The Way Of God's Will |
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Reverend Sun Myung Moon |
On Faith
II. Life of Faith
A life of faith consists in living always with an atmosphere of spring.
Sleeping, waking up, going, coming, giving and receiving: do all these with God without reservation and with a peaceful mind.
The safest way of life as a Unification Church member is to work on the front line bearing all the crosses on your shoulders. This is the true way of faith in the Unification Church. This course determines whether or not you are a child of filial piety, a loyal subject and chaste woman.
In order to become an Abel, you must receive God's love and become one with Him. For this, you must learn God's ideal and then practice it in your witnessing. You must also love and subjugate Cain, following the example of God.
The restoration of Abel and Cain will be no problem if both compete to volunteer for tearful suffering.
Abel is the one who feels heartbreak centering on God. No one will complain about the person who sleeps less, eats less, and suffers more than others.
In order to be an Abel, you must receive three great trials and three great persecutions from Cain.
You should transcend the concept of "self," fulfill your mission as a person who is to be redeemed, and build a foundation of goodness. You are an individual, but you are also a historical revival of heart.
Because blessing is dynamic by nature, you have to prepare yourself by becoming calm in order to receive it abundantly and digest it well. If you frolic too much after receiving blessing, you will become empty-hearted and lose it completely.
Ask Heaven for wisdom rather than power.
Doing spiritual work can be compared with flying an airplane: you must be accurate in the direction of the flight (purpose) and be sure to have your landing site (maintenance of self).
Be a person who does not violate the heavenly way of life. Your life should begin with establishing a foundation of spiritual victory.
There is no power greater than the power of faith. Why? Because even God takes it most seriously in doing His work. True faith is powerful enough to turn falsehood into truth.
Don't get angry because others fail to give you recognition. I pray to Heavenly Father, "You may recognize me only after the I finish the trouble-ridden works of this earth and reach up to the point where I can appear in front of your throne."
The best way to remove fallen nature is to serve millions of people as your Abels. If someone cannot recognize the value of your serving him this way, his blessing will be taken away from him to you.
The bigger hope one has, the longer he perseveres.
Grace is the source of life.
Connect with God all that you see and think when you are awake. If you cannot do so, you have to repent. Devote your first words of the day to God.
The way of repentance is not to strike your mind but your body. To strike your body, you must walk the kind of steep course that is disliked by your body. Christianity is the religion of suffering. All religions that are not deep will perish when they walk such a steep way.
Sin has occupied history, but the base of sin is your body. Therefore, deny and strike your body.
If you are occupied by your body, you are in the satanic world. If you are occupied by your mind, you are in heaven. Your conscience is the front line where God comes to visit you.
The world of peace and happiness is for later. Let us first remove sin, for as long as it remains it will only drive away peace and happiness.
Without exception treat each person cheerfully, speaking good words. if you do this ten times, ten people will become closer to you. When this becomes a habit, it will be good, and then you will not lose your standard of faith. If one could only do this. would prayer even be necessary?
Don't have a sad face, but always keep a cheerful heart. When you have a peaceful and truthful heart, peacefulness and truth will begin. In fact, words found in the Bible, such as love, grace and salvation are indeed fearful words.
Antagonism has no place in God's love, but only unity and harmony. In light of this, you can understand what the Bible means in saying that peacemakers will be called sons of God.
When you receive some grace, do not boast about it but pray that you may best use it. And after praying one hour for this, you must spend three hours to actualize it.
The way of faith is like maneuvering a boat. Rowing a boat can be compared to a life of faith: the moment you stop rowing, you are swept backward. Every single condition of evil society is an adversity which is not helpful for a life of faith.
When you are scolded, it is actually Satan working behind you who is scolded. Therefore, you have to be admonished in the same position as Satan's.
The only way to remove fallen nature is to surrender obediently. Sinful history was made because man did not obediently surrender to God's words and the archangel did not obediently surrender to Adam. The only way to indemnify this is to surrender obediently. To do so, you must begin with doing the most distasteful things.
