You Are God's Miracle

I look at you, your faces are so beautiful. Many times when I look at the beauty of men and women I wonder whether there was any way that Heavenly Father could have created us better than we are.
What would make a man more handsome or a woman more beautiful?

I have imagined making the two eyes totally round, the nose square, the ears upside down, and wondered whether that would make a person more beautiful. But every time I come to the conclusion that no one can improve upon the way God made men and women.


Reverend Sun Myung Moon



Truly each one of you is a masterpiece of God's creation.

Some men and women look in the mirror and wonder why they couldn't have been more pretty or created handsome.  But we shouldn't look that way.  You are God's masterpiece.  We should know that God worked very hard to make you just the way you are.

Even if everyone has condemned a certain person as ugly, there is surely an special characteristic that nobody else has.

When you think about it, God only has four basic objects for which to work.  He has the eyes, nose, mouth and ears.  On top of that, He has to place them in the same area, so there is a limited realm, yet God created an infinite variety of faces!

With only a limited number of items, God created billions of human faces, but no two of them are identical.  Each of our faces are unique.

There is an incredible mysterious beauty among the four billion people out there. 

Even though each face has the same four components, each is different.

Is there any better miracle than the God's construction of the human anatomy?

What if someone gave you the task to take the eyes, nose, mouth and ears and come up with a combination for four different billion faces?  Would you be able to do it?

Just thinking of the four billions faces leaves a feeling of awe.  The mystery of the face is so great.

Each face is different, although it has the same four components.

There is no way to avoid feeling gratitude and awe, surprise and shock at this fact. I always feel that it is our duty to live with confidence and pride in being a masterpiece of God's creation.

What if the world was only filled with women lacking even one male.

It would be a 'no-man's land'.  No matter how beautiful or how well-dressed a woman might be in that land, without men around, she has no flavor or joy in her living.

There is an guarantee that if there were no men around, no matter how much you were pressured, you wouldn't put on make up because there would be no incentive.

There is a popular saying that women dress nicely and put on make up for other women.  But if women is all that existed, there would be no need.

There would be a great disaster if the world was filled with only women and no man.

Or even worse, there were a billion women and only one man.  The women would definitely start a war over him.  There would be nothing, but constant struggle, battles, and conspiracies all focused upon the one goal to occupy the heart of this one man.

Women naturally do not like war, but if there was only one man, would the women just sit still or start a war over who is best suited for him?  On the other hand, if it was all men in the world and just one women the same situation would happen.

It is our good fortune that God distributed men and women evenly throughout the world.

There is a misinformed belief that there is a shortage of men, but as there are constantly men dying and being born all over the world, the numbers do even out.  There are enough men for the women and enough women for the men on the earth as a whole.

What if one entire country was populated only by men and another only by women?

Through Eastern philosophy, which is male-centered, the Asian culture looks forward to have a baby boy.

Even in China with the restrictions on how many children one can have per household, baby girls are either discarded or given to other countries for adoption.  What if God was to answer everyone's prayers and give them nothing but sons?

Even in America, the women would want a son first and also American men want sons.  But what if God answered all those prayers around the world?  What would happen?

A wise man knows that this is a useless prayer.  Women give birth, but God controls the balance.  Around the world , the population of men and women is about the same.  This is a great phenomenon.

It is the greatest of all miracles that we are alive today. 

Life is mysterious and the mysterious element is beyond man's control; somebody else must be controlling it.

Those who possess high goals and high ideals look for some mystic or mysterious element.

People look for and want miracles to happen.  But the greatest miracle of all is the seven billion people who are living on the earth.  When you look at a person, look at him individually as a source of wonder.  You are an eyewitness to God's creation, a miracle.

Everyone of you are born with a broadcasting station which is your brain.

You are emitting waves at all times.  But these color of waves vary from one person to another.  The harmony comes from the variety of different waves coming from each of us.  They don't repel each other, but rather create a universal harmony with one another.

The colors of our vibrations are not narrow.  They go around the whole world and try to embrace all the other colors of vibrations around the world and everything God created.  This vibration will visit the Orient, a white and go after a black person and embrace them as well.

But throughout history, man has blocked and chopped off this harmonious vibration.  This separation has been the greatest of all human crimes.

You emit waves all the time, but the colors of waves vary from one person to another. The variety of these waves makes for harmony; they don't repel each other but rather create a universal harmony.

Religious people accuse each other of being heretics and much more. Nationalism is another example. There is a Japanese way of life, a German way of life and a Korean way of life without flexibility.

People are boxing themselves in, blocking themselves off from infinite possibility.

Is this the kind of history that God wanted to witness?

He wants to see a history where there are endless amounts of possibilities in which each vibration goes out and encircles the world and embraces everybody.  This is the way God created His history, but man blocked this beautiful history.

We must search and discover a kind of people that lives in true freedom and true vibrations.

Where in the world today can we find people whose vibrations are not just in the physical world, but also int he spiritual world?  What teachings could fathom how to break down these man-made barriers?

True Father gives his speeches to a room full of Westerners, and Easterners shining out in all different colors and vibrations.  This man from the Orient gives out his vibrations which encompasses the Western world, the Western mind and the Western people.

What organization outside of religion has a history such as this phenomenon?  Even in the field of religion this has not occurred very often.


Everybody has heard about major newspapers collapsing, for example the Washington Star and the Philadelphia Bulletin. Every day we hear that the Daily News, the greatest tabloid paper in New York City, is dying. Then people hear that Reverend Moon is trying to create a new newspaper in the face of all these newspaper failures.


The companies that collapsed focused strictly with a business-minded enterprise with concerns about the destiny of the company and the fortunes of the members that helped build it.  These companies with this self-centered ideal have no way to link their purpose to the nation or to the world.

