Hyung Jin Moon
May 16, 2009
Headquarters Church Seoul Korea
Transcribed by: Pamela Stein
Edited by: Bruno Klotz
Welcoming Remarks by Hyung Jin Nim:
Today is a very sad day. Because my wife’s not here. She’s a little under the weather, and True Parents have captured her, in a very loving way. That’s why I’m a little weak today. But we will have to carry on. We are very blessed today, brothers and sisters.
We start with Cheon Seong Gyeong, page 790, today. Father speaks:
“I live for eternity centering on true love, like God. God created me this way. If you come to fulfill this portion of responsibility you will truly be successful.”
"I live for eternity centering on true love." Brothers and sisters, True Father has spoken a lot about true love. The teaching that he has given is so massive. Father defines true love very clearly. True love is God’s essence, His Divinity. True love is selfless love. It’s a love that can bring even our worst enemy to natural surrender. Father also shares that true love is a power, it’s an action. It’s not just a feeling or a thought. Through this power of action we are able to overcome the difficulties, the enemies, in our lives. We actually do that not by force but by natural subjugation.
Father says if we are able to do that we understand that God created us to do this, that this is OUR actual essence as well. When we come to fulfill this portion of responsibility, we’ll be successful in anything we do.
It is true that people who really do succeed are able to work with others. They’re able to consider others, give praise to others who are doing a good job. This is a very important trait of true love. True love does not just want to get praise for oneself but goes beyond. It’s allowing to share that selflessly with others. I believe that’s one of the things that True Parents are talking to us about today.
Brothers and sisters, welcome to service. I know it’s a very lonely welcome (smiling), but welcome to service. We hope that in every service we can truly glorify and bring praise and happiness to True Parents and Almighty Heavenly Father. If we do that, I do believe we will truly, this week, accomplish more, get more things done, be more inspired, more enthusiastic, and give people around us more strength. It’s going to be a great week. If you believe it, let’s give it up for God! I believe it! Let’s have a great week. Welcome to service.
Family Pledge:
Our family, owner of CIG, pledges to represent and become central to heaven and earth by attending God and True Parents. We pledge to perfect the dutiful family way of filial piety in our family, patriots in our nation, saints in the world and divine sons and daughters in heaven and earth by centering on true love.
God is the creator who is omniscient and omnipotent and created all things in the cosmos. For the first time in human history the tradition of true love, true life and true lineage of God has been realized through True Parents. When we attend God and True Parents with a true heart, we can become a central family of heaven and on earth. Only God and True Parents can guide us to God’s Kingdom, the land of blessing. True Father has become a filial son in God’s family, a patriot in the nation, saint in the world and divine son in heaven and earth. We must inherit this beautiful tradition of True Father. Blessed families must accomplish what God wants us to do in our family. AJU.
Meditation:
Let’s take this time to unite our mind, body and breath. We’ll start with our body. Let’s stretch our hands towards the earth today, breathing in the earth’s energy, and breathing in towards our heart. As we pass our living heart, breathing out towards heaven, stretch up towards heaven. See what God wants us to receive today, give us today: new hope, new inspiration, new strength. Breathing in. As we pass our living hearts, breathing out. Once again stretching towards the earth, gather universal prime energy towards our heart, breathing in. As we pass our living hearts breathing out towards heaven, stretch up and receive God’s love today, his compassion and wisdom, breathing in. As we pass our living hearts, breathing out.
Let’s now prepare our minds and be seated and sit up front of our chairs, so we can keep our backs straight, so we can breathe evenly and smoothly and calmly. Let us now close our eyes and enter into our first meditation and visualization practice.
Let us visualize ourselves not in this sanctuary but walking in a beautiful forest. It’s spring. The air is cool, it’s raining. We have an umbrella that’s sheltering us from the rain. I invite you to hear the sound of the rain on the leaves, the coolness of the air, the freshness and the humidity. Notice how all the creation is happy to be nourished by the rain. We can hear the beautiful rain drops on the ground. As we look up ahead we are going to see a beautiful stream. Let’s walk up to that stream.
I’d like you pay attention to the sound as you walk towards the sound of stream. As the sound gets louder, the raindrops sound begins to fade into the sound of the stream. When we stand in front of the stream, we can hear the power of the stream. We can hear the softness of the water, feel the healing power that comes from the water. We can still hear very faintly the raindrops on our umbrella.
