The Words of Won Pil Kim
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The Words of Won Pil Kim |
You should not forget that you are the microcosm of your Home Church of 360 houses. Thus, without perfecting your own individual Home Church, you will hardly attain the perfection of your Home Church of 360 houses. Then what is your individual Home Church? It is the unity of your mind and body centered on God's heart and Father's words.
Mind and body cannot unite by themselves. They can, however, come to unite centered around the dual purposes: the purpose of the heart and the purpose of the body. In this way, we can become an individual truth incarnation; God dwells where an individual comes into unity with God's will.
God's dwelling is referred to as a holy temple, or a church. A house dedicated as God's dwelling is a church; if God dwells in my body, I become an individual holy temple. After individually becoming holy temples, a man and a woman will give birth to children in whom God dwells. This is a children's church. The unity of husband, wife and children is a Home Church. Thus, there is an individual church, a Home Church, clan church, tribal church, national church, world church and cosmic church. This means that we have to make our individual church reality before we can form a Home Church of 360 homes.
Each of you has your own mission, besides working in a 360-home area. Take your mission as a place where you can practice serving in order to perfect your individual church. Meanwhile, consider your department as a place where God dwells, in other words, a department church.
Your department or your business has sections corresponding to mind and body, or to Cain and Abel. Your mission was started by God's will and Father's plan. When the members and Abel become one, the department will become one, operating under God's guidance, and the mission will prosper. You know that the unity of Cain and Abel creates the foundation of substance, upon which the messiah can come.
On the other hand, where a foundation of substance is not laid, there is no foundation to receive the messiah; and if the messiah cannot come, the department cannot grow, because it has not become the department church. Therefore, you have to have the kind of heart which impels you to make your department a department church. Through building up the department church, gradually your individual church will come to perfection.
Father himself is an individual church. He was put in jail, but even there he built up a church. Through Father's guidance and the aid of spirit world, some of the prisoners became Father's disciples and devoted themselves to attending him. Thus in the jail of hell, Father instituted a church.
Think about Jesus. He started his public ministry at the age of 30, but before that he assisted his father, who was a carpenter; he had no opportunity even to go to school. In the carpenter's shop, he became an individual church and transformed the workshop into a church. What kind of heart do you think he had when he had to cut, plane and sand the lumber? He must have invested the same heart as God did when He created the universe. He must have been thinking of restoring the sinful people and perfecting them, by cutting away their sins. In this way, he inherited God's heart and learned how much people in history had suffered.
Some of you are restoring the World Mission Center. What you are doing is just like the restoration of the world; restoration means to re-make what has been destroyed. You should look at this building as a symbol of all mankind or of the world of creation. Or perhaps you may think that you are restoring God's heart from one of sorrow to one of joy. In this way, you will become one with God's parental heart.
Therefore, if your heart is eager to build up your individual church and your department church, it will automatically become linked with your Home Church area.
Father said we should visit the 12 best homes every day and the 72 best homes every three days. Actually, the 12 best homes are included in the 72, so that means we have 60 homes to visit every three days (20 per day.)
If we subtract 72 from the total of 360 homes, that leaves 288 homes which we have to visit three times every 40 days (21.5 homes per day).
If we total up all these daily visits, that means Father has directed us to visit 53 homes per day.
In visiting the homes, however, you do not come to simply say hello to the people. For the 12 best homes, centered on the three best, you have to visit them with an especially deep relationship of give and take, serving them or giving them God's word. If you serve them, it may take an hour or two of your time; if you teach them God's word, you may spend 30 minutes or an hour, sometimes two hours. You may have to take your guests to a family meeting, Sunday service or a lecture. You especially want them to attend a workshop, so you would have to accompany them for at least two days of the workshop. All this requires considerable time and devotion.