Therefore, with this as a foundation, no matter how big the company becomes they can only grow within the realm of the individual enterprise and only have company success.  Their business philosophy is that when their enterprise or fortunes are damaged they will soon fold.

An universal mind has a far different starting point for a business.


We are not beginning a new newspaper for any person's or any organization's glory. We are doing this for the purpose of God, the purpose of the nation and the purpose of the world. Therefore, hard work and sacrifice can be made in order to achieve the higher goal.



Today the Western world has their focus based on materialism such as Communist nations.

That world has now hit a stone wall.  Western civilization has filed for bankruptcy.  In order to stop this, a new philosophy and civilization must begin and carry on.  We are standing at that crossroad in Western history.

People are facing all kinds of bankruptcy, even moral bankruptcy, business bankruptcy, and family bankruptcy.   But the Unification Church has a new goal and a new motivation.

The movement knows that the world needs help and must turn around and reverse its direction.

We are moving forward no matter the difficulties or obstacles that try to stop us.  We bring salvation to the rest of the world.  This is our standard.

We impart one vibration to encompass this nation and other nations around the world in order to bring about a positive change and head toward a world God envisioned from the beginning of creation.
We must be proud and confident of our position in relation to restoration and our standard.



Return for Tomorrow's Post: Does God Exist?

This post was rewritten and derived from the speech The Vibration of True Love

Adam & Eve Followed Satan's Will

Any person of faith has been taught that the world in which we live is not the original creation God had planned for His children.  If this is the case, then there has been some cause that has turned the creation away from God's original plan.

Many religions have their own version of this cause.

The Divine Principle teaches that evil came about because God's servant Lucifer went against Him creating Satan.

Satan was not the creation of God.  Evil came about because of Satan's will which is the opposite of God's will.

Thus, sin came about when man acted in accordance with Satan's will instead, which is totally against God's Will.

The Source of Evil is Satan.

Satan came into being when the archangel rebelled against God.

God created the archangel as a servant who was originally in a position of obedience to God.  This position was not eternal, but temporary once he aided in the perfection of God's children, Lucifer would have been able to choose the best mate among Adam and Eve's offspring.  Instead, Lucifer abandoned God and stole Eve for himself.

We must understand how adamant an enemy Satan is and how easy it is in our daily lives to side and sympathize with Satan, thus following his ways.

We currently live in a satanic culture where Satan's will is glorified and made to look beautiful, such as promiscuous sex, lustfulness and bad behavior.

Satan is the one who stopped God from carrying out His will. 

Adam and Eve, the first parents of creation carrying God's spirit, are incarnations of God's ideal.

They were originally created as temples of God in whom God would abide forever.  Through fulfilling God's will of unity with Him, they could have become the true ancestors to later generations passing on the true tradition of God's sinless lineage.

Instead, Adam and Eve followed the tongue of Satan and fell far below God's will and united with Satan instead.

In the position as God's children, they could have realized God's ideal in the position of God's children.  Through them, the Kingdom of Heaven on earth would have been established in their lifetime.  Instead, the first children of God were kicked out of heaven creating an alternative hell on earth led by Satan.

Originally, Adam and Eve were to not eat of the fruits (sexual organs) and God would have been our source through Adam and Eve passing down this true tradition of following God's Word from the beginning.

Thus, religion would not be necessary if the first True Parents of history followed God's will connecting humanity to God for eternity uninterrupted.

God was to be the source of human goodness from the beginning.  Then you and I would have been born directly into God's lineage free from sin and free from Satanic attack.  This would have automatically been Heaven on Earth.

Just imagine how free the world would have been if Cain and Abel were true brother having True Children and passing this godly lineage on to your family.  Abel would have been a humble servant of God allowing Cain to easily follow his brother instead of becoming the first murderer of history.

We would live in a world without division and where everyone was seen as brothers and sisters in one family under the true God.

When we see the world God originally planned, we see how far away from the idea we have fallen.

Then all mankind would have known of God's existence never doubting that God existed.

Atheism, corruption and Communism would not have risen in society to try to destroy God. God's arduous work through religion to teach His children about Him would not be necessary.  We would not have to just 'believe' in God, but we would live with Him.

As father and son, we would have a relationship of true give and take never questioning God's existence and His presence within us.  In this kind of life, we would rejoice forever in dancing and singing and in everything joyful.

If your mind is not happy, your body cannot respond to it. 

On the other hand, if your physical body is not happy, your mind cannot respond to it.

What if Adam and Eve actually followed God's word and waited until marriage to partake in the fruit of each other?

Then God would have been the source of everything good, virtuous, joyful and happy.  There would not be any confusion of what is wrong or right.  As God's object, you could directly respond to Him causing your joy to be great and varied.

It would not be necessary to be taught how to live righteously, how to act or think in the proper manner that does not separate you from God.  Most importantly of all, you would be well aware of the existence of the spiritual world.

But because we fell away from God, the door is closed to the spirit world.  We have ignorance to the world of spirit.

Any individual does not just exist as an individual but he exists in the position of an object to the whole universe. 

Adam was just one man, but had the responsibility to represent all male beings.

Eve played the role as the representative of all female beings.  They laid the tradition for the world to follow whether it was good or for bad.

Adam was able to have the sight to feel what would become of later generations.  He should have known that he was supposed to be the object of God.

If Adam was in the position of object to a God that is omnipresent, omniscient, transcendent of time and space, then he was in the position of representing the spirit of God in the external.  He would thus feel the same as God.  Wasn't this true for Jesus?

Since Adam and Eve were intended to be the external God and He lived directly in them, He thus would not be ever separated from them.

We as religious people, always say that we are God's children and God lives within us and He is always there.  But this is only a conditional behavior.  Being that God is a good, perfect God, He could not truly dwell where sin is exhibited.

