By Ouyang, China

When I was fifteen, I was diagnosed with a rare disease called pulmonary hypertension. At first, I just couldn’t do strenuous exercise, but before long, I’d get out of breath even just from walking, and my chest would feel incredibly tight. I had to drop out of school and travel around to seek medical treatment, but my condition grew worse day by day. I got to the point where I couldn’t even take care of myself, and I struggled to breathe even when lying down. When it got severe, I had to be on oxygen. The doctor said I had three months to live, at most. The thought that my life was about to end at only fifteen made me feel completely hopeless. I thought to myself, “If I have to die, so be it. Death would be a release.” But three months later, miraculously, I was still alive. My illness was still very severe though. The slightest exertion would cause heart palpitations and shortness of breath. When it was bad, I couldn’t catch my breath and felt like I was suffocating and about to pass out. Although my life had been spared for the time being, I couldn’t live like a normal person, and my dream of going to college was now impossible. I felt completely lost in darkness and misery. In 1999, my mother and I accepted Almighty God’s work of the last days. After that, I often read God’s words. From His words, I came to understand that God has performed three stages of work to save humanity. In the last days, God has become flesh to express the truth to purify and save people, and ultimately save them completely from Satan’s influence and lead them to a beautiful destination. My heart began to brighten, and I felt there was hope in life again. I believed that as long as I believed in God earnestly, I would have the chance to be saved and enter His kingdom, and maybe my illness would even be healed one day. I kept reading God’s words and attending gatherings, and my body gradually grew stronger. I also began to do a duty in the church.

Later, I went to another region to preach the gospel, and sometimes I had to ride my bike for dozens of miles. At first, I was very worried, wondering, “Can my body even handle this?” But then I remembered that I was a believer. I thought that as long as I did my duty properly, God would see my efforts and expenditure and protect me. My illness was in God’s hands, so there was nothing to worry about. After a while, my condition didn’t worsen, and I was very grateful for God’s care and protection. During that time, whether it was in the freezing winter or scorching summer, or whether I was being chased away by potential gospel recipients or even being reported to the police and hunted for arrest, I never backed down and just kept on doing my duty. In 2005, during a gathering, I heard that a sister had suffered from a severe bleeding disorder that the hospital couldn’t cure. But afterward, she persisted in doing her duty, and her illness healed before she knew it. I thought to myself, “God’s work in the last days is mainly to express the truth to resolve people’s corrupt dispositions, not to heal the sick and cast out demons. I shouldn’t ask God to heal me, but as long as I do my duty properly, God will bestow grace and blessings on me based on my performance. That sister’s illness was so severe, and yet it was healed. If I continue to do my duty, maybe my illness will be healed one day, too. If I were healed, I wouldn’t have to endure the torment of illness anymore.” Thus, I became even more motivated in my duty.

Later, in 2006, I happened to meet a traditional Chinese doctor who said there was hope of curing my illness. I was so excited to hear this, and I wondered if God was going to use this doctor to heal me. So, I actively cooperated with the treatment. But after nearly two months of treatment, my condition hadn’t improved at all. I was incredibly disappointed. “Why can’t my illness be cured?” I wondered. “For years, I’ve left behind my family and career to do my duty, even persisting in preaching the gospel through my illness. Haven’t I done enough? Haven’t I done it well enough? Why was it that some brothers and sisters were healed, but I wasn’t? If my illness were healed, couldn’t I do my duty even better?” The more I thought about it, the more miserable I became. I didn’t even have the strength to walk. Although I continued to do my duty, I felt drained and couldn’t muster the energy for anything. Later, during my devotionals, I read a passage of God’s words, and my state began to change. God says: “If, after you have made expenditures for Me, I do not satisfy a few of your demands, will you become disheartened and disappointed with Me, or even become furious and shout abuse?” “If you have always been very loyal, with much love for Me, yet you suffer the torment of illness, financial strain, and the abandonment of your friends and relatives, or if you endure any other misfortunes in life, will your loyalty and love for Me still continue?” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. A Very Serious Problem: Betrayal (2)). In the face of God’s questions, I had an indescribable feeling. God requires that people do their duty without trying to bargain or make demands, and are loyal and truly submissive to Him no matter what happens. But because I had endured some hardship and made some efforts and expenditures in my duty, I thought God ought to take away my illness. When my demand wasn’t met, I misunderstood and complained about God, and I lost all motivation for my duty. Although I had never explicitly prayed for God to heal me, I harbored this extravagant desire in my heart. In particular, after seeing some brothers and sisters recover from their illnesses, I became convinced that the day of my own healing was not far off. I did my duty with this motive, even thinking I was being quite devoted. But in reality, all my efforts and expenditures were aimed at getting my illness cured. I was trying to bargain with God. Where was my loyalty or love for Him? God had protected me and kept me alive to this day, and had even given me the opportunity to do my duty and pursue the truth. What God had given me was already more than enough. I should have done my duty earnestly to repay God’s love; I shouldn’t have made demands or tried to bargain with God. After this, I continued to do my duty and no longer fretted or worried about my illness.

