Romans 8:12-27
Former Church Headquarters
Seoul, Korea
Prayer
Father! Please allow us to examine our hearts. Allow us to examine our bodies. Please guide us to become the sons and daughters whose minds and bodies can pierce into the heart of the Father.
We know that all the people of faith in heaven who served the cause of the providential will could not raise their heads before You and suffered great embarrassment over the fact that they were fallen. We who are on the earth have to bow our heads before You and make an effort to possess Your heart. Therefore, beloved Father, we earnestly wish that You will not let us display any impudence. Let our demeanor not be disrespectful toward the Father.
Please allow us to have the desperate heart that recognizes we are sinners and longs for the heart of the Father, waiting for the compassionate and loving hands of the Father and bowing our heads low. If we still possess the root of dark sins, then, Father, we wish ardently for You to remove it.
Although many people have come together in this hour, please allow us to become one in heart. Even if our bodies are many, please allow all of them to become one. By doing so, please work through us so that we can pioneer the new path according to the directions of the Father, who is directing us at this moment. Beloved Father, we sincerely hope that You will allow us to receive new power to possess the original power of Heaven and produce new actions.
Please protect us in this hour now. Please do not let Satan find room for invasion. If we have some theory, some doctrine, assertion or concepts, then, Father, please allow us to forget them and have the heart of a child who longs only for the Father. Please allow us to silently offer all that we have in our minds and bodies before Your altar. Sincerely hoping that You will create and mold us with new words, we wish ardently that You will let the direct works of re- creation emerge here so that we can be embraced in the Father's bosom of love.
Father! Now we want to convey Your words, so please do not let the heart of the speaker and the hearts of the listeners become two. We know that the greater the gap between the heart of the speaker and the heart of the listener, the greater the opportunity for Satan to find room for invasion.
Father, please allow us to experience Your anguished heart. By doing so, Father, we hope that You will allow us to become sons and daughters who can alleviate the worries of the Father and return joy and glory to Him. Requesting and wishing sincerely that You will lay the hands of compassion on the congregation gathered here, we have offered all the words in the name of the Lord. Amen.
Today I will speak briefly on the title, "Let Us Experience the Sorrow of God." No matter how joyful and glorious a person's life on the earth might be, when he examines himself deeply, he will always find sorrow. This kind of situation exists not only for individuals, but also for families. Furthermore, we must understand that we can find sorrow even inside God Himself, who created society, the nation, the world and the universe based on an ideology and who has carried on the providence hoping for the one day when His will is accomplished. If there is sorrow in your hearts, then you must feel that this sorrow is not limited to yourselves, but that it transcends your environment and influences the whole environment.
The Relationship Between God and Humankind, Centering on Sorrow
The time has come when you must feel the amazing fact that, although we are extremely insignificant people, the sorrow we feel is not limited to us. Rather, it transcends the people, the world, the heavenly principles and nature, and is connected even to the Creator Himself. If there are people who understand that they are suffering grief on behalf of the people, the world and Heaven and earth, then although they might seem miserable, in actuality they are very close to Heaven.
Although we have been struggling to resolve our sorrows with our own power, we have not been able to do so. If there is a Heaven and we have a relationship with that Heaven, and if there is the will of God, who is working through history, then we must take our own sorrow and view it as the sorrow which represents the course of history and the sorrow of God, who has been guiding the providence. Although those people are sorrowful, they have many friends. Although they are lonely, they have a historical background. They are the representatives of all realistic environments and also of the will of the heavenly principles of the future. We must understand that the time has come when we must seek our own position.
Now if there is some grief deep inside your heart, where would that grief come to an end? Your sorrow must be provoked so that Heaven and humankind can mourn over it. Furthermore, there must come one day when the whole world must be able to mourn over it and when God can also mourn over it. However, your sorrow has been self-serving. Not only that, it has become an obstacle before humanity, the world and the heavenly principles. You have failed to manifest grief on earth as something that can respond before Heaven and earth in the same circumstance and environment. Accordingly, the way is blocked for God, who possesses greater grief than humankind, to pass through the world, the nation, the people and the family to reach to the individual and be felt.
What is the greatest sorrow we might have? We have to feel today that the most grave sorrow is the situation in which God cannot mourn with us when we are mourning, the family and all humanity on the earth cannot mourn with us when we are mourning.
When we are mourning, what must we do to feel the grief that Heaven and all humanity on the earth can share? If we lament, centering on ourselves, there is no way to seek this position. If we feel grief now, then we must learn to leave ourselves behind and mourn for the sake of the family. Transcending the level of the family, we must learn to mourn for the sake of the people, the world and even for Heaven. When we do that, God's sorrow and grief pass through to the world, the nation and the family. Finally, it reaches us.
