By Liu Chunmei
Learning of Her Husband’s Betrayal Unexpectedly
“Hello, my darling …” A flirtatious voice of a woman came over the phone.
“Who are you calling darling? How dare you seduce my husband? Don’t you have any sense of shame? I’m warning you, if you dare to call my husband again, I will give you a piece of my mind….” The more Jingyi said, the angrier she got, and she wanted to vent all the grievance and resentment that had built up in her heart. But before she could finish speaking, the phone was snatched away by her husband.
“How could you be so cruel and ungrateful?” questioned Jingyi, scowling at her husband. “I’ve been so good to you, but you actually betrayed me. What are you thinking? If you want to be with her, let’s just get a divorce. If you don’t want a divorce, then break up with her. Make a choice!” Jingyi was so angry that she started shaking from head to toe—she sank down onto the bed and tears rolled down her cheeks one after another.
Standing beside the bed, her husband hemmed and hawed but just didn’t answer her question directly. The sight of this filled Jingyi with anger and hatred. She had thought that her husband would think of how she had treated him well and would turn back, but now it seemed that he simply had no intention of doing that. Jingyi felt an inexplicable sort of grief. “Could it be that our years of a loving marriage will end like this?” As she thought of this, Jingyi felt extremely miserable.
“You know what, this shows that I’m capable. Anyway, it doesn’t cost me anything. When we were together, she was the one who paid the bills,” said her husband, head held high, without even a shred of guilt.
Jingyi had never imagined that her husband would ever say anything so shameless, and she was so enraged that she felt like her head was about to burst. She said angrily, “Seems that you have made up your mind. You wanna be with her? Fine, I will give you a divorce, and you will leave without any property.” Hearing Jingyi say this, her husband still remained silent.
Wiping away the tears from her face, Jingyi put on her coat and stormed out. While wandering outside her apartment, Jingyi’s eyes were caught by a couple who were taking a walk with their child. The three of them, hand in hand, were talking and laughing and it looked so sweet. Jingyi felt so envious and, without her realizing it, her mind traveled back to the past …
Memories of the Past Leave Her Heartbroken
Being raised up by two parents who had argued all the time, Jingyi desperately longed for a blissful marriage and a happy family after she grew up. When she got to marrying age, Qingshan quietly came into her life. After dating each other for three years, they walked into the marriage hall. After that, Qingshan worked very hard to provide them with a good life and he treated Jingyi very well. Though their life wasn’t wealthy, they seldom quarreled or fought with each other. Jingyi felt very happy and content and she thought she was finally living the life that she had dreamed about.
Ten years after their marriage, one day Qingshan had a car accident on his way to work and nearly lost his life. In order to treat his condition, Jingyi sold everything valuable in their home and took care of Qingshan in the hospital day and night, giving him body massages, washing him and feeding him liquid food. At that time, Qingshan asked her, when he had been in a coma, had she thought of leaving him with their child and marrying someone better? Jingyi said no matter whether he would wake up or not, she would take care of him and would not marry another guy. Hearing this, Qingshan was very moved and vowed that he would be good to Jingyi in the future. After being discharged from the hospital, Qingshan couldn’t do any heavy labor, so Jingyi alone undertook the burdens of running a household. Although it was bitter and tiring, she felt as long as they loved each other, it was all worth it.
Having gone through this hardship together, Jingyi believed even more strongly that no one could destroy the relationship between her and Qingshan and that they would spend the rest of their lives happily together. But to her surprise, she hadn’t been working out of town for two months when Qingshan had an affair. This made Jingyi angry and resentful, and her heart almost broke. She didn’t know how she and Qingshan would live together in the future. This matter then became a thorn in her heart, entirely occupying her mind. She could neither eat nor sleep, and in less than twenty days she lost several pounds.
At this time, a little boy’s ball rolled up to Jingyi’s feet and broke her reverie of her painful past. Coming back to reality, Jingyi didn’t know how she should face Qingshan. In her extreme pain, she called out to God, “O God, since I found out my husband’s affair, I’ve been feeling a stabbing pain in my heart. I don’t want my intact family to split up, but I feel it so hard to forgive my husband. I really cannot overcome this environment. God, I don’t understand what Your will is behind this. Please enlighten and guide me and allow me to understand the truth, so that I may emerge from my pain.”