Living a life of faith is like a pair of scales. Your daily life should be such that you elevate it gradually by adding the weight of goodness on one side.
If you sow the seeds of sincere dedication with all your effort, they will all come to bear fruit. The fruit of your wholehearted dedication cannot be conquered by anyone; it belongs to you. Satan can never rob you of your foundation of sincere dedication.
At least don't belittle yourself when you die.
When fruits start to be borne, flowers and leaves drop off. Similarly, when divinity grows in your heart, all your shortcomings will fall away.
When one acts centered around and motivated by himself, he needs to fulfill his 5 percent responsibility. But if one acts centered around and motivated by God, his 5 percent responsibility is not necessary.
If you do something only by consulting among yourselves, it will never be recognized by God no matter how well done it may have been. Everything should be reported to and connected with God so that it may be approved by Him. Work and live by always forming the God-centered four position foundation.
If you live according to your true mind, 80 percent of all you do will always be on target.
If you know the miserable situation of God, you will feel that you cannot stand before Him to repent; before you call, "Father!" you will cry over your defects first.
Don't be angry with your enemies. In your mind, say to them: "You may be angry at me, but I thank God because I can think of this occasion as material to fill one page in the book about my life when I win victory."
Do not conceal yourself behind a mask of falsehood. This would only give Satan a chance to attack you.
You must realize that even for you as an individual there are three types of people: those who take care of you, those who pay indemnity in place of you, and those who oppose you.
Yeast is the raw material for harmony. Become a yeast of love to be able to melt everyone together.
Always reflect upon your life in order to know if it is inclined toward the side of goodness.
Blessing exists not in front of God's throne but in front of Satan.
When you fall into a miserable situation and hit rock bottom, it then becomes time for you to go up. One extreme seems to be distant from another, yet the two are connected with each other. Right behind Satan stands God.
When your original mind operates, you are on the Abel side, so follow where your Abel mind will take you.
Hell is the place where the groaning of self-pity is heard.
The reason that you believe in God is that He had believed in you before you believed in Him. Therefore, you should believe and love the Will with your utmost gratitude and loyalty. Anyone who regrets that he is working for the Will would never be able to establish a foundation of existence in the ideal world.
"For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (Matt. 6:21) You should keep your real treasure in your heart. That is why you should invite the most precious God into your heart.
Grace is something God gives and transmits in order to save the world, so don't think it belongs only to you.
After you dedicate yourself fully, do not be greedy to seek a reward.
Let us dedicate our sincere heart for holy ground, holy temple, blessed families, and True Parents.
Even when we are about to die, let us believe. Even when we are about to perish, let us believe.
If a person has not experienced gaining or losing something, then you cannot guide him. Our Unification Church history was made through our heartfelt tears of gratitude.
Be a person who can benefit everyone. Your life should be lived for the purpose of benefiting everyone.
Never remember that you did good things for others. But never forget that you were taken care of by them.
Your will to do together, gather together, and take the same direction together with others is precious. You must dedicate that will to God.
If grace is given to you but your dedication no longer merits it, then that grace will be completely taken away.
To give to others and not remember it is the way to accumulate goodness.
He who has many people praying for him even though he does not ask them to do so will never perish.
An individual or society that is based on the consciousness of authority will perish. Those in high places must be prepared to go down.
How deeply do you realize that you are going to be saved through attending God?
The way of faith is to live and walk the way of death.
Man wants the best thing. It is good if in accordance with the Will you have something which you can boast of in front of others so they can learn from it.
Religion has the inherent power to enable one to transcend life and death.
The archangel never received perfect love from God, nor did he receive it from Adam and Eve who were to become perfect. That is why Satan has continued to rebel against God, and yet God has not been able to avoid seeing him. Here lies the reason why we must love even our enemies.
When God completely abandons something, Satan takes it. In the Last Days, the most pitiful men are those who are judged by the Lord although they thought they believed and followed him. How pitiful is a bride, who, in spite of having believed her bridegroom, is discarded by him!
