Faith and Life

by Yo Han Lee

Faith And Life - Volume 1 [Part 3]

Yo Han Lee
May, 1977

29. What You Should Do First

The starting point in our life of faith is to have a worried heart about the problems of others more than our own. Concretely speaking, when you begin worrying about the church's affairs more than your family events, you start walking the way of faith in the true sense. Most young people are anxious about their own future, but the conscientious ones believe they, as individuals, exist on the foundation of the family, family on the race and the race on the nation. So, in Korea, most of the people who cared about the nation came to believe in some religion. Religious people came to be persecuted by the Japanese government in the past. All of those who loved the nation became Christian. The reason why the faith is identified with patriotism is that both exist for the public good. In this case, patriots and scientists are treated more warmly in the spiritual world than those who lived for their own sake on earth. If you try to figure out with your own mind or according to your mission, what is more important for you to do, instead of searching for it with your heart, you will find out that you came to the church because you yearned for it very much. Then, naturally you'll feel like cleaning the house, for instance. In Korea, a high school teacher who majored in philosophy and who visited the most famous philosopher in Korea to discuss the problems of life, heard the Principle of Creation one day and it clearly answered all the questions left unsolved in his life. Because of this, he felt like coming to the church and helping with any necessary work. He began cleaning the bathroom and I wondered who was cleaning it every day. He cleaned it secretly when no one would notice him, as early in the morning or late at night as possible while the others slept. If you think in a theoretical way, you will have to ask what you can do since you joined the church, but if you decide with your heart, a person who is anxious to work can find for himself, without any problems, what he should do. We couldn't order the high school teacher to clean the bathroom. yet he eventually quit the school and devoted himself completely to the church without being asked to do so at all.

He deserted his wife and put his two children, who were so miserable, in an orphanage, but if he had not heard the Divine Principle, he would have deserted his wife and children and killed himself anyway. When he left his wife he said, "Consider me dead and don't pink about me." So, each person knows what he should do, but the reason why he doesn't really know it is because he thinks. Thinkers lose.

30. To Think

Strictly speaking, to say you shouldn't think means you'd have to become an idiot. When you think, don't think about your future. but think happily about your heartistic relationship with God. Thinking has to be accompanied by joy or else you'll become gloomy. Now, I don't mean you shouldn't always be thinking. Neither should you ignore the search for your hope and plan for your future. I mean that thinking if apt to be separated from joy, so you'd better not just follow your brain. You may become so convinced of your ideal and future as to be full of joy and hope, but however much you gain conviction, unless you have a vigorous flow of emotion, you become merely a thinker. This point is the difference between a man of faith and a thinker. Even though left-wing people are very active, their context is different from a man of faith's. In the left-wing movement some people experiences forced oppression, yet we don't have anything like that in the world of faith. In a family, parents must give all their children joy and happiness and educate them to be dutiful to them as parents, but when someone feels oppressed in the family, the family is destroyed. In the heavenly kingdom, no one feels forced and fearful. When your body is sound, you feel no pain anywhere, nor suffering in the smallest part. Yet, if even a part of your body gets hurt, your whole body must take responsibility. For instance, when you have a pain in the tip of your finger your whole body has to stop working to take care of the pain and treat it. Then your finger starts to move again for the whole purpose. In the same way, there shouldn't be any fear or force in the group in which heavenly people like us are gathered.

31. The Original Sin and Individual Sin

How much pain did you experience when you heard you were a child of Satan? After you find your position through Divine Principle, there's a big difference between the pain you feel for what you did in your past life and the problem of blood lineage. Although we take our mistakes so seriously, we don't care about historical sin saying, "Everyone is in the same position." But after listening to the Fall of Man, there are more people who suffer over the sins they committed before, than people who struggle over the reality of original sin. Then, some people commit the original sin with simultaneously having faith in God. Those people don't know how dreadful the original sin is.