The Root of Her Husband’s Infidelity
Later, Jingyi came across these words from God, “One after another, all these trends carry an evil influence that continually degenerates man, causing them to continually lose conscience, humanity and reason, and that lowers their morals and their quality of character more and more, to the extent that we can even say the majority of people now have no integrity, no humanity, neither do they have any conscience, much less any reason. So what are these trends? You cannot see these trends with the naked eye. When the wind of a trend blows through, perhaps only a small number of people will become the trendsetters. They start off doing this kind of thing, accepting this kind of idea or this kind of perspective. The majority of people, however, in the midst of their unawareness, will still be continually infected, assimilated and attracted by this kind of trend, until they all unknowingly and involuntarily accept it, and are all submerged in and controlled by it. For man who is not of sound body and mind, who never knows what is truth, who cannot tell the difference between positive and negative things, these kinds of trends one after another make them all willingly accept these trends, the life view and values that come from Satan. They accept what Satan tells them on how to approach life and the way to live that Satan ‘bestows’ on them. They have not the strength, neither do they have the ability, much less the awareness to resist.”
From God’s words, Jingyi came to understand that Satan is just using social trends to corrupt and harm people. Each trend that Satan causes to arise carries an evil influence as well as the corrupt thoughts and fallacious views on life that Satan aims to instill in people, such as “Seize the day for pleasure, for life is short,” “Don’t ask for eternity, be happy with now,” “The red flag at home does not fall, the colored flags outside flutter in the breeze,” “Love is not a sin,” and so on. Inundated and influenced by these evil views of Satan, people continually lose conscience and reason and revere evil more and more, and they gratify their physical lusts and become extremely depraved. For example, some people, after getting rich by starting their own businesses, begin to keep mistresses and regard this as a marker of status, some young men fool about with rich ladies as their gigolos, taking this as a display of competence, and there are even more ordinary people who are caught in the evil trend of affairs and are unable to break free. As a result, some families are ripped apart by extramarital affairs; some people cannot accept the breakup of their marriages and choose to retaliate or even murder, ending up behind bars. And there are also some who get venereal diseases as a result of engaging in adultery. All this are the disasters they bring to themselves and their families by following evil social trends and indulging in lust. Living in such a filthy environment, people who lack the truth simply cannot ward off the encroachments of the evil trend, but can only follow along with it in spite of themselves. For many years, Qingshan had been honest and self-disciplined and treated her very well, but now he actually betrayed her. Moreover, not only did he not feel any shame, but he even thought he was capable. This was also caused by him being influenced by evil trends.
Jingyi also thought of God’s words, “Betrayal is man’s nature.” People, regardless of whether they have betrayed others or not, are the same in nature and essence, and as long as there is the right environment, we are all capable of doing things that violate our morals and vows. Qingshan was also a person corrupted by Satan who didn’t have the ability to overcome sin, so he could be influenced by evil trends and betray his marriage. Jingyi then remembered a woman who had committed adultery in the Bible. In accordance with the law, this woman should have been stoned to death, but the Lord Jesus knew the sinful nature of man, so He gave her an opportunity to repent and told her not to sin anymore. “When God is doing His work, He always gives people opportunities to repent,” Jingyi thought. “I am also a corrupt person who often commits sins and defies God. Since God doesn’t remember any of my sins, I should also be tolerant toward my husband and give him a chance to repent.” When she thought of this, her hatred toward her husband faded a bit.
Searching for the Root of Her Suffering
Afterward, Qingshan swore to Jingyi that he would never get in touch with that woman again, but Jingyi was still somewhat worried. As soon as she heard Qingshan’s cellphone ringing, she would immediately tense up and listen carefully to find out who it was from, even when she was cooking. She was always afraid that Qingshan would contact that woman again.
One day, Jingyi discovered from Qingshan’s call history that he had again contacted that woman. Her heart once again dropped and she thought: How could I go on living with him? Last time, under the guidance of God’s words, I chose to forgive my husband and give him a chance. But I never thought that he would break his word and continue contacting that woman. I really can’t live like this. I should just divorce him. But as she thought of how the family she had worked so hard to build would fall apart, Jingyi felt greatly tormented in her heart. She found herself caught in a dilemma. If she divorced, she couldn’t let go of her feelings for Qingshan, but if she didn’t, they wouldn’t be happy together since Qingshan no longer cared about her. As she struggled painfully, Jingyi cried out to God, “O God, I don’t know what I should do now. I don’t want to divorce my husband. I am now in great pain and I feel lost and have no idea how to go on. I beg You to enlighten and guide me, allowing me to find the root of my suffering.”
