信耶稣的价值几何？ ——从几位信徒的实际经历说起

 

信耶稣到底有什么样的作用？每一个经历到神恩典的人，都可以给出答案。作为基层服侍人员，我们经常看见耶稣在一些人身上所产生出来的作用。

以下是3个信徒的实际经历，来看信耶稣价值几何。

有一位弟兄在没有信耶稣之前，喜欢赌博，身上留不住钱，只要有一点钱，就会拿出来用于赌博。为了赌博，连家人、亲戚、朋友的钱的都会去拿或者去偷。反正身上只要有钱，就会拿去赌博，若是没有钱就会想方设法找钱。

如此数年之久，虽然妻子和他父母都在外面打工挣钱，维持家用，整个家庭仍然备受煎熬，一贫如洗。就在他们家庭因为赌博无法继续下去的时候，这位染上赌瘾的弟兄在绝望之际想起了妈妈所信仰的耶稣，主动前往教会聚会，就在那次聚会的一刹那之间，他被上帝抓住了，深刻认识到自己的不足，决志信耶稣。自此之后，真的变了，再也没有参与赌博。

有一位弟兄在讲道的时候，说起了自己的见证，从他的见证中使我们得知，他最早是随从母亲信仰的其他神，后来经过一件事情之后，才转而信的耶稣。那这位弟兄为什么会改变自己的信仰，转而信靠耶稣呢？

这位弟兄在没有信仰耶稣之前，生了一场病，在医院里没有治好，自己的神也没有治好。虽然自己及家人都非常的虔诚，也许下了厚重的愿，但所信仰的那个神好像无动于衷，不闻不问。就在自己病情越发严重，几乎到了绝望之际，邻居再次向其传福音，自己也是抱着死马当做活马医的心态，试着信了耶稣。谁知去了教会之后，自己的病就逐渐好了起来。自此之后，他便坚定跟随耶稣，为耶稣大发热心，成为了义工传道。

再说一位婚姻不理想的姊妹。有一位姊妹出生于新中国成立之后，个子不高，没读过什么书，但是稍为接触之后，就可以感受到这位姊妹是一位有主见的姊妹。然而，这位姊妹的婚姻不幸福。 他们属于包办婚姻，虽然结婚很多年了，但仿佛不存在什么样的感情。姊妹的丈夫能力较弱，但喜欢对人指指点点，对自己的妻子尤其如此，总是说个不停，使人不厌其烦。姊妹在作见证的时候说道，若不是自己是有信仰的人，不知自杀了多少次，每逢想要自杀的时候，就会想起自己的信仰及孩子。也正是因为信仰阻止自己做了很多的傻事。因此，她说：“回过头来再想想，非常感恩能被神拣选，免于做很多的傻事。”

耶稣的恩典仍在，只要有人就近祂，依靠祂，那么就会收获到许多意想不到的好处。

注：本文为特约/自由撰稿人文章，作者系江苏一名传道人。

https://www.gospeltimes.cn/article/index/id/64383

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Pastor in Eastern China: 'Christ in Me is the Real Treasure'

 Translated by Richard Zou

People often want to be praised, but faith means to let go of oneself, give up oneself, and live out the Christian faith.

Having been engaged in the ministry for many years, Pastor L shared how he went from caring about himself so much to only caring about Jesus Christ in a recent interview with the Christian Times, an online Chinese Christian newspaper.

Many years ago, when Pastor L was pastoring in a certain place, his dream at that time was to build the largest church in China there. Pastor L admitted that this was actually his personal ambition at that time that in the name of doing a great job for God, it was himself who wanted to accomplish something. God was just a tool to help him achieve his goals. Although he didn't realize it at the beginning, he believed that his thoughts were in line with God's will, so God would definitely help him accomplish his goals.

At that time, Pastor L told his congregation, "In a few years, many people will see the name of our church on the Internet, and they will also see the name of the pastor of our church on the Internet.

He added, “When things are finished, I will say ‘thank God’ by mouth, all was done by God. But because it is done, I am complacent in my heart, my personal righteousness is revealed-It is I who finishes the job, who can compare with me? As you cannot do it, am I holier than you? Am I more mature than you?"

"Man cannot go before God. When God is doing His job, we just follow His steps. The Lord Jesus also said, I am in the Father, and the Father is in me. The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does, the Son also does. Rather than saying we don't want to do something, we can actually do nothing on our own, and we often say to the Lord, Lord, take a rest for a while and let me do it, which is the case."

Over the past few years, Pastor L's church has grown significantly, and the number of the congregation has slowly increased to more than 500 people. However, he was not satisfied with this,. “What kind of megachurch do you think it is, a church of only 500 to 600 people?” Because he wasn't looking at a few hundred people, he had in mind tens of thousands of believers, just like some megachurches abroad.  Since there were only over 500 believers, so it certainly could not be called a "megachurch".

Later, for some reason, Pastor L left the church, but he found himself in a worsening situation.“No matter how hard and diligent I tried, the church could never reach 500 people, much less,” he revealed.

Pastor L was confronted with such a situation and began to reflect deeply on what went wrong.

He said, "Then I found a problem: once the church gets bigger, I want both my co-workers and other people who know me to be able to say that I am a big vessel and can build a megachurch. To some extent, I would like people to make such positive comments about me.”

"I definitely don't want to hear anything negative or passive in front of me, I only want to hear words that praise me, which is a weakness of human nature."

“The reason why we deteriorate after serving for some time is that we do not rely on Christ who is our rock. Therefore, the strength in our hearts is gone, so we can only fill our inner deficiency, weakness, and ego with external things, then we can only seek satisfaction from the outside. It is natural to begin to credit ourselves with fame, power, or whatever else from the outside.”