To commit the original sin makes the condition of multiplying the blood of original sin in yourself even more than what you were born with. The problem is how to help a person who has unfortunately committed it. When he comes to ask what he should do, you must not interpret his sin literally according to the Divine Principle. If you do, become depressed saying, "I have no means to pay indemnity. This original sin is so serious. In addition, 1 committed this sin individually. So, "I'm at a dead end." Therefore, you can't give a frank explanation according to the Divine Principle. You, the leader, must know the Principle for him, but you can't explain it exactly as you know it. Your purpose is to save him. He comes to you for advice because he wants to be forgiven of his sin, and he has hope that you'll treat him in the same way as you did before he committed it. You must be sensitive to his motivation. Inside his mind he knows what he had better do. The reason why he asks, even though he knows the answer, is that he has an internal desire to be forgiven and saved. Therefore, you can't give him an explanation using principle and law. In this case, it's best to comfort him saying. "It was not you who committed the sin. You just inherited it from your ancestors. I'm the completely same kind of man even if I didn't commit any individual sin yet. Your blood and my blood are exactly the same if you were to analyze it" By doing this, you can explain from a direction of giving him hope and courage. God calls a man with the promise that He will forget the man's sin because of His love, but God can never forget. That man must pay all his indemnity afterward. As the Book of Revelations says, it will be noted if a man has washed his robes. However, God gives hope to a man first, saying that He will forgive his sins.

Even though a person doesn't commit a sin according to the original sin. For example, there is a difference between a married man and an unmarried man. A married man represents and restores the Old Testament Age. A person who has been engaged but separated after hearing the Fall of Man, gets blessed as the representative to restore the New Testament Age. A person who has never had any relationship with the opposite sex becomes the lord to create the future history. Such a difference exists of blood and lineage. Even a man of strong faith can't change this fact. A person married once before is chosen as the offering who must take responsibility and pay indemnity for all married risen in the Old Testament Age, in the position of a child in the Old Testament age, and a representative of the spirit men of the Old Testament Age. Therefore, a person who committed individual sin fell to an age lower. He loses the hope of being the ancestor of the Completed Testament Age, and he makes the condition by himself of owing more indemnity as the representative of many spirit men in paradise of the New Testament Age. He made a hill for himself on the even, flat road.

32. God Works on The Base of Your Attitude

God often gives a person three or four orders at the same time. The purpose of saying, "Go!" isn't to watch him go, but to see the attitude of' his mind toward the order "Go!", when he receives it. If you have a heart deep enough to sympathize with God because he even has to give such a person so many works and responsibilities, you will find the vertical connection with Him that He needs, and He can trust even such a miserable man as you. Thus, once you can make the reciprocal relationship between Cod and you, the person to whom He gives the orders, even if that person sits around, God will do all the work. Without this kind of faith you will tend to complain, "I've only got one body, yet He orders me to do this and that.." On facing the Red Sea, 600,000 people led by Moses complained to him, demanding to know what he was doing, leading them to such a dead end. If they considered it shameful to be trodden to death by the Egyptian army, they would rather have jumped into the sea, believing that God, who had led them there, would never let them die. Then Moses would not have had to separate the sea with his rod.

When you have been asked so many things to do and you pray, "How pitiful God is that He has to choose such a small man as me among many people," and you shed tears in your prayer, those tears are God's tears. At that time you experience God's grief. God gives orders and he also fulfills the orders. A man shares in the Providence of Restoration, yet all the work is done by God. He does it on the base of our minds. Especially when we go out pioneer witnessing, we experience this truth. Even though we succeed in something, we can't say to God that we did it and no one else could. do it but ourselves. As long as you have a desire to do anything on the foundation of the vertical relationship with God, He does everything.

33. Problem Before Witnessing

Before we started our Principle life of faith, we already had a base of faith to begin with. Then we could listen to the Words. A person without the base of faith can hardly come to believe in a deeper faith, even if he listens to the Words. We present the Words in the way we think everyone else listens to them and the way we think they are willing to walk the way of faith. But not everyone can listen to the Words because not everyone has the base or foundation for goodness in his past life. When you witness to such a person, you must put yourself on the same base he is. A person with such a base can easily follow the church. He will visit the church on his own and say, "Please let me follow you." So you have to check once if a person has that base or not before you witness to him. In order to check it you can examine his joy and sorrow, that is, in what situations does he feel joy and sorrow. If the base of his heart is rooted in the public good, God will take care of him first, even though he doesn't ask God for anything. At first you must listen to him to see how much of a foundation he has and then you should give him the Words according to that base or standard. Otherwise you'll lose those Words, just as you pour water onto the desert sand. Also, he won't be able to receive anything either.