Also, don't go to Home Church with the attitude of first teaching the people. Rather, think of what you can learn from them. In order to catch fish, you have to study them, their habits, their favorite food, etc. If you want to catch a giant tuna, you have to become bigger than the tuna. Actually a big fish can be caught with a small bait. The catch is the hook inside the bait. When you go fishing in Home Church, your bait is God's love and your parental heart. The importance of sacrificial love
Be a servant of servant to your 360 homes and love them wholeheartedly, not in a self-centered way. You might think that you can change people with your wisdom and knowledge, but the only way change will happen is through sacrificial love.
The archangel gained dominion over Adam not by money or by power, but by self-centered love, In order for you to restore the birthright and gain dominion, you must have sacrificial love. Your purpose in going to 360 homes is to gain the birthright. Satan knows this very clearly, better than you do. That's why he opposes you through the people in our area.
The good spirit world in your area is begging you to visit the people quickly; they have been waiting impatiently; if you don't do it, they will accuse you.
The archangel felt lonely and had love for only himself, but not love for others. Therefore, if you serve others, you are doing something Satan cannot do. If he had sacrificed for others, he would not be Satan. Serving is higher prayer than original prayer.
You may have to spend a lot of time with one person, attend a workshop or go fundraising. Then how can you visit your quota of 53 homes per day? Furthermore, you may not have full time to devote to witnessing, but still you should think about how to keep visiting 53 homes per day. What kind of attitude should you have then?
First of all, check your attitude towards Father's words and your Abel figure. You have to receive these instructions with the conviction that you can fulfill them. Central figures in the history of the providence often said they could not fulfill God's orders. But we have to become superior to every individual in the past history, otherwise we can never indemnify the failures of our ancestors.
Unless the people in the spirit world see us making some condition in which we are superior to them, it is difficult for them to help us, because they always want to help someone who is better than they are. If someone who is close to God and receives much love from God fulfills his mission with the help of another person, he will naturally share the blessing of fulfillment with his helper.
So, practically speaking, how can you fulfill the requirement of visiting 53 homes per day?
First, if you go to your area and visit some houses but run out of time to knock on the doors of the rest, you can stop in front of the remaining homes and visit them in your heart, asking God to bless each person there and let them know about your visit. In that way, you can visit each home.
Next, even when you do knock on each of the 53 doors, you do not always find everyone at home; day and night they go out, so where can you find them? You cannot meet them unless you go out to the street. So, wherever you are, whether on the street, at the store, in school, etc., you should always witness to 53 people per day, as a condition for visiting the 53 homes in your Home Church area.
There are many brothers and sisters who have difficulty visiting people who reject them because they are Moonies.
Meeting persecution is normal; it's nothing special. Satan is afraid of us, that's what happens. Why do dogs bark so loudly? Because they are afraid of people coming to the house; the dog is actually more afraid than the people who heir him bark.
Suppose there is one home among your 360 houses where the man kicks you out because you are a Moonie. When you are kicked out, don't get angry; leave the house with a smile and say, God bless you. See you again.
The following day you knock again on the door, and he yells at you for being a Moonie. On the third day, you knock on the same door, but he doesn't answer the door, because he knows you are a Moonie. Each day you knock on the door, and because he doesn't answer the door you just call out, "How are you today? God bless you." And you leave.
Each day he hears you say, God bless you, and then leave quietly. So he carefully opens the curtain and looks outside. He sees you leaving, quietly and politely. He knows that you came to bless him, but since you have to leave without being accepted, you appear to be lonely in his eyes, and you evoke some sympathy in his heart. Still, he sees that your face is not unhappy, but on the contrary, very bright.
If you continue five, six, seven times, he comes to expect you to call on him every day at the same hour. Gradually, he will become more interested in you. His opposition to you has been based not on personal knowledge of the Unification Church or the Divine Principle, but because of the many negative rumors he has heard. He had always thought that Moonies were evil people.
Thus, in the beginning, his mind and body were united in opposition to you. However, since you come to visit him every day and greet him kindly and wish him God's blessing, his mind starts to feel that he should no longer oppose you. After all, even his relatives and friends don't come to greet him so consistently every day and wish him God's blessing. Thus, as time goes by, his mind and body become divided. His mind receives stimulation from you and he is moved; his mind begins to tell him, This Moonie is not wrong, he is not evil. But his body says, The Moonie is evil.
