Ever since I believed in the Lord Jesus, I had enjoyed much grace from Him, often living in the peace and joy bestowed by Him. However, I always felt distressed in my heart whenever I saw the Bible say, “And Jesus said to him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has not where to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20). I called to mind: When the Lord incarnate came to work, He, having no place to lay His head, was born in a manger. Since the three wise men came to meet Herod the king, He had been hunted closely by the rulers, living a life on the run. When He started to work and preach, what He faced were still man’s sneers and slanders, along with the government’s persecution and the religious Pharisees’ resistance and condemnation. The Lord Jesus was forced to drift about with nowhere to lay His head, and in the end, was even cruelly nailed onto the cross. Thus, my heart frequently ached for the Lord Jesus’ sufferings which I believed were the worst for Him. Only after I read God’s words did I know there was a world of difference between my imagination and God’s true thoughts.
God’s word says, “There are some people who often sympathize with Christ’s plight because there is a verse in the Bible that reads: ‘The foxes have holes, and the birds have nests; but the Son of man has not where to lay His head.’ When people hear this, they take it to heart and believe that this is the greatest suffering that God endures, and the greatest suffering that Christ endures. Now, looking at it from the perspective of the facts, is that the case? No; God does not believe these difficulties to be suffering. He has never cried out against injustice because of His difficulties of the flesh, and He has never made humans repay or reward Him with anything. However, when He witnesses everything about mankind and the corrupt lives and the evil of corrupt humans, when He witnesses that mankind is in Satan’s grasp and imprisoned by Satan and cannot escape, that people living in sin do not know what the truth is, He cannot tolerate all of these sins. His loathing of humans increases by the day, but He has to endure all of this. This is God’s great suffering. God cannot fully express even the voice of His heart or His emotions among His followers, and no one among His followers can truly understand His suffering. No one even tries to understand or to comfort His heart, which endures this suffering day after day, year after year, and time and time again. What do you see in all of this? God does not require anything of humans in return for what He has given, but because of God’s essence, He absolutely cannot tolerate mankind’s evil, corruption, and sin, and instead feels extreme loathing and hatred, which leads to God’s heart and His flesh enduring unending suffering. Have you seen this? Most likely, none of you could see this, because none of you can truly understand God.”
Every word of God struck my heart. Although I had believed in the Lord for many years, never had I ever known God’s heart. Today when God is incarnated to speak to us personally, then I come to realize that the true suffering of God is not that of the flesh, about which He never makes any complaint. All His sufferings are for the sake of us. When He sees us living in sins, unable to extricate ourselves from them and incapable of distinguishing that which is positive and negative, what He likes and what He loathes…, these are what make God suffer most.
In the face of each of God’s heartfelt words, I perceived that God is great and holy, while we human beings are so insignificant that we just see the part that our mind can reach. Yet, what God reveals is determined by His substance. Regardless of His care for us human beings, or His mercy or hate, these are all perfect manifestations of God’s disposition and contain God’s love for us humans. God says, “The joy of God is due to the existence and emergence of righteousness and light, because of the destruction of darkness and evil. He takes delight in bringing the light and a good life to mankind; His joy is a righteous joy, a symbol of the existence of all that is positive and, even more, a symbol of auspiciousness. The anger of God is due to the harm that the existence and interference of injustice brings upon His mankind, because of the existence of evil and darkness, because of the existence of things that drive out the truth, and even more, because of the existence of things that oppose what is good and beautiful. His anger is a symbol that all things negative no longer exist and, even more than that, it is a symbol of His holiness. His sorrow is due to mankind, for whom He has hopes but who has fallen into darkness, because the work He does on man does not come up to His expectations, and because the mankind He loves cannot all live in the light. He feels sorrow for the innocent mankind, for the honest but ignorant man, and for the man who is good but lacking in his own views. His sorrow is a symbol of His goodness and of His mercy, a symbol of beauty and of kindness. His happiness, of course, comes from defeating His enemies and gaining the good faith of man. More than this, it arises from the expulsion and destruction of all enemy forces, and because mankind receives a good and peaceful life. The happiness of God is unlike the joy of man; rather, it is the feeling of garnering good fruits, a feeling even greater than joy. His happiness is a symbol of mankind breaking free of suffering from this time forth, and a symbol of mankind entering a world of light.”
Through God’s word, I sincerely felt God’s greatness and His true love for us mankind. Whatever He does is for the sake of us, and every part of His emotions centers around us, representing His love for us. In retrospect, after God created man, He used skins to make clothing for them with His own hands; what God revealed then was that He treated them as His family as well as His children, and took care of every detail of their lives. When the Israelites lived under the hand of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, God used Moses to guide them out of Egypt step by step and then into the good land of Canaan. When we mankind lived in sins, God came personally as flesh and was willing to be crucified as our mankind’s sin offerings. Today, in order to thoroughly save us men out of Satan’s camp, God is incarnated again and comes into the tiger’s den—China which is under the reign of atheism and regards God as the enemy. God incarnate is confronted with swords and spears, as well as those believers of the religious world who claim to believe in Him yet refuse His salvation again and again, but He never complains in the slightest. During the course, no man understands His heart, nor appreciates His sorrow and pain, but instead misunderstands, complains against Him and has numerous notions about His work, but God has always been enduring all these silently, waiting for someday when we mankind will awaken and comprehend His thoughtful kind intention.
The more I ponder over God’s words, the more I feel myself so fortunate to hear His personal utterances and hear Him express His heart’s voice, which is truly the exaltation of God. Had God not personally become flesh, I would never be aware that the God I believe in is so great and holy and that His love for us is so selfless, much less would I find myself so small. It is God incarnate that grants me the opportunity to know God and to understand the heart’s voice of God, and even more, an opportunity to open my heart to God and appreciate His heart. Today, if we want to know God, the only path is through God’s own utterances and through experiencing His work. Only then can we know God and finally become confidants of God. At this moment, I cannot help remembering the Hymn of God’s word “God’s Love and Essence Has Always Been Selfless”: “God always gives His best side and the best things to mankind while quietly bearing all the suffering Himself. God never openly discloses these sufferings. Instead, He endures them and waits in silence. God’s endurance is not cold, numb, or helpless, nor is it a sign of weakness. Rather, God’s love and essence have always been selfless. This is a natural revelation of His essence and disposition, and a genuine embodiment of God’s identity as the true Creator” (Follow the Lamb and Sing New Songs).