As He was guiding the providence, what has God caused people to believe in? In other words, before He embarked upon the history of re- creation, what did God make us experience first? It was not joy. First, He caused us to grieve for ourselves. He then inspired the heart which can mourn for the sake of our family, society, tribe, nation, world and the heavenly principles. Only when this is done will the way open through which we can go before God. This is the basic principle. For this reason, the Christian truth is such that believers must move forward in tears of sorrow and pass through a course of repentance.
When will we see the alleviation of the sorrowful feelings planted deep inside the heart of God since the fall, after the creation of the world? This remains as the fateful task that all humanity, the cosmos or the heavenly principles must resolve. Accordingly, before we can eradicate the root of this grief deep inside God, there is no way to come up with the solution for the fundamental grief of human beings.
Although God has created all things and has been governing the 6,000- year providential history until now, He has not been able to possess the one day of joy when He can remove all sorrows and appear as the Being of glory before the world of creation. You have to feel that there is this kind of sorrowful situation in Heaven.
Jesus and Liberation from Grief
In our hearts we try to feel the heart of God, but the evil elements and the social environment, our surroundings, cause our bodies to take the course which is opposite to our minds. In this way our minds and bodies are often in conflict with each other.
When we look at ourselves, we can experience two dimensions of grief. There is the grief that one feels as one adores goodness. There is also the grief one feels for one's own desires. In other words, one can grieve for the sake of one's own heart's desire or one can grieve to satisfy the desire of the mind.
If we are fallen human beings who will feel anguish no matter what, then which grief must we feel to escape from this realm of the fall? We must feel the anguish that can reach even to the heart of God. Otherwise there is no way that we can liberate ourselves from the realm of all this anguish.
However, people who are living on this earth cannot stand on the side of God on their own, become connected to the situation and heart of God, and create the environment in which they can mourn with God. Therefore, God sent one person, Jesus, who could represent the sorrow of God, and had the people believe in him. The Jesus you believe in came to cut people off from the sorrowful bonds of the satanic world and to raise them to the position of objects of God, who feels their grief.
What did Jesus bring to the earth? He came with love. However, to establish this love, he had to cross over the hill of sorrow. Yet Jesus had to conclude his thirty years of life without being able to cross the hill of sorrow. Jesus possessed a heart that no other understood. He shed tears for the sake of the people and out of concern for Judaism and Heaven.
Therefore, even if fallen humans want to understand the heart of Jesus, they cannot do it in the state they are in. When we serve Jesus as the Lord, from the position of having taken responsibility for his heart, will and mission, he who had penetrated through all the elements of sin that had tainted the 4,000 long years of history, we can finally feel his grief. Accordingly, the believers of Judaism who had average faith, the Israelites who boasted about their rights as the chosen people, had nothing to do with the sorrow of Jesus.
The reason that Jesus felt anguish after he came to the earth was because he agonized for the sake of God. He prayed not for his own sake but on behalf of the ideology that could stand on the side of God. Although Jesus prayed only to soothe the lamenting heart of God, longing to build the garden of God's love, there was no one, among the people of the time, who listened to the voice of those prayers. No one could realize the center of the Gospels Jesus talked about. Thus, though Jesus should have created the environment in which people could feel his agony and sorrow on behalf of God, because this will was not transmitted to humankind, Jesus felt deep pain even after he went to the spirit world. Accordingly, we have to understand that the sorrow of God still leaves its marks on the course of providential history because the purpose for which Jesus came was not achieved.
Now you must experience the sorrowful heart of God and the sorrowful heart of Jesus. With the sorrowful heart you have experienced, you have to learn to become a true person who can worry for Heaven. However, although you agonize in anguish, centering on yourselves, you do not yet agonize in anguish representing the heavenly relationship that gives us new life and pioneers the course of restoration. Therefore, if you forsake every worldly sorrow you feel and shed tears while feeling the anguish of Heaven, then you will be able to make a new beginning of hope. You have to understand that if there is one true person who can cling to the sorrow of God, shed tears unbeknownst to others, and get rid of sorrow on behalf of all people, then the fortune of the earth will move centering on where that person stands.
The people who cannot feel sorrow on behalf of God will perish. The church, family, society and nation who cannot feel grief on behalf of God will be doomed. If this nation had united from the top to the bottom, and from the rulers to the common citizens had clung to the altar of the heavenly principles and shed tears as a people and mourned, then they would not have become as they are today. The time has come when we must now make a new determination.