So the two fundamental aspects of him start fighting with each other, and the power of his opposition begins to lessen. Then if you visit him when his negative power is weak, he cannot yell at you for being a Moonie. After maybe a month, his mind will say, I would like to open the door and hear why he comes to visit me so often. So sooner or later, he will open his door and invite you inside.
Think about the story of the Israelites' victory over the city of Jericho. For six days they marched around the heavily-fortified city, but nothing happened. Don't you imagine that the people protested against their leaders, Joshua and Caleb, because there seemed to be no results? Still, they remained united, and on the seventh day, as they marched around the walled city, the walls collapsed.
You may think that the entire walled city collapsed, but that is not true. When the Israelites united centering around God's word, what do you think happened inside the city? The king, who was Abel, and the citizens, who were Cain, could not unite, and a civil war erupted. A division took place within the fortified city, and their power weakened. That is why the Israelites could enter.
In the same way, when you visit a negative person every day, uniting around Father's word, divisions will begin to take place between the mind and body of the opposing person; if there are two people living in the house, they will be polarized, and one will tend to accept you while the other wants to reject you. Do you understand? Even without conversing with the people, if you greet them kindly and wish them God's blessing, you will cause a split between the mind and body of your opponent.
Put yourself into the shoes of the resident of the house. He sees that the Moonie is not violating any law by stepping into his house, he is not trying to sell anything -- he just comes to serve. The negative person will start to compare you to the members of his church, who have never witnessed as eagerly as you are doing. He will begin to think that he should learn at least this one good point from the Unification Church.
Then you can write him a long letter, explaining your motivation in visiting his house. If he receives your letter at a time when he thinks you might be good and sincere, he will be moved by it.
My point is that if you unite with your Abel, obeying Father's direction, your opponents will be divided. On the contrary, of course, if we are not one, Satan will come to attack us instead.
What about people who are never at home? You have probably heard about Chung Pyung Lake, the holy land in Korea where Father wants to build an international university and training center. Whenever he is in Korea, he always goes to visit Chung Pyung, regardless of how busy he may be. Sometimes he stays for just five minutes and leaves. The land, however, knows of his presence.
The same is true when you visit a house. Even if the people are not home and do not know about your coming, the building itself remembers your visit. It understands. So, when you visit that house, hold the doorknob and say, "How are you?" When your master comes back, please tell him I stopped to see him.
If you set that kind of condition, the ancestors of the residents will appear to them and teach them about you, on the foundation of your investment of heart. We know, for instance, that there is electricity in this building; to make use of it, all we have to do is turn on the switch. In the same way, the entire spirit world is surrounding us, prepared to help us, but unless we fulfill our five percent responsibility, it can do nothing. By visiting our houses every day, whether the people are at home or not, we can lay an unshakable foundation of heart.
If a family is wealthy and seemingly content with life, the easiest way to approach them is through service. Even though they might appear so happy, deep inside their hearts they have some problem which they may never have confided to anyone. Because they are rich, with lots of money and material goods, they also have many problems. Why? Because in this world, people are caught up in life-and-death competition, trying to defeat each other.
Children try to get a lot out of their parents; being so busy, the parents don't have much time to devote to educating their children. The father works hard for his family, but his children rarely appreciate his efforts. When a man has a lot of money, many women surround him -- a rich man's relationship to women is so confused. In a rich family, the wife is often beautiful, so many men are attracted to her. Thus it is very difficult for the husband and wife to maintain a good relationship of trust and fidelity. This fallen world lacks any clear standard of how to love each other.
If, however, you look at such a family externally and imagine that it is perfectly happy, you have difficulty witnessing to them; they seem to witness to you. Father looks at people and can sense their problems, but how can we do the same? First we have to help them practically, so they can recognize us as a good person and trust us. On that foundation of trust they can open their hearts and speak out.