After the prayer, Jingyi saw these words of God, “Pernicious influences that thousands of years of ‘the lofty spirit of nationalism’ have left deep in the human heart as well as the feudal thinking by which people are bound and chained, without an iota of freedom, with no will to aspire or persevere, no desire to make progress, remaining instead passive and regressive, entrenched in a slave mentality, and so on—these objective factors have imparted an indelibly filthy and ugly cast to the ideological outlook, ideals, morality, and disposition of humanity. Humans, it would seem, are living in a terrorist world of darkness, which none among them seeks to transcend, and none among them thinks of moving on to an ideal world; rather, they are content with their lot in life, to spend their days bearing and raising children, striving, sweating, going about their chores, dreaming of a comfortable and happy family, of conjugal affection, of filial children, of joy in their twilight years as they peacefully live out their lives…. For tens, thousands, tens of thousands of years until now, people have been squandering their time in this way, with no one creating a perfect life, all intent only on mutual slaughter in this dark world, on the race for fame and fortune, and on intriguing against one another. Who has ever sought after God’s will? Has anyone ever heeded the work of God?”
From God’s words, Jingyi came to know that the conjugal happiness and family peace she had worked hard to pursue came from the ideas and views with which Satan inundated people. Satan makes people regard having a blissful marriage as happiness and as a beautiful life, so that they spend their entire lives working toward this goal. Jingyi thought of how, since she was little, she had dreamed of having a happy family when she grew up and how she had worked hard to achieve this goal after she got married. When her husband had an affair and betrayed her, she was afraid that their marriage which she had spent 20 years building would end this way, and was overwhelmed by the torment from his betrayal, to the point that she even didn’t want to go on living. Influenced by the wrong views Satan instilled in her, she had regarded her family and husband as the most important elements in her life and taken family peace and conjugal happiness as her life goals, and that was why when facing the danger of losing them, she felt she was going to lose all sense of meaning in her life.
But through God’s words and her own experiences, Jingyi came to understand that after we humans were corrupted by Satan, we have all become selfish by nature and only care about personal gain so that there is no true love between people, and even the love between a husband and wife is built on the foundation of each individual’s own interests and cannot stand up to tests. Through self-reflection, she found herself just like this. She had given so much for her husband only so that he could show more concern for her. But when her husband cheated on her, she became full of resentment for him and even wanted to divorce him without giving him any property. Obviously, she was also unable to spend for her husband selflessly. It seemed that the happy marriage she had been pursuing simply couldn’t be obtained among corrupt mankind and that to pursue this could not bring her true happiness. The revelations in the word of God allowed Jingyi to see through Satan’s cunning scheme and she no longer wanted to be toyed with and harmed by Satan.
Heading in a New Direction in Life
Afterward, Jingyi saw these words of God, “You are a created being—you should of course worship God and pursue a life of meaning. If you don’t worship God but live within the filthy flesh, then aren’t you just a beast in human attire? Since you are a human being, you should expend yourself for God and endure all suffering! You should gladly and assuredly accept the little suffering you are subjected to today and live a meaningful life, like Job, like Peter. … You are people who pursue the right path, those who seek improvement. You are people who rise up in the nation of the great red dragon, those whom God calls righteous. Is that not the most meaningful life?”
Through reading God’s words, Jingyi came to understand that she is a created being, so she should pursue the truth, worship God, perform her function as a created being and live out a meaningful life, and that only living this way is the right path in life and the correct pursuit and goal that a created being should have. With God’s words showing her the direction for her future, Jingyi silently made a resolution that she would never pursue family peace and conjugal happiness again but would pursue to perform her duties well as a created being and live to love and satisfy God. After that, Jingyi felt incredibly released in her heart and her whole body felt much more relaxed.
A month later, Jingyi threw herself into fulfilling her duties. Although sometimes she still couldn’t help wondering if her husband was again in contact with that woman and thus would feel a bit troubled, she was able to be aware that these thoughts came from Satan, through which it was trying to disturb her heart. Then she would immediately pray to God, saying, “O God! Please protect my heart from being constrained by this. I know I’m a created being and I should put my heart into worshiping You instead of always suspecting my husband. I wish to entrust my husband into Your hands and no matter whether or not my husband continues contacting that woman, and how our marriage will be in the future, I wish to let nature take its course.” After this prayer, Jingyi’s heart would gradually calm down and the pain in her heart would also subside. Later, as she devoted her heart to her duties and maintained a normal relationship with God, she no longer cared about whom her husband was calling and chatting with. That was when she felt that her life was free and released, and she also appreciated that only by living by God’s words and pursuing to satisfy God could she feel peaceful and at ease and live out a life of meaning. When Jingyi let go of the worries about her marriage, she was surprised that her husband stopped contacting that woman and their life restored its original peace.
Now whenever Jingyi sees the people around her afflicted by extra-marital affairs and living in pain, deep emotions well up within her. She is very grateful that she could come before God and, under the guidance of God’s words, change her mistaken views on life and values and no longer be toyed with and harmed by Satan. Meanwhile, she also came to know what the right path of life is, and began to seek to fulfill her duties of a created being to satisfy God and pursue to live out a meaningful life.
