The Words of Sun Myung Moon from 1957
|
|
The Words of Sun Myung Moon from 1957 |
16 "When you fast, do not look
somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show
others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their
reward in full. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash
your face, 18 so that it will not be obvious to others that you are
fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who
sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 19 "Do not store
up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy,
and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves
treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where
thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is,
there your heart will be also. 22 "The eye is the lamp of the
body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of
light. 23 But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be
full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great
is that darkness! 24 "No one can serve two masters. Either you
will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the
one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. 25
"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you
will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not
life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the
birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and
yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable
than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to
your life? 28 "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the
flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell
you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of
these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is
here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much
more clothe you -- you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying,
'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we
wear?' 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your
heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his
kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to
you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow
will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its
own.
Matthew 6:16-34
Father, we thank You for having protected us in the past year. Now, as we greet the first week of the new year, this hour is the time for us to offer a full bow before You with joyous hearts. From this hour on, we want to change our direction from being inadequate and insufficient in the past. We want to sanctify our minds and bodies as the Father wishes and fully bow, humbly and meekly, before You. Beloved Father, please receive us.
If there are any inappropriate principles and subjective opinions in our minds toward You, please eradicate them. If there are any blemishes in our bodies caused by Satan's encroachment, please burn them with the fire of Your sacred spirit, and forgive us With the grace of compassion. Please sanctify us to transform ourselves into the original characters You created and to become sons and daughters who can receive the Father's love of joy. Father, I pray this with a most sincere heart.
Father, please let the grace of holiness be connected to us from this day on. Let the power that can subjugate Satan be manifested through us. Please guide us to move our minds and bodies to harmonize with all creation in heaven and earth and to be able to please the Father in heaven. I pray sincerely that You will lead this gathering of ours to be the true gathering for which You wish.
Now the time has come for us to pour out all of our souls and to realize the love concealed within the Father. The time has come for the Father's dispensational work of 6,000 years to be manifested. Father, please allow Your sons and daughters gathered here to stand in a sanctified position of their own accord. Please allow them to be the children who can fathom the heart of Moses who, with sanctified authority from the Father, separated the Red Sea with the staff the Father gave. Father, I pray with utmost sincerity.
Father, please bestow Your blessing upon the thirty million people of this nation in this year, and let the glory and love of the Father hover over the numerous denominations gathering for the sake of this people. Allow the work of the dispensation promised to Your unknown sons and daughters to be unfolded so that the 3,000-ri peninsula of Korea can quickly become a garden of victory. Father, I offer this wish from the depth of my heart: that You will guide these people, who have been asleep, to return glory to the Father and to be able to do the work of the restorational dispensation in heaven and earth.
Father, we desperately desire that You will allow us to have sincere hearts like those of the underground faithful believers of the past and to move the many denominations to awaken the thirty million people. I also pray that You will allow us to mobilize these people to awaken the 2.4 billion persons of humanity and to establish the garden of original nature as quickly as possible. Father, please sanctify our minds and bodies in this hour with new promises and new rules, and receive us. Please bestow the grace of the happiness of the Father upon us. Please allow promises and responses to be formulated here. I pray that the Father's hands of protection will be with us for a long time from this time on, so that we can offer ourselves as the sacrifices of victory before the Father.
Father, I sincerely wish and pray that You allow us to become the loyal and pious sons and daughters who can offer their minds and bodies and everything else exclusively to please the Father. There are throngs of people who are scattered throughout the country even today, who hold onto Your words of truth and pray ardently, taking charge of altars in solitude. Please purify them of the elements of Satan. By establishing the Father's demonstrative power in the face of the forces of darkness, allow them to become the proud children who will manifest the glory of the majestic Father. Beloved Father, I pray and wish this sincerely. Please allow Your sons and daughters to be able to receive the Father's power of authority everywhere they gather, and protect them from being invaded by Satan.
Father! Please let the Holy Trinity be mobile in this hour, and allow the miracle of glorious resurrection to unfold. Soliciting You to allow the Father's sacred spirit to overflow in our minds and bodies from the beginning of the hour to the end, I pray in the name of the Lord. Amen.
I will speak to you briefly on the topic "Jesus' View of Life for the Sake of the Restoration."