A few years later, my family bought me another type of medicine, saying it might help my condition. Recalling my last experience with treatment, I asked myself, “If this medicine is also ineffective, how should I deal with this condition?” I remembered God’s words: “How should you experience sickness when it comes? You should come before God and pray, seek and grasp God’s intention; you should examine yourself to find what it is you have done that went against the truth, and what corruption in you has not been resolved. Your corrupt disposition cannot be resolved without undergoing suffering. Only in being tempered by suffering can people not be dissolute, and able to live before God at all times. When someone suffers, they are always at prayer. They have no thought for the pleasures of food, dress, and other enjoyments; they pray constantly in their hearts, examining themselves to see whether they have done anything wrong or where they may have gone against the truth recently. Normally, when you face a serious illness or strange malady that makes you suffer very badly, this does not happen by chance. Whether you are ill or in good health, God’s intention is there in that. When the Holy Spirit works and you are physically well, you can usually seek God, but you stop seeking God when you get sick and suffer, nor do you know how to seek Him. You live in sickness, always pondering what treatment will make you better faster. You envy those who are not sick at times like these, and you want to get rid of your sickness and pain as soon as you can. These are negative and resistant emotions” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. In Believing in God, Gaining the Truth Is the Most Crucial Thing). “Falling ill is really beyond your control. If you get sick and there is no way to cure it, then that is the suffering you should endure. Do not try to be rid of it; you must first submit, pray to God, and seek God’s desires. … If you are truly someone with God in their heart, then whatever you encounter, do not let it pass you by. You should pray and seek, feel for God’s desire in every matter, and learn to submit to God. When God sees that you can submit and that you have a heart of submission to God, He will ease your suffering. God achieves such effects by means of suffering and refinement” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. In Believing in God, Gaining the Truth Is the Most Crucial Thing). From God’s words, I understood that I was always dwelling on when my illness would heal and whether the medicine could cure me. All I thought about was how to escape my illness. This was a negative emotion. I realized I should seek God’s intentions in my illness and learn to submit to Him. That is having a positive attitude. Although being ill is painful, for me, it was also a form of protection. I had studied hard since I was a child, and even after getting ill, I still insisted on going to school, hoping to change my destiny through knowledge. I was on the path of pursuing the world, of pursuing fame, gain, and status. If I hadn’t fallen ill, I certainly wouldn’t have chosen to believe in God. I would have continued to pursue fame, gain, and status, living in this dark and evil world and being tormented by Satan. It was because of my illness that I accepted God’s work of the last days. This was God’s salvation of me, and His great protection of me. I also came to appreciate that God was using this illness to purify and transform me. If it weren’t for this illness, I would have thought I was genuinely expending myself for God, never recognizing the impurities in my motives for doing my duty, and I would not have repented or started to change. Understanding this, I prayed to God, “Oh God, I know this illness is a form of protection for me, meant to purify and transform me. I will no longer ask You to heal me. Whether this illness gets better or not, I am willing to submit.” After praying, I felt a deep sense of ease in my heart, a feeling of relief I had never experienced before.

