Eastern Lightning | On Quieting Your Heart Before God

On Quieting Your Heart Before God

Quieting your heart before God is one of the most crucial steps for entering into God’s words, and is a lesson that all people presently have an urgent need to enter. The entry ways to quieting your heart before God are:

1. Withdraw your heart from external things, be quiet before God, and pray to God with a focused heart.

2. With your heart quiet before God, eat, drink, and enjoy God’s words.

3. Make it a usual practice to meditate on and contemplate God’s love and ponder God’s work with your heart.

       First begin with the matter of prayer. Be single-minded, and pray at a fixed time. No matter how pressed for time, or how busy, or what comes upon you, pray every day as normal, and eat and drink God’s words as normal. As long as you eat and drink God’s words, no matter what your surroundings are, your spirit is especially pleased, nor are you bothered by the people, events, or things around you. When you normally contemplate God in your heart, what goes on outside cannot bother you. This is what it means to have stature. Begin from prayer first: Praying at peace before God is most fruitful. After that, eat and drink the words of God, and ponder God’s words and try to obtain the light, find the path to practice, know what the aims of God’s utterances are, and understand without deviation. Ordinarily, draw close to God normally in your heart, contemplate God’s love, and ponder the words of God, without being disturbed by external things. When your heart is at peace to a degree that you are able to muse, so that, within yourself, you contemplate God’s love and truly draw near to God regardless of what environment you are in, and you have ultimately reached the point where you give praise in your heart, and it is even better than praying, then in this you will be possessed of a certain stature. If you are able to achieve the states described above, then this will prove that your heart is truly at peace before God. This is the first step; it is a basic exercise. Only after they are able to be at peace before God can people be touched by the Holy Spirit, and enlightened and illuminated by the Holy Spirit, only then are they able to truly commune with God, and able to grasp God’s will and the guidance of the Holy Spirit—and in this, they will have entered onto the right track in their spiritual lives. Exercising yourself to live before God to reach a certain depth so that you are able to rebel against yourself, to despise yourself, and to live in God’s words, this truly is quieting your heart before God. Being able to despise oneself, curse oneself, and rebel against oneself is the result that God’s work achieves, and people can’t do this. Therefore the practice of quieting one’s heart before God is a lesson people should immediately enter. Some people not only cannot usually quiet their hearts before God, but their hearts are not quiet before God even when they pray. This is altogether too far from God’s standards! If your heart cannot be quiet before God can you be moved by the Holy Spirit? If you cannot be quiet before God, you can be distracted when someone comes by, you can be distracted when people are talking, and your heart can be drawn away when others are doing things, so you are not someone living before God. If your heart truly is quiet before God you won’t be bothered by anything going on in the world outside, and no person, event, or thing will occupy you. If you have entry into this, then those negative states or all negative things, such as human conceptions, philosophy of life, abnormal relationships with people, and thoughts in your heart will naturally disappear. Because you are always pondering God’s words, and your heart is always drawing close to God and occupied by the current words of God, those negative things are unconsciously stripped off. When positive new things occupy you, negative old things will have no place, so don’t pay attention to those negative things. You needn’t make efforts trying to control them. Pay attention to being quiet before God, eat and drink more of God’s words and enjoy them, sing more hymns praising God, and let God have a chance to work on you, because God at present wants to personally perfect people, and He wants to gain your heart; His Spirit moves your heart, and if you live before God following the guidance of the Holy Spirit you will satisfy God. If you pay attention to living in God’s words and fellowship more about the truth to gain the enlightenment and illumination of the Holy Spirit, then those religious conceptions, self-rightness and self-importance will all disappear, and then you will know how to spend for God, know how to love God, and how to satisfy God. Those things outside God are then unconsciously forgotten.

Pondering the words of God and praying over the words of God at the same time as eating and drinking the current words of God—this is the first step to being at peace before God. If you can be truly at peace before God, then the enlightenment and illumination of the Holy Spirit will be with you.

All spiritual life is achieved by relying on being quiet before God. In praying you must be quiet before God before you can be moved by the Holy Spirit. By being quiet before God when you eat and drink God’s words you can be enlightened and illuminated and be able to achieve truly understanding God’s words. In your usual meditation and fellowship, and when you are drawing close to God with your heart, only when you are quiet before God can you have genuine closeness to God, genuine understanding of God’s love and God’s work, and true thoughtfulness toward God’s intentions. The more you are usually able to be quiet before God the more you can be illuminated, and the more you are able to understand your own corrupt disposition, what you lack, what you should enter, what function you should serve, and where you have defects. All these are achieved by relying on being quiet before God. If you truly reach some depth in being quiet before God, you can touch some mysteries in the spirit, touch on what God at present wants to do on you, touch on deeper understanding of God’s words, and touch on the essence of God’s words, on the substance of God’s words, on the being of God’s words, and you can see the path of practice more thoroughly and more accurately. If you cannot be quiet in your spirit to a certain depth, you will just be somewhat moved by the Holy Spirit, inside you will feel strength, and some enjoyment and peace, but you will not touch anything deeper. I have said before, if one does not use all their strength, it will be difficult for them to hear My voice or see My face. This refers to achieving depth in being quiet before God, not to external effort. A person who can truly be quiet before God is able to free themselves from all worldly ties and can achieve being occupied by God. All people who are unable to be quiet before God are assuredly dissolute and unrestrained. All who are able to be quiet before God are people who are pious before God, people who yearn for God. It is only people who are quiet before God who pay attention to life, pay attention to fellowship in spirit, who thirst for God’s words, and who pursue the truth. All those who pay no attention to being quiet before God, who do not practice being quiet before God are vain people who are completely attached to the world, who are without life; even if they say they believe in God they are just paying lip service. Those God ultimately perfects and completes are people who can be quiet before God. Therefore, people who are quiet before God are people graced with great blessings. People who during the day take little time to eat and drink God’s words, who are completely preoccupied with external affairs, and do not pay attention to life entry are all hypocrites with no prospect of developing in the future. It is those who can be quiet before God and genuinely commune with God who are God’s people.