Fallen humankind has not yet found the value of eternal life to which the world, the earth and heaven, can attest. Therefore, fallen humankind is left with the mission of restoration to find the value of individual life, the value of world-level life, and beyond that, the value of heavenly life.
Where then will God's purpose of establishing the will of the dispensation and the sought-after value of life be completed? It is not going to be finalized with only you or the world. Heaven and earth have to be united. The value of life that God, the world and the individual can all be happy about at the same time has to be found. Only then will the dispensation of the providential salvation of Heaven be completed at last. The worldwide human activities centering on Satan will be completed, too, and so will the individual-centered concept of morality. You must know that fallen humankind must take the responsibility to make their way through such a life course.
You may easily look upon yourselves as individuals, but you must know that the whole ideal of creation resides within you. Therefore, you must first manifest the value of worldwide life. You must know that only after that will the value of your individual life be established.
You may also know very well that a life of faith is to seek the value of such a life. Therefore, you must put eternal life in place of the innate life that you are hoping for through self-analysis. By uniting the whole ideology of history into one, you must complete the worldwide life. Furthermore, you must set up a foundation of life with which you can make a connection with either eternal life or a worldwide life in the aspect of your individual life. Otherwise, your life at the present time will not be elevated to eternal life via a worldwide life. Adam and Eve were to establish such a cosmic life. Since the human ancestors lost this life by falling, God has been striving to restore this for the 6,000 years of human history. We call this history of God the history of providential restoration.
After passing through the course of toil of 4,000 years to set up the value of such a heavenly life, God sent a man who could represent the value of the total life. That man was Jesus Christ.
Although Jesus Christ was one body, that body represented the eternal and infinite worldwide life and the eternal individual life. Because Jesus came with such a historical background, he had to reveal the eternal hope in reality and testify to the value of the life that can exist forever in heaven and on earth.
What kind of standard did Jesus Christ, who came with such a mission, live centering on? Jesus did not exist to lead his own life. He existed to lead a life for the world. Going further and rising above that, he struggled day after day to lead an eternal life. This was the standard of Jesus' life.
In other words, Jesus' gaze, Jesus' feelings and the life he lived were not just for himself. They represented the world, and the individual. They represented God, and the world.
The words of gospel that Jesus spread were not for Jesus himself but were for the world. Beyond that, they were the words of eternal life representing God. If Christians cannot perceive this, they cannot comprehend the true meaning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and they cannot fulfill the purpose of Jesus Christ's coming. You must understand this.
What did Jesus do to realize the value of such a cosmic life? He elevated love. In other words, he propagated new words of the gospel to complete the value of cosmic life in heaven and earth. The central point of that gospel was love.
What would be the most important thing for an individual to be able to connect his own private life to the standard of eternal value? As Jesus said, he must have such love that he can sacrifice his life for the sake of others. In fact, Jesus established the standard of value of life by loving others more than himself.
Similarly, Jesus, who appeared representing the value of heavenly life, taught humankind to possess such love that they can sacrifice their lives for the sake of others' salvation. You must understand clearly that the man who appeared with such a loving heart, who loved his colleagues more than himself, who loved the world more than he loved his colleagues, and who loved God and the thousands upon thousands of saints more than he loved the world was Jesus Christ.
Jesus did not live with an individualistic ideology to find the value of his own individual life or with individualistic love. Even when he loved a friend, his love transcended the relationship of loving friendship. Jesus had the perspective that he loved the friend representing the world. He also loved that friend with the heart that represented God.
Likewise, Jesus did not practice love on a one-to-one basis. When Jesus loved a certain individual, it was with God's love, with cosmic love, and then with individual love. You must be able to experience this. Only when you do so can you rightly comprehend the value of Jesus' life.
Up to what level did Jesus raise the standard of his own life? He envisioned himself existing for the sake of the world. Even when he loved a friend of his, forsaking himself, he kept the perspective that he loved him for the sake of the world. This was Jesus' standard.
Jesus could establish the standard of love of worldwide salvation on the cross because he had the heart of love and sacrifice with which he could die for the sake of an individual and for the whole simultaneously. You must know that Jesus was the hero of love, life and character. That was not all. Jesus then prayed toward Heaven, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as You will." (Matthew 26:39) Because Jesus wished to live only according to the will of the Father, he could demonstrate God's love to humankind beyond the valley of death. Similarly, we must know that the entire course of Jesus' life was filled with such remarkable love.
