Confusion is a state of not knowing what to do,
how to do it, or when to do it.
The key to getting out of confusion is to clarify these three questions.

Implementing God's Word in Our Lives

Today, I want to speak on the topic of living a life of abundance. Before that, I want to discuss the meaning of living a life of abundance. We have already published seven or eight books on living abundantly. If we could publish one every week, it would be of great significance. We often say that, in fact, we will implement the blueprint of our entire education system in the future. Brother HF and his team are turning the ministry of written works into booklets. These booklets will become a very important spiritual asset of our church. Their basic function is to help us implement God's Word in our lives. Our church is a very practical church, demonstrating spiritual ministry to the fullest. We also implement spiritual life and spiritual principles in our lives to the fullest extent.

The Concept of Confusion

Today's topic on living abundantly is: Breaking Free from Confusion. In my ministry, I have found that many people are confused. When I ask them questions, their response is, I don't know. When I see their expression and eyes, I know they genuinely don't know, revealing a confused expression. They basically remain in a state of confusion. Therefore, when I train people, I often encourage brothers and sisters to break free from confusion. So, how do we break free from confusion? I will give you a concept of what it is. Confusion is actually a state of mind, a state where people do not know what to do, how to do it, or when to do it. This state of confusion can lead people into depression and decadence.

The parents of Chinese children studying in Singapore send their children here, but they do not know what their children will encounter in Singapore, and they find it difficult to do anything about it. Fortunately, some brothers and sisters have come among us, and these problems become relatively simple. I have encountered two types of children studying in Singapore: one type is those who study desperately, take exams desperately, and are bookworms; the other type is those who do not like to study and spend their days watching TV and reading novels, falling into decadence. Both types of people are basically in a state of confusion. They do not know why they are studying, nor do they know why they are reading these books; they only know to study. Those who do not study do not know why they are not studying, nor do they know why they are watching TV and playing on their phones. In fact, these are all manifestations of confusion.

So, what is confusion? Confusion is a state of not knowing what to do, not knowing how to do it, and not knowing when to do it. We have defined confusion in this way. The next step is easy. We just need to figure out what we need to do, how we need to do it, and when we need to do it to solve the problem. If some of us are still in a state of confusion, you need to start listening carefully to these three things: What exactly should I do? How exactly should I do it? When exactly should I do it? These three things are very specific. So, how do we break free from confusion? The most important thing is to remove this myth. This myth is: I don't know, and then staying in the state of I don't know. This is a critical matter. In fact, everything in the entire scientific development is from not knowing to knowing. You may not know today, but you can know tomorrow; if you don't know tomorrow, you can know the day after tomorrow; someday you will know.

The Key to Breaking Free from Confusion is Understanding Yourself

The key to breaking free from confusion is to start understanding yourself, what you don't know, what you know, what you should know, and what you should learn. Some time ago, we mentioned things like setting goals. Setting goals itself is an exploration. Of course, I think there are still some problems in the whole process, such as lack of self-control, which is another issue. Today, we will focus on the issue of breaking free from confusion.

Everything starts from not knowing to knowing. Today you know a little, tomorrow you know a little more, the day after tomorrow you know even more. Little by little, you will find that you know and you are not confused. In fact, none of us know everything all at once. People who study well or have strong abilities, what are they doing all day long? They are turning what they don't know into something they know, breaking free from confusion. Why did I title the topic Breaking Free from Confusion? Because if you don't move, you will never get out. Being able to ask questions is a progress in itself, it does not necessarily solve the problem. Your progress must move forward, and you will walk out of it. If we know today that everything is from not knowing to knowing, we will not be confused. Knowing this, the problem becomes simple. If you don't know and continue to stay in the state of not knowing, you will be very confused and lost.

