By Kemu, Australia

I, who lived in a small town since childhood, was a little introverted, and neither dared to talk before others nor liked to go out. After I started to work, I was often treated with disdain by my boss and bullied by my colleagues because I didn’t like talking much. So, I felt depressed but could do nothing about it. At that time, I placed my future on my other half, thinking: I would be free from such suffering if I can meet a man who loves and spoils me.

When I was 24 years old, one of my colleagues introduced me to a man. He was plain-looking but spoke with humor. I thought: I’m so introverted. It will be a good thing if I can have a husband who loves talking and can amuse me. Then I began to date him. And soon, my relatives and friends also knew our relationship. However, I gradually found that he was not only bad-tempered but also narrow-minded. Whenever there was something wrong, he would blame it on me. Because of this, I wanted to break up with him. But for fear that my relatives and friends would laugh at me, urged by our parents, I married him a year later. After marriage, his temper got even worse. He would vent his anger on me because of the slightest dissatisfaction, and sometimes even beat me. I dared not tell this to my parents for fear that they would worry about me, so I could only shed tears secretly. My husband was a cook, and he was unable to get on with anyone in his work. As long as his boss said something about him, he would wash his hands of the job immediately. So, he couldn’t work in one place for long. At that time, we had bought our apartment with a bank loan, so the monthly mortgage payment and the living expenses fell on my shoulder. I had to be economical in everyday spending and meanwhile endure his mistreatment. My previous dream was shattered completely and I felt so distressed and exhausted in my heart. However, being influenced by the thought that “A woman should throw her lot with her husband,” I still lived together with my husband wholeheartedly.

Five years later, I was pregnant and the life pressure became heavier accordingly. At that time, many people went abroad to earn money and we heard that there was a great shortage of cook abroad. So, after a discussion my husband and I decided that he would go abroad first and I would go years after the birth of our child. After several twists and turns, my husband finally received his visa when our child was one year old, and successfully went to New Zealand. After that, I left our child to my parents and found a job as a waitress in a hotel. It was the largest hotel in our county seat, equipped with a restaurant, guest rooms, KTV, and a bath. I was assigned to the Food and Beverage Department, and from then on, my life began to change. When I first worked in the hotel, be it the dress of the colleagues or the ostentation and extravagance of the customers, all made me feel that I was so outdated as if I were not someone of the present age. Not long after that however, I got familiar with my colleagues, and often went shopping with them after work, buying clothes and cosmetics. I also began to learn to dress myself up. Looking at myself in the mirror, I felt as if I were ten years younger and thought: It’s no wonder that people often say “There’s no ugly woman but the lazy one.” This is quite true. Besides, I often went Dutch with my colleagues after work and went to KTV afterward. Gradually, I learned to drink wine and chat online, and was also accustomed to such kind of life.

I made the acquaintance of Mr. Yang at a party. He didn’t talk much but was easy to get along with. I heard that it had been three years since he got divorced but he still remained unmarried. I felt that he must be constant in emotion, so I couldn’t help thinking well of him in my heart. When we met again, we became WeChat friends. In the beginning, we just exchanged greetings. Gradually, we began to tell each other everything. During that period of time, chatting with him became the most important part of my life. We often chatted late into the night, and sometimes I even still held the phone tightly in my hand when I had fallen asleep. And later, we began to date and go out to amuse ourselves. He was nice to me, and always consulted with me first on whatever he did, and he was considerate and thoughtful. By contrast, my husband only vented his anger on me and never showed consideration for my feelings. As is often said, “It’s the husband’s fault if the wife is unfaithful to him.” This even more made me think that my being together with Mr. Yang was not my fault. But not long after that, my visa was granted, which put me into a dilemma. To be honest, I didn’t want to leave. On the one hand, I was loath to part with my child and my parents; on the other hand, I couldn’t let go of Mr. Yang. However, I couldn’t make my child lose a complete family, nor could I let my parents know the relationship between Mr. Yang and me, or they would worry about me. Finally, I decided to leave.

After coming to New Zealand, I found that the temper of my husband hadn’t changed at all, which even more made me miss Mr. Yang. In the beginning, I did some casual labor, and would chat with Mr. Yang the minute I got off work. We often had a video chat, and would chat for three or four hours every time. Later, I found a full-time job, and only could chat for a while when I had time or leave messages. I felt extremely painful during those days: Why can’t I stay together with him? When will such kind of life come to an end?