You can find many ways to relate to such people. If the family watches television a lot, you can watch the same programs and offer your comments; you may enter into their situations, but don't be influenced and dominated by them. Explain the television shows from a principled point of view. The more you experience a situation (watching television with the family, for instance), the easier it becomes to find out how to control it.
So please don't feel insecure and miserable in front of rich people living in a fancy house.
Look at them as your brothers and sisters, not as outside people. They think that posh house is theirs, but if it is in your Home Church area, it also belongs to you; they just don't know about you. Become the master of your area.
Every member has a mission to accomplish, as well as Home Church to fulfill. I hope you can understand that the Home Church providence is not just a means of witnessing; it is the providence of God and our final destination. All members must fulfill it.
However, many of you do not have full time to devote to Home Church. Your central figure probably always emphasizes how important it is to accomplish your mission, perhaps mentioning Home Church only rarely. Thus, you members may become confused. Perhaps you concentrate most of your attention on your main mission, and if you think at all about Home Church, you are troubled because you cannot do it.
When you hear Father speak about Home Church or read his instructions about Home Church, it gives you a big heartache, and you have trouble investing as much heart into your mission as you did before, and you become less effective. Then when both areas suffer -- Home Church and your mission -- you feel a heavy burden. Therefore, you should understand the relationship between your mission and your Home Church work.
Compare this to the relationship between your spirit man and your physical body. The spirit man cannot grow without the foundation of the physical body; likewise, the physical body cannot develop properly without the connection to the spirit man. We cannot think about ourselves without considering the whole person -- spirit man and physical body.
Our mission, therefore, is like our physical body and our Home Church work like our spirit man. Thus, the relationship between our mission and our Home Church work is inseparable.
Suppose your mission is to repair automobiles, and you have to invest so much time in it that you cannot do Home Church work. As you repair a car, you can imagine that it represents all the people in your 360-home area. You should train your heart and mind to have this attitude. When you think of one car as representing all 360 homes and, symbolically, all mankind, your work on that car takes on a whole different dimension. You can invest all your heart, through this car, towards your 360-home area. Then in the future, when you do have time to go to your Home Church area, all spirit world and all your good ancestors will come to aid you.
The best condition you can make is to do the work of your mission while thinking of Home Church. To think of the two as separate activities is a misunderstanding of the Divine Principle.
Jesus told a story that also illustrates this point. In the parable, two people who went to the spirit world received different degrees of blessings, although both had done the same external activities. Jesus explained that the one who got the greater reward had given a cup of cold water to a beggar in the name of Christ, treating him as the son of God.
Thus, what really matters is your motivation and purpose. One person sweeps the yard thinking only of the yard, but the other person sweeps it as if it were the whole world. When you relate to someone, you should treat him as God Himself.
If you work with such earnest dedication, some day when you are walking along in your Home Church area, people will see a vision of True Parents or Jesus Christ walking alongside you.
Even though you may be working on a small job, if your heart and spirit are connected to your 360-home area, when you fulfill this small responsibility, you will reap additional fruit in your 360-home area. In this way, you can fulfill both your mission and your Home Church.
Also, you must consider that much time on your mission may be wasted by confusion and idleness when there is no clear attitude, position or plan. Often the reason for wasted time is a Cain-Abel problem or an unclear relationship between leaders and members. When the relationship between leaders and members is clear and smooth, the group and the mission will develop well. However, if you think, I will treat my central figure well only when he treats me well, you are only imitating the attitudes of the fallen world.
You should always do your best to give your entire support to your mission and to your Abel figure. This is the attitude of the restored Cain.
Since a common obstacle to doing Home Church is lack of time, you should look for the quickest way to complete your given mission, in order to go to your Home Church area, or at the very least, go street witnessing. Suppose you can fulfill your mission in seven hours, but you work longer because you want to keep busy. Satan is very sneaky; he will tell you that your mission is God's will and Father's direction and tempt you to escape from Home Church. This is Satan's internal test. You have to be honest with yourself and analyze whether you are working hard at your mission because you don't like to do Home Church work.