Let me give you an example. How do I find a job? I don't know. How do I write a resume? I don't know. He is confused. He does one casually, thinking he is done, but he is not done because he still needs to keep understand. Today I want to tell everyone that it is normal to not know things. If you know everything, would you be an expert? It is normal that you do not know things. Someone once said that as humanity's understanding of the world's knowledge increases, they find that there is more and more that they do not know. Do you find it strange? Shouldn't the things in this world decrease as I know more and more? Later, facts proved that the more we know, the more we find that we don't know. But this situation does not bring confusion because they will continue to explore.

I will first take you to the Book of Genesis. When God created the universe and all things, God created the things on earth, He let Adam and Eve manage the things on earth. But if God created the things on earth and they are already perfect, what do Adam and Eve still manage? Have you ever thought about this question? What do they manage? Since God created it perfectly, why do we still need to manage it? Because although what God created is perfect, He still left some things for us to develop. It is for us to explore, understand, and know His creation, and in this process to continuously explore, understand, and know God. That is to say, knowing God is endless, and knowing what God creates is also endless. This is why the more you know, the more you don't know. If you know everything in this world and there is nothing more to know, there is no point in living. It is precisely because God left a part for us to explore and understand that the exploration and understanding itself is the meaning of our lives.

Are you still confused now? You say I am very confused, I don't know many things. Then I tell you: it is normal that you do not know, and then your task is to turn those things you did not know into things that you know, and there will be no confusion.

Start Walking From the Simplest Place

So how do we keep moving forward? From a state of not knowing to a state of knowing, how do we move? Have any of us played jigsaw puzzles? Putting together a large number of pieces from a picture. How do you put it together? Where do you start? From the corners, you look for the four corners because the corners are straight edges. So start from there, from the simplest place. If you start with a piece in the middle, where all four sides are not straight edges, you will not be able to start because that is the most complex piece. So in the process of exploring, in the process of moving from not knowing to knowing, start from the simplest one.

Why are people confused when solving problems? Because they start by finding the most difficult place to solve, of course they will be confused. If I were them, I would also be confused. If you start from the simplest place, from the corners and edges, once you start, it will be easier. Everything has a simple place for you to start, can you find it? That is to say, the whole exploration process is also an evolution from incomplete information to complete information. Why do many people in the church have different opinions? Because they see different things. They probably took a few pieces of the puzzle and came to the pastor and said, Look, why is the church like this? Because you only have those few pieces in your hand. But if you put the whole puzzle together, you will be different. So what does it feel like to piece the whole puzzle together? Piecing the whole puzzle together is a systematic belief.

So today, brothers and sisters, you will find that some brothers and sisters say the pastor is a book. I think I should be several books. In fact, I have explored a lot of topics in the past few years. Why explore these topics? Because I feel confused, I am confused, I do not know. My initial confusion started from not knowing why I was alive. I found God in search of answers, and then started a wonderful journey in life. So God often does some wonderful and revelatory work in my life, and then I explore one topic, two topics, three topics. Over the past few years, I have put a lot of effort into doing these works, and doing these works actually adds a lot of fun to life. Then from not knowing to knowing, the most important ability in this process is pondering.

Breaking Free from Confusion Requires Pondering

Have you ever pondered? Pondering things is very interesting. For example, because of my work, I saw the cables in the computer room. There are hundreds of servers and switches in the computer room, and their cables are in the thousands. They look terrifying. Once they are messed up, you do not know what to do. It is like when you install things at home, that place will be a mess of wires for a while, and you will be annoyed just looking at it. After I saw it, I was very confused. How to organize these things? The problem is that I not only have to solve this problem, but I also have to maintain it. When a problem occurs, I can immediately find the problem. If it is a mess, you will be extremely painful. When I was solving this problem, I would go to the computer room when I had nothing to do, look at it, and then pondered. When I returned to the office, I would draw with a pen again, but it did not work. Then one day, I finally figured it out. How did I solve these problems? I designed something called cable management. Why are cables messy? Because they have excess length, I grasped the essence of things. Because the length of the cable is exactly the length it needs, you put it up and there will be no excess, no mess; if it is not exactly the length, there will be an extra piece, you will be annoyed because you cannot wrap it or not wrap it, and you cannot reattach it after you cut it off. Later, I grasped an essence, which is the management of excess cables.

