A Wonderful Reunion With the Lord: I Find the Way to Be Free From Sin (Part 1)

By Kemu, Myanmar

Editor’s Note: As a Christian, do you often feel distressed because you can’t free yourself from the shackles of sin? Are you looking high and low for the way to be free of sin? Sister Kemu used to feel sorrowful and distressed that she couldn’t find the way to be free from sin, and she worried that the Lord would abandon her. Now, however, she has welcomed the return of the Lord and has found the way to be free from sin. By reading the article below, you too will find this way.

Because of a sickness I was suffering with in 2005, I began to believe in the Lord Jesus. A few years later, my husband was suddenly sent to prison for illegal dealings in his business, and he was looking at imprisonment for life. I felt as though the sun was suddenly obscured by thick clouds and I was at a loss as to what to do. Feeling helpless, I often fasted and prayed to the Lord. The Lord heard my prayers, and my husband was released just over two months later. Through this personal experience, I saw that the Lord was my help and support at need, and I was resolved to serve the Lord in earnest. Thereafter, I often went into the village to preach the gospel and bear testimony, I never missed a weekly meeting, and I donated a tithe of my monthly salary to the church. Because our family was reasonably well-off, my younger brother, my nephew, my niece and some other relatives, as well as some orphans from the village, came and lived in our house. I led them to believe in the Lord, and I often held meetings, prayed and read the Bible with them. I also tried hard to practice the Lord’s teachings in my life, and I hoped that I could bring my entire family along with me by using how I was living my life as an example, so that they too would believe in and follow the Lord in earnest. I believed that, as long as I kept up my enthusiastic pursuit, expended myself and worked hard for the Lord and stuck it out till the end, then the Lord would certainly raise me up into heaven when He returned.

In 2016, however, without knowing why, my faith began to cool, and I often felt dispirited and spiritually weak. I had a strong feeling that the Lord wasn’t by my side, nor was I able to practice the Lord’s words. Whenever I saw someone in my family doing something I didn’t like, I couldn’t help but get angry at them, and I often got into arguments with my husband over household chores. Whenever I got angry or argued with someone in my family, I would feel terrible and would hurriedly pray and confess my sins to the Lord. Afterward, however, I would just repeat the same old mistakes. What made me even more distressed was that my family lost interest in meeting together and reading the Bible because of the effect I was having on them. I saw that not only was I not bringing my family along with me in my faith, but on the contrary, I was causing them to fall by the wayside. This pained me a great deal, and all I could do was pray frequently to the Lord: “O Lord! I always grieve You and disappoint You. I clearly state not to do anything that displeases You, and yet I can’t control myself, and I can never stop myself from sinning and causing You grief. O Lord! I really don’t want to live in such a state, I don’t want to influence my brothers and sisters with the way I’m living, and I really don’t want to be someone You abandon. Please help me to get through this predicament….”

So as to rid myself of this depressing situation, I stepped up my reading of the Bible, and I even went into the mountains to fast and pray. But sometimes I would only read a few lines of scripture before I got tired, and I would only be able to say a few words of prayer before falling fast asleep. I visited a few churches in the local area, hoping to find a church that had the work of the Holy Spirit. To my surprise, however, every church was the same: The believers were all dispirited and spiritually weak, their faith was weak also, they coveted worldly pleasures and they could not free themselves from the shackles of sin. I felt very disappointed, and I asked my pastor whether or not we would be able to get into heaven by living in such a state as this. He told me that the Lord doesn’t see our weaknesses, and that we will definitely be able to get into heaven so long as we never depart from the Lord’s way, expend ourselves and dedicate ourselves for the Lord, and stick it out to the very end. What the pastor said sounded right, but I always had this uneasy feeling in my heart.

