Chapter 3 - Unification Church Members

1) A Heart of Longing is Necessary

What should be the attitude of a believer? You must have the heart of longing. You must know that because we have this fateful relationship, you cannot help but have such a heart of longing. So what is heaven longing for? Heaven is longing not for believers but for those who practice and substantiate their faith in their daily life. Similarly, heaven is longing for you as well to become the kind of person who will substantiate this faith in your daily life. Also, heaven is not longing for the appearance of a country of hope, but for citizens of that land with that kind of lifestyle. Today, we have to go beyond just the word "faith" and be able to substantiate our faith in our daily life.

That is, we must become members who live our lives with heaven, citizens who live our lives with heaven and a church that is one with heaven. If we live this way we can become believers who can sing praise and return glory to heaven. This is what heaven is longing for. Although God has taught the way of faith to countless numbers of our ancestors who lived throughout history, what is it that He has really longed for? We must know that God has been longing for them to become the people who can live life together with Him, rather than just be believers. So we must know what heaven is longing for us to be.

God is longing for us to become people who can happily sacrifice, be willing to die and be resurrected for the sake of our faith. God longs for us to become people who can call him "Father" and sing praises to him in the eternal ideal world. He hopes that we can be those who can go beyond death and be resurrected into life. All of you must know that God dearly misses you and has been persevering to find and meet you. (6-84)

What should be the attitude of those believers who are living in these last days? We must become the text book that heaven and humankind are hoping for. We should inherit and substantiate this content throughout our lives. We should become the people who can inherit this content in our lives. This is the hope of believers and heaven. (151-258)

All of you should know that the attitude of a believer must always be that of a debtor. As a believer, what should be the most important element? It is the attitude of a debtor. Have you paid your debts? If you have no debts, why not create some debts as a form of training? You must experience the hardships of a debtor. It is truly miserable to stand in the position of a debtor who cannot repay his debts. (43-108)

We have an important mission. Today, you should set up the condition to repay all the debts through your daily life of faith in your crazy circumstances. That means you must assess yourselves whether you are really repaying your debts through your daily life. Today, in your life of faith, you must be connected in relationship to settling the debt of the eternal God, that of parents that of the creation. As the conditions for the age to indemnify all debts have arisen, you must reflect on what kind of heart to have. (1-112)

An upright believer does not have the attitude of "myself." Even right up to the brink of death we should be able to say, as Jesus did, "it is done." With joy, we must be able to bring to a conclusion all our past suffering, and our hope. The person who has achieved this possesses the eternal kingdom, and dwells in that heavenly kingdom. We must know that God's will is to find this kind of person. (6-76)

Those who stand on the goal line of ultimate victory should take that final step and cross the line: then new hope will appear before you. You will see a new day. A new ideology will come into your hands. To create a relationship with that ideology you must know that the heavenly condition, that same path, still remains to be followed.

For this reason, in front of this historical destiny, we need to prepare resolutely for anything. From this perspective, please reflect on yourselves. Do you have the proper attitude as a believer? Has your life of faith built up a heart of longing? Have you had that desire? You cannot go this road if, having an old-fashioned faith, you believe everything will be solved and accomplished by itself. In that we must go forward with the right attitude of faith, although we may be confronted by the power of death, we must survive to neutralize it. There must be some, thing that remains. Aspects of passion, faith, endeavor, endurance-all these must remain. You must understand that this is the first level of inheritance from Heaven.

To make your way through the complex realities of today, you must seek and go forward with ambition. Keeping in mind your ties with history, with the present age and with the future, and longing to be a person of ambition, you must find this quality and go forward. You will be hampered by innumerable foes in your quest, but you must fight them and fight them again, advance and advance again, clash and clash again. Thus, supporting the altar of patience with your shoulders, feet, hands, bodies and heads, you must become the offerings who prepare to cross over the pass of patience. If you do not, you will never be a person with the attitude of a true believer or who seeks for God's will and the heavenly truth.