To come before God to accept His words as your life, you must first be quiet before God. Only when you are quiet before God will God enlighten you and make you understand. The quieter people are before God, the more they are able to gain God’s enlightenment and illumination. These require people to have piety and faith. Only thus can they achieve perfection. The fundamental exercise for entering spiritual life is being quiet before God. All your spiritual training will be effective only if you are quiet before God. If you cannot quiet your heart before God you cannot receive the work of the Holy Spirit. If your heart is quiet before God no matter what you are doing then you are someone who lives before God. If your heart is quiet before God and drawing close to God no matter what you are doing, this proves that you are a person who is quiet before God. When you talk with others, when you are walking, you are able to say, “My heart is drawing close to God, and is not focused on outward things, and I can be quiet before God.” This is a person who is quiet before God. Do not come into contact with things that can draw your heart away to the outside, and do not come into contact with people who can draw your heart away from God. Drop whatever it is that can distract your heart from being close to God, or stay away from it. That way is more beneficial to your life. Now is the time of the great work of the Holy Spirit. It is the time when God Himself is perfecting people. If at this moment you cannot be quiet before God then you are not someone who returns before the throne of God. If you pursue things other than God there is no possibility of being perfected by God. Those who today can hear such utterances from God and still cannot be quiet before God are people who do not love the truth, people who do not love God. If you will not offer yourself now when will you? To offer oneself is to quiet one’s heart before God. This is a genuine offering. Whoever truly offers their hearts to God now certainly can be completed by God. Nothing, no matter what it is, can disturb you; whether that is to prune you, or deal with you, or whether you meet with frustration or failure, your heart should always be quiet before God. No matter how people treat you, your heart should be quiet before God. No matter what environments you face, be it adversities, suffering, or persecution, or whether many kinds of trials come upon you, your heart should always be quiet before God. This is the way to being perfected. Only if you are truly quiet before God will you be clear about God’s current words, practice more correctly the Holy Spirit’s illumination and enlightenment and not deviate, be able to grasp more clearly God’s intentions and have a clearer direction in your service, be able to grasp more accurately the moving and guidance of the Holy Spirit and have the certainty to live under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. These are the results that truly being quiet before God achieves. When people are not clear about God’s words, are without a way to practice, cannot grasp God’s intentions, or have no principles of practice, this is because their hearts are not quiet before God. The purpose of being quiet before God is to be earnest and pragmatic and seek correctness and transparency in God’s words, ultimately to achieve understanding the truth and knowing God.

If your heart cannot be constantly quiet before God, God cannot perfect you. If a person is without will that equals being without a heart, and people without hearts cannot be quiet before God. They do not know how much work God does or how much He says, neither do they know how to put it into practice. Are these not people without hearts? Can people without hearts be quiet before God? God cannot perfect people without hearts, and they belong among the animals. God has spoken so clearly and thoroughly, yet your heart still cannot be moved and you still cannot be quiet before God; isn’t this being an animal? Some people go astray in practicing being quiet before God. When it’s time to cook they don’t cook, and when it’s time to work they don’t work, but just go on praying and meditating. Being quiet before God does not mean not cooking or working, nor ignoring life, but being able to quiet one’s heart before God, being able to keep God’s place in one’s heart in all normal circumstances. When you pray, kneel down properly before God to pray; when you work or prepare food, quiet your heart before God, ponder God’s words or sing hymns. No matter what environment you are in, you have a way to practice, do all you can to be close to God, do all you can to quiet your heart before God. When circumstances permit, pray single-mindedly; when circumstances do not permit, draw near to God in your heart while doing the work with your hands. When you can eat and drink God’s words then eat and drink God’s words; when you can pray then pray; when you can contemplate God then contemplate Him; do all you can to exercise yourself for entry based on your environment. Some people can be quiet before God when nothing arises, but as soon as something happens their hearts leave God. That is not being quiet before God. The correct way to experience is that under no circumstances does one’s heart leave God, or feel disturbed by outside people, events, or things: This is a person who is truly quiet before God. Some people say that when they pray in meetings their hearts can be quiet before God, but when in fellowship they cannot be quiet before God and their thoughts become distracted. This is not being quiet before God. Most people at present are in this state, and their hearts cannot always be quiet before God. So you need to put more effort into exercising yourselves in this area, entering step by step onto the right track of life experience and walking onto the path of being perfected by God.