You should not have to invest time in preparing to go to Home Church after completing your mission. If there is good give and take between leaders and members on the job, powerful life elements can be generated there, giving you a joyful mind which can carry over to your Home Church work. But if you are unhappy because of problems with your leaders or other members, you cannot go to Home Church in that frame of mind, and you have to prepare yourself. The key, then, is to work on your mission with the attitude of working to heal the whole world.
When you do Home Church very well, you can do your mission well. When you fulfill your mission faithfully, you can accomplish much more in your Home Church.
Father gave directions to all members to do Home Church work. The Home Church providence is our destiny; everyone, without exception, has to go this way. If your leader doesn't take care of you and you complain, you have the wrong attitude. If your leader hurts you, do you stop eating and sleeping? No, because these are life necessities. Doing Home Church is just like eating and sleeping -- fulfilling an absolute necessity for your life.
If you concentrate on your mission, you can get more work done in a shorter amount of time. If you determine to get by with less food and less sleep just to be able to go to your area, you can make it. If a mission is so busy that there is absolutely no time for Home Church, the leader should go to Father and get permission for the members to postpone Home Church work in order to do their mission full time; but without the permission of Father, you cannot stop Home Church work. Don't be unstable or influenced wrongly by others; just go ahead to your area.
It might be easy for you to think that you cannot do anything for your Home Church contacts while you are away for 40-day pioneer witnessing. But actually, you can write to them from your pioneer town.
If you have in your Home Church area a negative person of whom you are afraid, sit down and write to him the things you wanted to tell him -- honestly and straight from your heart. You can write something like this:
I visited your house many times, but I know that you are negative about Moonies, so even though I wanted so much to talk to you. I didn't have enough courage. But before I joined, I was in the same situation as you are -- negative towards Moonies. Then I met one and wanted to know the truth, so I went to the church and found out about them.
Before the church, I had nobody I could trust, but since I met them I changed and became so happy. I want to share this happiness with you; that's why I went to visit your house. I walked around your house many times, praying for your family and your happiness. Sometimes it is very difficult for me to wake up early in the morning, but still, when I think of you and the future happiness I hope to experience from a friendship with you, I get a lot of energy.
Although I am far away from you now, I am still thinking and praying for you....
You can recount the experiences you have gone through in your pioneer town, your deep experiences of suffering and rejection, connecting them with Jesus' experiences. Tell him that even though you have no place to sleep, no money and that you haven't eaten for two days, you feel the heart of God and Jesus and thus feel you have great hope for the future. You can mention that
Rev. Moon has gone through worse situations, and he never asked God for anything, but always tried to comfort God's heart. In this way you can testify about Father.
Such a letter will really deepen your relationship to your Home Church area and will make history.
In Korea, I had to take care of one of Father's children one year when the summer 40-day pioneering condition came up. I was told to do IW work, which meant that I could not take care of the child. But I decided that I could still help him. Every day during that 40-day condition I wrote him a letter about how much people were changing when they listened to Father's words and how hard the brothers and sisters were working. I wanted him to understand how precious it is to follow Father's direction. I expected him to be really appreciative of Father and I also hoped he would realize how precious brothers and sisters are to Heavenly Father.
I didn't expect Father to read all of those letters, but he did. Then Father told me to send all those letters to Lady Dr. Kim in America, so she could bring that same tradition of 40-day pioneering to America.
Father openly uses the name Unification Church, but if members are hiding behind another name, how can the spirit world help them? If we clearly identify ourselves with the Unification Church, then Cain and Abel will be clearly divided.
On your initial visit to each house, you should identify yourselves as Unification Church members. If you don't express that, how can you classify the homes into A, B or C categories? If people do not know you are members of the Unification Church, their process of restoration cannot begin. You are going to be working in your area for perhaps seven years, so sooner or later the people must know who you are; if you hide your identity, the providence is prolonged.