Life of faith is a path of adventure. You must accomplish what others cannot before you can be listed in the historical book of Heaven.
Believing has its limits. After you harmonize among yourselves, belief will no longer be necessary.
Don't be proud that many here were Christians before joining the Family. Today, all Christians are avaricious people, who want to go to Heaven riding on Jesus' shoulders instead of taking him to heaven on their shoulders.
You must make an effort if you are to possess the value of future resurrection.
Don't bind but loosen things in your life.
In your life of faith you should be thankful and satisfied without being noticed by others. If you cannot be that way, you should repent in sorrow, saying to God, "I am a sinner. Give me the power by which to become free from sin," If you can do neither of these things, you are no longer continuing a life of faith.
Have a renewed mind. In your life of faith you must always rejoice and be thankful. When you rejoice in prayer and experience a constant welling-up of pride, your mind is a joyful mind.
The purpose of faith is to conquer death on earth. If your awareness of death is weak, you cannot maintain a powerful life of faith.
Who is the master of death and who is the master of life? People in the world ordinarily wonder who the master of life is. But we should know and serve the master of life, God, and find and conquer the master of death, Satan, in our real life. We must take over the place which death once occupied and set up the banner of life there.
Do not leave any regret at the moment of death.
If you have more than three enemies while on earth, you can never go to Heaven after you die. You must untangle this problem on earth, praying for them for at least three days.
Religious men are those who wage war against death and win victory. What if, when you went to bed, it was your last moment in your sickbed? And what if, when you awoke in the morning, it was your first glimpse of the spirit world? Never take the matter of death lightly even for a moment.
Death is the way to your original home. When going there, what sort of gift are you taking with you? If you think of this at least once, you cannot spend a single idle moment.
The goal of education in the Unification Church is to train those people who can qualify to go to the highest spirit world.
In order to enter Heaven, you should confer with God in prayer at least three times in the end.
We should always pray about the problem of how to decisively win over and go beyond the boundary of death. How much have we thought of our original home where our Father, the very cause of our being, dwells? Fallen men never think about the problem of their own eternal life, so who will do it for them?
You will go to that place of the spirit world which corresponds to your own spiritual level. On arriving at the spirit world, an average person must go through twelve great tests, and even those with much merit must go through three tests:
First, your worst enemy on earth appears to confront you.
Second, the historical enemy, Satan will come and accuse you, saying, "Your ancestors such as Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus toiled so hard and Master has taught you so much through his words. But did you become one with the words and carry them out?"
Third, the angelic world will test you, describing heavenly laws and asking if you yourself became the embodiment of them as a loyal subject.
Finally, Jesus and the Holy Spirit will ask you questions to see if you can qualify to be a child of the Lord, and when you pass that test, you will reach perfection.
The reason why he who has received grace becomes uneasy is that he becomes like a spirit man without a body. He should make achievements because otherwise the grace will leave him.
The way to recover grace is to put into practice at least ten times that which you have prayed for.
In the way of faith, we need true companions of faith. When they can help each other, love each other, and radiate great beauty, thus becoming a source of pride among those around them, the Will of Heaven will automatically multiply.
A man of faith must always have a renewed mind in order to grow. Morning makes you feel good because it refreshes you.
Your life of faith should always be calm and regular like breathing. And your life of faith should be such that you draw a certain line below which you will never go when you begin personal and social relations.
If you so strongly long for God that you forget your illness, you will get well.
Older Family members are sometimes in the position of Cain. Those younger members who receive grace are sometimes allowed to take the lead in indemnifying certain periods of history of restoration. Even in such cases, older members should not feel jealous of them.
A person should be capable of dominating sin, maintaining himself peacefully and subjugating Satan naturally before he can be qualified as a man of Heaven.
You should shed tears, sweat and blood, embracing history and the universe.
To have regret after dedicating all one's sincere heart is a foolish act and against heavenly law.