Just when I was feeling lost, I met Sister Qin, who was in Germany, on Facebook in November 2017. I spoke with her about my state of spiritual darkness and pain, and I told her that I really wanted to recover my faith and love for the Lord. Sister Qin listened to me and then sent me this passage: “If you are unable to summon the strength within you to love God, then how can you pray? You should say: ‘O God! My heart is incapable of truly loving You, I wish to love You but I lack the strength. What should I do? I wish for You to open the eyes of my spirit, I wish for Your Spirit to touch my heart, so that before You I am divested of all passive states, and unconstrained by any person, matter, or thing; my heart I completely lay bare before You…. Now, I pursue the love of You, and regardless of whether You let me love You, regardless of how Satan interferes, I am determined to love You.’ When you encounter such things, you pray in this way. If you do so every day, the strength to love God will gradually rise up” (“Concerning the Practice of Prayer” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

After I’d read this passage, tears fell from my eyes. I felt that these words were so wonderful and that they were talking precisely about my current state; I knew I had to have this kind of open-hearted prayer with God! As I contemplated this passage, I felt in my heart as though I were drawing closer to God, and I felt stronger. Sister Qin then said to me, “Sister, if we believe in the Lord but we do not feel Him beside us, then we will be unable to obtain His commendation. Therefore, we cannot just allow ourselves to become mired in a state of negativity and weakness, but instead we have to actively seek the appearance and work of the Lord. Only when we find the wellspring of life and obtain the work of the Holy Spirit can our parched spirits be watered and nourished, and only then can we recover our faith and love. We are now in the last days and the prophecies in the Bible concerning the Lord Jesus’ return have basically all been fulfilled. At the crucial moment of welcoming the Lord, we must fellowship more about the Lord’s words with brothers and sisters who are in pursuit of the truth and we must seek the appearance of the Lord, for only by doing this is it possible to find the Lord’s footsteps and avoid being abandoned by the Lord!”

Sister Qin then introduced me to Sister Lucy and Sister Xiling. When we held meetings together, I heard them say that God’s name always changes along with His work, and that when God comes to work in the last days, He will not be called Jesus any longer, but will be called Almighty God. I still believed, however, that only by praying in the name of the Lord Jesus could we be saved, and so I didn’t make much effort to seek the truths the sisters had spoken of. One morning, I felt empty and listless, so I went onto YouTube and typed in the words “The Church of Almighty God” which the sisters had mentioned. Unexpectedly, many gospel movies and videos leapt out at me from the webpage, and I clicked on the two movies, Awakening in the Adversity of Persecution and Sweetness in Adversity, and I watched them both. The experiences of the protagonists in the videos really drew me in and they moved me deeply. They faced cruel torture and torment at the hands of the CCP government, and yet they were still able to keep their faith in God and love for God. This kind of faith and love was precisely what I was yearning for, and I cried as I watched the videos. What was even more wonderful was that the passage Sister Qin had sent me before about how to pray also appeared in the videos, and I finally realized that those words were the words of Almighty God. I remembered it saying in the words Sister Qin had read to me: “I was once known as Jehovah. I was also called the Messiah, and people once called Me Jesus the Savior because they loved and respected Me. But today I am not the Jehovah or Jesus that people knew in times past—I am the God who has returned in the last days, the God who shall bring the age to an end. I am the God Himself that rises up at the ends of the earth, replete with My entire disposition, and full of authority, honor and glory” (“The Savior Has Already Returned Upon a ‘White Cloud’” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). It looked to me now as though Almighty God was indeed the second coming of the Lord Jesus! I immediately sent Sister Qin a message, arranging a time for us to hold our next meeting. At that meeting, I asked the sisters directly whether or not what they had testified to me previously was the work of Almighty God. I also told them that, through watching those movies online, I had come to understand that Almighty God was the Lord Jesus returned in the flesh. Sister Lucy then said excitedly, “Sister, let us give thanks to the grace of God that you have come to understand this today!” At that moment, I felt both happy and ashamed. From that day on, I attended meetings online with my sisters three or four times a week and I watched The Church of Almighty God’s movies and hymn videos every day. The more I watched, the more light pervaded my heart, and I didn’t feel sleepy or fatigued in the slightest. Moreover, I felt my faith in the Lord and my love for the Lord return; I felt as though I had returned once again into the Lord’s embrace, and I felt happy.

To be continue… 

Source From: Eastern Lightning