Because God created Adam and Eve as the external God and intended to live in them, He could never have been separated from them. The result should be an ideal kingdom of heaven on earth.

Fulfillment of this ideal was barred by Satan.

Because God is considered the generating station, we must connect to God in order to act right.

Anything that uses electricity to work, must be connected to an electric source if it is to fulfill its purpose.

Without electricity, electric mechanisms would never work.

Because Satan disrupted this connection between humans and God, we cannot work properly either.  Because of this fact, we should see how fierce an enemy Satan is to us.

Satan has deprived you and me of experiencing God's true love.

He is the enemy who has cut off God's love from us.

A being like Satan to those outside any faith sounds like fiction, but he works through even the people close to you.  Your own mother can work on the behalf of Satan in your life.  This is why Jesus set the standard that one should love him more than his own family to be considered worthy of him.

Satan destroyed God' ideal of creation and is still active today in each of our lives.

The core teaching of Christian ideology is forgiveness.  We are taught to forgive other's sins seventy times seventy times.  Then why does God not forgive Satan for all of his misdeeds done to society?

Man struggles daily to separate themselves from the grasp of Satan.  Because of this, God feels pity for His children and feels inclined to forgive man seventy times seventy times.

But God cannot forgive Satan Himself.  This is because he is the enemy of God's love.

Satan deprived God's family of divine, true love, so God cannot forgive him now.  Once all men are restored and man wants to forgive Satan, then God might in the future have to forgive Satan for turning the ideal upside down.

Satan came into being through Adam giving him power by believing in his unholy words.  Thus, it is only through Adam or man that God can separate Satan from him, deny him, and at last forgive him.

Due to the human fall, Satan is abiding in us, in place of God. 

Therefore, we are the incarnation of Satan.

Why do we stubbornly stand by the idea that we are born of God's lineage when God is perfect, yet we carry sin within our own blood and carry about ungodly acts with ease?

If God created us in His image, this means He created us to reach perfection, not fall from His standard.

We are in the lineage of Satan, instead of God.  Wouldn't this go against God's law of creation?

When we look at religious history of martyrs, even in primitive religions, men were sacrificed or killed before God.

This was the symbol of shedding the satanic blood that flows within man.  The age of animal sacrifice had the same meaning. Nature is closer to the ideal because they follow the laws of God.  Bird do not discriminate against other birds who come from a different territory.

Since we live far from the ideal, there is a way to return to God's lineage.

We must live an ascetic life which presents difficulties and hardships if we want to change our satanic lineage.  This is the course each of us has to take in order to be restored to God's standard.

This is how God restores us to the perfected beings He envisioned in the beginning.

When we look through God's eyes, He doesn't see us as men of His creation.  We do not even look like original human beings.  We are satanic beings that stand in the position of His enemies.

Isn't this true when you look at the world's situation and in the history of mankind?  Is it a glorious history, or one full of pain, violence and heartache.

This is because we are truly the children of Satan who we followed and caused the fall.  We are God's enemy.

God has worked throughout history to reverse this problem and restore us to our original state which He created.  Every moment that we breathe, it is a constant fight against the satanic power which is established on this earth.

Can you imagine the difficult job of restoring us to the position before the fall to nurture us to grow into mature beings without any trace of the satanic blood lineage?

We think we are truly God's children even though we are imperfect, but it is likened to if you adopt a child from a friend.  No matter how much affection and love you give, you still cannot love him as your own children who are of your own blood, flesh and carry your spirit and character.

This is the situation God is in.  We are more like adopted sons and daughter of God since we do not carry His true, sinless blood lineage.

How is it possible for God to love us as His own children the same way He loved Adam and Eve before the fall?

God tries hard during this course of restoration to love you and I born into sin by imagining that we are immaculate beings and has the potential to return to our position before the fall.

Since we are the children of Satan, who is God's enemy, God naturally feels a sense of resentment towards us at first.

It would be likened to a father whose wife had a child her first child with his brother, yet has to care for and raise the baby as if he was his own.

Likewise, Satan stole the true father position from God.

We are able to ease this painful heart of God by receiving hardship and difficulties coming from Him.  Once you are able to become completely obedient to God's will, He will feel like forgiving you.  Thus, we must determine to win the sympathy of God by going through difficulty as though it was natural.

When we are able to bear this, compassion for our position will swell up in God's heart for you.

God places us as the offering and checks to see if we are able to obey Him in that difficult position.  No matter how difficult or hard the situations you have to endure, you must go through them with a grateful heart.

The only way to win God's heart is to go through difficulty and get over them alone.

So, in the Bible we read that those who persevere to the last will win the love of God.

Human history has been one of restoration.  There has been many rises and falls of nations and people with good and evil woven throughout.  Through this process, our sins have been indemnified or cleared away.

However strong the faith that you have, it does not matter if you fail to believe in God at the end you
are destined to go to hell.

Since your blood is stained with Satan's blood lineage, you cannot restore yourself to the true position all by yourself.  To be saved and restored, you must be placed in a position of a living sacrifice on the altar of God.

Yes, Jesus died for our sins, but we are still born into a sinful lineage.

However hard you may struggle to restore yourself, you cannot do it all by yourself, because your blood is stained by satanic lineage. Only by putting yourself in the position of a sacrifice, a living sacrifice, on the altar of God, can you be saved and restored.

It is hard for a non believer to understand the concept of sin when our external body does not show signs of sin.  Jesus was sinless, but it was hard for people to believe because he looked like any other person.

Since God is a good God and we were made in His image, then there is a way for us to return to our original position before the fall.

But, even if we cannot see it, satanic blood that we inherited runs through every part of our body including our limbs.

