Using stories from the New Testament, Bo Hi Pak talks about our portion of responsibility in God's restoration and about how our love and faith are pivotal to the liberation of God's heart.

May God bless you richly this morning with grace and spirit and love. It is wonderful to see you again. Many new faces. Many old faces. Many different colors and many different races. Truly, this is a living color service. I know this service pleases God. We come from all different cultural backgrounds. Different languages. Different ways of life. Different food. Yet we are fully aware that we gather together in this auditorium on one common ground as children of God and we are brothers and sisters.

In order to truly become brothers and sisters, we must recognize one common parent: God. When God has become real in our hearts, we truly recognize him as our Father. Then we know our brotherhood will become complete. This morning I want to speak about faith.

There is one incredible story in the Bible, in the fifth chapter of Mark, that always touches my heart. We can see in this passage a beautiful example of simple faith. Visualize a very poor, suffering woman. She had suffered from a disease for 12 years and had visited many doctors, all to no avail. She was hemorrhaging blood, and she became desperate. She heard about Jesus performing miracles and healings. She wanted to be healed. She wanted to believe in the power of God that manifested through Jesus Christ.

The woman waited quietly for Jesus to pass. I know she was timid, almost trembling. Having simple faith, she touched the garment of Jesus Christ. At that very moment, the blood stopped. The hemorrhaging was healed. Of course, she was jubilant. I can well imagine her excitement and joy and happiness. But that only lasted a few seconds because she knew Jesus detected that someone had touched his garment, and he was trying to see who it was. Jesus asked, "Who touched my garments?" There was a large crowd around him, so naturally many people had touched him. But Jesus didn't mean that. Jesus meant the one specific instance that someone touched him and "power had gone forth from him."

This woman of simple faith knew that she could not escape so she, "in fear and trembling," confessed to Jesus. She thought that touching him might have been a grave mistake or some kind of sin. But Jesus turned around to her and said, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your disease." The key is in this sentence: "Daughter, your faith has made you well." Wasn't it God who healed her? Wasn't it the power of the son of God that healed this woman? Surely, the credit must go to God. But Jesus said your faith has made you well. Go in peace.

From this story we learn an incredible truth about God. God does not really heal. Why? Because the power of God's healing is always available. It is a matter of men claiming it. That is the whole point of the Bible. That is the central point about the dispensation of God. For example, in this room, although you don't sense it, there are all kinds of waves. Some rock music, some other sermon, some classical music, some television waves, all kinds of waves are here to fill up the air. In order to understand those air waves, we need a radio or television set and we have to switch it on. Then we can receive the air waves that are already here.

By the same token, the power of God is always available. It is a matter of men becoming a radio set or a television set and turning on the switch. That switch is our faith. Jesus said, your faith made you well. Jesus Christ, as the son of God, brought down from God the power to heal this entire universe and more. Many times over. But Jesus needed a response from the people. The response was to determine the outcome. This area of responsibility God cannot touch. This is why God is taking so long to restore mankind. This is why today many people claim that either there is no God, or they don't understand God, or they don't need that kind of helpless God.

Many people who come to study the Divine Principle say, "I want to believe in God, I want to know about the Bible, but truly I cannot understand. If almighty God exists, why doesn't He do anything about this suffering world?" People even believe that God is dead. If God is dead, it is useless to call on Him for help.

Communism tells believers that they are crazy. There is no such thing as God. One time on Moscow radio they pronounced on Christmas morning that their rocket was flying through space and had not discovered God yet. According to them, Christianity is the opium of the masses and Jesus Christ will be relegated to mythology. What the communists are trying to do is throw God out of this planet, and they themselves want to become the god of this world.

But the men and women who come to the Divine Principle brought by Reverend Sun Myung Moon find a deep understanding of the Bible and the fundamental questions of life. For example, I, myself, was trying to be a good Christian for five years before I joined the Unification Church. I was trying to understand the Bible. But the Bible didn't make sense. I thought I was awfully dumb. God was not interesting to me. The Bible was very dry. It didn't seem to have answers to the vital questions such as why a God of goodness would leave all the wickedness and evil of the world alone. Why is there so much crime, so much war and death, dishonesty, impurity? When I studied Divine Principle, it gave me the answers. This is the deepest motivation. I knew that the Divine Principle was the truth. A revelation from God. I found the real God. I understood God.

