After reaching adulthood, I became the chairperson of my church’s youth association for many years, and whenever the preachers weren’t there I would lead the brothers and sisters in prayer, Bible studies, hymn-singing, and the sharing of testimonies. After getting married, I was put in charge of receiving the Sunday offerings and the tithes. At first our church had the work of the Holy Spirit: The pastor talked fluently and eloquently, and the brothers and sisters enjoyed the sermons and felt that they were edified by them. Everyone was brimming with confidence, and we attended all the church services and spread the gospel wherever we could with great enthusiasm. But eventually the pastor’s sermons became repetitive and lackluster, and could no longer provide what we needed. The confidence of brothers and sisters thus began to wane, and they became more interested in money and pleasures of the flesh. Congregation numbers began to fall, until it got to the point where the pastor had to make calls every Saturday just to try and get everyone to attend. Even when the brothers and sisters did show up they sang the hymns listlessly and without devotion, dozed off during the sermons, and started talking about business as soon as the services ended. The services had become all form and no substance. And I was very troubled by this. I thought to myself: “How does our church turn into such a barren pasture?” But then I remembered how, over the previous 30 years, I had often heard different pastors saying the same thing: “We believe in the Lord Jesus, so our sins have all been forgiven.” “We gain salvation by the grace of God because of our faith.” “The Lord Jesus has already completed His work of redemption once, so we believers in the Lord are already saved and will enter the kingdom of heaven.” Because of this, “I’m already saved, I will enter the kingdom of heaven” became the basic tenet of my faith in God. No matter how bleak the church was, or how weak and passive the believers were, I would always tell myself: “I must keep the way of the Lord. As long as I don’t leave the Lord, then He won’t abandon me. When the Lord returns, He will take me into the kingdom of heaven.” Although I kept on warning myself in this way, I still wasn’t able to keep on the Lord’s path: I would sin by day and confess sins by night, but whenever I prayed, I couldn’t feel the Lord by my side. My spirit felt dark and empty, and I felt I was getting farther and farther away from the Lord, as if He had abandoned me. This caused me great suffering, but I was unable to find the source of the problem …