If you don't say you are a member of the Unification Church, you might feel more comfortable externally, but then you will always have the uneasy feeling, when will they find out who I really am? If you don't say you are from the Unification Church, you will not get persecuted, but then you will feel free to talk only about secular things.
In the early days in Korea, we would sometimes wait to tell people we were from the Unification Church until we had established a good foundation in our relationship with them. They would come over to hear the lectures on the Divine Principle, and they would really love the lectures, but when they found out that this was the Unification Church, they would leave. On the other hand, those who knew we were from the Unification Church but came anyway to find out about us were the ones who ultimately stayed with us.
If you don't mention the Unification Church when you witness, you will become weak spiritually; conversely, when you do identify yourself with the Unification Church, you will be persecuted and as a result become strong. In this sense, it is a good idea to make up some flyers or pamphlets to put under the people's doors, introducing yourself as a Unification Church member, before you even begin knocking on doors. That way, they will know who you are when you come. Your position in your area should be clear; otherwise, the people in your 360 homes will not know how to relate to you. If you don't receive persecution because of your connection with Father, spirit world cannot help you. Thus, the path of persecution is ultimately the easiest one.
In every situation, you must base your actions not on personal considerations, but on a deep concern for the salvation of the person you are witnessing to. You should never act out of fear of persecution. Our position in our area should be clear, otherwise the people in our 360 homes will not know how to relate to us.
When Father gives directions, if there are things about his instructions which you do not understand you should ask about them and clear them up. This clarification will generate power for you to carry out his directions. Clearly understand the contents of directions when they are given. Regarding Home Church, for instance, it is one thing to feel that you have to do it because Father tells you to do so and quite another thing to do it based upon a clear understanding of why Father gave us these instructions. Therefore, I want to explain again why we do Home Church.
Basically, we have to do Home Church because after we succeed there, we can go back to our native town and restore our tribe and enter heaven together with them. Before the Home Church providence, we could never go to heaven together with our entire family. It is not possible to enter heaven as an individual; you cannot live there alone. Thus, in the past, no one could go to heaven, because he could not enter with his entire family.
With Father's victory at the Washington Monument rally of 1976, the Home Church providence began. Before then, even though you were a member of the Unification Church, you could attain only personal salvation. Only through the Home Church providence can the whole family go to heaven.
However, unless you restore your Cain tribe in your Home Church area, you cannot restore your Abel tribe (your relatives in your home town). You know that Abel cannot go to God by himself, only by bringing Cain along with him, the 360 homes of Home Church.
Your parents may be calling you, waiting for you to come home to them. However, you have to tell them, "Please wait a moment; I will come back after I restore the Cain tribe." Then I will serve you and indemnify the entire period I could not spend with you.
For instance, one sister's father came to New York from Switzerland to visit her. While spending time with her, he noticed that she had changed completely, and he was deeply moved by the attitude of the brothers and sisters from many different nations. He accompanied his daughter to her Home Church area and helped repair things in one of the homes. There he saw how much the people cherished his daughter.
So he told her, I will make 20 or even 50 Home Churches for you in our home town; please come back as soon as possible.
When you bring your physical parents to your Home Church, how do you think they will feel when people tell them, "Your son or daughter is such a good person; unless we make efforts like he or she does, he cannot save our country." We want to follow his or her example and love God in the same way. Don't you think your parents will want to follow you? Now your parents oppose what you are doing, because you look lonely and unhappy. They feel that they have to witness to you instead. This kind of thing should not happen.
When other people serve someone, they do it so they can save themselves. The great religious teachers -- Jesus, Buddha, etc. -- taught their followers to sacrifice for God so that they could be saved. But the Unification Church is unique in that it teaches us to sacrifice and serve in order to liberate God and all mankind, not just save ourselves.
If then you sacrifice yourself for the liberation of God and mankind, what would God do with you? Will He leave you alone, or take your hand and lead you into heaven? God will tell you that He would feel lonely without you, and even He would not want to go to heaven unless you accompany Him.