Men are born to believe. Today many people believe in science, and they say science is everything. Science will bring utopia and solve the human problems. There are great Nobel Prize winners. They invented the atomic bomb. They discovered the mighty power of atoms. It seems to me humankind is truly cracking open the secrets of the universe. They are trying to solve the problem by knowledge. But I tell you, even a million Ph.D.s and Harvard graduates or Nobel Prize winners cannot figure out the mystery hidden in just one simple green leaf. They cannot figure out why this particular flower is white and this one is yellow, what makes this one such a beautiful pink. Even in this one green leaf, there is incredible mystery.

According to the Divine Principle, when Almighty God created man, He left a certain responsibility to man. For illustration purposes, we say that God left five percent of the responsibility to us. God creates us unperfected, unfinished. We have to fulfill our five percent of responsibility to become perfect. Everything else God created 100 percent complete. The trees, stones, rivers, sun, and all the heavenly bodies are 100 percent complete. This means that all these creations, other than man, are like a gadget, like a machine, set to do certain fixed things. This watch was created to do a set responsibility. This watch does not have the liberty or freedom to deviate from its given purpose. But God did not create man like this. God created man with freedom, with choice, which is given to man as a responsibility to God.

Why did God do that? Because of that, the fall of man came about. You see, if God had set man's will 100 percent, man could not deviate from the Principle. There could be no sin. There could be no fall. For God it would have been much simpler and saved a great heartache. But men were given choice and freedom, and men made the wrong choice. For 6,000 biblical years we have suffered the consequences of Adam and Eve's choice. Why did God do that? Why didn't he save Himself the trouble? He did it with nature, the trees, the moon and sun and water and everything else.

When I understood the deep meaning of why God made man different, it touched my heart. I became a Unification Church member. I knew the answer through the Divine Principle. The answer is love. God loved man. God wanted man to be special. Do you know how special? God wanted man to be another God. How can you expect any more than that? God wanted us to be another God, or even better than God. I am sure some brothers and sisters might say, you, Mr. Pak, are blasphemous. How can we be better than God? Yet I learned this from Reverend Moon, so don't blame me, blame Reverend Moon, all right?

But this makes sense. In what respect are we better than God? We have form. God doesn't. In other words, God is infinite, invisible form. We are made into substantial form. We are supposed to be walking Gods. There is a phrase in the English language, a "walking dictionary." You are not supposed to be just a walking dictionary. You are supposed to be walking Gods. In order to be like God, what do you need? What is God's most important characteristic? God has many, many important characteristics. But what makes God, God? The power to create. God has the power of creation. God is ideal and He can make that ideal become real. Therefore, in the original Principle of Creation, God wanted us to be another God. We can be identical to God, except He is invisible and we are visible. We can be another creator.

We know that we are created beings. We can never imitate God 100 percent. In other words, God is Creator. We are creatures, or created. He is the manufacturer, and we are the manufactured. I manufacture the watch. The watch is manufactured. The watch and I can never be the same. In order to make this watch the same as the maker, man, it would have to fulfill a qualification. Man, also, has to qualify to be a walking God. This is the reason God created man imperfect. The five percent responsibility God left to man. If we accomplish that responsibility, then God will say that man is a joint project between man and God.

Let us say God is building a wall, and God has laid 99 stones, but the wall will never be completed without one final stone being laid on top. God is asking man to put the final stone on top of the wall. When we have done it, God will say, my son, my daughter, you and I created this wall, so we both are the creators. So when there is a stockholders meeting for that wall, God sits on one side of the table and man sits on the other. We sit together. We are partners. God wanted to give this qualification to man. If God creates 100 percent of man, we are merely robots, no different from this watch. Therefore, we would eternally remain as creatures, created, not creators. To me this is the highest love God can bestow upon man. Although God created you and me, God wants us to be a joint, common, co-creator. This is love.

Since God is our Father, we shall become His sons and daughters. We call ourselves mankind, right? I want to create a new word: Godkind. We want to be included in God's race and not the fallen human race. And God wants to lift everybody up to be side by side as father and son. How could we ask for anything more?

