It was in the afternoon. When I returned home after a gathering, I saw my husband sat down at the computer desk, wearing a worried look and holding a telephone constantly flipping through the phone number. I asked him, “What’s wrong? What happened?” He didn’t answer. Afterward, only after I kept asking him did he respond, “Our storefront loan will fall due.
The principal and interest total over 500,000 yuan. We must repay it in three days.” On hearing this, I was shocked, saying, “Ah! So much money! Where can we get it?” My husband lowered his head and didn’t say a word. Immediately, I felt my head was about to explode and felt lost; meanwhile I was occupied by anger and dissatisfaction, complaining within: It is done! Other debts are still not paid in full, and now, another came out again. It’s your father’s fault for persisting in buying this house. It’s hopeless! Will this storefront not be sequestrated if we are unable to pay off the loan? We just put money into our business and haven’t got any return, but now the investment will just be money down the drain! What should we do if we have no place to live? We have owed so much money, and how will we live? I really wanted to yell bloody murder at my husband to vent my complaints. But then I thought: It can’t solve any problems. After I saw my husband frowned and was in a maze, my heart was even more burning with anxiety.
With time sliding by bit by bit, the due date was staring us in the face, but where could we borrow this large sum of money? What should I do? I couldn’t waste time, and had to quickly figure out how to get the money. Subsequently, I used my abilities to offer counsel to my husband, letting him borrow from my brother-in-law. I should have thought that my brother-in-law wouldn’t refuse to help us but would lend at least thirty or forty thousand yuan to us because he was rich; however, I never thought that he said that he could only lend ten thousand yuan to us, and then he found an excuse, saying that he had no money. Although such a result hurt me so much, I didn’t give up but continued racking my brain to find all sorts of ways to borrow money: with high interest rates, we borrowed money from my husband’s networks and mine; we also swiped all our credit cards. In these ways, we got some money from bits and pieces, but the amount of it was far away from that of the loan. I was surrounded by depression, loss, and helplessness, and only thought of hurriedly solving this difficulty. I even wished that time could be still forever, and tomorrow wouldn’t come any more, because I was afraid that I would be the accused and be criticized by others if I couldn’t pay back the money. What should I do? … The anxiety and sadness in my heart, just like a large mountain, stressed me to the point of suffocating.
Just when I was in desperate straits, I suddenly realized: I am a Christian and I should pray to God! Faced with such a big thing, I have always tried to solve it by my own abilities but have never come before or entrusted it to God. Thus, I knelt in God’s presence to pray, “Oh, God! Encountering such a thing, I’ve already thought of everything I can do but it’s useless. Now I don’t know what to do. I feel very painful, and don’t know how to walk out of the predicament. O God, may You enlighten me and guide me….”
After praying, I read such a passage of God’s word, “When confronting real-life problems, how should you know and understand God’s authority and His sovereignty? When you do not know how to understand, handle, and experience these problems, what attitude should you adopt to show your intention, your desire, and your reality of submitting to God’s sovereignty and arrangements? First you must learn to wait; then you must learn to seek; then you must learn to submit. ‘Waiting’ means waiting for the time of God, awaiting the people, events, and things that He has arranged for you, waiting for His will to gradually reveal itself to you. ‘Seeking’ means observing and understanding God’s thoughtful intentions for you through the people, events, and things that He has laid out, understanding the truth through them, understanding what humans must accomplish and the ways they must keep, understanding what results God means to achieve in humans and what accomplishments He means to attain in them. ‘Submitting,’ of course, refers to accepting the people, events, and things that God has orchestrated, accepting His sovereignty and, through it, coming to know how the Creator dictates man’s fate, how He supplies man with His life, how He works the truth into man. All things under God’s arrangements and sovereignty obey natural laws, and if you resolve to let God arrange and dictate everything for you, you should learn to wait, you should learn to seek, you should learn to submit. This is the attitude that every person who wants to submit to God’s authority must take, the basic quality that every person who wants to accept God’s sovereignty and arrangements must possess. To hold such an attitude, to possess such a quality, you must work harder; and only thus can you enter into the true reality” (“God Himself, the Unique III”). After reading God’s words, I understood that in this thing God asked me to possess a heart of seeking, obeying, and waiting, no more solving it by myself but experiencing His sovereignty and arrangements. At the time, I recalled that, when Job lost his livestock all over the mountains, he didn’t complain; instead, he could submit to God’s domination and arrangements, said these words, “the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD,” finally stood firm and bore witness for God. Although I didn’t attain the submission like that of Job, yet I was willing to keep an obedient attitude to face this environment. After understanding a little God’s intention and demands, I entrusted this thing to God and no more used my abilities to solve it. Even if I couldn’t get money so that my house was sequestrated and I have no place to live, I wouldn’t complain; whether I was able to borrow the money or not and whatever the future life would be, I believed in God’s sovereignty and arrangements and waited for God to reveal His intention to me. When I faced this thing with such an attitude, I was truly no longer worried and oppressive, but felt especially released and free. Later, I said to my husband, “We don’t have to worry about this thing anymore. Let’s play it by ear. We can only borrow as much money as our capacity allows.”