After you ponder over everything, you will find the pattern. Finding the pattern of jigsaw puzzles, finding the pattern of cables, finding the pattern of finding a job, finding the pattern of writing a resume. After you find the pattern of things, you will not be confused. The problem is to grasp the essence of the problem. Pondering, exploring, and understanding are the most important characteristics of us human beings. If a person's first reaction when encountering a problem is I don't know, why is this so, he will definitely be confused. Today I tell you that learning has an essential pattern. There is a method to how a person learns, and this thing needs to be pondered. I have a habit. When I take the subway, airplane, or train, my mind is rarely idle. If you look at it, you will find that my notebook is full of words. Why is this so? Because I have been pondering.

The Future Development Model of the Church

For example, the activities we experienced in October and November. I did not grasp the essence of things, but I will explore it. Now I can tell you that I have grasped the essence of things, and I know what I am doing. For example, the church must be a network church because it greatly improves operational efficiency. Now what do we do next? I cannot only be a network church all the time. I have mastered a law of things development: regularly and in shifts, bring them to close proximity to receive training and establish our close relationship. I am always pondering. When I cannot figure it out, I will chat with my brothers and sisters closer to the church. I am also pondering during the chat. They often see the expression on my face when I am thinking. Things that I pondered, I tried it as I pondered, drew it as I pondered, and I pondered it out. So, don't stop in confusion, keep moving forward.

Why Attend University?

Recently, I pondered about something, which is why did I attend university? Do you think pondering it has value? It has value because I grasped the essence of it: to make a living. If it is in order to make a living, you must have a degree, but if you have a degree but no ability, what do you do? You cannot make a living. This matter has been circulating in my mind. Later, I pondered it out, which is to train this person's ability to make a living from a young age. Then I asked myself, are what I learned really useful? Geometry, mathematics, and algebra do not seem to be of much use. Because I am doing computer work, we were born in the fourth industrial revolution, do you still need to calculate with a pen? No need. As long as you give the computer an equation, it can immediately give you the result. There is no need for you to deduce it at all. Did we waste time learning to deduce by hand? It was a waste. Is it not good if we save this time to train our abilities to make a living? good. So when should we do career planning? I started to grab this essence.

Of course, if they can be admitted to Tsinghua or Peking University like Sister KR, they should go. There is no issue there. But if they are admitted to a third-rate university, then just forget it. They will also be unemployed after graduating from a third-rate university. It is better to train their abilities to make a living now. It is already very good if they don't pick up bad habits and don't make a group of bad friends. We are digging out the basic laws of things in the process of pondering these things. If we give him a positioning after graduating from elementary school and let him take out 10%, 20%, or 30% of his time to practice his ability to make a living, he can still live even without a degree. Later, I studied the developed countries. They have a characteristic. If you go to Australia or New Zealand today, you will find that the income of blue-collar workers in these places is quite high. If you are a sewer repair worker in Guangdong, your monthly income is very high. So why is the income high but no one does it? Because people are misled to go to university, get a third-rate one, and then there is no time to do these things. After graduation, they do not know how to do these things either. Then they continue to hang on, preferring to earn a meager income rather than to do these things.

My younger brother is a typical person without education. He graduated from high school, but now he is doing very well as an electrician. In our area, they all call him Master Liu. They all say that it is reassuring to find Master Liu for renovation work, and he does a good job. Is there a problem with making a living? no, none at all. But when it comes to his son, my younger brother and sister-in-law, they did not find the essence of things. In the end, they sent their child to a non-first-rate university. After graduating, they do not know what to do. So when I went home in July, I discussed this issue with them, but did they ponder it carefully? no, they still live according to people's inherent thinking. What do you do when the times change? The result is being thrown down.

