Deuteronomy 14
8 Every third year, instead of using the ten percent of your harvest for a big celebration, bring it into town and put it in a community storehouse. 29 The Levites have no land of their own, so you must give them food from the storehouse. You must also give food to the poor who live in your town, including orphans, widows, and foreigners. If they have enough to eat, then the Lord your God will be pleased and make you successful in everything you do.
Richard: Wow, is God good, or what!? Based on today’s reading, I serched online for an orphanage in Charles Town, WV, which is near where I live. Lo and behold, I found this nonprofit which is headquartered right here in Charles Town: http://childrenofuganda.org/. I can’t wait to meet them, since we have family from Uganda and have and are adopting from Uganda!
This is an amazing testimony of the power of Rheama’s (“random” readings chosen by opening the Word of God and pointing at a certain verse.) Based on today’s Rheama, I beleive that God wants me to work with and help this organization. And it also just happens to be my birthday today and it is snowing heavily here, too!
2 Chronicles 8
8 It took twenty years for the Lord’s temple and Solomon’s palace to be built. 2 After that, Solomon had his workers rebuild the towns that Hiram had given him. Then Solomon sent Israelites to live in those towns.
God’s Possession and Our Possession
Rev. Sun Myung Moon
November 9, 1958
The closer you walk toward Heaven, the more you dissolve Heaven’s bitter resentment, and the more deeply indebted you feel. For 6,000 years, God has been seeking His kingdom and people on this earth. Consequently, the historic debt of the toil of His seeking has accumulated for 6,000 years. Therefore, even if my individual self has satisfaction and happiness, I cannot say I own the heavenly kingdom.
If one is a son or a daughter of Heaven, he or she is left with the earth and the world for which he or she is responsible and for which he or she must be concerned and offer protection in God’s place. In other words, as long as anything that God cannot own remains, he or she should feel that he or she cannot have confidence in himself or herself.
For that reason, although Jesus came to this earth with the privileges of the Prince of Heaven, he could not exercise them, not even once. Everywhere he went, he washed the feet of his disciples and aided people. Jesus did not live even one day of his life for his purpose.
Looking back on Jesus’ life, we realize that he lived only for the good of others. His was a life of grief in which he struggled hard for the sake of others; he shed tears for the good of others; he was abused for the benefit of others; he was torn in the interest of others and he faced death for the good of others.
If God cannot dissolve this sorrow of Jesus, then God is useless. For that reason, we must liberate God from this iron chain of sorrow. Until the day He can claim that the whole of heaven and earth are His with uplifted hands and say to all humankind, “Let’s rejoice together!” we cannot make a case for ourselves. Because these vicissitudes existed, Christianity put emphasis on love, sacrifice and service and made an emphatic point out of living a life of persecution and contemptible treatment.
What do we have to do to be owned by God? We have to be able to shed many tears for God’s sake. You will be God’s possession as much as you have the mind to grieve for God’s sorrow in His place. You will be God’s possessions as much as you shoulder God’s hardships in His place. You will be God’s possession as much as you take false accusations from Satan in God’s place.
Therefore, you will become God’s possessions as much as you have rendered devoted service. That is not realized in a fair place; it is realized when human beings cling to sorrow or pain that all others have shunted aside, detesting them, and when they give devoted service. This is the path of Principle which Christians must walk.
The reason Korean Christianity caught fire was that Christians in the early days walked this kind of course. If a throng of people had appeared denying this, saying, “Since we are the people of the heavenly kingdom, why do we have to die?” God’s providential Will would not have spread throughout Korea.
If Jesus himself had denied this, saying, “Since I am the Son of God, why do I have to die? Why do I have to be abused and receive contemptuous treatment?” the course of salvation that you believe in today would not have been possible in human history.
What was the reason that all nations educate their people as patriots or in devoted service? Some patriots deserted their families, abandoned their desires and their honors to represent the will of their nation. You must know that they were people who took upon themselves the pain of their nations. They took upon themselves the sorrow of their nations and grieved. They tried to take responsibility for everything in their nation, representing the central figure. You must know that this is the right attitude to have in abiding by the laws of Heaven.
In this confused world today, numerous people insist upon having a high opinion of themselves and try to manifest their authority. It is difficult to find a truthful Christian. It is even more difficult to meet true sons and daughters of God, truthful people whom God can own. Now we should usher in a friend of ours, become people of the heavenly kingdom and organize a tribe by forming a religious order.
Where in Korea is one saint or faithful believer who has been claimed as the possession of God? Where is that one religious order? Where is that one race? We must shout, pouring out all the strength that is in us, until we are completely exhausted. We must realize that the time has arrived when we must seek, running until we fall.