Then, in 2017, I heard Brother Xu Liang, who I was cooperating with, talk about the stomach problems he used to have. He had tried to get them treated for a long time with no success. Then one time, his stomach problems flared up after he got a chill, but after that flare-up, they surprisingly went away. Hearing his story, I couldn’t help but feel a faint hint of despondency. I thought about how my pulmonary hypertension often caused heart discomfort, and how I had to take medication every day to manage it, which brought all kinds of side effects: headaches, blurred vision, edema in my lower limbs, nausea, and more. Other people’s illnesses were being healed, but when would mine ever get better? I realized that deep down in my heart, I was still making demands of God, still hoping He would take my illness away. I felt awful, and I didn’t know why I always found it so hard to submit. Later, I read God’s words and found the root of the problem. Almighty God says: “Many who follow God are only concerned with how to gain blessings or stave off disaster. … The purpose of these people in following God is very simple, and it is for a single goal: to be blessed. These people cannot be bothered to pay heed to anything else that has nothing to do with this goal. To them, there is no goal more legitimate than believing in God to receive blessings—it is the very value of their faith. If something does not contribute to this aim, they remain completely unmoved by it. This is the case with most people who believe in God today. Their aim and intention seem legitimate, because as they believe in God, they also expend for God, dedicate themselves to God, and perform their duty. They give up their youth, forsake family and career, and even spend years away from home busying themselves. For the sake of their ultimate goal, they change their own interests, their outlook on life, and even the direction they pursue; yet they cannot change the aim of their belief in God. They run about for the management of their own aspirations; no matter how far the road is, and no matter how many hardships and obstacles there are along the way, they remain persistent and unafraid of death. … Apart from the benefits that are so closely associated with them, could there be any other reasons why people who never understand God would give so much for Him? In this, we discover a previously unidentified problem: Man’s relationship with God is merely one of naked self-interest. It is a relationship between a receiver and a giver of blessings. To put it plainly, it is the relationship between an employee and an employer. The employee works hard only to receive the rewards bestowed by the employer. There is no kindred affection in such an interests-based relationship, only transaction. There is no loving or being loved, only charity and mercy. There is no understanding, only helpless suppressed indignation and deception. There is no intimacy, only an uncrossable chasm” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Appendix 3: Man Can Only Be Saved Amidst God’s Management). “The words ‘enemies of God’ have essence: They are not saying that God sees man as the enemy, but that man sees God as the enemy. First, when people begin to believe in God, which of them does not have their own aims, motivations, and ambitions? Even though one part of them believes in the existence of God and has seen the existence of God, their belief in God still contains those motivations, and their ultimate aim in believing in God is to receive His blessings and the things they want. … This is to say, in his heart man is constantly testing God, constantly devising plans about God, constantly arguing the case for his own individual outcome with God, and trying to extract a statement from God and see whether or not God can give him what he wants. At the same time as pursuing God, man does not treat God as God. Man has always tried to make deals with God, ceaselessly making demands of Him, and even pressing Him at every step, trying to take a mile after being given an inch. At the same time as trying to make deals with God, man also argues with Him, and there are even people who, when trials befall them or they find themselves in certain situations, often become weak, negative and slack in their work, and full of complaints about God. From the time when man first began to believe in God, he has considered God to be a cornucopia, a Swiss Army knife, and he has considered himself to be God’s greatest creditor, as if trying to get blessings and promises from God were his inherent right and obligation, while protecting, caring for, and providing for man were the responsibilities that God should fulfill. Such is the basic understanding of ‘belief in God’ of all those who believe in God, and such is their deepest understanding of the concept of belief in God” (The Word, Vol. 2. On Knowing God. God’s Work, God’s Disposition, and God Himself II). What God exposed was my true state. I saw that my mentality of believing in God to gain blessings was extremely deep-seated; it wasn’t something that could be changed after just experiencing a few revelations. When I first became a believer, I thought that if I forsook things and expended myself for God, He would grant me grace and blessings, and that my illness would sooner or later be healed. With this motive, I was willing to endure any hardship in my duty. But when my illness wasn’t cured, I complained that God wasn’t righteous and even lost motivation for my duty. Now, hearing that someone else’s illness had been healed revealed the impurities in my faith once again. I saw that I was still making demands of God. My belief was all about gaining grace, about getting God to heal me. I was treating God as a great physician, as someone to be used, and not as God at all. When God didn’t satisfy my demands, I tried to demand a reward from Him. I didn’t have a shred of a God-fearing heart. How could someone like me be called a believer? I thought of Paul. All his suffering, expenditure, and hard work were for the sake of obtaining a crown of righteousness. He wanted to trade the price he paid for the blessings of the heavenly kingdom. Paul had no submission to God at all; the path he walked was one of resisting God. I was walking the same path as Paul. If I continued this way, no matter how many more years I believed or how much I toiled and expended myself, I would never be able to gain the truth or achieve a change in my disposition. In the end, I would still be eliminated by God. I saw how truly dangerous it is to believe in God without pursuing the truth! I had to correct the mistaken perspective behind my pursuit, let go of my extravagant desires, and do my duty according to God’s requirements. After that, whenever I heard someone say their illness had been healed, I was able to approach it correctly and no longer asked God to take my own illness away.