So you must have real skills. There is a kind of panic among us, not an economic or political panic, but a skills panic. You must have a feeling of skills panic. Do you have skills? If you don't, what can you do? What do you rely on to make a living? This is a critical matter. Of course, don't go into industries that will be eliminated in the Industry 4.0 era. You will be finished if you go into industries that will be eliminated. After looking at the Industry 4.0 era, the best choice is to go to church and be a full-time co-worker, but whether I want you or not is another matter. You need to know that it is difficult for machines to solve people's spiritual problems; it is not easy for computers to solve people's spiritual problems. This requires those of us who minister.

Pondering is the Key to Breaking Free

Pondering is the key to breaking free. Breaking free from confusion requires you to explore, understand, and ponder. When you cannot figure it out, you will find a key: I go to the pastor, I go to my pastoral district leader, I look for my pastors and then we explore and understand. So today we start to understand, we must develop the habit of exploring and pondering. Recently, I found that real estate is a very interesting thing. Wealthy people are all related to real estate. Can you take out 1% of the time to understand real estate, and then you will know how real estate works? You will discover opportunities and seize them, and you can obtain huge wealth. Therefore, developing the habit of exploring and pondering is very important because that is the image of God. God wants us to manage this world. How can you manage if you don't ponder? If you only slap your head, it is useless to slap out bean curd brain, so we must begin to learn, explore, and seek.

I know a person; he is very interesting. In our era, the clothes were very rustic. We felt that the dramas we wanted to watch were the ones where the clothes looked good, but no one in that era thought about it. But the boss of a tailor shop in Dashilan was very good. He would go to see movies as soon as there were some, especially foreign movies. When he saw beautiful clothes in the movie, he would come back to ponder, and then go to tailor them. Two weeks later, the same clothes were hanging in the store, and they sold very well. Other tailor shops did not make money, but his tailor shop made huge amounts of money. You say this person is so interesting. He came out of the cinema and he didn't know what the movie was about, he was there to see the clothes. He is a very powerful person. If you and I go to see this movie, after watching it, we only know the story, and we don't know anything else at all. This is what happens when you don't know how to ponder and explore.

There is also a person I know, who is also very interesting. He opened a restaurant. Every Saturday, he does not eat at his restaurant, but goes to other restaurants and points out its signature dishes. After returning home, he goes to the kitchen to cook until he can make the same dishes, and every time people want a table of dishes at his restaurant，He will give that dish for free, and if the customers think it tastes good, they will specifically order that dish next time they come, and it will sell very well. He goes out to eat every week, experiments every week, innovates every week, and launches new products every week. Do you think his restaurant will not be popular? So you have to ponder. The most critical thing is that our brothers and sisters have dull eyes, wooden expressions, and then say: I don't know. How can this work?

Pondering Requires an Open Mindset

Pondering requires a concept: an open mind. If you think it is impossible from the very beginning, then you are done, confusion will become your only possibility, and you will be confused for a lifetime if you do not break free. My sense of touch is very sensitive because I have trained it over the years. Someone said to me: Pastor, I have sent in many resumes, but no one has responded. At this time, you should ask yourself why. Once you ask, he says, Is it because of this and that? He knows the reason for this problem. What did he do before? He has an attitude of that's just the way it is. Never tell yourself that's just the way it is, but learn to explore better ways. So have an open mind and remove that impossible-mindset, this mindset will kill you. The green screen environment in our church now is the result of exploration; the software our church uses, I explored for half a year. I know the kind of software I want, so I have been trying to figure it out, the problem is that the management of this software system will not explore, I will do it on my own, equal to I will do the work as 3-5 people. So today our brothers and sisters must learn to understand the essence of confusion. Nothing can withstand pondering; you only need a notebook and a pen, you can draw what you learn.

