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REVEREND SUN MYUNG MOON SPEAKS ON
As we persevere on the difficult path of life, we know well that we are immersed in a sorrowful situation. We know that many painful circumstances lie ahead of us. We know that we have not the heart which can sing in sheer happiness when we face Heavenly Father, this land, and humanity. Father! Please have mercy on us. We have been worn out by sorrow and hardships. We have struggled without even knowing in what direction to go. Please hold onto those of us who have wandered, not knowing on whom to lean. Father, we feel how wonderful and great is Your amazing grace, yet we are unable to return glory to You. Please forgive us.
Father, You have suggested to us the path by which to avoid sorrow in this sorrowful world. However, we ask for Your forgiveness since we were inadequate in upholding Your predestined will. We know that You have prepared a path by which we may avoid hardships, even though we deserve a suffering course. We are so grateful. However, we ask for Your forgiveness since we were unable to walk that path.
We now desire to live the rest of our lives according to Your will, for Your joy and glory only. Nevertheless, the power of death and the influence of sin in this world powerfully encircle us. You know how difficult it is to escape from them. Therefore, benevolent Father, please be present at this time.
Father, please forgive us. We have not yet become people who return glory and joy to You from a liberated position. Please subjugate the power of darkness by spreading new power and Your mighty hand. Father, we sincerely hope that You will raise the history of re-creation in order that we may sing of the glory of resurrection as victorious people.
Since the power of death is sweeping over us, we need to overcome the decision of life and death. We must gain the automatic and spontaneous power that can push this away and march forward. Loving Father, if there are children of Yours who yearn for such power, please personally grant them the ability and allow the authority of resurrection that they may become heavenly soldiers who pioneer their daily life with the hope of the future.
Father, please forgive them, even if their lives so far have been unworthy. Your will is to announce the new promise of tomorrow and to shake and move us. Loving Father, we sincerely desire that You allow us to fulfill our responsibility as pioneers today and tomorrow as we look toward Your will, Your ideology, and Your hope.
Father, now is the time to purify and check ourselves before coming into Your presence. It is the time when we cannot find any place on which to lean and when we cannot pass through the true center. Oh, Father! The last days are calling for someone who can understand and relate to Your heart, someone who can prepare the victory and bring glory to You of his own accord. You have called us to shape us into such people. However, we are ashamed in Your presence. Please forgive us.
We heard your words by which to understand and relate to Your heart as we go this path. We also saw the deeds which reveal Your grace. However, we have not become the heavenly soldiers who build a loyal altar by upholding Your will. Father, please guide us and protect us since we are afraid we may increase Your grief.
Can anyone claim to be loyal and righteous in Your presence? We are all full of shortcomings and unfaithfulness. Although we have understood Your heart which promotes goodness and that You are searching for those who will uphold Your will of goodness, we have not been able to act according to Your will, Father. Please forgive our disloyalty. Allow us to realize that Your heart is entangled in such situations and thereby compel us to give up everything we have and become reintegrated into what You can claim. Holding onto Your heart alone, Father, we yearn to follow, and move and act together with You wherever You may go.
Please recreate the thirty million people of this nation. Please lead these lives into Your garden of hope again. Make us worthy to lead the people. You have called us to Your will in front of others. Father, please allow us to fulfill our responsibility of communicating Your heart to these people. Please make us into the children who can spread Your words.
Father, even if individual hearts may differ in these sons and daughters who have gathered here today, I know the centers of their minds are the same. Their minds long to live for You, to follow You, and to inherit Your heart. Upon that condition, please work with them. Please move them and show them the glory of resurrection. Thereupon, lift them into the gracious realm of liberation. Loving Father, we sincerely hope for and ask this.
We know well that countless satans seek to invade us if there is any gap between You and us. I earnestly hope that our hearts can be connected to Your heart, our bodies connected to Your hyung sang, our situations connected to Your situation, and our wishes united with Your wishes that You may personally be present in this hour. In so doing, please allow this hour to be one of promise that we may fight off any encroaching authority of Satan and may bring victorious glory to You. Please allow this hour to be one of final decision, our loving Father.
We entrust this hour to You. Please do all according to Your will. Compassionate Father, please embrace us in this hour, for there is no one who claims to be self-righteous anymore. Please order us if You have any words of command. Please allow us to realize Your words, even through scourging if we are so ignorant.