When you go out pioneering, you mast make the internal base of faith as an individual and then search for a few people as well who will become the foundation centered on yourself. At first, Jesus tried to make this foundation at home, but neither his mother nor his brothers responded. Secondly, he went to Jerusalem searching for priests, but they refused to be the foundation for him too. Thirdly, he went to John the Baptist. Again, both John and his disciples denied him. Thus the foundation of Jesus was completely destroyed, so he had to begin all over again to make the foundation for himself. So, in the most miserable place in Jewish society where the poor, the deserted and the jobless were gathering, Jesus found Peter and John and chose them to be the foundation. Jesus came down to the same level they were at and made the foundation with them. It was a foundation based on their sorrows rather than on their faith. It was the foundation built on people who were in the same position as those being deserted by the world and the age. As Jesus had nothing, he could sympathize with those who had nothing. In tire beginning of his mission, he tried in vain to make a relationship with the priests centered on his mission, but he gave up mal<ing the foundation on his own standard. He had to start over again making n foundation to comfort sorrowful people and to educate them. That was not the position of the Messiah nor of John the Baptist. Jesus served and satisfied the miserable and sick people and tried to make the foundation centered on them. Then the disciples began to realize the value of Jesus by observing his miracles. However, they welcomed him for their own sakes because they thought he could remove their sorrows by the power of miracles. No one received him fur any other reason. Some also observed his spiritual power and thought he would be. greater in the future than their own priests. They followed Jesus to use him, only to gain happiness as his followers That way the standard of their faith in him.

In Korea, what we do first in pioneer witnessing is to look for the most miserable family in the village or town, for example, the home with only women whose men were chosen to be soldiers or a home with only old people whose sons and grandsons had gone to war. We visit those houses and instead of using words or talking about faith, we have relationships with them first as men of character. making ourselves useful and bringing then? Joy, In this way we come to the town in the position of a servant and look for work that we can do with the physical body. Master showed us how to do it. It's to find the household that goes to sleep last and gets up first. Biblically speaking, the witnesser in the village represents the chief priest, who keeps the fire burning on the altar through the night. Not to turn off the light means to protect this world with all your heart. As Father often says, we must go to bed after the last family in the village goes to bed and we must serve this family by such things as cleaning up their yard before they awake. Then you can have a heartistic relationship with them without even speaking a word about faith and on this foundation you must shed tears and sweat for them. While you become the object of God and serve them, you grow so much-When you have a "secret" with God, God helps you so much.

34. Public Standard

The way for you to grow by yourself without a central figure is through prayer. We have to teach young members how to pray. You should not pray for yourself nor worry about your family but pray for the race and the world. Each one of us has an organic relationship with the nation, which is included in the world. Therefore, the nation doesn't exist without the world. Neither do we exist without the nation. When we care about the public good rather than ourselves, God must possess us and dominate us. Satan can't invade us if we have such an attitude of mind. This is the stepping stone to faith. So, it must lead them to the standard of living their lives for the public good. It is the mission of the witnesser to make such a base in people's mind before speaking the words. When we pray, we should go beyond that standard of prayer centered on the church only. If we don't, our faith won't go beyond a certain point. Then the best attitude for your spiritual growth is for you to understand the relationship between your work and the whole.

If you are committed to the public good, the spiritual world will give you revelations. In case you're in trouble, even when God can't reveal things directly to you, He will reveal them to the person who is praying for you. It's a rule in the spiritual world that God always shows you the way whenever you pray in a group of three (trinity) at the same time and place. You, in the position of central figure should not lead members by your own standard or feeling. Since God cares about us and is responsible for us who carry the heavenly mission. He always shows us the way as long as we try to realize His caring and follow His desire. In Korea, when we become church directors, Father appears spiritually and teaches us. Sometimes he shows us spiritually the title of a speech he is giving to the local churches in Seoul. When we have an important event at headquarters that some church directors are eager to attend but can't because they have to take care of their churches, they are shown all that happened at that event in headquarters spiritually. In Korea, most of the leaders higher than church directors know by spiritual communion whatever new directions Father gives on Sunday. From my experience, when I went to Seoul once a month for a meeting, I found to my surprise that Father emphasized the same points I was emphasizing to my family for a month. As long as brothers and sisters who are sent throughout the nation have this standard since we couldn't go to Seoul, we climbed a mountain and had a service there. Not only one person, but everybody gathered there could hear spiritually what Father was preaching in Seoul.

