Romans 5:20
0 The Law came, so that the full power of sin could be seen. Yet where sin was powerful, God’s kindness was even more powerful. 21 Sin ruled by means of death. But God’s kindness now rules, and God has accepted us because of Jesus Christ our Lord. This means that we will have eternal life.
Richard: Just as God is kind to us, we should exercise kindness in our lives.
Isaiah 60
The Lord said:
10 Jerusalem, your city walls
will be rebuilt by foreigners;
their rulers will become
your slaves.
I punished you in my anger;
now I will be kind
and treat you with mercy.
Oh, Where Shall I Go?
Sun Myung Moon
January 18, 1959
Matthew 7
Father, we know well that many people have struggled on a deeply woeful course in history to find You, even though they did not know the way. Father, Your existence seems likely, yet improbable. You seem to exist in history and yet cannot be recognized as existing for certain. We behold this Father with an intensely grieved heart. You seem to exist in our hearts, and yet You are insubstantial.
We know well that You created the whole cosmos with the ideal of goodness and gave an amazing blessing to humans in that You gave us true consciences and enabled us to experience the ideal of goodness through our intellects, emotions and wills. We know well, however, that it is undeniable that Your substantial existence is felt in the temporal limitations of the moment.
Whenever we long for Your image in our hearts, we cannot help being seized by an unknowable sorrow. We cannot help lamenting over the misery of our existence. Father, You led us to this state. We know that this is Your historical operation of the heart to lead us to eternal life.
We want to know the Father, who came to us through our Shim Jung and who was the heart behind the scenes of history, unbeknownst to us, trying to structure history into one substantial ideal. We are sincerely longing to establish Your heart as the ideal of our lives. Since we do not clearly know the value of Your substantial existence, we do not know the value of our daily lives. We are in a miserable position of having to struggle today and tomorrow. Father, have pity on us. Have pity on each of us, wandering about on the boundary of death.
Father, now we know that the time has come when You must spread Your hands of love. The wave of that love should reach our environments and our world of Shim Jung. It is time to regain Your authority of Shim Jung. The authority is Yours alone. We know that the time has come to wage a war centering on the heart. Please give us the magnanimity with which to open closed hearts. Now is the time when we should become sons and daughters prepared to bow down to You. Enable us to hear You knocking on the doors of our hearts, to see Your hands before us. We sincerely hope and desire this.
We know that we must continue through the remaining ground of sorrow and the wall of grudges, the showdown and war of the last days. Father, grant strength, ability and Your substantial presence to Your sons and daughters who know this. Allow us to cut the dashing figure of a heavenly soldier who can go through all suffering and battles. Allow us to become noble and confident sons and daughters in exercising the authority of judgment, according to Your decisions. Beloved Father, we earnestly hope and desire this.
Since You are the one who blessed the chosen people, we know that You will bring it to pass. We know that the root of our heart is goodness, and our heart moves through goodness. We know that the purpose of goodness, history and the providence is to become one, centered on You. Please allow the pinnacle of the ideal, adored by the spirit of goodness, to bear fruit. Let us establish ourselves that we may persistently continue to become the ideal itself. Father, we sincerely hope and desire this.
Please allow us to know where our hearts are and where our bodies are moving. Allow our hearts to concentrate all our energy on longing for You and adoring goodness. Allow our bodies to call out to You, struggling to grasp goodness and holding onto the hands of hunger and thirst.
We know that the 6,000 years was the process of holding onto You and pleading with You. Beloved Father, we sincerely hope and desire that, at this time, You allow us to bow to You with our honest selves, confess all, and receive Your guidance.
Father, have pity on the sons and daughters gathered here. Since this is a time to offer a sacrifice to You, allow heaven, all saints, all people, and all things to lower their heads. When the Israelites made an offering to You, You lowered Your head to look it over, and all people and all things on the earth also lowered their heads. We hope that we can unconsciously lower our heads at this time and humbly seek the grace of compassion. Thus, we sincerely hope and desire that You personally come here, accept our offering and guide us.
Since You are the one who drives us to the path that is rejected by others, the road that is difficult to walk, You become responsible for this path. We have not been moved by a human heart nor dragged along by a human situation. Rather, we have been attracted to this place by an irresistible power of the heart. Guide us never to become lax.
Since we are ignorant of Your words of urgency and advice, apply shocks of power to us hour by hour so that we may realize the Words and move in their direction. Father, we sincerely hope and desire that no one will drop out of the process of moving toward You.
We sincerely hope and desire that You allow us to yield all we have to You, never staining Your altar, bowing down to You with all our hearts in offering sacrifices to You. If we still have our own philosophy, understanding or concepts, please remove them all at this time. Allow us to be the children who can submit all our possessions to You with the heart of a child. Allow us to receive them back and boast of them before Satan on the earth. Father, we sincerely hope and desire this. Now we are about to receive the words. Please be with us. We sincerely hope and desire that since You will give many words of guidance, we will not disappoint Heaven after we hear them. Please allow the hearts of the giver and of the receivers to become one now. We sincerely ask that, at this time, we may return to the heart of a child sucking milk in its mother’s bosom. We pray all this in the name of the Lord. Amen.
