The Way For Students - 166 Chapter 5. Man Of Faith Section 1. Life Of Faith 3. Life Of Faith
5) Faith Requires Experience
We believe that God is love. The gospel teaches that God is love. Then how much have you absorbed God's love in your heart in your life of faith? Have you ever shared the heart of God, looked at the history of His resentment, or worried about his unfulfilled will?
Have you ever experienced the sorrow and pain that God has endured in His efforts to find and restore lost mankind with a heart of love? His sorrow and pain have been greater than His joy and happiness. You have to experience this kind of heart.
We Unification Church members know this through the principle of restoration. We have to experience God's heart deeply in our life of faith. Not only in name, but truthfully and really we have to experience Heavenly Father. We have to shed tears in embracing God's heart, which was filled with sorrow in the Garden of Eden as God watched the fall of Adam and Eve.
Then you have to experience the deep resentment God felt as He watched Cain kill Abel. Sixteen hundred years after that God called Noah, and four hundred years later He called Abraham. After another four hundred years God called Moses.
Sixteen hundred years later God called Jesus. Through this sorrowful history, the central figures of each age, the saints, sages and ancestors struggled and battled. You have to experience the deep sorrow of God's heart as He witnessed all these things.
You must experience the heart of sorrow of the historical providential central figures representing God through 6,000 years of history. Humankind, living on earth today, must experience this sorrow for their sake. (6-251)
Experiencing a life of faith means that when God is happy, I am happy too. When God is sorrowful, I am sorrowful too. We have to be that kind of people, with that kind of attitude, resolving God's sorrow and sharing our joy with the world. If we are that kind of people, this world will be restored through us. (32-221) |