Cheon Seong Gyeong Ⅱ - 336. The path of devotion, faith and prayer
14 You have resolved even to face death in walking this new path of faith. Therefore, if you advance in the direction God’s wishes with absolute faith, your path of faith will lead you to discover divine value. Hence, you need to feel the responsibility that accompanies such faith, and become true sons and daughters who practice this faith. Unless you do so, there is no way you can stand before the Father. You will not be able to stand before the absolute Father as a true son or daughter, and a patriot. (3-022, 1957.09.08) 15 If you look from a historical perspective at how God has searched for people, you will see that He has found people through their conditions of faith. On the one hand, God has asked people to establish conditions of faith, but on the other hand He has demanded that people put their faith into action. After you create a bond of heart with God, in order to gain a foothold to erase feelings of sadness, you need to forge the path of putting faith into practice. Only in this way can you establish history-shaping connections. (6-211, 1959.05.17) 16 In order to resolve any awkward situation, you have to report about yourself honestly and truthfully. Sincerely report, “I am this kind of person” and request, “I am a wayward person but You are good; if only You would sympathize with a person like me and kindly show me the path of rectitude I need to follow, I would be grateful.” If you engage people with a prayerful heart, your environment will become natural. However, if you persist in your ways, whatever effort you make will not settle your mind. Rather than settling in that environment, you will leave. Therefore, to be able to say, “I am such and such a person and I wish to build a relationship with you,” you need to report about yourself sincerely and truthfully. This takes place through prayer. Prayers help rectify your course when you are going astray. If you reflect on your daily life, you will see that your words and actions vacillate and your feelings go up and down. Every moment, as you live and breathe, you are weighing this and that. In weighing your options, you have to be sincere. (045-247, 1971.07.04) 17 Normal people do not understand my prayers. They need to read them a hundred times to grasp them. When you hear the mysterious sounds of heaven, in order to resonate with them you need profound reverence and feeling. Therefore, you need to connect with nature, with everything. Unless you have that connection, you will not know. The Buddha said the same: “In heaven and earth, I alone am the honored one.” He could say that from his being in that state. It is like this when you overcome boundaries. (566-268, 2007.06.22) 18 You need devotional conditions and prayer. Is your position that of a resurrected person? If you are not standing in that position, are you at least ardently seeking it? Are you confident about taking responsibility for the environment in your path of faith? We have not yet accomplished this. This is why prayer is necessary. Prayer has the power to move the goalposts of life and death. It is difficult to offer the ardent prayer that is necessary. How busy would you be if you had to build a great tower stretching miles upward? Seriously, if you had to build a very wide and tall tower, wouldn’t you be incredibly busy? If you resolved to build it and projected that it would take fifty years, you would not have a second to lose. (31-317, 1970.06.07) 19 1 believe that prayer is the greatest power, because it makes possible what is impossible. In the Unification Church we emphasize prayer, but we do not teach a different method of prayer. It is just the contents of our prayers that are different. My teaching has been, “Do not pray for yourself” I teach that you should pray instead for your mission, for others, and to offer words of comfort to God. (091-117, 1977.02.03) 20 When you face a difficult problem, resolve it with prayer. Why then do we pray? Prayer enables a relationship based on God's standard of heart. When you pray about an issue with a serious heart of concern for God and the nation, God will certainly teach you what was before and what is to come. Such occurrences will take place quite frequently. (33-131, 1970.08.11) 21 More than expanding outward, we need to unite with our mind and find the path that leads deep within. This is the life of prayer today’s Christianity talks about. Prayers that seek to connect with God’s mind and profoundly experience the essence of God’s Word are more precious than prayers about setting certain objectives and achieving them. This is why we seek a quiet place when we want to pray. (29-318, 1970.03.13) 22 If you lead a life of prayer, you will feel indescribable joy. This state of joy is the state of God’s thought prior to creation. Having reached this state, if you are able to stand in the position where you can describe such joy, you will be in the state of God after He created the entire universe. This level is the position of God as He created the universe through the Word. From that state, you have to proclaim the Word. If you do so, people certainly will appear wanting to receive the Word. (29-321, 1970.03.13) 23 If you want to pray, you have to do so before beginning your daily activities. Hence, the most important time is daybreak. Dawn is the most important time. This is the time period that determines the outcome of your day. Pray at this time. In order to offer a profound prayer filled with emotions hitherto unknown and unfelt, do not center your prayers on yourself. Pray for a great objective on the level of the nation or the world. (30-123, 1970.03.21) 24 You have to lead a profound life of prayer, which means you steep your daily life in the providence. You also have to reflect constantly upon how closely you are tying your daily life to the course the church is going and the path God is walking. To do so, your heart has to yearn for church news to the extent that you just go to church or call the church at any time. God surely will dwell in the family in which He finds such a heart. Without such a heart, there is no root that can sustain what is planted; it is the same as having planted nothing. Understanding this principle, you need to reorganize your life to lay such a foundation. (31-293, 1970.06.04) 25 Prayer is more important than eating. This is why I like nature and why I treasure times of solitude. I like the tranquility of the night. You will not have the foundation to experience the richness of life unless