By Lili, China
It was seven thirty a.m., and the traffic was at its peak. In the crowd, Lili, sweat beading on her forehead, was hurrying to her work place.
Lili was engaged in the sale of cosmetics. It had been three years since she entered this trade. She had a clear knowledge that as a salesperson, the sales figures were the key to show their levels and decide how much they could earn. As long as they had good performance figures, everything would come upon them, such as a large salary, a prize, the appreciation of the boss, the high regard of the colleagues and a chance of promotion. But recently Lili met with a trouble.
When making the annual summary, Lili found that her sales figures for each month were different. Sometimes they were high, and sometimes they were low. More importantly, Lili found most of her customers were new customers and that there were very few repeat customers and regulars. In order to solve this problem, she bought various books on sales to read, expecting to master some sale skills. But no matter how hard she tried, it worked so little. These days, she had always been wearing a worried frown and she was eager to find out what the crux of the problem was.
When having a gathering yesterday, Lili opened up to brothers and sisters about the problems she met with. She thought that maybe God’s words could help her solve her problems, and sure enough, from 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 wouldn’t forget what the sister had communicated with her: God is faithful and so He likes an honest man. God requires a believer in Him to seek to be an honest man. To be honest is to be true in his words and actions, not to be a deceitful person, and 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 products but also to buy high-priced sets of products. In order to reach this purpose, Lili learned various sweet talk, and learned to treat different people in different ways. For those who could afford products, Lili would say whatever sounded pleasant, and no matter whether they were in need of the high-priced products, she would continuously overstate the products’ merits so that they would choose them. In this way she raised her performance figures. However, it was temporary. The exaggerated merits couldn’t be approved by the customers and many of them were regretful after they used the cosmetics. It directly influenced her reputation and therefore, her customers were one-offs, not regulars. In God’s view, such behavior was deceitful but not honest.
Like the afternoon before, Lili had worked for half a day, but the 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, purses and skin condition.
After generally knowing the customers’ identity and consumption levels, Lili selected one customer, a white collar worker who was all dolled up with makeup and in a name brand of business suit. By then, in Lili’s eyes, the other customers before the counter seemed nonexistent.
Lili walked 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, putting it mildly, she was specially promoting a product, but frankly speaking, she was exaggerating the product’s merits so that the customer would think that in the shop there was everything she wanted and there was only better but no best product. At last, she was persuaded by Lili and bought a good eight products. With a satisfied smile on her face, the customer took the bill to the cashiers.
Now thinking of it, Lili felt ashamed of her deeds: In order to raise her performance figures, in her work, 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 it, nor did she have any intuition when following Satan’s evil trends. Today, she was a believer in God and she knew that God liked an honest man. If she still acted as she used to, it couldn’t be after God’s heart. So Lili made up her mind that since she had seen God’s requirement, she would act according to God’s requests and be an honest person firmly.
Unknowingly, 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 God’s words to be an honest person.
While she was thinking, there came an ordinary-looking lady in ordinary clothes. Lili didn’t, because of her appearance, ignore her as before but offered service to her. Knowing about the lady’s demands, Lili almost began to naturally flatter the products and recommend high-priced ones, when she became aware that it was deceitful and it didn’t conform to God’s intention, and so she quickly gave it up in her heart. Then, Lili made an objective and real introduction of the product the lady liked, from its functions to its merits. Furthermore, according to the needs of the lady, Lili introduced a kind of mid-range product.
The lady felt quite surprised that Lili didn’t promote to her a high-priced product but introduced 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 felt glad just now for having practiced some truth heard that, an anger welled up inside her. At this 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 she was practicing to be honest and she couldn’t lose her temper because the customer didn’t buy. 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 no matter when you come.”
Obviously, it was beyond the expectation of the lady that Lili could still serve her with a smile. She was moved because Lili neither looked down on her for she wore ordinary clothes nor recommended high-priced products to her, but only promoted what was suitable for her. What’s more, busy serving her for hours, Lili didn’t scold her for her having no money to buy. The lady made a decision in her heart …
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 practiced to be an honest person. To Lili’s surprise, the lady who had come on 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 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 of the likeness of an honest person. Though she was lacking much, Lili gained confidence from this experience in practicing to be honest in her life and work.
Lili had never expected the secret of sales she had been desperately looking for was in God’s word. Lili decided that she would firmly practice according to the words of God in the future. There would be some difficulties, but she was sure that God would guide and help her.