[602] Devotion and sincerity must be invested to guide members

[대태양/김현수]

Devotion and sincerity must be invested to guide members

You should feel the same heart of longing for members as you felt for your first love. (The Way of a Spiritual Leader - 290)

You should stay up all night mak­ing devoted efforts to raise core mem­bers. If you can offer this effort for three days, they will bond with you and feel grace that will stay with them through­out their lives. If you witness with strong determination, feeling that time is too short, and become anxious when your guests leave because it is late, then the spirit world will cooperate with you. (23-249, 1969.5)

You must first be absolutely dedicat­ed to God’s will in order to convey it to others. (23-249, 1969.5)

You should go through indescrib­able hardships in raising members, just as I have done. If you have a guest at night, you should ask on bended knees for heaven’s blessings for that person. For guests who come during the day, you should invite them into the living room and receive them more warmly than you would your own relatives. You should establish a family tradition such that you can say, “Our home is such a home.” If you establish such a family tra­dition, who would those people live for? Would people with a tradition of warm­ly receiving others let their church leader starve? Those who let their church leader starve and still ask for blessings should have their mouths filled with sand. (60-308, 1972.8.18)

Even when you talk through the night, you should make it interesting. When you talk past twelve midnight until two or three in the morning and you think, “I wish they would leave. I should get some sleep,” they would all run away. Even when it is three or four in the morning, you should be think­ing, “I hope they do not go. I wish that time would stop.” When they return home after experiencing that situation, their spirit will realize how important it was. They will feel sorry and, immedi­ately after eating, will want to go back. I have been working in this manner.
(56-51, 1972.5.10)

Whenever we meet anyone, we must not think this is the end of things. Espe­cially if we meet someone centering on God, we must never forget that relation­ship. Even if that person stops coming to the church, you should not cut him off or despise him. Even if that person falls away, you must never abandon the rela­tionship that you have made with him. (42-162, 1971.3.4)

Therefore, never be discouraged if a member falls away. When a member falls away, a very interesting phenom­enon occurs: A person who resembles that person’s character, speech, and even the way he walks, will join the church. From every angle, the new person who joins amazingly resembles the person who fell away, and yet he is much bet­ter. When you see such a phenomenon, you can understand that sincere invest­ment and prayer are never lost. This is an absolute fact. (42-162, 1971.3.4)

If there is something bad, do not get rid of it right away. Even if there is some­thing bad, you should deal with it, hav­ing the flexibility and capacity to find some conditions that will improve it while you keep the bad aspects on hold. If a person is cut off due to a mistake he made a year ago, then he may spiritually die completely. But if he is kept for one, two, or three years in the belief that the mistake is a secondary consideration, then after that time there may be a way for him to live. (72-313, 1974.7.14)

If you love the members who have just joined, then they can quickly set the condition for indemnity. The reason the church is not able to make progress is because this is not being done. This is the reason why God said to love each other and live in harmony. (18-40, 1967.5.15)

In the early years of our church, when I was raising members in Korea, I did not sleep at night. I employed a one-on-one strategy. When I was giving a lecture to one person, I imagined that I was giving it to an audience of a hundred or even a thousand people. I thought that that particular person could determine the lives of several thousands or even tens of thousands of people. If you want to have a person follow you, whatever your directions may be, you must invest your­self totally into creating such a motiva­tion in that person. (96-284, 1978.2.13)

How many members with longing, yearning hearts have you met? I have met numerous such people. They visit from the ends of the earth to bow before me. Why is this? It is because I have already thrown the line of love, bonded in heart, to the ends of the earth, and because I have already sent an electrical current through it, they know the direction they have to go. That is how it should be.
(171-30, 1987.12.5)

To become a leader, you must truly stand in the position of the doctor who cures the sick. If an ill person’s spiritual situation begins to deteriorate, you will have to make an effort to cure that per­son’s heart while you shed tears day or night, oblivious to time. That is a spiri­tual leader. How many nights have you stayed up trying to save lives? How busy have you been trying to save lives? If such deeds go up to the spirit world with you, then you will be the object of com­mendations and you will set an example of good character. (69-165, 1973.10.31)