If you want to dedicate your heart to me, do so after you have dedicated your heart for the nation and mankind whom I love, and then create achievements.
When you die, you must be grateful to God, grateful to His Will, and feel sorry that you could not better fulfill the Will.
The reason you fear death is because you have not done the work you should have done on earth. Once you complete your work, you will never feel fear.
When I see those who dedicate their heart to me in hope of solving their problem of life and death and of receiving blessing, how can I, a subject, spend an idle moment?
When you are late to a worship service you should feel so repentant that you cannot raise up your head.
The only way to avoid accusation is to toil at the cost of your life. Who would dare to accuse you when you tearfully make up your mind to die for the Will?
How long have you fought for the Will feeling the responsibility of restoration? You must struggle, either catching up with me or catching up with the front line; there is no other way you can go.
Get up in the morning, saying, "Father!" with a smile, and go to bed at night, saying, "Father!" with a smile.
A son of filial piety lives by consulting his father concerning the most minute details.
You have to proceed by holding the hands of the True Parents tightly.
Humble yourself, thinking that all the evils and sins of the world happened because of you, worrying about them with an aching mind, and shouldering all responsibilities.
In believing in Jesus, we have to know his heart.
Moses, who took charge of the Will of God, knew the destination and direction clearly, and expressed these things one or ten years later in his behavior. But the Israelites were not able to live that life which contained the destination and direction.
Religious life emerged to unite man's idea, which governed history, and God's idea.
God has been developing His providence for 6,000 years in order to have His idea of creation practiced in man's life.
The ethical view of Christianity consists in welcoming even the enemy Satan and praying for his blessing.
Civility means that the relationships of front and rear, right and left are in order.
A man of faith should shed three kinds of tears: tears of shame, tears of gratitude and tears of joy.
Absolute faith can alter destiny.
No matter how hard you may work or how many accomplishments you may have, you have to be with Heavenly Father. If you act by yourself, Satan will take everything away.
Salvation is obtained through attendance. How much have you felt that?
Give something to your family, to your nation, and to the world. This is the triple-objective standard.
The purpose of life of faith is to realize self-perfection and feel infinite love, thereby enjoying infinite happiness.
Life of faith consists in making a connection of yearning in the world of heart.
Why do you have debts in your life, which exists only once? You must have others indebted to you instead.
God is with you only after you win over your environment.
Don't curse those who are punished, but pray for them. If you curse those who are cursed, you will be cursed.
The purpose of the action of conscience is to make the children of God attain perfection. We should find the place where conscience can. take rest.
Unification Church members must live continually in tears and sweat.
Don't live by holding your conscience in your hands, but by pioneering the foundation of conscience.
The path of faith cannot be perfected by centering upon the vertical world alone, but by being supplemented by horizontal conditions.
The place near to God is an extremely fearful place.
"God, only You know." This is man's conclusion.
Have you ever stopped to wonder to what degree God loves mankind?
The Messiah is the standard of life of faith. Faith consists in resembling him.
Going the path of faith means following the Messiah in Golgotha in order to inherit the pain which he has in walking in tears.
Man is the fruit of the sin of his 6,000-year lineage. He is the exhibit of the 6,000-year sinful history. His cells contain the 6,000-year-old sin. Repentance is needed to liquidate this.
Pray without sleep and rest and guard the garden of Gethsemane.
Even when you die you have to leave a part of you behind. You have to say that you want to drop even one hair near the Temple at the time of your death. When you leave this world, what will you take with you? That is the question. To become a being means to prepare what you are going to take with you. If you become a being in your family, you will take blessing on the family level. If you become a being in your nation, you will take blessing on the national level.
You must not forget that God put you in this position by purchasing you for His sorrow, exchanging you for His sorrow, and seeking you for His sorrow.
You have to writhe in agony by asking if God can be consoled through you.
When you face a problem, don't solve it as your own but ask how God would solve it. Then the answer will come out naturally.