35. Indemnity Life, Reconstruction of Life

A certain problem exists: you have to know whether the motivation of your heart is in the Principle or outside the Principle, whether you make indemnity conditions or accusation conditions. Unless you pay indemnity, however long you're in the family or however much knowledge you have about the Divine Principle, you can't grow spiritually. Since the question is whether your deeds pay indemnity or not, you must analyze your life according to the Divine Principle.

When we receive an inspiration, we tend to treat it briefly and not perceive the historical or future content in it. When Moses killed an Egyptian, the Israelites regarded him as a murderer without thinking about the implications of the act. If you judge some event as having meaning only for the present moment and don't think about the deeper meaning behind it, you have nothing to do with that indemnity condition. Thus, you'll be unable to enlighten your heart. If you can't enlighten your heart, you can't see from God's viewpoint and in the end, you won't be trusted by God even if you suffer very much.

The problem is how much you apply the standard of the Divine Principle to your daily life. Being in Satan's dominion, we don't always take a person seriously when we're in his presence, but later we begin to respect and miss him when he goes away. Then we often experience regret for our past attitude. How responsible can you be to practice the standard of the Divine Principle in your life`? Can you have the same heart toward brothers and sisters that you have toward Father'? We are apt to be irresponsible to brothers and sisters even though we give all our loyalty to Father. How much do you make and practice internal determination in your life" Once you win and overcome in the church. How do you look at yourself? From the viewpoint of God or from your own viewpoint? How much are you responsible for your work as a part of the whole?

When you witness to people, if you do your best, sincerely and honestly, God will take responsibility for them. If you visit your contact three times with utmost sincerity, God must take care of him. You can restore him without even speaking, but just by shedding tears. God accepts the prayer which shows that you love God's will, prayed with all your sincerity, shedding tears. So He listens to you and takes that condition to pursue the Providence.

36. How To Set Indemnity Conditions

After you receive a blessing, your spirit will decline, but when you rise again you can keep that blessing if you were steadfast in your mind. If you can endure having your heart abandoned for a certain time, it becomes the condition for paying indemnity. Few people can pass three years with the same zealous heart they had in the beginning. As this three years is the indemnity period, you can't give birth to a spiritual child by your own ability, even though you may have one because of your ancestor's virtues. Once you are resurrected you feel compassion toward those who are not resurrected. There isn't any time when you don't have something to do with indemnity.

37. Witnessing

When you witness, you must first listen to a person carefully so he will have an inexpressible feeling that he'd like to be with you and have a deeper relationship with you even though you're the same age. If you are concerned about him, he will come to speak frankly the deepest part of his heart. Once you can serve people with a parent's heart, you can give them inspiration and restore many of their lives. It's better to make personal contact with each person individually rather than ministering to a group of people at one time. It's the mission of the archangel to have contact with many, but the mission of parents is to have individual, personal contact. This is the time of parents and children. The time of the herald is over, that is, being a John the Baptist. This is the Age of the Messiah or Parents and as children of parents we must create men by our personal contact. If you treat people as a mass you can't resurrect them. Make contact with a parent's heart and you'll succeed. Often we fail to do this. When you meet someone about your age who is idealistic, even within the family, it's not good to look at him as a fellow-worker on the same level as you. You must have a compassionate heart for him, naturally, like a parent.