you go the way of prayer. In that world, in that space, you can feel and experience a love that is very hard to find elsewhere. On the basis of prayer, you can strengthen yourself and advance your life of faith. I cannot always pull you along. What will you do when I am no longer around? You need to make prayer an intrinsic part of your inner life. You need to pray day and night, so yours will be living prayers. Only in this way will your desires and the subject of your prayers grow and develop as the years pass. This is why you have to be aware of the time in which you are living. Develop your inner life through prayer. (104-112, 1979.04.15) 26 Prayer is not something undertaken with a capricious mind. To pray, you have to find a deep place, a place that can represent Heaven, a place that is the center, not the sidelines. How then should you pray? In order to pray about serious and desperate problems in your life, cleanse yourself and pray in a location that is not on the borderline, and that forever has no relationship with Satan. Those who say, “No matter how fervently I pray, God never answers” are praying in a position where no answers are possible. How can God respond to a prayer you utter while on Satan’s side? (123-080, 1982.12.12) 27 The mind is round. There are doors to the mind. However, when you pray, your prayers do not always flow smoothly. As the four seasons are different, prayers are different according to your character. There are times when your mind unites with the direction of Heaven; you must not miss these moments. If you lead a life of prayer, you will immediately sense the coming of these moments; you will already know. Hence, you must prepare thoroughly for such occasions. Then, when such a time arrives, having already made various preparations, you need to open your mind’s doors as wide as possible, let the extraordinary force and love of God flow into you, and reach the stage where you can perceive this force and this love. (156-213, 1966.05.25) 28 In the Last Days, we need to offer many tearful prayers. When we pray, we need to shed not only tears but also blood. We went over the hill of tears and the hill of the cross. In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus offered a prayer drenched in blood. He shed tears as he held and embraced the Jewish nation. It is prayers such as these that vanquish Satan’s power. (10-042, 1960.06.26) 29 Pray from the bottom of your heart. When your words and actions reflect your innermost heart, they will become honorable words and actions that bring you no shame before God, Satan or anyone else. God is seeking such people. (2-050, 1957.02.17) 30 If you pray from the bottom of your heart, with religious discipline, crying out to Heaven, your prayer will be answered. However, if you offer the same feeble prayers over the decades, as many people do today, your prayers will remain unanswered. You must pray on the basis of your ability to pledge with a genuine heart of love. You need an earnest heart capable of waiting thirty or forty years after offering a prayer. If you pray with an earnest heart that will remember that prayer after thirty or forty years, your prayer will be fulfilled. There is no need to pray for it over and over again. (7-095, 1959.07.19) 31 When you pray, you should pray with tears and break out in sweat. You should pray with this conviction: “If something strikes me, even if it penetrates my body, it won’t knock me down.” Even as people persecute and oppose you, you should know that the time when God will answer your prayers is drawing near. As you follow the path of the Unification Church, your hardships will increase when you come close to that time. You need to understand this. (112-055, 1981.03.29) 32 You need to experience a life filled with new sensations that arise from complete devotion to God. When you engage in activities with your heart filled with these sensations, you will witness multiplication and, eventually, development. When a tree is sprouting new buds, each day is different. Each day is filled with life’s energy. Every time you lose this feeling, you need to pray at the risk of your life. Pray through the night and accumulate merit in order to progress. When you lead such a life, occasionally God will make it difficult for you to find the time to offer conditions. In such circumstances, however hard you try to find hope, you will not succeed. Also, there will be times when the harder you try, the deeper you will sink into a dark pit. If you find yourself in such circumstances, you need to subjugate Satan who follows you, renew your heart of attendance to God, and fight with greater vigor. (30-133, 1970.03.21) 33 The more we reflect on the course we need to complete, the more we realize that completion is not possible by personal effort alone. This is why people of faith have to pray. As an individual, if you are unable to inherit the tradition that is united completely with God’s Will, any effort you make, however great, could produce an outcome that directly contradicts God’s Will, irrespective of the loyalty you demonstrate. We have to understand the reality of our present position. (071-276, 1974.05.05) 34 Before praying for your sons and daughters, you should pray for the ancestors in heaven who have invested themselves until now. Your heart has to desire the welfare of humankind ahead of your personal welfare. Before you dance, look at all the people groaning in the pit of sorrow, and worry about them. Even when he was happy, Jesus could not show his happiness in his countenance or actions. Please relate in your heart to Jesus’ circumstances. (4-125, 1958.03.23) 35 If you pray according to your own will, it will not work. God will have nothing to do with your prayers, even if you conduct numerous vigils. We have to deny one sphere, embrace the next sphere, and advance for its sake. For example, to hold on to the nation, which is greater, we have to deny the family. Public service means living for what is greater. This is the only way we can leave a legacy. Worrying about one’s own desires or seeking to advance one’s family comes later. We have to go forward centered on the greater objective. (28-270, 1970.02.08) 36 Fallen human beings are born in the midst of apparent happiness but pass away in the midst of tears. Nonetheless, the nation will bless those who grasp and shed tears for the nation; pitiful religious groups will bless those who grasp them and weep for them, and the world will bless those who hold on to and shed tears for the world. (4-166, 1958.04.06) |