"My own personal experience is that I hope people comment on me as a good person. ‘Look at Pastor L. He graduated from a famous university and has built megachurches, has a great impact, has great credit, has a great role.’" Pastor L. said, "To be honest, I used to enjoy hearing this and liked to be affirmed and praised by others. But now I've put it down, what is man? What am I? That's all I am. If the Lord wants to use me, He can use me, if He doesn't want to use me, He can put me aside. My performance is good or bad, I have my own weakness, but I don't care. I don't care what people think of me.”

“I think the difference from before is that now I have Christ in me, and that's the real treasure, and what are the things other than those? What is reputation? Some people slander me, some people attack me, and some people defend me, but what's the point? It doesn't matter to me. This is a mystery, a mystery that has been hidden from all generations before the ages. Now, this mystery has been revealed to us, and this mystery is to see Christ in us, not the Christ who sits on the throne of heaven, nor the Christ who reigns on earth, but the Christ who is in us, in our hearts,” he concluded.

- Translated by Richard Zou

http://chinachristiandaily.com/news/category/2022-09-09/pastor-in-eastern-china---christ-in-me-is-the-real-treasure-_11865

Pastor Says Reason Why We Can't Live out the Life of Jesus Christ Lies in Stopping Pursuing the Lord Himself

I believe that for many Christians, a big question that has been troubling them is: Why have I been believing for so long, but I cannot live the beautiful life of Jesus Christ? They even feel as if their faith is going downhill, losing the purity and enthusiasm they had when they believed in the beginning, and as their faith grows, they don't seem to gain anything except learning more knowledge about their faith.

Recently, the Christian Times, an online Chinese Christian newspaper, interviewed Pastor L, a senior pastor somewhere in Eastern China, who shared his latest thoughts and observations about it.

Some time ago, Pastor L. found a problem that shocked him. "We are right to believe in the cross, but just believing in the cross is not enough."

He explained that although the cross forgives us of our sins and anyone who believes in Jesus Christ is clothed with the power of the cross, this is not enough, we need to have a life. Nor does this life come to us by ourselves, but through the Holy Spirit and the help of Christ. The Holy Spirit enters and dwells in the church and will enter into everyone who believes in Jesus Christ.

"So, the main content of the gospel is not only the cross but Jesus Christ Himself and what He has done," he added. 

Pastor L said that he found that many pastors, elders, and believers have been saved and born again. They do have the experience of being saved, the transition from unbelief to belief, and himself is a typical example. But many people would question, "Why can't we live the righteous and good life that the Bible says?"

We can't practice God's righteousness and goodness, but the Bible commands us to live like Jesus Christ. Living like Jesus Christ is called sanctification. Many people say, "Can you be sanctified? You can't be sanctified." But whether it is from doctrine or from Bible, it teaches that sanctification is a process, not a result. But some people make it absolute, they say that sanctification is a state of completely holy, which of course is impossible, and it is impossible for us until we die.

"God's command tells us to love our enemies, but we do not even love our brothers and sisters enough, let alone our enemies; I do not even love my wife enough, let alone my brothers and sisters. We say in the church that I love you, brothers and sisters, and that I love you in the name of the Lord Jesus, but are all of these really true? We have heard God's words, and we know that God's will is in them, but I am striving to love my brothers and sisters in my own way, and this is what we are doing as Pharisees. Because when I use my flesh body and flesh heart, my human disposition to struggle to obey the word of God, I become a Pharisee."

The pastor continued that we cannot live like Jesus Christ, but because God commands that we should live this way, many people follow it and live it in a superficial way.  "Therefore, in fact, many Christians only live like religious people, not like Christians. This is terrible."

Compared with other religions, the external religious rituals and religious appearances of our Protestant Christianity are far inferior to them. But the difference between us and them is that we have life, and they have no life. But the problem is that we have life, but we cannot live like that. Not grasping the gospel's essence is the reason. "The saved people should have a new lifestyle of being saved, unfortunately, we cannot live like that."

The Holy Spirit enters us, not only to give us life but to give abundant life.  We cannot provide an answer to where our abundant life is, so people describe external things as signs of abundant life. For example, a person who has made money after believing in the Lord, or who has been healed of a disease or something else, or who used to be indifferent to the church, but is now very enthusiastic about it. In order to measure whether his faith is good or bad or whether it is growing, we can only look at superficial phenomena."

"It is not wrong that this external thing is a manifestation of faith, but the question is whether this external manifestation of a person is revealed from life? This is not necessarily the case. We cannot say that a person's faith is good because he has made a lot of money after his conversion. Otherwise, it would end up that a person's piety of faith is determined by how much money he makes - the more money he makes, the more pious his faith is. We can't say that," he urged. 

"We have life, but we often put it aside and continue to rely on ourselves. Life is Jesus Christ Himself, and we put Jesus Christ aside, still striving to build our faith deeper with our own efforts, trying to enter into the fullness of life by ourselves, and just separate from the essence again. We want to justify our faith through this external life of a religious person. Man cannot go ahead of God, but must let God go first, and then we follow."

Pastor L said that we always want to do many great things as if that's how our faith grows well. "God doesn't care how big or small what we do is. The Lord said, 'I only value you, and I only care about you, let me live in you and give you an abundant life.' This is the gospel. The resurrected Lord lives in me, lives in you, and lives in every Christian. This is the essence of the gospel."

"Let us live like Jesus, not live only according to my preaching, my learning, my knowledge. 'Knowing only Jesus Christ and Him crucified'. Only then can we truly live the beautiful life of Jesus Christ," he concluded. 

- Translated by Richard Zou 

http://chinachristiandaily.com/news/category/2022-09-06/pastor-says-reason-why-we-can-t-live-out-the-life-of-jesus-christ-lies-in-stopping-pursuing-the-lord-himself-_11832