True Tears
Christianity is a religion of tears. Therefore, when we feel the true heart of God, we will not be able to look at the people, the nation, the world or Heaven without shedding tears. Although people should stand in this kind of position, they are not shedding tears of inspiration. Not only that, they are impudent before Heaven and act rashly and thoughtlessly toward the heavenly principles.
True friendship in the world is formed on the basis of tears. How then can there be no tears shed when fallen people experience the heart of the heavenly principles? There must come a time when you shed endless tears as you believe in Jesus and realize that you are sinners. You will feel so totally ashamed as to be unable to find a place to hide. You will feel that you deserve to be punished many thousands of times. You will not be able to raise your head before Heaven. You will feel embarrassment to such a degree that you will not be able even to find your place. You must genuinely lament and shed tears. Otherwise, the path that you are walking on, as an individual, will be blocked. You must form the family that holds onto the will of Heaven and worries; otherwise the path, which your family is walking on, will also be blocked.
Fallen humankind is becoming more divisive as their sorrow increases. When they grieve centering on themselves, they will experience division, which is the nature of evil people. When they grieve for the sake of goodness, that which is divided will become united. In other words, the divided minds and bodies become one to form the point of unity with the heavenly principles.
Why must we walk the course of such a miserable fate? When humankind fell and lost the ideal garden in which they could feel the love of God in their lives, it caused infinite sorrow in God. In other words, because people caused the sorrow that tore apart the heart of God, they must travel this kind of course.
What kind of period is today? Because this era is the last days, the time when we shed tears for individuals or for the family has passed behind us. Moreover, the time when we shed tears for the sake of the nation has also passed behind us. Now is the time when we must shed tears for the sake of the world. Now you must not only shed tears for the sake of the world, you must further shed tears for the sake of the heavenly principles and the spirit world. You must be able to shed tears for the sake of Heaven. You must feel the joy of God as your own joy and feel His distress as your own, too. Only when you can become such people can you step forward as the sons of the Father who created all things in the universe, the ones who are qualified to govern the whole world.
To cross over this hill of sorrow on the world level, individuals, churches and societies have been sacrificed. However, in this age now, we must pass through the course of sacrificing for the sake of the world. From now on, we will pass through the course of sacrifice on the world level. That one day, that one time, is none other than the last days that Christianity is talking about today. The purpose of the last days is to eliminate all who do not understand the internal sorrow of God in one generation.
When we think about these things, what kind of environment are we in today? What kind of position are we in? Jesus, whom we believe in, transcended the individual level and walked through a life course that represented the heart of the heavenly principles. When we consider this, we can understand that we have not shed as many tears as God has shed for humankind. We are debtors of tears before God.
Therefore, you must not just sit idly. You must feel the unconscious explosion of sorrow in your heart and build the altar of tears for the sake of this people, the nation, the world and the cosmos. You must forget all your own sorrow and pray with a heart concerned for the will of God.
You are in a position to pray, "God! Please alleviate your sorrows through me." You must comfort God and Jesus. Yet you have not been able to offer this kind of prayer. You have prayed only for your own sake. Therefore, you must understand that you have the responsibility to overcome this.
To Attend the God of Sorrow
Now you must throw away all your sorrows before Heaven and become the people who offer everything they have to Heaven. Only when you do that will you finally come to realize that God is shedding tears for your sake and for the sake of the world.
Only after you understand that the Father clings to you and sheds tears over you like this can the Father become your Father and Jesus your Lord. If there is someone who lives in this kind of situation, then he will come to understand in what kind of environment God is shedding tears for us.
If humankind had not fallen, they would not have been born out of the lineage of sin. They would not be eating all things that are mourning. Moreover, they would not have died shouldering the sorrow of Heaven and earth. However, because human beings fell, they came to bear all conditions of sorrow on their shoulders. Furthermore, they were put in the position where they must get rid of it by themselves. Although Jesus died falsely accused of being a sinner, his heart of love toward humanity remained unchanged. Similarly, if there is someone who clings to God and mourns, not for personal but for public reasons, then God would want to save that person from sin.
Until now God has had no other choice but to agonize over humankind who is eating things soaked in sin and wearing things soaked in sin. You have to feel that God is lamenting over the fact that you are in an environment where you can be invaded by Satan like this. Therefore, the Israelites purified all things for three years in the land of Canaan. In the Bible there is a record concerning the circumcision of the mind and the body. This means that the environment has still not been realized on the earth in which God can claim even one minute thing as His own.
What this means is that God does not have sons and daughters whom He can freely embrace and love. You have to understand the sad situation of the Father who, even if He could love them, must have Satan standing on both sides as He loves them.