Next, what did Jesus Christ, who came with the mission to restore the cosmic life, raise to find the value of life? That, too, was love. This love was not meant for individual human beings but for the world, God and the eternal world -- the spiritual beings who are in the spirit world.
In order for us, in our daily lives, to realize the value of the life of Jesus, who represented God's love, we who must take responsibility for the restoration of the whole life must not deal with whichever matter we face with transient emotions. We must deal with all things with the resolution and determination that we will model ourselves after Jesus' character, who represented the whole on the cosmic level. Only after we pass through such a day-to-day life can we complete the worldwide life and make a connection with eternal life.
In other words, if your day-to-day lives have a transient value that affects only you, you cannot make a connection with eternity. That is the reason you must lead a life in which you can make a connection with God's eternal love. Only when you do that will the eternal God be with you. Because Jesus lived making daily connections with God throughout his life, though Jesus is dead, the will of God, who wished it to be completed by Jesus, has been continuously carried on toward its completion.
What then can we do to make such connections? What is the perspective that has to be set up at our center while we lead a life of faith in Jesus? We have to have a perspective like Jesus, who envisioned that he was born not only for an individual but also for the world and for Heaven. Only in living the life of sacrificing for others, in other words, only when you live the life of serving and loving others can you make eternal connections with God. You must know this clearly.
Today we have faith in Jesus and are grateful for his love, but that sense of gratitude should not stop at the level of our own selves. We have to raise it to the dimensions of all humankind. if there is one who is like this, he will bear the worldwide mission. Furthermore, he will be responsible for God's mission, too.
If we live focused like this in our lives, we will not be disappointed. Upon facing any kind of hardship or difficulties, we will overcome it and stand tall.
Accordingly, in the scriptural reading we just read that Jesus said, "Do not be worried about anything." In other words, he said not to worry about what to eat and what to wear. This does not mean to deny everything. Rather, it means that to establish the value of the whole representing God's will, before you deal with your own individual lives, you must first be concerned about solving worldwide matters. Furthermore, you must be concerned about heavenly matters. To the person who lives with such a resolution, his own individual suffering does not mean much.
How then should we who are to fulfill God's will lead our lives now? Our day-to-day lives should not become ones that deal only with the internal and external matters of our own selves. Beyond matters of our own concern, we must connect ourselves with matters of the whole and take the responsibility to realize eternal value. Only then can you fulfill the will of Heaven's gospel. When you take the path of missionary work with such a sense of duty, God will be with you. Similarly, when you lead your lives with loving and caring hearts, you will surely witness the miracle of recreation. You must know this for certain.
Until now, we have lived a self-centered life of religious faith. We have persevered and loved for our own sake. From here on in, we should not do thus. Now when we demand love from Heaven, we must do it for the sake of the whole of humankind, and for the sake of the many spiritual beings in the spirit world.
The history of humankind seeking the eternal life is the course of the providential dispensation. The remaining history, in which humankind will be seeking the worldwide life, is the course of the history of humankind. To seek the daily life is the course of life. When this is compared and contrasted with the sense of the values of humankind, seeking the worldwide life is human duty and seeking the individual life is moral principle. You must know that all these matters of concern, from the world to the individual, are connected to each of us.
If you want to keep the value of life that the Father can guarantee eternally, you have to study Jesus Christ's view of life centering on love. What was Jesus Christ's view of life? His view of life was to have the heart of serving and caring, the heart of the cosmic master centering on love, and to rule over day-to- day life. That was the central theme of the view of life that Jesus Christ established to restore the cosmic life. Therefore, even when you come upon trivial problems in your daily lives, you must deal with them with the thought that you have the responsibility of carrying out the mission to restore the worldwide life. You must also understand that Jesus Christ was a man who practiced love for the sake of restoration.
To practice love, you must, of your own accord, live a life of serving and caring for others. When you do that, you can make a connection to the love of the whole. Then you can establish the value of life of which the eternal God can approve. Because Jesus came with the mission to restore the cosmic life, he had to go through the course of individual service, individual sacrifice and individual tribulations. As he was bearing such responsibility, he wanted to be responsible, not just for his generation, but for the life of the whole of humankind until the mission of total restoration is completed.