Please, Holy Trinity, personally direct the whole hour hereafter. Through the protection of the myriad saints, allow no Satan to invade this hour. Please make this hour one that can be recognized as Yours; let our purified minds, purified bodies, and purified hearts be offered as living sacrifices to You. I earnestly hope that You will personally direct this hour of service, Father.
If there are any members who are unable to attend here, Father, please protect and bless them with the same grace. I ask You to protect Your young children with lonely hearts, who are fighting in the countryside, with the same grace. I pray all these things in the name of the Lord. Amen.
Please allow us to check where our minds dwell. We know that our minds are moving around in all directions, although our bodies are gathered in one place. Just as Adam was shaped by the lump of soil moving according to Your hands, we know that our minds also should be moved according to Your desire.
Our sacred Father, please allow us to long for You at this time with a concerned mind that checks whether the original form and essence of our minds have become the holy of holies. Let us check if our minds can connect to Your heart, even as our bodies settle into one altar now.
We feel that we should not be without the sensitivity of mind by which an earnest heart toward Your gentle and holy presence can fill us, even without our being conscious of it. You wished to reveal our mission by discussing from the hidden depths and showing Your presence in the distant quietness. We cannot help hoping for such intervention on Your part.
When we did not attend You in the midst of Your distant quietness, when we were not able to connect with Your hidden situation, You were sorrowful, lonely and miserable. Knowing that You face such a situation, we should feel in our hearts the necessity of attending You as our real Father; we should feel the necessity of forming one, united, inseparable relationship centering on eternal life and eternal love. If such a heart does not emerge from within us, how can we call ourselves Your sons and daughters? How can we say that we have an inseparable relationship with You? If we are so, please allow us to know that we have nothing to do with the ideal of heaven You wish to grant us, we have nothing to do with the foundation for Your comfort for which You have toiled throughout history.
Compassionate Father, loving Father, if You abandoned these miserable ones, they would never be able to escape from the shadow of death. How can we, who are in such a situation, emerge before You as righteous? We cannot be proud of anything. We do not possess anything. The only thing we possess is our shortcomings. The only thing we feel is awe in Your presence. Father, please have compassion on us. We hope for Your benevolence, Your compassion and Your grace. We are all waiting for Your outstretched hand to appear. We sincerely hope, Father, that You will look at us with compassion.
The dispensational time calls for the last days. The wave of death is sweeping over us and trying to swallow each of us. We know that You see through our chaotic environment and that Your concerned heart and the marks of Your toil remain on this earth. We can understand how indescribably anxious Your mind is as You look at these things. However, Father, we earnestly hope that You will look at us compassionately at the same time and guide us.
If we have a lonely heart, we should confess and transform it into Your heart. If we have a sorrowful and frustrated heart, we should change it into Your heart of happiness and life. We are in such a pitiful situation. Father, You know this. Please forgive us. We have to entrust our difficulties to You and regain our energy from You in this fallen realm when we should be taking on and lightening Your burden.
Father, please permit all of our hearts to be connected. We struggled in the realm of death and had no relationship to one another before; yet we are gathered here as one family with admiration for Your heavenly dispensational ideology. Father, for this reason, we earnestly ask that You have compassion and visit us.
Who can have confidence in Your presence? Because You have confidence, we hope to have confidence; because You said it is so, we desired to feel it as You felt it. Father, if there is any wrong in this, please forgive us and personally direct us. We sincerely ask this.
Father, have mercy on the thirty million people of this nation. They are struggling, not knowing in which direction to go. They are howling at the crossroads of life and death. Satan's claim on their lives gets heavier, Father. We should feel sorrowful over this. We know that we should establish the victorious foundation by changing their path and cutting away the rope of death around them. Father, please grant us the power, if our power is not sufficient. Please give us courage, if our courage is not sufficient. As You gave the encouraging words, "Be bold and courageous!" to Joshua, we earnestly desire Your words of advice to us at this time.
Please permit us to bring the thirty million people before Your altar and connect them to Your life. We sincerely hope, Father, that You will guide us to become Your children who can sacrifice everything and fight against the satanic force that tries to separate us.
Father, there are sons and daughters of Yours in the lonely countryside now, pleading to You with their sorrowful hearts. Please be their friend, their resting place, and their guide. We sincerely hope that You will counsel and comfort them.
Please have compassion on Your children who do not have an environment in which they can share their difficulties with others. They do not have any members with whom they can share their hearts. They are in lonely circumstances. We know that Your world of heart moves beyond the limitations of time and space. Therefore, we ask that You allow the same heart to them at this time, so that their minds can be moved as Yours moves. Father, we earnestly ask that You inspire them with Your undiscriminating hand of grace, and reconnect them to Your heart.