Sons and daughters, who are receiving the love of God unconsciously, do not want to eat food that is not appropriate. Moreover, if there are some unacceptable clothes, then they do not want to wear them. The same thing will take place when they live in an unacceptable place. This is because God is working through our minds and He does not want this. In the same way, God is concerned for people in the background, but they are unaware of it. This is the sorrowful situation of God.
Now we must become someone who can experience the heart of God. As it is expressed in the eighth chapter of Romans, we must become the sons and daughters who can freely eat the things given to them and rejoice in an environment outside the realm of lamentation where all things are mourning.
If you possess certain things, then you must understand that they are things which must indemnify sorrow on the world level. Not only the things that belong to you, but everything in the world where fallen people live is in the same situation. In other words, your things are not your own. Your bodies are not yours. What is the origin of life and material things? It is none other than God. Therefore, you have to understand that all that belongs to you can be recognized as yours only after they pass through God. Accordingly, you must be able to sacrifice all of your minds and bodies for the sake of the will of Heaven.
The Path of Public Interest and the Path of the Heavenly Way
The people who have struggled to walk the path of public interest have forsaken all that they had and spent their life with a heart that seeks only to live for the sake of the whole. In other words, if what belonged to them turned out to be some condition of sorrow before Heaven and humanity, they courageously eliminated it. You have to feel again that the path on which you are exerting yourself, to eliminate unrighteousness and sin, is none other than the path of the heavenly will.
Although Jesus came to the earth, there was no apostle who truly believed in and attended him. Thus, the only thing he possessed was the one body that God recognized. The Israelites, centered on Judaism, should have been at the forefront in believing in and attending Jesus, but they could not. The world and all things had to bow before Jesus.
What do you have today of which you can be proud? Do you have the confidence to represent history or transcend time to assert that something is your own? You are weak people and cannot. You do not have anything you can call your own today. Today this land has lost its master, and the people have also lost their master.
What must you do in this situation? You must never pack to leave, for your own sake, to avoid this course of sorrow. If you possess the heart to govern the universe, then you can forsake that kind of thought and go forward. If you want to live, then you must offer your life. If you want to win the victory, you must step above death and rise. When you walk this kind of path, because you are human, you cannot prevent sorrow from seeping into your heart, even without your being aware of it. However, people must overcome this hill of sorrow and offer all of their minds and bodies to the Father. They then may go in search of all things.
Now we must learn how to offer material things, everything we have, to the Father and fight with Satan on behalf of Heaven. When your minds and bodies are offered totally as the Father's own, Satan cannot make false charges.
God comes seeking us as individuals, but He wants to find the family, the society and the world centering on these individuals. The course of the providential history of Heaven has descended all the way down to the earth while seeking us. Now it must go toward the direction of Heaven again centering on us, but that path has been blocked. The people who are pursuing goodness have cut off and denied all worldly things until now. They have tried to seek the way through which they can establish the original things lost before God, but we must understand that this way has reached its limit.
Until now, our sorrow has been for the sake of finding God. What kind of sorrow remains in the end period of all religions? What remains are the sorrow that seeks to attend God and go to the end of the earth. Therefore, you must go forward with the determination to realize the will of God with the notion of having received a royal summons.
You must feel the grief of God. You must experience the grieving heart of Jesus. You must feel substantially the fact that for 6,000 long years, God has been groping in grief to seek each of you.
Even in this hour, God is concerned about people and the many future generations and is exerting Himself, wishing for an eternal kingdom to be built on the earth. However, today people have been completely neglecting this fact.
We Cannot Behold God Without Shedding Tears
The people who are experiencing the heart of God in their lives as He works amid the historical sorrow cannot behold God without shedding tears, no matter where they are. When you are aware of the will of God and are fighting to become His sons and daughters, if you have a comrade with whom you share the same cause, God will come there and shed tears.
Where is the source of God's grief? It is inside us. At the same time it is inside this nation, this world and all things. We must bring an end to this and carry on the movement to restore the joy of God. The center of life for us is experiencing the grief of God.
The problem is whether we have set the standard to mobilize the spirits of the spirit world, of which people are not aware, and have them bear witness. The spirit world is also demanding this. Because the spirit world is aware of the heart of God, if there are people on the earth who make such an appeal, then the spirit world will mobilize the spirits to help in the affairs of the earth in seeking to realize the ideology of the Kingdom of Heaven.