The person who wrote the book Skills Panic did not attend university. He could have been admitted to Tsinghua and Peking University, but he did not attend. But he is much better than those who graduated from Tsinghua and Peking University. He dropped out of high school in the second year and then wrote this book. When he finished writing this book, he was not much older than Brother JX. Brother JX was 15 years old when he read this book. We must learn a more practical way of thinking. Some Christian pastors believe that Mao Zedong was an atheist, so we cannot say what he said. Why can't we say it? Mao Zedong's On Practice is very good, and his On Contradiction is also very good. Deng Xiaoping's saying that practice is the only standard for testing truth is also very good. You cannot negate them all. So I encourage brothers and sisters to learn to read.

Learn to Read

How to Become a Planning Master? First, become proficient at military books. you must read The Art of War; then read widely, third, have a general idea of what things means, fourth, practice and ponder, and then case exercises, he wrote a lot in details. You need to know that if a person does not ponder, does not learn, and does not explore, even if the opportunities float in front of you, you may not be able to grasp them. So today our brothers and sisters must begin to learn these things. What he says may not be right, but you can take it as a reference and ponder it a little. What these people say is very interesting. This planning ability is called four ounces of strength to move a thousand pounds, which is leverage. Today, I want to teach you one thing, which is that you must learn to use leverage, such as financial leverage, which is bank loans. Let me give everyone an example. If you have 500,000 in hand, you borrow another 500,000, and then you buy 1 million of property. This 1 million of property doubles and becomes 2 million. Then how much money did you make with this 500,000? Made 1.5 million, which is 3 times its amount, because the bank's 500,000 is in operation. This is leverage. But I do not encourage excessive borrowing. Everyone should learn to manage their finances.

Reading the Bible and Reading Textbooks Cannot Replace Each Other

When I was pondering these things, I believe that many pastors have not pondered them. Of course, some pastors have pondered them. Today, I will tell everyone where they have not pondered them. I thought: God, if I pray every day, I do not study math, English, Chinese, and physics, and then I go to university, can I get in? God ignored me, He was too lazy to ignore me. I asked again: God, I pray, read the Book of Songs, and sing, but I did not do well on the exam. Why? Later, I pondered it out. These things cannot replace each other. Prayer cannot replace reading the Bible, and reading the Bible cannot replace prayer; praying in the spirit cannot replace praying with understanding, and praying with understanding cannot replace praying in the spirit. That is to say, it must be complete. Reading the Bible cannot replace reading math, and reading math cannot replace reading the Bible. You must clarify these things one by one in our daily lives. Don't wait until you are 50 or 60 years old when you ask God why God did this? God will answer you: Because you are too lazy, you don't do anything or pondered.

Some Christians have a very strong religious flavor. I myself hate the religious flavor very much. You will not see the religious flavor in me. Although I am very good at doing healing and deliverance, I really do not have the religious flavor in me. I will not speak religious things on the stage, and I live a very secular life off the stage. I am who I am on and off the stage. I am that cloud pastor of the cloud church. Although I live in the clouds, my feet are still on the ground. For example, the topics we discussed, such as time management and emotion management, were all explored by me. While learning from others, while pondereding, it became today's content of living an abundant life in our church, including stress management, what stress is, you must understand these things. I have been studying fear for a long time, and I found that many people have fear. Slowly, I have a very deep understanding of fear. We will not talk about fear today, just about when you encounter one of these things, you should not let it remain in confusion.

Develop a Habit of Pondering and Learn to Grasp the Essence of Things

Vague things will create confusion, they are all bad, we must to develop a habit

Summary

Let me summarise. To break free from confusion, cultivate a habit of pondering and exploring. Do not remain in ignorance. Create a table for yourself, noting what you know, what you do not know, and what you need to know and understand. Then, go forth and explore, ponder, and delve into these matters. You will find what you seek, for that is the kind of person God desires.

For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. (Luke 11:10)

This applies not only to spiritual matters, but also to matters of worldly management. Amen!