One day, I had a sudden impulse and cooked a new dish. At the table my daughter said in surprise, “Mum, I never expected that you can cook this dish.”
I said to her with a smile, “There are a lot of dishes I can cook.”
The funny thing was, a few days later, when I brought another new dish to the table, my daughter again expressed surprise, “Mum, when did you learn to cook this?”
I laughed, saying, “Sweetheart, you really think too low of me. Since I have cooked for so many years, I may well be called a good cook. The dishes I can cook are far more than what you know.”
My daughter only remembered the dishes I had cooked and thus thought that I couldn’t cook other dishes. Actually, it’s not that I couldn’t cook those dishes but just that I didn’t want to. From her response to this thing, I realized that if we see people and things in accordance with our own thinking, what we see will be limited. For everything is progressing and changing all the time. Then, it occurred to me: If we always treat things according to our own thinking, won’t it be easy for us to make wrong judgments? Given that in daily life we often delimit the development of things, then in our belief in God, do we also frequently delimit God in our own minds and think that God can only do the former work and will not do the work exceeding our thinking?
Thinking back, Jehovah God descended ten plagues on Egypt so that the Israelites could come out of Egypt, from which the Israelites saw the authority and wisdom of God and praised His great power. However, when facing the danger that before them rolled the Red Sea and behind were the pursuers, they began to complain against God, thinking that God couldn’t deliver them from the danger. Their doing so is because they didn’t know God’s wisdom and almightiness and limited God’s deeds to their minds and imaginations.
History tells us that mankind always repeats past mistakes. In the Age of Grace, when the Lord Jesus came to do the work of redemption, the Pharisees and most Jews held the view that God could only issue the laws and wouldn’t leave the temple to do His work, and much less would He become flesh to work. Because they confined God’s work within the letters of the laws according to their minds, they couldn’t understand or accept God’s new work transcending the limits of their minds. At last, the fact that the Lord Jesus was resurrected three days after the crucifixion proved that the Lord Jesus was the coming Messiah, which countered the thoughts and notions of the Pharisees, and they received their just punishment for defining and blaspheming the Lord Jesus.
I couldn’t help recalling these words: “During the Age of Law, Jehovah led Moses out of Egypt with His words, and spoke some words to the Israelites; at that time, part of the deeds of God were made plain, but because the caliber of man was limited and nothing could make his knowledge complete, God continued to speak and work. In the Age of Grace, man once more saw part of the deeds of God. Jesus was able to show signs and wonders, to heal and cast out demons, and be crucified, three days after which He was resurrected and appeared in the flesh before man. Of God, man knew no more than this. Man knows as much as is shown to him by God, and if God were to show nothing more to man, then such would be the extent of man’s delimitation of God. Thus, God continues to work, so that man’s knowledge of Him may become deeper, and so that he may gradually come to know the substance of God” (“Knowing God’s Work Today”).
This passage of words warns us: The reason why God asks us not to randomly define Him is because His work is always progressing forward and His great power and wisdom are wonderful and unfathomable. We can only know as much as is shown to us by God, and can only follow God where He leads us. Even if we have experienced God’s work, what we have understood is merely a drop in the ocean. So, we should know the work and working methods of God through actually seeking. If we measure God’s work by our own thinking, we will repeat the Pharisees’ error, defining and resisting God’s work. For our thoughts and imaginations have a scope, just like the caged bird which can only move around in the cage.
It’s already the last days now. We believers are all waiting for the returned Savior. Some brothers and sisters, after watching the movies and videos testifying the appearance of the Lord and reading the words of life on the internet, begin to investigate seriously. Some, meanwhile, hold the view that the Lord Jesus will unquestionably return upon a white cloud, otherwise He is not the Lord Jesus; and some believe that God’s work and word are all in the Bible and that any work outside the Bible isn’t God’s work. … So, when hearing brothers and sisters testify that the Lord Jesus has returned, they don’t seek humbly the Lord’s appearance, but make the judgment in accordance with their minds and imaginations. However, is God’s work really the same as our imaginations? The Bible says, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” (Roman 11:33). From this we can know that God is exceedingly rich and shall never be completely known by us. Even if we have some understanding of the prophecy, we can never completely fathom God. If we stubbornly hold on to our conceptions and refuse to come out of the stage of our mind, we will be like the caged bird, be ruined by our minds and thoughts, and lose the last salvation of God. In that case, despite our lifelong faith, we are still unable to gain the praise of the Lord or be raptured into the kingdom of heaven.
Once on a gospel website, I hit upon a passage of words which is very helpful for us to seek the Lord’s return. Here I’d like to share it with you: “if you wish to follow the footprints of God, then you must first transcend your own conceptions. You must not demand that God do this or that, much less should you place Him within your own confines and limit Him to your own conceptions. Instead, you should ask how you should seek the footprints of God, how you should accept the appearance of God, and how you should submit to the new work of God; that is what should be done by man. Since man is not the truth, and is not possessed of the truth, man should seek, accept, and obey” (“The Appearance of God Has Brought a New Age”).