Our eyes have been accustomed to seeing evil things.  How do we go about restoring our eyes to recognize virtuous and good sights?

What do we have to do to restore our five senses to recognize the good in our environment?

Also, how are we going to restore our limbs and every part of our body for the purpose of goodness?  We must first deny ourselves and love God more than we do anybody else.

Just as Jesus said, you must deny your family and your sinful way of life before God can have His object as pure as before the fall.  When you have a traditional marriage that is still tied to the fallen lineage with your own children, then your fallen family and surroundings are all elements that make God grieve.

From God's viewpoint, this multiplication of the fallen lineage is not acceptable and is against God's will.

The Bible stated that in the Last Days that it would be burdensome for those with children and family for this reason.  Satan would have even more hooks to work through the fallen family and make it harder to restore each individual.

The Messiah comes to reverse the fall and to give his faithful followers into marriage that erases the fallen blood lineage and connects us to God's direct blood lineage.  This was Jesus' desire.  This makes more sense why Jesus was grieved and not happy at fulfilling the way of the cross.

Jesus carried God's true blood lineage, which he would have been able to pass this lineage on through the a True Marriage and leaving True Children on earth carrying God's blood.

Thus, humanity connecting to this true lineage through following his path and what the Bible calls the Marriage of the Lamb.  This is the Marriage blessing which the Messiah gives to his followers that is given directly by God.

A true religion must teach you to deny yourself and to sacrifice yourself, to drain the satanic blood out of you. 

Once you completely yield yourself in total obedience to the altar of God, you utterly deny yourself and are re-created by God's hands.

Once you deny yourself, you will finally feel that you have cut the satanic chains and separated yourself from Satan's grasp and return to God.

But as fallen people, we turn around and deny God and rebel against Him through our actions.  Then God has no choice but to place you back into the satanic world and test you many times.

Before each of us can be fully restored and recognized by God, we must get rid of any signs of betrayal of the fall.

Even though we are chased away for our disobedience, we must return to God with tears in repentance for our sins.

He may get rid of His resentment of being treated poorly even though He only gives us love through putting you through hardships.  You must endure these times and cling to God without leaving Him.

We must be like Jesus who is always symbolized as a lamb because he represented the whole of mankind.  The lamb is a creature that is obedient to his master's call and will obey him even at the moment of death.  We are each symbolized by a lamb as followers and we should be obedient to God.

Through Jesus going to the cross, God was teaching mankind how to be obedient to Him even at the moment of death.  Jesus went tearfully the way of sacrifice, because he knew that it was not God's original plan.

Only through the Jewish people not believing Jesus was God's son and not following him to the end did he have to go to the cross.  Even though he knew it would prolong God's will of heaven on earth, Jesus obeyed God all the way to his last breath.

What is more virtuous than faith and actions?

Your heart toward God, the pure love of God is more valued.

You then must first understand God's heart and how much He has suffered in the work of restoring the world of peace He originally planned.

Are you in a position where you can receive the love of God?  Can He can rely on you?

Is God happy with your actions in your life?  Are you where He can really love you?  Since we know that we are not of God's blood lineage, then we should understand that it is difficult for God to love us naturally.

If God is going to love us at all, He has to go through difficulty.

We are the sons and daughters of God's enemy.

Thus, we should try hard to win His heart and turn it towards us.  We must clearly understand what has caused God grief throughout history and we must reverse what we have done in the past including our ancestor's tradition of sin and restore the original state within ourselves.

Through this course of restoration, we should bring ourselves into a position that is better than Adam and Eve before the fall.  Thus, we would be obedient to God not repeating the fall through our selfish desires.  This is our ultimate goal.

The Fall, caused God so much grief.  God has been imprisoned not able to work freely without a direct connection to His children who were stolen.  We are in the position to help liberate His heart.

Even God's own happiness has been wrapped in bondage.

What Father could be happy seeing His children stolen and destroyed?

As His adopted children, we also should not sit by and watch Him suffer because of our disobedience.  Therefore, we should liberate Him and relieve Him from this grief.

Because we have not known this, throughout history, people of religion have been asking God to help liberate them.  They pray for God to do this and that for them without having the notion of our responsibility to liberate God instead.

The Unification Church was created on this earth with that mission, to liberate God's broken heart.

We teach the grief of God and whose people feel such grief, and then teach others how to liberate God's heart.

The most important question or problem is how to relieve His heart by restoring ourselves on the individual level, family level, nationwide level, and worldwide level.

We should know that this world is not the world God wanted, and He does not want it to stay the way that it is.  He does not want Christianity to stay as it is either.  God wants the world of Christianity to relieve Him from His sorrow.

How many Christians have thought of this?

Who has thought of comforting God in all of the betrayals and heartache He has suffered throughout the work of restoring the world?

Has there been a nation that has thought of liberating God's heart from sorrow?

This must be taught through religion.

In order to this, one man must be restored to the position of Adam before the fall, who is not born into sin.  He will work through his family without the fall up to the level of the whole world.  This is what God wants.

This man will set the tradition completing the teachings of Jesus to lead people through the restoration course.

A rebellious son may run away and return with billions to his father.  But for this father to be consoled, he would have to see that his son has more piety and obedience.  Without this attitude, the father's resentment toward his betrayal will not be cleared away.

This is the same for a wife whose husband has stopped loving her.

Even though she might have a huge diamond ring and lots of money, nothing can restore the love she has lost.  What is more important than that diamond is love.

Jesus had the mission to restore God's love through his family.

Thus, the Lord of the Second Advent returns to carry out this same mission.  Jesus left us an example how to be a true son and brother.  The Messiah returns to give the example how to be a True Parent and True Husband through his sinless family on earth.

The mission of the Unification Church is to restore our love towards God, then restore God's love for us. 