When I was willing to depend on God, no more dealt with the thing by myself, but let Him rule over my life, on the day when we should repay the money, my husband let out a sigh of relief and said, “We’ve raised over 500,000 yuan in two days, and we finally manage to pay off the loan! I did not expect that our tenant had a year’s rent paid in advance on the house before the day it should be paid, and what’s more, lent some money to us.” After hearing these, I was particularly excited. Unbelievable! When we racked our brains and tried our best to borrow money everywhere, we even couldn’t get any money at a high interest, yet when I completely entrusted the thing to God with my true heart, I really saw God rules over everything, and that the heart and spirit of man follow His orchestration to change.
Afterward, I read another paragraph of God’s word, “There will always be some people who want to see for themselves what they are capable of; they want to change their fates with their own two hands, or to achieve happiness under their own power, to see whether they can overstep the bounds of God’s authority and rise above God’s sovereignty. The sadness of man is not that man seeks happy life, not that he pursues fame and fortune or struggles against his own fate through the fog, but that after he has seen the Creator’s existence, after he has learned the fact that the Creator has sovereignty over human fate, he still cannot mend his ways, cannot pull his feet out of the mire, but hardens his heart and persists in his errors. He would rather keep thrashing in the mud, vying obstinately against the Creator’s sovereignty, resisting it until the bitter end, without the slightest shred of contrition, and only when he lies broken and bleeding does he at last decide to give up and turn back. This is true human sorrow. So I say, those who choose to submit are wise, and those who choose to escape are pig-headed” (“God Himself, the Unique III”). Through reading God’s words, I further understood that although I believed in God, I only admitted in my heart that God is the Ruler of all things. However, before real difficulties, I didn’t believe that God rules over human’s fate and still chose to rely on my two hands to change my fate. Facing this circumstance that we were unable to repay the debt, I did blame my father-in-law, and even wanted to lose my temper with my husband, stubbornly opposing God, so that I always ran into a wall, was exhausted physically and mentally and suffered unspeakably. From this thing, I realized that in real life, I was all based on my ability to deal with each thing but didn’t trust that God has authority over my everything, and that He is my reliance. Ordinarily, when I read God’s word, I only understood the letters and doctrines. I didn’t apply the truth that God holds sovereignty over all things to real life to experience and make the truth become my reality, but always wanted to solve things by myself, so I couldn’t see God’s leadership or taste that God rules over everything. Through this thing, I understood God’s intention: He wants to add the truth of obeying God’s sovereignty and arrangements into me, allowing me to have a true knowledge of His authority and domination.
Thank Almighty God! I have benefited a lot from this experience. The reason why I was happy and thanked God was not that He had helped me solve my trouble of raising money, but that I had learned from this thing. When I was confronted with difficulties and maintained an attitude of waiting, seeking, and obeying, I did witness God’s deeds in reality. I truly believed that God is the Ruler over all things. He allowed me not only to deeply experience the power of His word but also to have a real understanding of the Creator’s sovereignty. As the proverbs say, “Man proposes, but God disposes,” and “Man works the land, but the yields depend on Heaven.” I deeply felt the key matter that decides the success or failure is not my devotion or efforts, because everything is all in God’s dominion.
In this complex society, we will face all kinds of troubles and difficulties every day, and many times we merely handle them based on our thoughts, abilities, and man-made ways. If we fail, we will consider that we haven’t tried our best and our ability falls short; if we succeed, we will think that we handle them based on our own wisdom, labor and efforts. No matter what we do, it is unrelated to God. If we continue to experience in this way, we will never have a true knowledge of God’s sovereignty, much less see His practical deeds and obtain His approval. When we are in the face of trifles in our daily life, whether they are good or bad, big or small, we should believe in God’s dominion, and learn to wait for God, seek His intention, and submit to His sovereignty and arrangements in everything. Only in this way can we truly experience God’s authority and dominion and obtain the reality of this aspect of truth.
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