In the blink of an eye, it had been more than twenty years since I first got this disease. Sometimes, I still felt discomfort in my heart and worried if my condition was worsening. If it gets severe, it means heart failure—would I die if that happened? Then, I read more of God’s words: “Everyone’s lifespan has been preordained by God. An illness may be terminal from a medical standpoint, but from God’s point of view, if your lifespan is not yet over and your time has yet to come, then you couldn’t die even if you wanted to. If you have a commission from God, and your mission has not been completed, then you will not die, even if you get an illness that is supposed to be fatal—God will not take you yet. Even if you do not pray and seek the truth, and do not attend to treating your illness, or even if your treatment is delayed, you will not die. This is particularly true for those who have an important commission from God. When their mission has yet to be completed, no matter what illness befalls them, they will not die straight away; they will live until the final moment of the mission’s completion” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. Part Three). “As a normal person, if, amid illness, you are able to submit to God’s arrangements, endure all kinds of suffering, and are still able to perform your duty normally, are able to complete the commissions that God gives you, then is this a good thing or a bad thing? This is a good thing, this is testimony to your submission to God, this is testimony to you loyally performing your duty, and it is testimony which shames and triumphs over Satan. And so, any suffering should be accepted and submitted to by every created being and every one of God’s chosen people. This is how you must understand it, and you must learn this lesson and achieve true submission to God. This is in line with the intention of God, and it is God’s wish. This is what God arranges for every created being. God’s putting you in these situations and conditions is equivalent to giving you a responsibility, obligation, and commission, and so you should accept them” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. Only by Resolving One’s Notions Can One Embark on the Right Track of Belief in God (1)). After reading God’s words, my heart suddenly brightened. Although I had been given a death sentence by the doctor long ago, as long as my lifespan is not yet at its end and my mission is not yet complete, then I will not die no matter how severe my illness gets. When a person dies is in God’s hands; it has nothing to do with the severity of their illness. If one day I do die from this illness, it will mean my time has come and my mission is complete. I should still submit and thank God for His grace in giving me the opportunity to do my duty and pursue the truth. He has allowed me to understand many truths and mysteries and to know the meaning of life. Even if I die, my life will not have been in vain. Understanding this, I felt a great sense of release. I became willing to pursue the truth and hold fast to my duty amid my illness, and I no longer worried about my own life or death.

In October 2020, I went to a provincial hospital for a check-up. The doctor said, “It’s impossible for you to have pulmonary hypertension. The average life expectancy for this disease is only two to three years, and your current condition doesn’t look like it at all.” He then had me undergo a series of tests. After reviewing the results, he admitted that I did indeed have pulmonary hypertension, but that it was relatively mild, and my heart function was still fine. I knew this was God’s protection. So many others with this disease have tried various treatments: Some develop heart failure within a few years, while others die when their condition worsens. But I am alive today and able to do my duty. This is truly God’s grace and mercy! Now, although this illness is always with me, I no longer see it as a set of shackles, nor do I feel pained by it. Instead, I can accept it and submit. I have also come to appreciate that this illness is God’s salvation and protection of me. I thank God from the bottom of my heart!