living sacrifice

holy

I never thought that these two words could be applied to me. Even when I didn’t believe in the Lord, I knew that I had nothing to do with holiness.But now, Sister Zhao said that she wants me to be holy. I think this should be the result of her prayer in the small secret room just now. This result makes my heart happy, and I long for holiness.

During the worship, the song of the cross was played, and when Jesus Christ was crucified for my sins, I had mixed feelings.

I thought about my sinful sins, how Wang Xuanhuan deceived me and hurt me, and how much punishment Jesus Christ had suffered for my sins...

When my mind was running wild and my eyes started to cry, a picture suddenly appeared in front of my eyes:

On the originally empty podium, a person suddenly appeared.I can't see what that person looks like.On top of the man's head, there is another white figure, slightly larger, and it does not look like an ordinary person. He is wearing a snow-white robe with a white belt, white beard and white hair, and a hazy light on his body.He slowly descended from the air and covered the previous person.

I rubbed my eyes and the picture disappeared.

what is that?

I have no idea.I researched this matter for a long time. The Bible does say that there are visions. It says that in the last days, old people have dreams and young people see visions.What I saw may be a real vision, but I may not be sure.But I can't figure out what it means, so I can only say that it happened at the time, but what it means, I still don't know.

What that voice changed for me before was that it completely changed my not-belief in the spirit world.

Well, this matter, I think the biggest change for me is that it made me start to think about a question-what is the assurance of salvation.I have to admit that there seems to be a leap in thinking between this vision and "what is the assurance of salvation". What exactly is the gospel to be preached, and how do people get saved? Am I saved or not?Am I saved?

This question has troubled me for a long time, because I still don’t understand why Paul said in the Bible, “I am determined to say nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified”?What I really don’t understand is, is it enough for a person to be saved only by believing in the Lord’s resurrection from the dead?Is there really no need to pass anything else?

Our church does not do this. When Brother Sun made his decision to Jiang Zhixing, he said that believing in Jesus is for his studies, girlfriend and work; Sister Zhao told us to use various methods to bring people to the Lord, even Later, Mu Yun preached a lot of Buddhism when she was preaching the gospel, and she didn't stop her; my mother and her friends were deceived into church by me in the name of "being healed", but I didn't know it at the time It's not okay to do this...

We have done many wrong things in preaching the gospel, but because of this strange experience, I began to think about some questions: Which words did I hear to be saved?What is the gospel?How can we be truly saved?

Sister Zhao gave me the answer: "As long as you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart, you will be saved."

My reaction is really?I don't quite believe what Ms. Zhao said.But I can't express that feeling, I think she said it too lightly, not serious at all.

It is because of our differences in views on salvation that we have great differences in how we do many things.

For example, at the beginning, I didn’t pay much attention to the preaching of the resurrection of the dead. I preached many other things, such as “voices from the spiritual world”, “casting out demons”, “healing diseases”, “using science to prove the Bible”, etc. wait.

I don’t quite remember exactly how the Lord led me to understand my own mistake. I just remember watching some videos of more orthodox preachers.When I watched it, I was actually not quite sure whether I was saved or not, so I followed the video to check myself carefully. It must have been a long time.I even once thought that it would be difficult for a person to be truly sure whether he is saved or not when he is alive, right?I've been fretting about this for a while.

Evangelism is another mystery to me. When I was saved, I was very enthusiastic about evangelism, and my heart was really hot. The prayer I prayed to the Lord was to ask the Lord to make me fish for people.

I am not good at eloquence, and only a pen can write something, so I planned to preach the gospel by writing novels, but I didn’t know what the gospel is.

I felt that there were two completely opposite forces tearing at my mind: one was to use Christianity to write novels, and the other was to use novels to write about Christ.Although both are Christ and novels, I know they are completely different.

I know that the latter approach will definitely sell poorly, but I think the Lord will not like me using His way to fill the novel market for myself.At that time, fame and fortune had a great influence on me, because my heart was unclean, it was difficult for me to make a simple and clear decision between these two things.

