By Lili
It was seven thirty a.m., and the traffic was at its peak. Lili, sweat beading on her forehead, was hurrying to her work place through the crowds.
Lili was engaged in the sale of cosmetics. It had been three years since she entered this trade. She knew clearly that for salespeople, the sales figures were the key to showing their performance and deciding how much they would earn. As long as they had good performance figures, everything good would come to them, such as a large salary, bonuses, the appreciation of the boss, the high regard of their colleagues, and a chance of promotion. But recently Lili had met with a thorny problem.
When doing the annual accounts, Lili had found that her sales figures for each month were different. Sometimes they were high, and sometimes they were low. More importantly, Lili had found that most of her customers were new customers and that there were very few repeat customers or regulars. In order to solve this problem, she bought various books on sales to read, expecting to master some new sale skills. But no matter how hard she tried, it worked only a little. So these days, she always wore a worried frown and was eager to find out what the crux of the problem was.
At a church gathering yesterday, Lili opened up to the brothers and sisters about the problems she had. She thought that maybe God’s words could help her solve her problems, and sure enough, from some of God’s words a sister read to her, she gained a lot.
God’s words say, “You ought to know that God likes those who are honest. In essence, God is faithful, and so His words can always be trusted; His actions, furthermore, are faultless and unquestionable, which is why God likes those who are absolutely honest with Him. Honesty means giving your heart to God, being genuine with God in all things, being open with Him in all things, never hiding the facts, not trying to deceive those above and below you, and not doing things only to curry favor with God. In short, to be honest is to be pure in your actions and words, and to deceive neither God nor man” (“Three Admonitions”).
Lili would never forget what the sister had communicated with her: God is faithful and so He likes honest people. God requires a believer in Him to seek to be an honest person. To be honest is to be true in words and actions, and not to be deceitful: Not to deceive God nor to deceive people.
God’s words, as well as the fellowship of the sister, left Lili wondering: Why didn’t she have steady sales figures? Why didn’t she have a stable and long-standing group of customers? Ordinarily, when she made sales, her aim was to persuade the customers not only to buy the products but also to buy the high-priced sets of products. In order to do this, Lili learned how to sweet talk, and learned to treat different people in different ways. For those who could afford the products, Lili would say whatever sounded pleasant, and no matter whether they were in need of the high-priced products or not, she would continuously overstate the products’ merits so that they would buy them. That was one way she raised her performance figures. However, it was temporary. The exaggerated merits couldn’t be confirmed by the customers and many of them regretted buying the expensive cosmetics. This directly affected her reputation, and therefore her customers were one-offs, not regulars. In God’s view, such behavior was deceitful, not honest.
Just like the afternoon a couple of day ago: Lili had worked for half a day, but her sales figures were very low. Lili was watching every customer who came before the counter, and she, like a scanner, carefully scanned the customers, including the way they dressed, their jewelry, purse and skin condition.
After getting a general feel for the kinds of customers there and their purchasing power, Lili selected one customer, a white collar worker who was all dolled up with makeup and was dressed in a designer business suit. By then, in Lili’s eyes, the other customers before the counter were virtually nonexistent.
Lili walked over to the white collar worker. With a professional smile, she patiently and carefully introduced the products. Meanwhile, Lili paid constant attention to the customer’s facial expression to judge what product she took interest in, and then Lili specially promoted that product.
In fact, to say she was specially promoting products is putting it mildly; frankly speaking, she was exaggerating the product’s merits so that the customer would think that the shop had what she wanted and there was no limit to what was on offer. In the end she was persuaded by Lili to buy a good eight products. With a satisfied smile on her face, the customer took the bill to the cashiers.
Thinking of it now, Lili felt ashamed of her deeds: In order to raise her performance figures, she had said and done things against her own convictions. In the past, when she didn’t believe in God, she didn’t know about these things, nor did she have any intuition that she was following Satan’s evil trends. But now she was a believer in God, and she knew that God liked honest people. If she still acted as she used to, it wouldn’t be in accordance with God’s heart. So Lili made up her mind that since she now knew God’s requirement, she would act according to God’s requests and firmly be an honest person.
Almost without knowing how, Lili arrived at the mall where she worked. Having smartly got everything ready, Lili prayed to God in her heart and asked Him to help her practice His words and be an honest person.
While she was thinking this, along came an ordinary-looking lady in ordinary clothes. Lili didn’t, because of her appearance, ignore her like she used to before but offered to serve her. After getting to know the lady’s requirements, Lili almost began to naturally exaggerate the products and recommend high-priced ones, but then she became aware that this was deceitful and didn’t conform to God’s intention, and so she quickly gave it up. Then, Lili made an objective and honest introduction of the product the lady liked, from its functions to its merits. And, knowing the actual needs of the lady, Lili also introduced a mid-range product.
The lady felt quite surprised that Lili didn’t push a high-priced product but recommended a suitable one for her, and she was very satisfied. But when she was about to buy it, she found that she didn’t have any money on her. After Lili, who had felt glad for having practiced some truth heard that, anger welled up inside her. At that very moment, Lili thought of a section of God’s words, “Since you acknowledge that you are a member of the house of God, you ought then to bring peace of mind to God and satisfy Him in all things. You must, in other words, be principled in your actions and conform to the truth in them” (“Three Admonitions”). God’s words enlightened Lili in time and woke her up. She realized that since she was practicing to be honest she couldn’t lose her temper because a customer didn’t buy anything. What’s more, the lady didn’t mean it, and so Lili should be tolerant. Thinking of that, Lili wasn’t angry anymore. A smile appeared again on her face and she said easily to her, “It doesn’t matter. You are welcome any time.”
Obviously, the lady didn’t expect that Lili could still serve her with a smile. She was moved because Lili neither looked down on her for wearing ordinary clothes nor recommended high-priced products to her, but only promoted what was suitable for her. What’s more, after busily serving her for hours, Lili didn’t scold her for not having money to buy things. So the lady made a decision …
Soon it was time for Lili to go off work. Her performance figures were low that day, but she was still happy in her heart as she’d practiced being an honest person. To Lili’s surprise, the lady who had come that morning came again, bought six sets of cosmetics, offered to join as a member and continuously praised Lili for her honesty and trustworthiness.
When Lili heard what the lady said, a look of beautiful delight spread over her face, not because she had sold products but because she’d got a taste of the sweetness that came from practicing the truth. In her heart, Lili clearly knew that it was not that she herself was good or reliable but rather, thanks to the guidance of God’s words, she could live out a little likeness of an honest person. Though she was still lacking much, Lili gained confidence from this experience in practicing to be honest in her life and work.