We advocate liberating God's heart first and winning His love before liberating ourselves.

Many may not accept this notion, but what religion has truly been able to reverse the acts of the fall and bring about a sinless society?

When you first come to God, He would view you the same way He views Satan at the beginning.  He would want to see the love you have for Him is more than your love for anyone else.  This is the only way to clear away His resentment.

The Messiah, who is not born perfect, also has to grow to maturity in spirit.

Even the Messiah has been rejected by God to restore the fact that we have rejected God many times.
Even though he was put in an even more difficult position, he would go back to God's bosom and cling to Him in prayer and love, then God would accept Him.

But after awhile, God would send him back into satanic hands to go through even more tribulations and hardships.  After conquering these things, he would go back to God. And so many times he has had such things happen to him




Return for Tomorrow's Post: To Be a Leader, Live for Others

This post was rewritten and derived from the speech Day of Resolution of Victory.

How to Love With God's Heart

 “Above all else, guard your heart,” says the proverb, “for it is the wellspring of life” (Proverbs 4.23).

"In any case, the heart, like a garden, needs protection and cultivation if it is to flourish and break through the forces that warp and distort its impulses."

What does it mean to "keep the heart"?  It means to keep your heart pure and polished.  How?  through cutting through the ego, pride, misperceptions and distortions that cover our hearts. 

How can we purify our hearts and delve into the intrinsically good and pure heart that mirrors the heart of the Creator, our heavenly Father?

The Heart of God

Dr. Martin Luther King said, “At the heart of reality, there is a Heart.”

Behind the human heart, of course, is the divine heavenly Heart.

God’s Heart is the wellspring of His love, the core of His being. This heart impels Him to live for the sake of His children and creation.  What may not be known about God's awesome might and majesty is a fierce concern, intense sensitivity, and incomparable tenderness.  God is the king of love.
 

“Can God enjoy His life without love?” asks Reverend Moon. “No. However omniscient or omnipotent He may be, by Himself alone, He cannot enjoy happiness . . . You say you are happy because you have your parents, your husband or wife, your sweetheart. You say to someone, ‘I am happy because I have you with me . . .’ If that is true with human beings, the same applies to God.”

Jesus addressed his Lord and Creator as “Abba”—Papa (Mark 14.36).
 

More than the most devoted of earthly parents, the Heavenly Father is so passionately concerned with every single one of His children, that no one’s gladness or distress escapes His notice.

“Not one [sparrow] is forgotten before God,” we are assured, and surely each person is “worth more than many sparrows” (Luke 12.6-7).

God's heart works in relation to a partner and it does not stand to be apart or enjoy isolation.  Who can stand as God's true object partner in relation to His heart?

Philosopher Abraham Heschel speaks of a Lord passionately and personally involved with His people. The Bible has the Creator as affected by humanity as a man is by his wife (Hosea and Jeremiah 3.20).

 

God’s heart shapes His ideal, what religious traditions have called the Kingdom of Heaven, the World to Come, the Golden Age.  It is the place where “The dwelling of God is with men,” (Revelation 21.3) as He intended. Intimacy with one’s children, grandchildren and great grandchildren—does any parent desire anything more? In the same way, God’s heart wants eternal closeness with each of His children.

This parental heart means no one is outside its reach. God's grace falls like rain on the worthy and unworthy alike. There are no limits to this love; no sacrifice is too great. He “so loved the world” that He would offer everything He has, even His most beloved Son (John 3.16) that “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” and be saved (2 Peter 3.9). “Turn to me and be saved,” He cries through the prophet Isaiah, “all you ends of the earth!” (45.22-23).

Indeed, this is a defining characteristic of God’s Heart—no one is outside it. Even those who disobey Him, reject Him or even seek to destroy everything He holds dear are not excluded. His wrath and judgment are ultimately for the purpose of reconciliation, of being together with His children.

Thus there is Jesus’ saying to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” in imitation of the Creator's characteristics (Matthew 5.44). As Reverend Moon has said, no matter what state human beings are in, “God cannot but love man. You can be so confident as to say, without you, God cannot be happy.”

The impulse to seek joy through loving is too strong for any permanent rejection or estrangement between the Father and any of His children.

God's Heart has three aspects; One is joy, the spirit in which He created the universe.  This is reflected in the infinite varieties of the beauties that make up the creation.  During the creation process, the divine imagination was animated with gladness.


“It was good,” He said of His creation (Genesis 1.10). He was especially joyful in anticipation of sharing His life with responsive children and having them delight in the creation He had made. When human parents happily prepare a nursery and then tearfully welcome a new child into the world, they taste something of God’s heart of joy at the creation.

The Heart of God is the ultimate counterpart to the human heart, and deeper and wider than our own and overflowing with the purest, most profound love. Only His heart so fully, in the words of Blaise Pascal, “fills the soul and heart which He possesses" ... it alone has the capacity to completely stimulate every part of us.

 

Those privileged to have tasted of its fullness have described its intoxicating rapture.

 

“Once the heart of God dwells within you, no matter how lonely you may be you will be filled and the universe will be filled,” states Reverend Moon. “Such a person is infinitely joyful, lacking nothing.”

 

“Ah, my Lord God,” wrote Thomas à Kempis, in, “most faithful lover, when Thou comes into my heart, all that is within me rejoices!”

This is the ultimate happiness and the essence of Heaven. It has been called paradise, nirvana, bliss. Whatever it is called, it is ineffably good and satisfying— an oasis in the desert to the thirsting human heart.

Aspects of God’s Heart
 

This is why the distance from Him that has been the human condition throughout the ages leaves such an ache and restlessness.

