How God’s Words Helped Her Overcome the Temptation of Losing Her Wealth

Qin Miao

“The factory’s out of business, it’s been closed.”

Hearing that urgency in her younger brother’s voice over the phone, Lianying felt for a moment like something had exploded in her head and then her heart leapt into her throat. How could that be possible? She hoped she had heard wrong. Half-aware, she asked: “The factory … closed? What on earth happened?”

Her brother choked out the words: “It’s been cordoned off. I was … cheated. There’s … nothing.”

“Cheated?” Lianying’s vision went blank and she nearly passed out. She gripped the phone tightly, feeling incredible anxiety. She asked her brother question after question, feeling an urgent need to understand every single thing that had happened with the factory.

The minutes ticked by and every one of her brother’s answers left her with little hope. She slowly put down the phone, leaning back on the sofa and staring blankly. She felt a burst of heart-wrenching pain that her waif-like frame could hardly withstand.

After her husband heard the news he rushed home from his job at the clinic.

“We invested over a million and that’s all gone? That’s the hard work of half of our lives! No, it can’t be! I need to go to Guangdong.” He waved his hands around and looked at the clock to see what time it was.

Lianying’s heart was racing and she was anxious to hop on a flight to Guangdong.

The next day she didn’t feel like talking to anyone. She had never imagined that her hard-earned money would just fall prey to someone’s cheating, all for nothing. She couldn’t wrap her head around it—how could a factory that had been doing such great business suddenly just becoming nothing? Could it be that they had offended someone, that someone was plotting against them or wanted to exact revenge? Thinking of all the hard work to manage the factory that ended up being closed just like that, Lianying felt like her heart had been cut open.

The winter night was so quiet and long, and the clock on the wall kept ticking along. Lianying tossed and turned in bed, seeing that it was already 3 a.m. She so hoped that this had all been a bad dream.

Lianying visibly aged quite a bit over just a few short days, and she felt really down. She didn’t understand why something so major would befall her. In her pain and despair she prayed to God: “Oh God! I’m in pain and very weak. I don’t understand what Your will is in what has befallen me. I want You to guide me. Amen!”

While pulling Lianying inside, Sister Dong said: “What happened? Why do you look so haggard? Come on, it’s cold outside. Come on in.”

Sister Dong poured a cup of hot water for Lianying. Feeling that warmth from her, Lianying poured out her heart to Sister Dong.

Sister Dong topped up Lianying’s cup with hot water and said considerately: “I understand how you feel. Anyone would be upset if something this major happened to them! The ways of the world are so dark. If we didn’t have faith we wouldn’t have a path to take. Lianying, this has already happened. Just living within this will only bring you suffering. I think you should quiet yourself, pray to God, and seek His will. Understanding the truth is what’s most important. Let’s read some fellowship.”

Lianying nodded.

Sister Dong spoke while turning on her tablet computer, then read: “Sometimes God allows Satan to do something. Some disasters are carried out by Satan, but it is what God has arranged and allowed; it is God’s maneuvering. Satan is a tool in God’s hands! Isn’t that the truth? (It is.) This was exactly the case in the example of Job’s trials. What was the root of Job being tested? (God and Satan making a bet.) God made a bet with Satan, allowing it to tempt and attack Job, and as a result when Job was just living his life, he was suddenly robbed; quite a few other things like that happened in just one day! If someone didn’t know that God and Satan had made a bet in the spiritual world, looking at it from the material world they would think: ‘Wasn’t that a calamity coming upon Job? Didn’t he suffer an attack by those robbers? How could that have anything to do with God? Most likely Job had done something to offend the robbers!’ Isn’t that what people think? (It is.) That’s what it looks like from the outside, but is this thinking wrong? It is and it isn’t, but if you think that’s all there is to it, that’s wrong. While thinking that you have to see that behind the scenes, God is ruling and arranging all things, that He orchestrates everything. God allowed the robbers to do that, otherwise who could do anything to Job? No one would be able to. You can see from this how fully you understand this issue. If you just look at the surface of it you won’t recognize that it was God’s rule and arrangement, that it was God’s action and He was bringing all things into play so they could do service to perfect Job. That means that you’ve been deluded by the superficial presentation of this, and you will never grasp the truth and essence behind it. Are there a lot of people like that? (Yes.) How many? (Almost everyone thinks that.) All of us frequently think that way, and no one is an exception. We all think of things on the most superficial level and we fail to think of what is just below the surface. … What’s the problem here? It’s not recognizing God’s rule and arrangements, being unable to grasp God’s will. That’s the root of it” (“Sermons and Fellowship About God’s Word ‘God Himself, the Unique III’ (III)” in Sermons and Fellowship on Entry Into Life (XIII)).