I thought of the fact that day and night occur at opposite times in East and West. I sometimes thought that God created the Eastern and Western Hemispheres in order that people might sleep peacefully, because otherwise all mankind would sleep at one time and be taken possession of by Satan.
You are normal only if you are more joyful than when you joined the Unification Church.
Nothing whatsoever can destroy a father-child relationship. In the same way, you must absolutely be connected with God.
Where is the center of your center now? That is the question.
Sunday is the day when you, having practiced self-restraint and planned for a week, give the Family members something which they can rejoice over.
The reason you are not encouraged in your life of faith is that you cannot determine the internal place of God's existence in yourself. You have to unite with the place or point of His presence. Have more concern for the Center than for the universe. Do you think that God will leave you?
Let us believe well. To believe well means to love our children and the world well.
The faithful in the Last Days must complete all that the past saints were not able to do.
The word honesty means to act straight. In order to become a man of honest faith, therefore, you have to govern your mind in a straight way.
Making excuses will be of no help at all in your path toward your goal, and will only lead you to a destination which has nothing to do with your goal. If you commit a sin of degree ten, yet feel with a sense of guilt of degree 100 that you are not qualified to stand before God, then God will be able to regard your honesty as degree ten of loyalty. Therefore, a man of faith does not have to make excuses; he has to be honest.
A pioneer does not complain of coming trial and pain. A man of faith is a pioneer, so that he who complains in his life of faith is neither a pioneer nor a man of faith.
Where there is hope, there is development. Where there is no hope, there is at least retreat, if not utter cessation. Therefore, whether there is happiness or unhappiness is determined by hope. If there is no hope in a man of faith -- who should march toward tomorrow's hope -- he is an extremely unhappy man; his faith is only superficial.
All that you face as a pioneer is unexpected, so that you have to know how to judge and discern in serious situations.
God gives us experiences, not because He wants to do so, but because He wants us to have absolute faith thereby. He lets us have spiritual experiences because He must connect our desire with them.
Absolute faith is not the place of self-affirmation, but the place of self-negation. Life of faith is not limited to our spiritual life. What is important is how our spiritual sensitivity is applied to our relative environment.
Knowledge cannot control life. Only religion can do so.
A person becomes a physician for the purpose of saving patients. In the same way, it is for the purpose of enabling unbelievers to go to the Kingdom of Heaven that you believe in Jesus.
No one says that doing things for oneself is good. The thesis that doing things for others is good holds true.
God's providence of salvation does not begin with the salvation of those who are better-off. It must begin with the salvation of suffering people. Therefore, many men of faith are suffering, poor and hungry.
Life of faith is not life for yourself alone but the life of a sold servant. For since a servant is born as a child of a servant, he is approved and loved by his master only after he goes through the life of a servant.
Faith plays the role of guide. Therefore, it only takes you to the gate and not to the room.
The path of God is the path of pioneering. The path of a man of faith is the path of following.
The course of faith does not need a long period. A day is essential to faith, and an hour of the day, too, is essential to it.
Faith is the contract between God and man made through His word.
Your faith should be such that you feel thirsty and always admit of your defeat. If so, you have no complaint. In that way you have to be able to support your leader when he is tired.
A tree does not wither immediately. Before it senses whether or not it has withered, it is condemned to death. The same is true with faith.
He who has no tears is not walking the orthodox path of faith. You have to shed tears of sorrow, tears of apology, and tears of gratitude. These tears develop the basis of heart.
If in your path of faith you have no one who pulls you from above, you need someone who supports you at your side, or someone who sustains you from below. Thus, you need companions of faith.
Let us lead the way instead of being pulled.
Fortunate are those who have had a foundation of deep faith since their adolescence. Once you lose power in your life of faith you cannot regain it.
In the path of faith you must stand by swearing a thousand or ten thousand times in your mind. Life of faith is the period in which you collect materials to pass through the summit.
Life of faith consists of practicing conviction in life.
Do not walk because you are commanded to do so but because you must do so. Thus, you must feel grateful to me for walking in your place and then commanding you to walk.
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