As I said, we can do more than God. We can do things that God cannot do. We can eat the steak which God cannot. We can touch things which God cannot. We can build a wall which God cannot. This is the very reason God needs you and me today. We are God's tools. Without us, God's ultimate fulfillment of the kingdom of heaven will never be possible.

When man fell it was something like the man dropping the final stone that would have completed the wall. Any parent would be able to pick up the stone and say, let me do that for you. God could easily say, let me do it. God indeed has the power to pick up the stone. But God cannot do it. Why? Once God picks up the stone and completes 100 percent of the wall, at that moment you and I would be relegated to being robots. Do you understand? Robots. God did not want to have robots as His children. God wants to have Godkind as His children. Therefore, 6,000 years have gone by already. It might take another 1,000 years. But God needs us to pick up the stone and try again and again and again, until we finish the wall, which means finish ourselves, make ourselves perfect as God is perfect. Perfect in love.

For that purpose Jesus came. Matthew 5:48 says, "You, therefore, must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." It is our goal. As impossible a goal as it seems to be, it is our goal. One day God wants us to be as perfect as He is perfect and even better. And what is our responsibility? It is to pick up the stone and lay it on top of the wall. That means to have faith. Faith is our responsibility. Faith will complete our creation. Faith means willing participation. God gives us the bold choice of saying yes or no. God is waiting for us to voluntarily stand up and say, yes, Father, I am your son.

How many thousands of years God has been suffering, waiting, waiting in anguish. God cannot do things directly. The moment God does things directly, does the things you and I should do, we would be relegated to robots. A manufactured product. God does not want that, no matter how many more thousands of years He may suffer. Compared to eternity, many thousands of years of suffering is nothing. God can still wait. In the meantime He suffers without His children. This is the heart we must understand. The Unification Church brought the heart of God to the world for the first time. Reverend Moon is the prophet who revealed the broken heart of God. God's broken heart.

Many Christians think God is sitting on a throne, enjoying great power and presiding over the universe. No. He is not. God is without a smile. His heart has been broken again and again. After all, we are His children and we are either dead or crippled. Do you think any parents would enjoy a single day when their child is either dead or crippled? That has been the life of God for 6,000 years. God's situation has been a tearful one, not because He is lacking in power, but because He created us in such a way that He could not exercise His almighty power until men take initiative and say, Father, I believe, I can take responsibility, I have faith. That is the kind of children God has been waiting for for 6,000 years.

Today, the Unification Church is creating a new faith, a new breed of people who will come out and stand before God saying, my Father, now I know you finally, I believe in You unconditionally. That is what the Unification Church faith is all about.

Reverend Moon's favorite words are "the liberation of God." Liberation of God. Amazing. Who has ever talked about this in all of human history? Have you ever heard any philosophy, any religion, anybody talk about the liberation of God? Reverend Moon is the first to proclaim this in history. Reverend Moon is proclaiming that we are going to liberate God from His heartbroken sorrow, and we will comfort Him and bring Him joy for the first time in history. In order to do that we must fulfill our five percent responsibility, which is faith.

After God created Adam and Eve, God said to them in Genesis 2:1617, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die." This is very interesting. If God is almighty, God can block any danger that would come to His children. God didn't have to give such a commandment. If any danger crept up to His children, He could stop it. He could protect them. He doesn't have to give them this warning. But there is a reason God told Adam and Eve that they would die if they ate of the fruit of that tree. He was telling them that they had a choice. They had to choose to obey or not to obey. And God could not protect them from the consequence of that choice. It is their responsibility. Therefore, to undo the consequence of that choice is also their responsibility. It is our responsibility. God is waiting.

Adam and Eve made the wrong choice. They disbelieved God. The fundamental reason for the fall of man is disbelief. Eve, instead of listening to the word of God, listened to the word of Satan. The word of Satan was more sweet to her. That was the motivation of the fall. They disbelieved in God. God cannot give you faith. God cannot make you believe.