What is the reason that the spirits in the spirit world cannot come to this earth? It is because this earth is made up of barriers of lamentation. If the environment we dwell in is free of the conditions of lamentation, if through our bodies we can become free from the conditions of sorrow, and if we have entered the realm of peaceful rest in which we do not feel any fear when we are threatened by Satan, then God will help us. To cling to the people who mourn, worry and shed tears for the sake of the Father, Satan must stand in the same position. The forces of Satan will then be fundamentally dismantled.
For this reason, you must experience the sorrow of God, who has been guiding the providence for several thousand years. Taking responsibility for all of heaven and earth, you should be able to say, "Please take us as the sacrifice and make us into the bombs that can explode Satan! Please uproot the sorrow of God." Jesus came with this kind of heart.
In the same way that Jesus could become the bomb that could produce the resurrection of new life and could perform the works of re- creation by walking the path of Golgotha, you must also produce these kinds of works. After experiencing the heart of God, who has been guiding the providence until now, you must become the people who have the determination and the resolution to offer your minds and bodies for the sake of this world. God is seeking these sons and daughters, one family, one nation and one world.
If you experience this heart of God in your daily life, you then will grieve infinitely over God. God immediately senses the presence of such people. Therefore, you must become such people. If you have failed to become thus, you then must bow down before such people.
Those who can bow down before such people must become the true sons and daughters. Only after that is done can you inherit the great work of the creation of the heavenly principles. Are there such sons and daughters on the earth? You have to become such people. You have to remember that if you fail to do so, you will become sinners who cannot dare to raise their heads before Heaven.
The ears through which you hear, the eyes with which you see, the mouths through which you speak and the feelings that you feel today exist for what purpose? They exist to fulfill the will of the heavenly principles. However, if they deviate from the will of the heavenly principles, they then will surely be confronted with the day of judgment. Since you have come to understand these facts, you must first judge yourself; after then judging the surrounding environment, you can step forward. In other words, the path of the cross is making the judgment upon yourself. You are to first judge your life and then judge your death. Only after passing through the day of resurrection in this manner can you finally become the true sons and daughters which Heaven can recognize.
The Mission of True Sons and Daughters
Now you must examine your minds. If members have made some mistake, then you must consider it your own and shed tears. If the people have made some mistake, then you must become those who can take responsibility and shed tears. If there is such a person, then even if the people decline, he will not. If a person sheds tears for the world and represents the heart of God, then even if the world perishes, that person will never perish. Furthermore, you must clearly understand that if a person sheds tears for the sake of Heaven, even if he is in a sad situation because he is living for the sake of God, he is then living in blessed grace.
Accordingly, when you shed tears for God, you must perceive God's eternal love and fulfill the mission as God's representative. The people who are immersed inside such a heart do not need prayers. They do not even need the notion of faith. Before they pray, they are already feeling the heart of God.
Therefore, you must experience the sorrow of the heavenly principles. Stepping above the lamentation of all things, you must become true people who can connect directly with the situation of God. If there are such people, though it might seem that they are declining, they will never decline. Even if they are mistreated and chased out, their heirs will always emerge.
You are walking a path different from that of others today. Ladies and gentlemen, do not hold grudges against anyone. Rather, you are to receive the benefit of indemnity through the tears you shed for their sake. Today you are enjoying the privilege of experiencing the grief of God and shedding tears before anyone else. However, you have to understand that Heaven shed tears for you first. Moreover, you must not forget that all people are members of one family.
If there is one flock on the earth who holds each other's hands and worry for the will of God and the heavenly principles and bow their heads in tears and great awe, then even Heaven will bow before them. Because they are the one visible sacrifice, all people will bow their heads before them. Although the sacrifice Abraham offered was small, Abraham and all of heaven and earth bowed their heads before that offering of sacrifice.
Therefore, when you stand in the position of offering , you must think what kind of condition you are going to set. Are you going to set the condition of offering for the sake of the individual? Or are you going to set the condition on the level of the family, the society, the nation or the world? The heavenly value will be determined based on the condition of offering you have made.
What then is our wish, we who have come forward after having pioneered the difficult environment? There is no other hope than that of becoming the true sons and daughters who experience the grieving heart of Heaven and bow before it.
You must always pray, "Father, please let us feel the sorrow that penetrates deeply into Heaven and earth. On that foundation, let us become the sacrifice for all people." You must shed tears and mourn. You must become the members of unification who can connect with the heart and situation of the Father. You must go forward holding up the flag of war to alleviate that grief.
You must feel the grief of God in your life in order to eliminate the universal grief that has remained to this day and restore all things which are overcome by the conditions of lamentation. Moreover, you must understand that you have come forward as the pioneers who are fulfilling this will. You have to keep in mind from this time today that you must become a new person.