How God’s Words Helped Her Overcome the Temptation of Losing Her Wealth

Sister Dong then shared this in fellowship: “Reading this from Sermons and Fellowship made me think of when Job first encountered a trial. Over the course of just one day, several gangs of robbers carted off all of his possessions. From the outside it seemed that it was the robbers who had taken Job’s wealth, but in fact, without God’s permission, Satan wouldn’t have been able to do anything at all to Job. It’s recorded in the Bible that Satan said: ‘Does Job fear God for nothing? Have not you made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he has on every side? you have blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face’ (Job 1:9-11). From this we can see that God approved of Job; Satan made this accusation of Job because it was not convinced, which is why God allowed Satan to tempt Job so that he could stand witness for God in the face of Satan, perfecting Job’s true faith in God. Job believed that everything comes from God and would rather have cursed the day of his own birth than deny the name of God, and in the end he bore a beautiful, resounding witness for God. We can also see from this that the issue you’re encountering now is a battle in the spiritual realm, and if we seek God’s will from within all of this, we will be able to understand God’s kind intentions from within this trial and refinement. If we only look at the surface of things but fail to see their essence, we won’t be able to see through Satan’s trickery. We will then be likely to live within temptations and lose hold of our testimony!”

The pain in Lianying’s heart abated after hearing Sister Dong’s fellowship. She nodded and said: “So on the surface, the factory being closed down and my financial losses seemed on the outside like a trap set up by other people to fool and rip off my brother, leading to us losing the factory. But in fact, all of this had God’s permission, and what I have to do is seek God’s will! Now that I think of it, Job encountered such great trials without losing faith in God, but when I faced the closure of the factory there was no God in my heart. I became weak and negative; I became disheartened. My stature really is too small. I will no longer judge things as they appear and fall prey to Satan’s trickery. I must follow Job’s example, and no matter how much I suffer, I will stand witness for God.”

Sister Dong nodded and smiled, and the two continued talking …

After she got home Lianying looked much less anxious and her state had taken a dramatic turn for the better. She no longer felt entwined in the question of whether their wealth had suffered from others’ schemes. But after quieting her heart and then thinking of the money she had lost, over 1 million yuan, she couldn’t help but still feel anxious and upset. Before she knew it, she no longer had the heart to perform her duty.

In her pain she came before God many times in prayer and seeking: How could she actually come out from that state?

One day, while doing her devotionals Lianying read these words from God: “Something is revealed through the human disposition of the people in this world, including each and every one of you. How is this interpreted? It’s the worship of money. Is it hard to get this out of someone’s heart? It is very hard! It seems that Satan’s corruption of man is thorough indeed! So after Satan uses this trend to corrupt people, how is it manifested in them? Don’t you feel that you couldn’t survive in this world without any money, that even one day would just be impossible? (Yes.) People’s status is based on how much money they have as is their respectability. The backs of the poor are bent in shame, while the rich enjoy their high status. They stand tall and proud, speaking loudly and living arrogantly. What does this saying and trend bring to people? Don’t many people see getting money as being worth any cost? Don’t many people sacrifice their dignity and integrity in the pursuit of more money? Don’t many more people lose the opportunity to perform their duty and follow God for the sake of money? Isn’t this a loss for people? (Yes.) Isn’t Satan sinister to use this method and this saying to corrupt man to such a degree? Isn’t this a malicious trick? As you progress from objecting to this popular saying to finally accepting it as truth, your heart falls completely under Satan’s grasp, and therefore you unwittingly come to live by it” (“God Himself, the Unique V” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

Lianying carefully pondered God’s words. She then understood that the reason she couldn’t let go of her million-yuan loss was that she saw money as too important, always feeling that in this technologically-advanced, materialistic, money-focused society, being poor couldn’t be okay, and that in their lives people should work to earn money by relying on their own ability. She thought that having money meant having everything, that it brought authority, status, and the admiration of others, that only living that way had value and meaning. She had taken satanic laws for survival such as “money above all” and “money can’t achieve everything, but without money you achieve nothing” as her own personal mottos. As a result, losing money was like losing half of her life.

With the book of God’s words in her hands, Lianying lifted her head to look out the window, deep in thought: “It’s true. The money our family earned from the clinic we opened was enough, but I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted to earn even more and enjoy even more, to be flashy and have others look up to me. Every time someone called me boss or manager I was delighted, and I felt it was all worth it no matter how difficult or tiring it was. These last few years I’ve believed in God and have been performing my duty, and even though I’ve had my brother help manage the business, I’ve frequently been preoccupied with the factory, hoping we would get big orders and earn even more money. I would frequently call him to give him tips on having business talks and managing the factory. Particularly when I saw that it wasn’t doing very well, I was really racking my brains to think of how to improve things. My body has been here performing my duty, but my heart went elsewhere long ago. Now, the factory has disappeared in the blink of an eye and it feels like my heart has been yanked out. I’m always in pain and upset, as if I’ve lost my spirit. I thought that I was able to let go of such a large family business and let someone else look after it and I could perform my duty in the church to show that I was faithful to God, but now I’ve seen that my faith was just to gain blessings and benefit. On the surface I was performing my duty but I had not handed my heart over to God. I wasn’t focused on seeking the truth. As a result, my perspectives on things still haven’t changed even now; when a trial came upon me I was tortured half to death by the issue of money.”

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To be continued