During the Korean War I had an incredible experience when I was a company commander. My company of about 200 men was attacking one hill. Enemy machine gun fire was coming from the top of the hill. They were firing at us, firing and firing. Even though we bombarded them with artillery and air support, they never stopped. Every time our company tried to assault the top of the hill, they fired at us. I was thinking how brave the enemy soldiers were. I respected their courage. But finally, at the end of the day, we took the hill. When we came to the enemy trench, we found a horrendous scene. It was unbelievable what we found in that trench. The enemy soldiers were all dead. But that was not what so horrible. Every single communist soldier was chained to the concrete wall of the trench. They had no freedom to escape. They were there to die. They were forced to die.

Do you call that patriotism? Did they die for love of their country? Were they loyal even unto death? No. Forced loyalty, forced patriotism, forced death have no value. Patriotism, loyalty, love-all have to be voluntary, freely chosen, freely given. If you do things at gunpoint, there is no value in the sight of God. God will never deprive us of our five percent responsibility. We would no longer be God's children. Our return to God has got to be voluntary. God cannot force you. No one makes you worship. God doesn't call you to Him at gunpoint.

I want you to understand this is why God is taking a long, long time to restore mankind. God could restore the world in a second. Presto, finished. But God wants us to come to Him voluntarily, by our free choice, through faith. The power to re-create man and the universe is always available. We must respond to it with our faith. This is why Jesus said to the woman, your faith made you well. This is why John 3:16 proclaims, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." But that does not give you automatic salvation. There is a condition. "Whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life." It is your responsibility and my responsibility. "Whoever believes in Him" is your job and my job.

I want to conclude by recalling another dramatic story from the Bible. One day Jesus encountered a man who had been born blind. According to John 9:6, Jesus "spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle and anointed the man's eyes with the clay." It sounds dirty, doesn't it? Spit and dirt on your face. Jesus said to him, "Go wash in the pool of Siloam." This man who was blind must have been a very righteous man and a man of simple faith. This was his test. He believed in that word and stood up and went to the lake and washed and came back completely healed. His vision had come back. Restored. Praise the Lord, he said.

Every miracle has a teaching. The teaching is this. Jesus did his part in restoring the man's vision; then the man had to do his five percent: believe. Accept the word. Unite with it. The pool of water was not important. Acceptance of the word of Jesus was important. Believing in him was important. Believe in him, obey him, and go to the lake and wash, and you will see.

Matthew 14:22-33 describes the night Jesus walked on the water. He had been alone up on a mountain praying; the disciples were waiting in a boat "many furlongs distant from the shore." Jesus "came to them, walking on the sea." Jesus told Peter to walk on the water, which Peter did, but after a moment he became afraid and began to sink. As soon as he doubted, he sank. His faith held him up; his lack of faith sent him down.

Today, let us become men and women of infinite faith. Let us accept God and Christ and the Coming of the Second Advent, the Divine Principle. Let us accept in faith. Trying to gain salvation through your brain will not work. Once the Divine Principle convinces you that the power of God is working, then you must solve your problem in infinite faith.

I remember Reverend Moon saying in the early days of his discovery of the Divine Principle that he prayed for only one thing. "God, let me believe the things that throughout history all other people said they could not believe." That was Reverend Moon's prayer. The things people could not believe, let me believe it. Let me accept it. Let me obey it. Let me do it. Because of that infinite faith, the Divine Principle is today in our hands.

Faith the size of a mustard seed can move a mountain. I see that Reverend Moon's faith is a mountain-size faith. I know that the truth and his faith and our faith together can move the world. We can move God and move God's heart. We can liberate God from His sorrowful, broken heart. Let us pray.

Prayer by Bo Hi Pak:

Our loving Heavenly Father, thank You very much for this enlightening day. Father, Your truth is assimilated into our hearts, deep down, cleansing all ungodliness of the week. Father, we truly believe in You as our Father, Almighty God as a Creator, but who because of us, suffers so much for humanity to restore us. We believe in You that You will ultimately restore all mankind. We believe in You and You will prevail. You will win. Father, we want to be Your champions. We want to be Your instruments day by day. Give us added energy and inspiration this coming week. Every one of us who bows down together in this room shall receive Your power in our infinite faith in You. All these things we pray in the name of our Lord Christ. Amen.

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