be no other one. I'm taking a risk to tell you. Logically speaking, these are all our internal information. .”

"You tell me what to do first. I won't do anything that hurts nature."

"What's wrong with nature? It's just playing games with the boss. It doesn't matter if your game skills are not good, they don't look at the skills. As long as you are a woman, you can act like a baby to the boss. When the boss is happy, it is possible to reward you tens of thousands. "

A one-hour tip can cover my rent for several months. How can such a thing not be tempting?But I kept my eyes open and asked her: "Those bosses don't want to talk about disgusting topics, do they?"

"What do you think? How can you be pure and pure in doing this? Of course, I'm not asking you to sell yourself. You can control the topic yourself, and just change the topic if it doesn't work. Let me tell the truth, I am also doing this, but I don't Talking to them about that kind of topic is just playing around occasionally."

I looked at my colleague, a friend of mine at the newspaper, and told her very seriously, "I don't do this kind of work."

"Okay, okay, if you don't do it, I'll do it. I think it's pretty good. I've earned more than 1 yuan, and it's only been a few months. Of course, I'm lazy than other girls in the group, otherwise I guess I can earn a lot of money." , by now there should be [-] to [-]."

Earn [-] to [-] in a few months?If I take on this kind of work, my rent will not be a problem, and I don't have to worry about what will happen in the future. I can take this opportunity to save a lot of money.

I hesitated.