In other words, Jesus has carried out the mission of the restoration of the cosmic life for the past 2,000 years. However, since he could not fulfill the mission alone, he sent the Holy Spirit to work. He is even mobilizing the many spiritual beings in the spirit world to carry out the mission.
Because Jesus came and went without fulfilling the mission to restore the value of cosmic life, that mission is yet to be completed. Therefore, Jesus is still working laboriously to complete the mission on earth until this day.
However, this mission cannot be completed only by Jesus. By whom, then, can this mission be completed? God wishes us to complete the mission. In other words, because Jesus could not fulfill the mission to restore the cosmic life, we have to carry it out. If you feel responsible for the mission to be completed in your generation, you need to have a strong determination throughout your lives to fulfill the mission by any means.
Now, you of today must experience in your daily lives that Jesus is making laborious efforts in the course of the providential dispensation to establish the value of cosmic life. Otherwise, the will of Jesus Christ, who has worked laboriously as a man of mission to restore the cosmic life, cannot be completed through us.
You must know that first you have to offer yourselves as a conditional object of pledge before Heaven. Jesus set a condition of pledge for the world, for heaven and earth and for the whole people. That was the crucifixion. Through the crucifixion, Jesus could cross over in one stage the standard set by many saints and sages through their struggles throughout their lives. Therefore, you must have a clear concept that you will become sacrificial offerings of pledge submitted before Heaven, before the world or before an individual to realize the value of cosmic life.
Wherever you go, wherever you are, whatever you do, you must always make an effort to set yourselves up as conditional objects of pledge in any circumstances, every hour and every day. Such a life is the life of faith. Now you are left with the mission to find the value of cosmic life in front of the Father. You must set yourselves up as conditional objects of pledge and lead lives by which you can make a connection with the life of Jesus. Furthermore, you must have the resolution that you will build yourselves into worldwide conditional objects. Further, you must determine that you will become the sacrifice of pledge replacing the numerous prophets who have made laborious efforts until now and for Jesus Christ. Only when each one of you makes such a condition of pledge can you multiply from one to two, become four, and reach to the world.
You must know that when such circumstances come into being, the earthly toils to find the true value of life will be concluded. In other words, unless the foundation that can conclude the earthly efforts to find life is formed in each of you and expands to the church, to the society, to the nation, and even to the world, the dispensational will for which God raised Jesus Christ, restoring the cosmic life, will not be concluded. You must understand this very clearly. When you think of yourselves, you who have worked during the dispensation of the will so far, and also of Christians today, no individual or family has appeared who represented the value of cosmic life and comprised a standard in which they connected to society, the nation and the world. The whole of humankind, each and every one in the world, was to enter that realm. However, they did not. Unless such a standard gets established on the earth, Jesus Christ's mission to restore the cosmic life will not be concluded.
You should know that although Jesus Christ was a true individual being, he has not expanded to the level of the family, the society, the nation and the world in stages. Thus, the sorrow of Jesus Christ has escalated into that of the cosmos, of God and of Heaven.
Therefore, humankind has wished for the day to come when they could moderate such sorrow and accomplish the eternal victory of Heaven. You must testify throughout your lives to the value of the whole dispensation of heaven and earth, and have the determination to manifest the love of heaven and earth.
However, there are differences between your view of the value of life you wish and God's view of the value of the cosmic life He wishes for in order to complete the whole dispensation. Therefore, you must equip your minds with the attitude that you can lead a worldwide and cosmic life even in your individual lives, throughout your life course, setting the heavenly principle of hope as the standard. If you maintain such an attitude in your mind, then even when you do not completely realize the will, you can continually make internal connections with the whole.
That is why Jesus said, "Heaven exists in your mind." What is the meaning of this? Jesus, who came as a man of cosmic love and perfect truth, with the value of cosmic life, said this to mean that the kingdom of Heaven will appear only when each person fulfills the whole value God blessed him with and maintains it as his foundation.
When individuals belonging to the realm of Heaven gather in unity to launch the worldwide life campaign and let the many good spiritual beings in the spiritual world make connections with the whole, the will of cosmic life on earth that Jesus tried to restore will be concluded for the first time. You must know this.