We think of history as being the record of the lives of individuals and that history develops according to the actual life situation of individuals. Also we cannot deny that the goal of history has been to reach a kind of ideal utopia. For that to appear it is absolutely necessary that the past be cleared up and that we then pursue a kind of inner human relationship which can unite with a new ideal.

Therefore we must stand firmly centered on absolute values. We should not become wavering individuals. Since we are endowed with absolute life, we must stand with confidence in a perfect position from where we can bring our foundation of faith to conclusion. We must be standing at the point at which we can establish common ground. This position, at which we unite with eternal life, must be connected to life's historical course, and in advance of this, one individual among us must be the starting point. (6-131)

In your life of faith there is a time for repentance and a time for receiving grace. The time for receiving grace is also the time to share it. It is due to repentance that we receive grace, but you receive grace not just to keep it to yourself. You have to share it. In order to have a life of faith, it is absolutely necessary to get out of the position of a bystander. Now you obey and follow Reverend Moon, but that doesn't mean that you center your life of faith on Reverend Moon. Actually you are leading your life of faith centering on yourself. Because of that, people of faith set up and keep their way of faith all by themselves, in disregard to all the other people around them.

On your own, in a realm of deep heart of which even people close to you have no experience, you must be able to live a satisfying life of faith with gratitude centering on heaven. No matter how evil the world around you is, you must have a life of faith such that you can look at heaven and earth and say, "Thank you, I am deeply happy." If you can not do that, if you cannot feel that way, you must at least be able to say from the opposite position, an extremely sad position: "I am a sinner. I fall short in everything, please give me courage." You must make time for personal repentance. (153-136)

So, as a religious person, what is it that you have to be most careful about? Whether your work is great or small, whatever it is, don't treat it as an individual matter. In other words, you must make your mind rounded. If you put enough air into a balloon it will become round. Have that same kind of attitude of mind. Don't let your mind become crumpled, but keep it completely round and taut like a balloon. Otherwise, if your mind is insecure or wrong, centered on individual desire, your rounded mind becomes jagged. When your mind is rolling like a ball, it has smooth contact with a flat plane. But if it is jagged, only the points have contact. In that case, it will not smoothly stimulate anything but will act against everything.

The more we experience that, the more our conscience is stricken and the standard of our conscience will gradually go down. Therefore you need to keep your mind taut like a round balloon. In so doing, when we receive a stimulus, our whole mind must be able to resonate. If you have two tuning forks and strike one, the other will vibrate with the same frequency. We must have a well-rounded mind that can become a resonating vessel. For this purpose, we must always make effort to feel the spiritual vibration coming from our subject. A person living a life of faith therefore needs time to meditate. Meditate while longing for good things. When you meditate, open the door of your mind completely and make your mind round.

Then, centered on God -- God's original nature and your original nature -- a person with a spring-season character must have the attitude to have a complete relationship and resonate with the spring-season nature of God who is the subject. Then, centered on this resonance, when you have a desired purpose, God is certainly with you. You must know this! And, in the situation of not being able to feet this resonance with God, think this way: God is looking at your work. Even if you do not feel His direct relationship with you, that relationship is there. You must think that God is involved with what you do, that God's will is being planted there, and that now is the moment to approach Him centering on His will. You must think that way. Looking from the viewpoint of centering on the work itself, God's will is already being accomplished. (40-278)

In living a life of faith, do you have an explosive and stimulating power in the center of your heart which is moving unceasingly towards the world of God's will? When you have that heart then it is evident that God is with you. On the other hand, if you don't have that power it is evident that God is separate from you. When your heart is pouring out love for humankind, and you have the mind to share your life limitlessly with mankind, it is clear that you belong to heaven.

Self-centered love and proud self-centered values are evidence that God is already leaving you. You must know this. Such a person is not going toward heaven. He will reach his limits through his self-centeredness. The world of self-centered limitations is quite different from the world of God's will. (32-21)