By Li Cheng
I’m a farmer and used to sustain myself by farming. In ordinary life I saw some businessmen get money by tricks without laboring, so I often wondered when I could do some business and earn money easily like them?
In 2001, I accepted God’s work in the last days. God says, “You ought to know that God likes an honest man. God has the substance of faithfulness, and so His word can always be trusted. Furthermore, His actions are faultless and unquestionable. This is why God likes those who are absolutely honest with Him. Honesty means to give your heart to God; never to play Him false in anything; to be open with Him in all things, never hiding the truth; never to do that which deceives those above and deludes those below; and never to do that which merely ingratiates yourself with God. In short, to be honest is to refrain from impurity in your actions and words, and to deceive neither God nor man” (“Three Admonitions”). When I read these words, I thought: It’s over. I will be unable to do business in the future. God likes honest people and asks man to be honest. I cannot earn much money if I practice being honest in business; but if I play tricks to make more money, which is the behavior of a deceitful man, I’ll be disgusted and hated by God. So I can only do farm work. From then on, I harbored the absurd viewpoint—being an honest person according to God’s requirements is a loss and is not practicable at all. God, however, counterattacked my erroneous notions with facts.
In the spring of 2016, I began to trade in scrap because of the needs of living. One day, I went to a garage to collect scrap iron. When I took the weight, I admonished myself: I am a believer in God; I should be honest instead of giving short measure. Profiting at others’ expense would disgrace God’s name. So, I weighed the scrap iron twice, which was 29.75kg in total. Then I said, “It may be counted as 30kg.” Hearing that, the boss said gladly, “We can have a long-term business relationship from now on. I’ll sell all my scrap iron to you. You can come every four or five days.” “Great, I’ll surely come!” I said merrily. He went on to say, “Do You Know? I have driven two scrap collectors away before you. They reckoned that I didn’t know the weight of the scrap and tried to play tricks on me. In fact, I had weighed it and just wanted to see whether they were honest or not. But they two deceived me. You’re honest. There are not so many people as honest as you now.” Out of the garage, I was very excited and thought: How wonderful God is! The garage is just about 100 meters away from the recycling center. That is like pennies from heaven. Previously, I assumed that it was impossible for a businessman to earn money with no tricks. This time I saw that an honest man wouldn’t suffer losses, and instead, he would be accompanied by God’s blessings. God likes such person, and so does man. Henceforth I went to the garage every few days, and the boss always sold his scrap to me. From this I truly appreciated that being honest isn’t a loss at all.
One day, I went to a recycling center to sell waste paper. Riding on my tricycle, I got onto the weighbridge. After the boss took the weight, I unloaded the tricycle and weighed it, and then settled accounts with the boss. When I took the money in my hands, I felt there must be something wrong. I thought as I was walking: It was wrong. I just sold over 50kg of waste paper, 0.8 yuan per kilogram; therefore it should be no more than 50 yuan. But why was I paid over 100 yuan? Ah! I remember: When the empty tricycle was weighed, I was not on it, so the boss had figured in my weight. Should I tell him the truth? I turned round to take a look at the boss, who was very busy, and thought: No! I can’t tell him! Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost. Why not take advantage of him? As I was planning to do like this, God guided me within: You should be honest. God likes honest people and hates deceitful men. The Holy Spirit watches over everything. Right now, God is watching, so are Satan and angels. That’s right! God wants the testimony of me. I cannot take the money. I should be honest and stand testimony for God. So I walked to the boss, told him the truth, and paid back the extra money. He took it joyfully and said approvingly, “Few people are as honest as you!” Although I didn’t get more money, I felt steadfast and peaceful for practicing being honest according to the word of God. Several days later, I went there to sell scrap again. To my surprise, the boss gave me lots of firewood for free. Afterward, I went there every few days, and the boss would always throw some firewood into my tricycle without my request. From then on, I needn’t buy coals in winter, which saved me much money. In addition, I found the boss trusted me more than others. When I sold scrap to him, sometimes I loaded my tricycle up with two kinds of things, cardboard and waste paper, whose prices were different. When weighing them, in order to be spared the trouble, I would tell the boss the weight of the cardboard, and the rest was the weight of the waste paper. He would write down directly what I said without weighing the waste paper again since he trusted me. But when others sold scrap to him, he would take the weight of different items one by one.
Before, I mistakenly thought that an honest person couldn’t do business in the world; he could hardly earn money as a businessman. But when I put into practice the truth of being an honest person required by God, being straightforward and deceiving neither God nor man, I gained God’s blessings. Not only did I not lose anything, I also received more grace. Moreover, in my practical experiences, I saw it was not that believers in God can’t do business; rather, as long as one does business in accordance with God’s requirements, his business would become increasingly prosperous for long.
Thank God! I have seen in my experiences that being an honest man is not a loss at all. As long as we act according to God’s words and take God’s words as basic standard, we’ll have a way forward. God says, “The future direction will be thus: Those who gain the utterances from God’s mouth will have a path to walk on earth, and be they businessmen or scientists, or educators or industrialists, those who are without God’s words will have a hard time taking even a single step, and will be forced to seek the true way. This is what is meant by, ‘With the truth you’ll walk the entire world; without the truth, you’ll get nowhere’” (“The Millennial Kingdom Has Arrived”). It is clear that in the future, whatever industry you work in and whatever business you do, you can never turn away from God’s words. Only those who practice God’s words can gain God’s blessings, prosper in the world, and live steadfastly and joyfully. From now on, I will continue pursuing to practice the truth of being honest and live out the likeness of a real man to comfort God’s heart!