38. Prayer

Treat your life as three dimensional. It's the attitude of one who prays not to look at himself as just himself. When you deal with something, you must do it on the foundation of your heart of prayer. Prayer is parent's heart. When you have some relationship with others, watching them and worrying about them from God's standpoint, you become the central figure to pay the indemnity and heartistically you stand in the mediator's position with God and them. Then you become your prayer itself. When you think about something without any relationship to God, your work has nothing to do with indemnity or prayer. Strictly speaking, when you work in daily life, you must have the same standard of heart that you do when you pray to God. The problem is not how long you pray but how much you actualize your prayer in your daily life. Even if you make determination in your prayer, unless you practice it, it becomes mere habit. The existing churches have only habits. Though they pray for the higher goal, they don't practice in daily life. Their prayer is only ceremony. When you feel bad or vexed, you must reflect whether the feeling is from yourself or God. When you're teased by others, you should feel sorry for God, instead of your own honor or face because you have experienced in suffering heartistically for God's will for a long time. Jesus was this way. Even while he was crucified he cared about God and the people. In our daily life, it requires much fighting on our part to maintain the standard of always confronting God in our prayer. This standard is often taken away by the surrounding circumstances. The feeling of prayer goes away without noticing. We are apt to be, buried by our surrounding. After the feeling passes. We notice we did something wrong. Without this standard we don't knew who we are. Then we must have a subject and should know the relationship between that subject and ourselves. Our position will be determined by finding out to whom we belong.

How To Be Spiritually Stable

Man is conscious of what he is thinking. We spend our lives following our thoughts, but unless we judge whether the origin of these thoughts comes from our original mind or is influenced by people and surroundings, we can't make a distinction between our fallen nature and our original nature. This is the fundamental cause of our spiritual problems.

38. Two Motivations for Joining the Family

You will find two reasons for beginning your life of faith in the church. One is your unconscious attraction to the stimulation and spiritual influence you never felt before because of the Words. You find in yourself a kind of driving force you never had previously, pushing you to the church. This kind of person is the resurrected and reborn person. You become different than you were before because of the Words.

The second reason is your interest and curiosity about the activities and organization of the church and the people you find there who are very kind. Some people join because the atmosphere in the church seems to be better there than the circumstances they came from.

39. A Person Who Entrusts Himself And A Person Who Asserts Himself

After someone heard the Words, they unconsciously followed the church without knowing what the church or the organization was, not what it was doing. This kind of person is already resurrected by the Words. A person with such a motivation realizes his own value as a man every day while he gradually learns the Words deeply: He was this kind of person, he was struggling because of that, He came to understand through the Words that he was actually interested in such things. As he studies like this his portion of freedom becomes greater every day and he gradually ignores his personality. This kind of person enters the life of faith through the right gate. He respects elder brothers and sisters because they led him and resurrected him. He feels like consulting them about his problems, entrusting himself completely to them, appreciating them. Thus, he is eager to learn and associate with brothers and sisters from a humble position.

However, there is another kind of person. He expects others to treat him well, simply because he wants them to. This comes from his desire to be the center. He is eager to fulfill this desire and spends days dwelling in it. As time passes, he remembers other people's faults and reluctantly associates with them while at the same time being unaware of his own spiritual problem. Such a person is just wasting time.

40. How Do You Keep Seeking for Canaan Until the End?

There were many among the faithful attending God's providence who got off the track on the way, even though they started with such high motivation in the beginning. Briefly speaking, the Israelites left Egypt for Canaan willingly, but because they encountered so much poverty and suffering in the way, they switched the standpoint they had chosen - led by God and going toward Canaan for His providence - to their own standpoint. But this switching of direction also destroyed their sense of value. Thus, those who failed generally turned their direction to one of self-centeredness, destroying the subject of their life and eventually their sense of value. The major problem is the control of your spirit. Are you really resurrected by the Words? Do you really realize God exists and is alive?

Many people who have been in the family a long time eventually doubt whether God really exists or not. Thus, even a certain professor was in a theology school and he ultimately published an essay stating that God was dead. Did you ever hear about it? "God is Dead." It wasn't an atheist who pronounced these words, but a theology professor who believed in God all his life; yet arrived at this conclusion. What does this mean? It means a man of faith has faith on the premise that God is dead, that is, he doesn't really believe God exists and lives. The Israelites first believed in the God of Jehovah, yet they came to the conclusion that He didn't exist. Even though the Messiah had come, they became his stumbling block.

I found many ministers living their lives without God. There are many ministers who reach people based on what they know from their studies, just like working men, instead of teaching them the living God as they themselves live together with Him. They have the name of being a minister but they don't bring God to others. There are many kinds of people like this. Among our family members, there are many who are more occupied with their work instead of living with the living God, even though they heard the Divine Principle and joined the church devoting themselves completely. There are quite a number of people like this. You must have noticed it yourself.