Jesus came with the mission to restore the cosmic life. When the people of that time received Jesus without understanding his mission or position, Jesus scorned them and told them that they must not be more concerned about what to eat, drink and wear than about God's nation and righteousness. He told them not to adopt these concerns as the standard of their lives. If there is a person who lives with the determination to lead his daily life on behalf of God and Jesus Christ and to fight for the world, he will not be alone. God will be with such a person and Jesus and the Holy Spirit will also be with him until the end of the world. On the other hand, the people then led their lives concerned only about their own well- being, without understanding such relations. That is why Jesus scorned them.
What then is the purpose of your faith in Jesus in the last days? It is not for the sake of receiving some external worldly blessing. It is not for the sake of your individual well-being or good life either. Our good life is for the sake of Jesus and God. When that purpose changes its direction, things may appear fine, but as days go by, things will go awry. On the contrary, if humankind lives for the sake of Jesus, God and the world, Jesus said that God will bear the responsibility for everything.
By the way, while you have the responsibility to fulfill the will of God, the question is how much and how far you can sacrifice yourselves toward its fulfillment. If you sacrifice for your own sake, you will become an individual hero. if you sacrifice for the benefit of the world, you will become a worldly hero. If you sacrifice for heaven and earth to establish the victorious standard of life, you will become a hero who will govern heaven and earth. That is why Jesus has been striving behind the scenes until now to make humankind resemble his character, to find and establish the value of life.
It is so indescribably important for each of you to raise yourself and launch a restoration campaign for such a life. When viewed from the aspect of human history, in the sense of the realities of the world or in the perspective of the eternal hope of the future, this is vitally important. You have a great responsibility.
Your standard of life, including eating and all aspects of living, must be for the sake of restoring the whole life in the place of Jesus Christ. Moreover, you must become the one who proceeds forward with a sense of responsibility to realize the value of the whole life God is looking for, centering on the love that Jesus set up. Only when you become such persons will God's will of restoring the cosmic life be completed through you. You must understand that the place where such people gather to live is heaven. The more such people there are, the more God will be with them and the more God will be delighted.
We have come to understand in our hearts the history of the efforts of the Father, who has set up the laws of heavenly principle and carried on the dispensation to have the life of restoration connected to the level of Heaven. Father, please guide us to comprehend fully that You have exerted Yourself for 6,000 years to establish the value of the worldwide life.
We came to know that it is a divine rule that God cannot intervene with the religion that has nothing to do with Christ, from an individual to the whole. Beloved Father, I pray from the bottom of my heart that You allow us to live the life that Jesus Christ wishes and to understand the value of Jesus Christ's love.
We came to know that we, too, must have the same determination in life as Jesus Christ. Please be with us so that we can repulse the attacks of Satan and obtain victory on the battleground where we can find the value of our individual lives.
We came to understand that Satan will accuse us as we move along in Jesus' footsteps on the course of restoration for the value of life. Therefore, please lead us not to become those who are ridiculed and sneered at while walking the course stretching from our individual life to the worldwide and cosmic life. Beloved Father, I sincerely hope and want that You will allow us to be determined to proudly repel Satan's accusation in our daily lives and in the aspect of history, and that we can establish the whole life and fulfill the responsibility.
Now we know that we must resemble the character of Jesus, who ruled over all things on earth to establish the worldwide life that possesses the value of eternal life. Father of love, please let us resemble that character of Christ. We are faced with a situation where all of us, no matter who we are, must walk the course of struggle in reality. Father, please lead us not to be accused by Satan in the aspect of our social life, in the aspect of our character that we are trying to establish in the presence of the Father, or in the aspect of our love, which we must render to humankind. Please be with us so that we can realize the love of Jesus, who ardently wished the love of the eternal Father to be fulfilled.
Father, I sincerely hope and wish that You will govern us to possess the value of life that Jesus established and to realize that value on this earth. Please allow us to understand in this hour that only when we bear the responsibility for this work can we make connections from the position of individuals, via the world, to heaven and earth. Beloved Father, I pray from the bottom of my heart that You will guide us to become sons and daughters who can voluntarily determine themselves to brush aside all the external conditions and to find the standard and value of the whole life. By taking all the conditions as an offering of pledge, let us fight on.
Requesting sincerely that You rule over everything according to Your will and take charge of all this, I prayed in the name of the Lord. Amen.