As the psalmist expressed it: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night” (42.1-3). Conversely, when Adam sinned, God searched for him in the Garden, calling, “Where are you?”(Genesis 3.9).  This can be views as God's pure Heart could no longer see Adam's impure heart after the fall occurred.

The fall left Heavenly Father and the earthly children in need of fulfillment having lost their "love partner" of one another.  God's heart has experienced much displeasure.  Who can look at God's situation as wonderful throughout history when one peers through the eyes of God looking upon His lost children disconnected from His heart? "The agonies of the world that burden all but the most callous of souls are."

 

Joy over the Creation Hope and Commitment to Restore the Lost Ideal Impulse to Love Sorrow Over Human Suffering

This is an important aspect of the divine heart: sorrow.

God is likened to a human parent that has to endure witnessing their children suffering through a reckless act or worse, as victims of a crime.  God's heart breaks whenever he sees the torment and misery of the world;the senselessness of war, the wretchedness of hunger and poverty, the harshness of disease, the agonies of families torn apart and the devastation of spiritual emptiness.

 “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it,” said St. Paul of the body of believers (1 Corinthians 12.26); how could the Head of the body not suffer? He agonizes with His loved ones as any of His children do with theirs.

“In all their distress, he too was distressed” (Isaiah 63.9), say the Hebrew scriptures of His relationship with His people; He “could bear Israel’s misery no longer” (Judges 10.16). He was even agonized as a mother in labor: “Now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant” (Isaiah 42.14).  Muhammad likewise felt God’s misery, saying in a Hadith, “I see what you do not see and I hear what you do not hear; heaven has groaned, and heaven has a right to groan.”

Not only does God feel the pain of every person, but this is ever amplified by His understanding of what could be, like a dreamer who is far from his ideal, His unrealized vision for the beautiful world He intended. A parent grieves even more painfully over a child’s mistakes and suffering than the child does, because the elder also knows more fully all the potential and hopes and dreams that have been lost.

God had envisioned a Heaven on Earth and higher ideal than the current situation of the world.

Besides His pain arising from compassion, God’s heart aches for the broken communion with His loved ones. He feels the pangs of joys lost, unable to fully share the lives and the loves of His myriad sons and daughters. This frustrated hope is what Asians call “han,” the basis of what theologian Andrew Sung Park calls God’s “wounded heart”.

Yes, God's heart has been broken at the disobedience and suffering of His children.
 

Scriptures reveal the pain of the Parent who has given all yet cannot connect with His children enough.  His love is largely unrequited. “The more I called Israel, the further they went from me...” (Hosea 11.2). This Hebrew verse captures the poignant lament of a heartbroken Father.

"How often I have longed to gather your children together,” He confesses to a rebellious world, “as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (Matthew 23.37).

The parent is willing to give without end for the sake of her child, but joy is incomplete when love is not returned. Indeed, He is described as “grieved” over the wickedness and faithlessness of His children (Genesis 6.5-6).

A Christian from California recounts I’ve never really been very good at sharing my faith with people. Then one day I was walking down the street in Berkeley, California, and I saw this big poster of a missing child. 

That poster seemed to speak to me. I realized that God is missing all kinds of children. Day after day, He watches His children killing each other, robbing each other, crumbling down in loneliness and then going to hell. When I thought how I’d run around searching if my own child was missing, I realized I had to testify to my faith with more fervor to help God find His missing children.
 

God is the fountain of hope. This is the third primary aspect of God’s Heart—there is hope that God's ideal which was lost in the beginning can be restored.

This hope gives power to overcome the sorrow, disappointment, and grief.  This force sustains His awesome perseverance, which has been laboring painstakingly and patiently through His representative for the day of the great homecoming.

He fervently seeks among the multitudes of every child who does not know Him. The Bible offers metaphors for the almighty Lord of the universe.

One is the image of a poor woman desperately searching for a lost coin (Luke 15.8-10), as if the omnipotent One forgets all dignity in His urgent efforts to save His children. Another is that of a shepherd, leaving all of his flock to track down the missing one and rejoicing when it is found (Luke 15.4-7).

If a parent's child was taken captive, that parent would sacrifice and offer anything and any amount of ransom if it meant the liberation of their children held in bondage.  God does the same with more intensity using His whole heart and effort toward liberating man from the chains of ignorance and the force of selfishness.

God cannot rest until even those who have committed the most heinous of crimes repent and begin to cultivate their own hearts of original goodness which emulates God's great heart.

Maybe the best poignant image of the tender Creator is the one painted by Jesus in his story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15.11-32).  The patriarch's aching heart is revealed for his wayward son's return when he stays waiting at the window hoping for the day he returned.  The father forgets everything when he first sights his son walk back to the land and runs forward to greet him. He is beside himself with joy to have his son back, no matter what pain the young man caused. One could say the father is a willing slave to parental love.
 

Since man is made in God's image, God's heart is essentially the same. 

God has fashioned Himself to be vulnerable to His children and to be captive the the same love that captivates them.

“He is the Lord omnipotent, the Lord of all beings, the controller of all,” the Hindu scripture reads, “yet he permits himself to be controlled by those who love him” (Srimad Bhagavatam)—and by love itself.

Because of His unfailing faith in His people and His vision, God can endure the agony of seeing His faithful ones scorned and persecuted and to keep on working until every part of the original plan is realized.  This means, God will not cease His work of restoring His children and world until everyone is back into His bosom.

“He will not falter or be discouraged,” the prophet Isaiah declared, “till he establishes justice on earth” (42.4).

With the heart of the Father yet in the shoes of a servant, God perseveres to save His children, driven by His heart of hope.  The father who pays for his son’s careless damage to another person’s car, the mother who goes to the principal to ask for one more chance for her daughter, the father who stands with his boy in court and offers his own respectability as a hope for leniency, the mother who apologizes to a child her daughter has shared the sorrow of God over the misbehavior of His children.