In this place let us gently close our eyes and breathe in this fresh wonderful air. As we breathe in new life in our hearts let us say "I am alive" and as we breathe out let us say in our hearts "thank you". As we breathe in, "I am alive", as we breathe out in our hearts let us simply say "thank you". One more time, breathe in, "I am alive". Final exhalation, breath out, "thank you".
God and True Parents have blessed us with the blessing of life, to inherit the true love of God. True love is God’s essence, His divinity, the selfless love that brings even the worst enemy to natural surrender. If we can inherit this, we will be a greater blessing to our family, our community, city, nation and world. Let us join our hearts for prayer.
Opening Prayer by Rev. Kyle Toffey:
Dearest loving Heavenly Parents, we come before you today with anxious anticipation for this service and our time together, knowing that more than WE want to reach out and touch you, that YOU want to reach out and touch US.
Heavenly Father, we are coming from so many different places, not just from around the world, but from our stages of life and the situations that we are going through. You know us so well. So as we come here today, I really pray that each and every person here can hear Your voice, can get the guidance and the love that they need, in order to really truly be lifted up and joyful.
Heavenly Father, we are at such a precious time in human history where we can know You more. I really pray that today in this service we can make a joyful sound to You, that we can enthusiastically sing and pray and wish in our hearts that You come and visit us. If we do that, we know that You will indeed come.
We want to be a beacon of light that shines up to You, giving You hope and new inspiration. So as we participate in the service today, I really pray, Father, that Your presence can be felt by each and every one of us, that we can feel Your love, Your guidance and Your personal care for each and every one of us. Heavenly Father, we love You, we know that You love us. Let us have a great service today, really inspire each other and inspire YOU. We pray these things together as one family in our own names as Blessed Central Families, AJU.
Remarks about prayer by Hyung Jin Nim:
Thank you very much. Brothers and sisters, let’s take this time to pray. We want to pray for our special Abel Angels who helped us during this week. We want to pray they be with us next week. We want to always encourage them. We want to have a living relationship with people whom we love and who we know are caring for us. We want to take this time to pray for our Abel Angels. Abel Angel is the person you know is really caring for you in the spirit world. For me that is Young Jin hyung, that’s my brother who is one year above me. I know he’s always with me, protecting me. I know he’s going to be with me this next week. Let’s take a little time for those special people who are still with us, who are still working on our behalf. Let’s take time to pray for them. Let’s pray together.
All these things we pray together with our brothers and sisters around the world and in the spirit world. We pray and offer our hearts in our names as blessed central families, AJU.
Thank you, brothers and sisters. It is really so important to include brothers and sisters who have passed, especially the ones that we know that are really with us. Many times we may feel alone, we may feel that we are walking this path by ourselves, but in those times it has brought me great comfort to know that my brother is with me in my personal life. He’s protecting me, guiding me. I’ve had certain experiences that really confirm that. I want to really include them into our lives, to be a part of our lives, we don’t want to forget them as time passes. They are so precious. Thank you so much for praying for them.
Let’s take time now to encourage the person next to you. If you came with your spouse, now is the time to see her with new eyes. Give her a big hug and say I love you three times. Encourage the person next to you.
Interesting story:
It was preaching time, and the preacher came up and was talking about forgiveness, forgiving your enemies. The preacher asked for a show of hands, “Who is ready to forgive your enemies?” About 50% of the congregation raised their hands, “I’m ready.” The minister continued on, about 20 minutes, and then asked again, “Who is now ready to forgive their enemies?” About 80% of the people, but there were a couple of people not raising their hands. He went on again for another 15 minutes, asked the question again, “Now who is ready to forgive their enemies?” EVERYBODY raised their hands except for one person. The person’s name was Mr. Jones. The preacher asked Mr. Jones "Are you not willing to forgive your enemy? Everyone here is will to forgive their enemies? Are you not willing to forgive your enemies?" Mr. Jones says, “I don’t have any enemies.” “Mr. Jones, this is very unusual,” the preacher said. “I know you’re 86 years old, it’s almost impossible to live your live without making a single enemy. Can you come up here and explain how you lived that long without making a single enemy, without having one enemy in the world.” Mr. Jones teetered up to the front and briefly explained, “It’s very easy. I’ve outlived them all!” (Laughter)
True Parents Declaration:
These are my True Parents, the eternal King and Queen of Peace, and liberator of God's Heart! They have saved me from my past. They have blessed my future, and they give True Love, Forgiveness and Happiness today and I choose to receive it! My mind is awake, my heart is open wide, and from this moment I change forever! In my own name, AJU!