In January 2016, a sister of the store preached to me God’s kingdom gospel of the last days. I saw God’s words saying: “When one becomes independent, one begins one’s own journey in life, which leads one, step by step, toward the people, events, and things that have a connection to one’s marriage. At the same time, the other person who will be in that marriage is approaching, step by step, toward those same people, events, and things. Under the Creator’s sovereignty, two unrelated people with related fates gradually enter into a single marriage and become, miraculously, a family: ‘two locusts clinging to the same rope.’ So, when one enters into a marriage, one’s journey in life will influence and touch upon one’s other half, and likewise one’s partner’s journey in life will influence and touch upon one’s own fate in life. In other words, human fates are interconnected, and no one can complete one’s mission in life or perform one’s role in complete independence from others.… A marriage is not the product of both members’ families, the circumstances in which they grew up, their appearances, their ages, their qualities, their talents, or any other factors; rather, it arises from a shared mission and a related fate. This is the origin of marriage, a product of human fate orchestrated and arranged by the Creator.” God’s words unraveled the knot in my heart. It turned out that there is a complex chain of relationships behind each person’s marriage, and all this cannot be chosen by us. The fate of each person is within God’s designs and arrangements, and so is that of my husband and me. Our fates are also interconnected, and it was because of our related fate and common mission that we could come together.

God’s words also say: “Since the creation of the world, I have begun to predestine and select this group of people—namely, you of today. Your temperament, caliber, appearance, and stature, your family into which you were born, your job, and your marriage—you in your entirety, even including the color of your hair and your skin, and your time of birth—were all arranged by My hands. I arranged by hand even the things you do and the people you meet every single day, not to mention the fact that bringing you into My presence today was actually done by My arrangement. Do not throw yourself into disorder; you should proceed calmly.” This passage of God’s words made me even more clearly understand that my whole life, including my family, my work, my marriage, and even my appearance, is ruled and arranged by God. Besides, I also knew that I came from God and was predestined and selected by God. My marriage seemed to be unhappy, but against such a background, I came abroad and was lucky enough to accept Almighty God’s gospel and have the chance to know the Creator. All this is God’s love for me! Through fellowshiping God’s words with the sister, I no longer complained about my fate and my marriage, and changed my attitude toward my husband. I also decided not to contact with Mr. Yang anymore, and the relationship between my husband and me also eased off a little. It was God’s words that changed me and led me away from the pain of marriage and emotion.

Soon after that, my father was ill and I went back to China to see him. After going back to China, I lived in weakness because there wasn’t the support and help of the brothers and sisters or the leading of God’s words for a long time. One day, I met Mr. Yang again. Unable to resist the temptation of emotion, I gave in to the fleshly lust and did the thing that offended God. After that, my spirit sank into darkness. I knew that I had done something that God did not like, and thought God wouldn’t want me again. After returning to New Zealand, I didn’t dare to meet my brothers and sisters. During that period of time, I personally tasted how painful the life without the guidance of God. I just commuted by following the prescribed routine every day, leading a muddleheaded life and feeling especially empty in my heart. Seeing that my state was abnormal, my sisters took turns to fellowship with me. However, I just avoided meeting them, for I always felt that I had been eliminated by God, and that even if I laid bare my transgression, God wouldn’t forgive me, and even worse, I would be looked down upon by my sisters.