All share the same hope: if they pay enough, pray enough, love enough, and try hard enough, eventually their children will respond to their sacrifice and love and will become responsible people in their own right. This is the hope of every parent. God, the Parent of all, is the same.

Photos by: freedigitalphotos.net
 

Return for Tomorrow's Post: How to Grow the Heart

 

Textbook: Educating For True Love Chapter, Foundation of Character Foundation based on the teachings of Dr. Rev. Sun Myung Moon as more of an understanding of the Heart of God.

God Needs Liberation, Too

"No matter how many times I may have said that I want to liberate God, God says, 'All right. Before you consider liberating me, please take care of the problems of the world first. Then come and tell me that you want to liberate me.' This is why I have sought out the most difficult problems of the world and taken them upon my shoulders."

Many people and nations may wonder how such a country with such a young government ever came to power as America in a few short hundred years.  America was started with the founding heart of rebels.  People who left their country who wanted to serve God and not the church on a new land.  Their reference to God and the Bible in their laws and in their way of life is directly correlated to the country's rapid growth and dominance in world. 

Fast forward not too far into the future and America's biggest problem is the loss of the order and discipline of love and the lack of a guiding clear philosophy of life.  True Love has been downgraded in our ways of life and through the media.  There are many religions, but no guiding principle of how individuals express their love on a brother, matrimonial and parental level.  In order for every person to experience true, lawful love, we need to restore its discipline and order.  In addition, the majority of the population lack a superior philosophy of life, and thus life their life day to day without a central, guiding principle.

The other problem in the world today is communism.  The walls came tumbling down, but communism still spreads its atheistic viewpoint like a poison to the world.  We live in a free country that practices freedom of speech and faith, but everyday we lose religious freedom in all facets of life as the atheistic viewpoint takes over our country.

Satan's vehicle is communism, and he must be driven out.  The faithful must reestablish the order of love and restore the eternal unchanging ideology which is the central theme of all human life.  This is not an easy task. 

The only way for change is for the Messiah to return and guide humanity to solve these problems.  That's right, for us to pick up our plows and begin the work of recreation.  If restoring the world was easy with the snap of God's finger, the world would have been restored in the garden of Eden and God would have never given us free will to choose to live by His rules.

Because God gave His children freedom to choose His way or the satanic way, when we chose satan's words over His in the garden and to this day, it essentially placed God in a prison not of his own making.  A prison where he watches His children get murdered, become reckless and live individual lives without His purpose and die and go to hell.

So, God is all powerful, but gave His children 5% responsibility to go after that power. 


The Order of Love

When the Messiah returns, his first task is to restore the central ideology which will lead humanity to reestablish the order and discipline of love.  Then humanity will be able to return to the true, lawful love.

The second responsibility to return order to the world is to chase out satan. 

What about you? Are you restoring the order and discipline of love within the realm of your life and activity? You need the Marriage Blessing given directly by God in order to do begin the true work of recreation of your lineage. The Blessing is the pinnacle in your course of restoring love.

These are not my ideals and concepts, but those taught by the Returned Messiah.  These teachings explain what the world should be like, what the nation should be like, and how society should function and how each of us should live. 

These teachings of the Divine Principle which is based on the bible is the basis of each of Achieve World Peace blogs.   The central theme is the ideal pattern for individuals, societies, nations, the world and even the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.  Each of these facets has a clear-cut formula to follow to return to true love.

Right now, religion is trying to banish Satan from this world, day in and day out.  You and others are waging a "Knock Out Satan" campaign whenever you restore the order of love and the ideology of God.  On the other side of that, satan is always trying to promote illicit and abnormal love.  Abnormal is when objects just float around without following any principle and is confusing front and back, right and left.

What is abnormal love?

The evidence is evident in our nation when it is 'normal' for a gentleman to sleep with one woman one night and prowls for another every night.  Also, when one has sexual relations with a family member or homosexuality tendencies.  These are just a few examples of abnormal illicit love that has nothing to do with God's original love.  Even though these practices have become the norm, it goes against God's purpose of creation and ideal of love.

How many of us desire and hope for any type of these loves?  Does society agree that these few examples are abnormal type of love or normal?  Society has deemed that temporary, illicit love is in fact normal behavior. 

If one is not clear on the distinction of abnormal and normal love, satan will keep following them until they fully practice the normal way of love.  Once true normal love is practiced which begins with living for the sake of others, then satan can no longer follow that person.  How can he follow someone who does not have his traits?

When we live for a selfish purpose, only looking out for ourselves, we make it easy for satan to always be right behind us.  There is a remedy for anyone following the wrong path.  Once we start living for the sake of others, satan must retreat.  This is the dividing line. 

Satan can not claim someone who is living for the sake of the whole and for others.  Once you are living for the sake of all people of the world, the entire world will welcome you and satan will have to go away.

Since the world is entrenched deeply in sin, how do we save the world and then release God from the prison in which we have placed Him?  We have been discussing about the two principal needs of mankind: liberation from illicit love and liberation from the bondage of false ideology. 

When mankind is liberated, satan will leave completely.  He will not have a source to attach and have give and take relations to exist.  The presence and existence of satan who was formerly the good angel Lucifer is the main cause of God's imprisonment.

How is it possible for God to be imprisoned?  Because God gave you and I free will to follow Him or not, we chose to not follow God and satan has complete control over God's creation.  Does this sound like freedom for either humanity or God?  It look as if the only winner is satan.

As soon as Satan leaves, God will stand up and slowly walk out to greet us. "Finally I'm free!" He will say. "I have no more worries in the world! Who did it? The Messiah, the Second Advent did. He liberated me!"