For example, when we have Sunday service, some people came to the church reluctantly saying, "It's Sunday. Today I want to rest but I have to go to the service . . . " Instead of a life full of spiritual motivation, they get into a habit and only follow religious ceremony after a while -one year, two years, three years and seven years - even though they once had spiritual vitality. They can't help being dominated by habit or circumstances. In this way they run off the road.

41. Resurrection by the Words

To live with the living God is to feel dominated by Him, to talk with Him about your problems and to live with the understanding and knowing God's situations and following them. Those who have a life of faith out of habit live with a dead God and have nothing to do with a living God. When they come to a dead end, finally they begin to doubt if God really exists and they think, "Why am I at a dead end even though I have been believing in God for many years?"

The Israelites left Egypt believing that God existed. Yet they began doubting if God really did exist, wondering if He had deserted them, even though He had led them by the pillar of cloud and fire. Then all of them complained and grumbled to Moses. By studying the history of the Israelites who were so full of complaints, we can realize we have nothing to do with God when we make mistakes in controlling our spirits. When this happens, our direction is often switched and our center destroyed.

We must check this problem of spirit and reflect if we are the subject, resurrected by the Words and if we're really dominating ourselves from the center of our mind. Resurrection by the Words: this is most important.

42. He Trusted By Brothers and Sisters

What kind of motivation we have in the course of faith is the most serious problem. This motivation must be our Alpha and Omega and our life should be centered or this motivation for eternity.

We spend our daily life centered on the spirit through prayer, the Words and our relationship with brothers and sisters. The spirit can be stable only on the foundation of faith. The foundation of faith means that we must have some principled result which makes others need us. In the family, we must become the kind of people the whole family can't live without. We must be remembered and expected by the family, teachers and friends. Those who have such a foundation of faith will need human relationships when they come to the church, believing in the Words and beginning their faith. They don't have any debts, don't cause others to worry about them and are always doing good for others.

Wherever we exist and go, we have the responsibility to be the people who others need in that situation. We are responsible for giving joy to our surroundings, rather than taking joy from them. It is natural common sense. On that foundation, we can resurrect our spirit. Those who owe debts to others bring anxiety to their parents and conflict their relationships with brothers and sisters. In those relationships we can't find any place for our spirits to rest and be nourished. That kind of person is like sand, moving around, blown by the wind. The Bible talks about people who build their house on sand and those who build it on rock. The rock represents those who are admired by others and who don't owe debts. They are trustworthy and other people don't have to worry about them. We can trust people mho give us debts, that is, those who serve us, but we can't trust those who owe us debts. For the latter, the life of truth can't be resurrected on such a foundation.

First of all, we must be trusted by brothers and sisters in our family as well as by others. Every person directly called by God was like this. Noah was called a righteous man.

Jacob left for the wilderness and met Jehovah after he was recognized by his father at home. Abraham also was called by God and attended His providence after he fulfilled his responsibility as the first son at home.

43. For Your Spiritual Stability

A man of faith goes out for God's will on the foundation of faith in his family. God tries to have reciprocal relationship with such a person who has this foundation. The four position foundation is the position of existence. "I" exist as one, element in the relationship of subject and objects. On that foundation centered on the Words, after I hear the Words. And in the life of the church also you must responsibly establish a position in the church so the church can't function well without you. When you establish this position, the Cain/Abel relationship emerges. First, you naturally have an elder brother of faith who worries about your future and second, an object whom you must take care of. In your surroundings you have both of them. Then when you succeed making the position in which you are needed, your spirit grows on this foundation. As you gradually grow spiritually, you get into a new dimension of yourself which is different from your old self. You'll feel what others are thinking about you. You'll become sensitive enough to realize the context of his thought when a person within your four-position foundation worries about you. You'll know it even if he doesn't speak to you because you'll have a heartistic give and take with him without even talking. This is the action of spirit, the influence of the living spirit. Your brothers and sisters can be influenced by what you think and you are influenced by what they think. In such a relationship God will dominate you on the base of your heart.

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