However, God did not give me up and still arranged for the sisters to play the hymns of God’s word for me. One of the hymns says: “The Almighty has mercy on these people who have suffered deeply; at the same time, He is fed up with these people who lack consciousness, as He has had to wait too long for an answer from humanity. He wishes to seek, to seek your heart and your spirit, to bring you water and food and to awaken you, that you may no longer be thirsty and hungry. When you are weary and when you begin to feel something of the bleak desolation of this world, do not be lost, do not cry. Almighty God, the Watcher, will embrace your arrival at any time.” And another hymn—God Has Expended Everything for Man—says: “Saving you who have sunk to the deepest depths of degeneration requires calling out to you strenuously, judging you strenuously, and only then will that ice-cold heart of yours be awakened. Your flesh, your extravagant desires, your greed, and your lust are too deeply rooted in you. These things are so constantly controlling your hearts that you are powerless to cast off the yoke of those feudal and degenerate thoughts. You neither yearn to change your present situation, nor to escape the influence of darkness. For your sakes, God has endured great torment, with great pain He has bestowed His beloved Son, His flesh and blood, to you—so why do you still turn a blind eye? In full view of everyone, you reject the arrival of God. Why cause such desperate yearning in God? Why make God call out again and again? Why force God to worry for His beloved Son? Why does not man understand, man who lives amid pain and suffering?” Listening to every word of the hymns, I could no longer control my inner shame and indebtedness to God and burst into tears. In the days when I strayed away from God and had no God’s leading, I lived like a walking corpse, without any peace and joy in my heart. However, no matter how hardened my heart was, God still moved the sisters to help me and used His words to call me again and again. Only then did I realize that I had been misunderstanding God. Although I did something that betrayed and offended God, and avoided and distanced from God, God did not abandon me, but instead, He kept waiting for me to turn back to Him. God’s love was really so great! My heart was deeply touched by God’s love and I even more felt regretful and indebted to God. So, I told the sisters about what happened when I went back to China. Unexpectedly, the sisters not only didn’t look down on me but also fellowshiped God’s words with me.

Through fellowship, I understood that God’s coming to do the work today is just to save us mankind deeply corrupted by Satan, but not to eliminate us. God knows well that we have been deeply corrupted by Satan, so He expresses His words to judge and cleanse us according to our needs. God’s words say: “All this is done for the purpose of making man complete. From beginning to end, God has been doing His utmost to save man, and has no desire to completely destroy the men He created with His own hands. Today, He has come among you to work, and is such salvation not even greater? If He hated you, would He still do work of such magnitude in order to personally guide you? Why should He suffer so? God does not hate you or have any ill intentions toward you. You should know that God’s love is the truest love. It is only because people are disobedient that He has to save them through judgment; if not for this, saving them would be impossible. Because you do not know how to live and are not even aware of how to live, and because you live in this licentious and sinful land and are yourselves licentious and filthy devils, He cannot bear to let you become even more depraved, He cannot bear to see you living in this filthy land as you do now, trampled on by Satan at will, and He cannot bear to let you fall into Hades. He only wants to gain this group of people and thoroughly save you.”

Each sentence of God’s words warmed my heart, making me feel God’s motherly love. God did not have the heart to let me fall into the underworld, so He always moved me and saved me with love. From God’s words, I saw clearly the true fact of how I had been corrupted by Satan. Thinking back to the past, although my husband was bad-tempered and didn’t treat me well, I still wanted to be faithful to my family and be a good wife and kind mother. However, since I entered society, the big dye vat, I had been no longer what I was before. I was influenced by the evil trend while I was together with my colleagues. Unconsciously, I accepted the fallacious view “It’s the husband’s fault if the wife is unfaithful to him,” which made me regard the negative things as the positive ones and find a shameless excuse for my evil deeds. What my friends of the society brought me was only vanity and comparison, and could only make me become more and more evil and depraved. On the contrary, Almighty God’s words taught me to differentiate between the positive things and the negative ones, made me see clearly that the society was so evil and that I was so badly corrupted by Satan that I had become extremely filthy, being full of fleshly lust and being a licentious and sinful person, and also let me understand the bottom line of conducting myself as a person. I truly felt that only God loves man the most. He expresses the words according to the needs of the corrupted mankind, which is just to cleanse us and thoroughly save us. I was not willing to grieve God and wouldn’t do the things anymore that were hated by God. I would follow God wholeheartedly, accept the judgment and chastisement of God’s words to have myself transformed and purified, and pursue to live out the likeness of a genuine person to repay God’s love.

Seeing my change, the sisters were also deeply touched. We sang a hymn of God’s word together—Only God Loves Mankind the Most: “God is able to perform this work today because His management plan has reached this stage; He would not save mankind unless He loved mankind, and it is only because He is prompted by love, under the precondition of love, that He works thus. God’s suffering of immense humiliation in becoming flesh in order to save corrupt mankind is full proof of just how great His love is.”