James 1
5 If any of you need wisdom, you should ask God, and it will be given to you. God is generous and won’t correct you for asking. 6 But when you ask for something, you must have faith and not doubt. Anyone who doubts is like an ocean wave tossed around in a storm. 7-8 If you are that kind of person, you can’t make up your mind, and you surely can’t be trusted. So don’t expect the Lord to give you anything at all.
2 Chronicles 7
2 Some time later, the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream and said:
I heard your prayer, and I have chosen this temple as the place where sacrifices will be offered to me.
13 Suppose I hold back the rain or send locusts[c] to eat the crops or make my people suffer with deadly diseases. 14 If my own people will humbly pray and turn back to me and stop sinning, then I will answer them from heaven. I will forgive them and make their land fertile once again. 15 I will hear the prayers made in this temple, 16 because it belongs to me, and this is where I will be worshiped forever. I will never stop watching over it.
Richard: Have you sinned? We all have. Cry out to God and ask His forgiveness. Also cry out for the sins of our nation. For example, over 60,000,000 babies have been aborted since Roe v. Wade in 1973. This does not include chemically induced abortions.
Let Us Understand God, Who Wanted to be Proud
Rev. Sun Myung Moon
February 8, 1959
Because Noah’s course was like that, even when God judged the people with the flood, there was no condition upon which the faithless and rebellious people could protest against Heaven. Noah was someone of which God could be proud. The judgment of Noah was the process through which the value of heavenly pride and practical value were established. The sons and daughters of Noah should have become connected to the heart of pride that God wanted to establish, but they disregarded Noah’s devotion and had self-centered thoughts. Heaven was turned upside down.
The same was true for Abraham. It was not easy for him to leave everything behind in Ur of the Chaldeans. Abraham could have led a more joyful life than anyone in the satanic world. His wife was extremely beautiful, and he had abundant wealth.
God called Abraham and drove him the opposite way, toward tribulation. You have to understand that God ordered Abraham to leave Ur of the Chaldeans and drove him into tribulations that his relatives, family and people dared not attempt.
We have to understand that Abraham transcended himself and deeply felt the existence of Heaven, which was guiding his tribe and descendants to the ideal world. Abraham knew that ordinary daily life was not something of which the people could be proud. When God’s command was given to him in this state of mind, he abandoned all that he owned. It was not easy for him to do that. Abraham set out on a truly miserable journey toward the land of Haran, abandoning all that he had, his family, which had given him great joy, and all his belongings. However, even though he was a pitiful wanderer, his footsteps were full of confidence, because he believed that a glorious and proud day would come, even if he could not be proud of his current situation.
Abraham was determined that no matter what kind of ordeals and difficulties he might face, he would overcome them hundreds and thousands of times. You have to understand that Jesus sought for the garden of God’s pride more intensely than anyone else, with this same determination.
Because the heart of Abraham and the heart of God, who was desperately looking for a reciprocal object, came together in unity, God was able to give Abraham His proud blessings, which included the garden of the absolute ideal for which God longed.
This is how Abraham was put in the blessed position of being the ancestor of faith before Heaven. His living descendants thought they could be proud of their place of dwelling. They should have transcended the people and gone forth toward the world, yet they did not understand this. They just wanted to stay in one place and cling to their source of pride. This made them increasingly distant from the ideal of which God can be proud. You have to understand that this is why human beings have entered a long course of sorrowful history.
The same was true for Moses. For forty years Moses lived a comfortable and luxurious life in the palace. Although he lived a most enviable life, more than anyone else, he longed for the day Heaven could raise up his people and take pride in them. Although they were a pitiful people, moaning under the misery of 400 years of slavery in Egypt, he believed that one day God would surely bless them and lead them into the blessed land of Canaan. Moses hoped that God would build a new garden of hope, a nation that surpassed all others, the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, of which God could be most proud.