Please allow the minds of the giver and of the receivers to be one. Please guide our hearts to be connected with Your tranquil heart. Father, we sincerely ask that You lead this hour so that we may kneel before You with a solemn attitude and harmonize with the natural desire to bow. Please direct this hour and prevent Satan's invasion during this time.
I ask in the name of the Lord. Amen.
My topic is "My New Self and the Heaven Where My New Self Can Dwell." I will speak briefly upon this topic.
Countless people live on this earth, yet no one can confidently say that he possesses Heaven in his mind. The ideal world which humankind has admired and sought is surely heaven.
In this world, there are many who would wish to live well and be in a blessed position; however, those who can say "I lived well" and "I was blessed" are very few. When we look at this situation, we cannot deny that our life in this world is indeed not life in heaven, but its very opposite. I stand on such a border line; I stand in a position to search after Heaven. We cannot deny that we should seek out and live in such a place. Therefore, our mind searches for a better ideology, and our body seeks a better resting place.
However, the place we can confidently say is the best place in the whole of human history, the place where the original human mind can dwell, has not appeared yet. The lifestyle and social organization of such a life have not appeared in human history.
Therefore, although our minds yearn for a world of hope, we are living in the midst of difficulties in a situation where we cannot avoid the undesirable environment. Tomorrow will be the same. No one can deny that we live in an environment where we desire the world of hope, yet we live with lamentation and grief.
We have to think again about the problem of when we will be able to fulfill the garden of hope, the garden of ideology, and the garden of happiness by overcoming ourselves and our environment, when we will be able to live centering on for what we truly hope. That is the most difficult problem humankind has to consider and resolve.
This problem is so very troublesome, we cannot remain indifferent to it. Moreover, we know well enough through our life experience that our destiny does not allow our mind to stay cut off from the problem just because it is difficult to resolve.
We were born on this earth. However, we did not contemplate whether being born on this earth into our life was a good or a bad thing. There are many people who do not even think about whether this reality is true or not. After being born and living our lives, we are bound to die, leaving our bodies behind. We know well that each of us must go over the valley of death.
The issue of whether we die a truth death is related to us and to our lives. We should not forget that as we began, so must we end.
There may be many who are proud of the fact that they were born on this earth of their parents' lineage. However, a person with a true parental heart should grieve over the child she has borne. Even if a baby is lying in the cradle of happiness at birth, no one can be certain whether that child's whole life will be happy. The parent herself should experience a heart of sadness before a heart of happiness.
If we acknowledge that the child is not born in the garden of happiness, then the life he will lead after birth will be the same; the valley of death he will cross after his life will be the same. We must not forget that we are living in this kind of realm. Let us ask ourselves, "Have I yearned for the true life? Have I lived a true life? Do I have the confidence to victoriously face death as I sing of the preciousness of true life?" Everyone would have to say, "No."
For these reasons, we cannot deny that all people are within the fallen realm and all people have a deplorable destiny. We are not in the world of the normal mind; we are in an abnormal world and environment. Consequently, no one can assert the word "happiness" from the day he is born to the day he dies. We have to remember that such things as happiness, the ideal, and hope have no relationship to us. The reason my mind is not happy is that I have not become a person who can be joyful.
If I had a heart that substantiated hope, then I would rejoice in the midst of that fulfilled hope. However, I do not possess such a joyful heart. If I had substantiated the ideal, then I would be in the position to confidently command all things to follow me, but I do not stand in such a position.
Humankind should have possessed the true ideology, yet they did not. Humankind should have lived in a happy environment, yet they lost that environment. I should have become a person who sings the melody of liberty and peace and who returns the glory of all the happiness swelling in my heart to the Creator; yet I have not become such a person. We have to realize that there is nothing more miserable and sorrowful than this.
Jesus bore the whole burden of the four-thousand-year history. He bore total responsibility for the forefathers in history. He bore all the ideologies of happiness and the Kingdom of Heaven and the hopes of humankind throughout history. Therefore, Jesus is indeed the friend among friends, the center among centers, the center of our total life. He is the center of hope and ideology and even of life and death. Jesus left a word of hope on this earth.
Heavenly Father toiled over four thousand years of long history so humankind might gain new hope and recover happiness in the realm of the new heavenly ideology, coming out of the realm of lamentation and death.
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