What is the Gospel, how people are saved, how to spread the Gospel... all these series of issues were involved and became a big problem for me at the time. That is to say, I was very unclear about the truth of salvation at the time.The church never taught it because they didn't know it.

Since Jiang Zhixing's family came to our church, various activities here have increased.

The main one is Sister Zhao, who has to deal with various ministries. She gave us a class. In the class, she drew a cake and said to us: "The organizational structure of the church is God-centered, surrounded by various There is a core ministry, and then there are some relatively minor ministries on the periphery. Our current state is that even the core ministry is not complete. I have a blueprint in my heart, and each of us must participate in the service, so I have never The team leader will be trained next week, Lin Xiao, and you also need to participate."

"Me?" When it comes to being "XX Chief", I always feel disgusted in my heart. I feel that being a leader is not as comfortable as being a straggler.

"Yes, you also want to participate. You have just been saved, and in the future you will be mainly responsible for leading the catechumens."

"But I don't know how to lead people."

"That's why the team leader training is needed. I will create a group for the relevant training materials and send them to everyone in the group. You should take a good look at it when you go back. Next week we will discuss the content of the first lesson of the team leader training."

I feel that the things of God cannot be obtained through training, and I have no interest in such training and service at all.But there was another voice in my heart accusing me: The Lord has been so good to me, I don’t even want to serve him, I am a person who doesn’t know how to be grateful.

That accusing voice seemed to criticize me from the moral high ground, which made me very sad.

I don't know if that voice is God's voice, and I don't know what God wants me to do.Of course I know that what God has prepared for me must be the best. Even if it is something I don’t want to do, if God asks me to do it, I am still willing to do it, but I suddenly don’t know if this voice belongs to me, God, or devil.

Sister Zhao told me to go back and pray hard.

I also prayed for this matter, but I still didn’t understand it, so I kept procrastinating.

……

The training for the group leader was carried out under the impetus of Sister Zhao alone, and no one else expressed any opinions. Maybe some people refused to participate in private?But Sister Zhao is very eloquent, and I don't remember hearing anyone objecting in public.

Like the previous theological training, the group leader’s training also has a video series. Sister Zhao asked us to go back and listen to it ourselves, and we will have a meeting every few weeks to exchange ideas.

I didn't want to be the group leader, so of course I didn't listen to that training, so I was caught by Sister Zhao in the first training.

"Lin Xiao, you also talk about your views. Everyone has spoken, but you have not spoken."

aha!I didn't even listen to the training, what am I talking about?

Just like when you were caught by the teacher in class when you were a child but couldn’t answer the questions, I also hate being caught when I was not prepared, but I have to do it anyway.I just said nonsense: "I think...the kingdom of God and the world are completely opposite. The whole value is completely opposite."

In fact, I don't know whether I connected or not. I don't want to talk too much, so as not to reveal my truth.

But a sister on the opposite side thought about it and suddenly said loudly: "I think what she said makes sense. It's really true."

Sister Zhao didn't say anything, didn't say whether I was right or wrong, she continued with her lecture.This made me very embarrassed, because I was afraid that like You Yan, she would suddenly see my real situation from the spirit, as if you had no privacy at all, isn't it scary?

But Sister Zhao did not do this at all. She never threatened us by saying things like "I see in my spirit" or "God wants me to tell you". On the contrary, she always comforted us and encouraged us. For a long time, I always felt that such comfort and encouragement was what I needed, and it was not until later that I discovered the great disadvantages brought about by blind comfort and encouragement.

Because I was caught once, I listened carefully to the training video of the team leader, but I really didn’t feel the burden of being the team leader (I didn’t even know that there was a burden at the time, so I felt that I was forced to ), so no matter how you listen, you can’t listen to it.

I prayed to God about serving in the small group, but God did not speak to me for a long time.

Every time Sister Zhao asked me at a party, I just remembered.Then I racked my brains to find ways to blur it first.Therefore, I have delayed the matter of leading this group for more than a month.