Liberation

Until now, you didn't fully comprehend what I meant by the liberation of God and mankind or even knew that God required to be rescued from slavery as well. You didn't know the definition of liberation. By establishing the central ideology that restores the discipline of love and expels Satan, you are liberating mankind and liberating God. Is the task easy or difficult?



When every individual receives this ideology and puts it into practice, there will be no room for Satan. God will be welcomed everywhere. That is how liberation will take place. So to liberate mankind means to liberate God. The two liberations are simultaneous; they are not separate events. One solution will suffice.

Therefore, why do you go out to witness? It is to accomplish this very task. You witness for the liberation of mankind and the liberation of God. Who is working hard and daily for the direct liberation of God, those who accept and practice the words of the Returned Messiah who reveals the hidden truth that the disciples of Jesus' time did not have the ears to hear or the heart to believe.


Digest Everything Through Love

There are many wars, but the world is embroiled in an ideological war. There is a conflict between the God-accepting ideology and the God-denying ideology, between democracy and communism. What is the ideology of the Returned Messiah? Completely on the opposite spectrum, it  is Unificationism. We are bringing everything into harmony and unity. The role of our ideology is to digest everything; it is a "melting pot" ideology.

Reverend Moon the author of the Divine Principle said, "I have a healthy stomach: I can take in everything and digest it. I can eat hot pepper sauce and Korean kimchee, and at the same time I can eat cheese and bread. It makes no difference; everything can be digested into one stomach. Such a stomach is ideal, isn't it? You must be able to digest everything to be an ideal person. What kind of person are you?"

Return for Tomorrow's Post: Perfection: Mind and Body Unity


Textbook: True Love Volume One, The Restoration of True Love

Spiritual Food or Die Trying

I believe every human has once seen or heard the biblical phase, "Man Cannot Live By Bread Alone."  For those who do not know, God's word or law is like food for the spirit or soul of every man giving life.

Since a man, who was created by God's word, fell as a result of losing the word, he must be recreated by the word.

That is God's word of love, God's word of life and God's word of lineage.

The principle law is more precious than anything else. Have you ever thought of the principle being more precious than eating your meals, wearing your clothes, or sleeping? You should have viewed the principle as something absolute, and believed in the principle with a more precious and sacred attention, than anything else in the world; however, we as humans could not live up to this standard. Before God, we should all repent.

We must breathe, spiritually, every day. How do we do this?

Just like you have meals daily, you must connect with God's word. You must place more emphasis on connecting with the word than eating daily meals. You must emphasize the word as most important. Only then will you walk the path to Heaven.

Everyone has to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. However, it is more precious to receive spiritual nourishment, the word of God. The question for your life is this. How much will you nourish and grow your spiritual self, valuing God's word more than your daily meals.

You must understand God's word in your "chest" as soon as you understand it in your head. You also must understand it in your body as soon as you understand it in your chest. Then, you must understand it in your heart as soon as you understand it in your body.

It is no good if you act according to your own regard, while God's word remains only the words that you read. Don't many of us religious do this?  We preach the word to others, but don't fully follow it ourselves?  I'm not talking about hypocrisy, moreso, about how it is oftentimes hard to even recognize that we are not completely following the word because our spirit hasn't matured to what we preach yet.

We must become the manifestation of God's word.  Just as Jesus did. Many will say this is blasphemous to think we can be the same as Jesus.  Then why did he tell us to be perfect like our father is perfect?  Is it possible for fallen humanity to become perfect like Jesus?

Of course it is.  All of God's saints and Jesus gave us the word according to their time to guide us toward perfection.

How do we do this?

God's internal heart must become your internal heart. Namely, you must become the embodiment of your original mind.

We shouldn't feel guilty that we are not like Jesus, that we upset God's plans and stumble along the way.  Every human has an immature spirit that must be nourished and grown just like the human body.  The word is food for our spirit. 

This is why many who read the word and follow it as much as possible without judging others seem to be more stable and grounded in their life.  They are growing their spirit while others struggle throughout their days and seem on the brink of death and calamity all of the time.

Truth must be actualized. The truth should be maintained and perfected in living human beings. Otherwise, the truth may be taken and misused by Satan. Therefore, God does not reveal the new truth through his saints until all required conditions are met and the truth is manifested in reality.

This is why you see a progression of the truth heighten from Noah's time to Jesus's time.

God's word will bring a result of goodness and carry out the grace of resurrection and the grace of recreation wherever it is spread. So you must be people who are equipped with the word and who can liquidate evil, carry out the grace of resurrection, and command the execution of recreation.

Therefore, the place where such people, who are equipped with God's word, live together is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Jesus said to Satan, "It is written: 'Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"(Matthew 4:4) This is very real. Has God's champions lived until now because they labored? Or have they lived because of money? It is neither. They have lived by holding on to God's word.

God works through levels and stages - growth stages.  Everything in creation grows through stages.

First, is the era when you believe in God' word. Second, is the era when you practice God's word. Then, last is the era when you live your life -- your whole life -- centered on God's word. You will enter the era of living life. In order to transform this world into the Kingdom of Heaven, each of these steps should be followed faithfully. We will develop in the order from the era of faith, to the era of practice, and finally the era of living life.

The spirit world is a place where people live their lives centered on God's word. Since every action in your daily life is in accordance with the word, you must be disciplined here on earth. In other word, if you dislike the word of God, you should not eat your meal. You must enjoy and taste the spiritual nourishment more than your meals. Since the word is the eternal spiritual nourishment, you must be trained to develop the taste for the spiritual meals that last forever, while you live this limited earthly life.


Return for Tomorrow's Post: The War Between Mind and Body

photos courtesy of : freedigitalphotos.net


This is from a compilation of speeches titled "Our Attitude Toward God" given by Dr. Rev. Sun Myung Moon.