Main Sermon:
Brothers and Sisters, I’d like to talk to you about standing up in faith. One of the keys to living the blessed life is being able to be skillful in overcoming our battles that we have from day to day, standing up when it’s right, when we need to.
We face battles everyday: getting up, going to work, our finances, our relationships; we even may be discriminated against at the workplace for being a Unificationist. We also face battles in our spiritual life, etc. These battles are many times not so much fights that we have to win, but problems that can be solved.
You only have a limited amount of energy per day. You can’t waste all your energy on fighting every single one of your inconveniences. Whenever somebody at the office is talking behind your back, or when somebody is saying something nasty, you can’t fight it all the time. We can’t ALWAYS go and confront everybody. God believes in us. This is one of the keys: God believes in us. Learning to be skillful and standing up at the right moment, learning when to stand up, this is one of the keys to the blessed life.
Let’s take a look at some of the world scriptures today. Christianity: Rom 8:35-39.
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, distress or persecution, or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? No. In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”
We see this in the Christian tradition. It is through the relationship to the divine that we are able to win over the tribulations, distress, persecution etc. that we have to endure many times in our life of faith. This relates not only to physical things, but to our spiritual life as well.
Let’s look at Islam, Koran, 3rd Suran. We’ll read that together:
“If you persevere and ward off evil then that is of the steadfast heart of things.”
Here again we see the importance of perseverance, of warding off the temptations, of being strong and overcoming battles, as a very important part of our life of faith.
We’ll take a look at Buddhism today. Lotus Sutra 13th verse:
“For the sake of preaching the sutra, every hard thing we will endure. We will not love body nor life but care only for the supreme way.”
Many people in the West think that Buddhism is just meditating and being peaceful, calm, etc, but there is a very strong emphasis on faith and also energy. Also effort is an extremely important component of Buddhism. For the sake of preaching this sutra, even the hard things we’ll have to endure, overcome those battles, overcome persecution, etc.
Let’s take a look at True Father’s words from “Standing up and being Brave”, Cheon Seong Gyeong, Unification Family Life, pg 249.
“We must become new, but how must we become new? This morning you have to take a new stand by casting off your habitual faith of the past. You have to discard your attitude of life which dealt with the night, and absorb and digest this environment with the subject nature which is able to greet the new environment and the new spring.”
This is such a beautiful quotation. Here again, we can relate this to the transition of indemnity period and the age of liberation and complete release, where we are really opening up a new era not only for our tradition, but for also the world, spiritually.
Standing up in our lives is really one of the keys in living a blessed life. Because there will be times when we have to stand up for ourselves. There will be times when we are overwhelmed by attack, and have to “choose our battles wisely” -- everyone in parenting has heard this phrase.
Human beings get into conflict when they live together. This is almost inevitable. Scientists have said that this is a normal part of human evolution, that conflict in human society is inevitable. Violent conflict resolution however is not effective, and this should be avoided at all costs. But it is very important to be skillful in small things and to be able to choose when and when NOT to confront others or when or when not to even SAY something to others.
If every day while you are living with the kids you confront everything that doesn’t fit exactly what you think that child should do, or if the child confronts every single thing about the parent, this will create bitter enemies very quickly. You will scar each other very quickly. We will be lonely very quickly.
Learning when to step up and learning when to let things pass, this is a really important skill in living the blessed life. But on the other hand, if we don’t ever stand up for ourselves we can be taken advantage of; we can be continually stepped on. So learning this balance of when to let things go, when to not mind it so much, when to let it just bounce off you, and when to say “what a minute, that’s not fair,” this is one of the keys.
One of our boys was going to school. His name is Shin Man. He met this one guy in his class, much taller than him, and he was making fun of Shin Man, calling him Shin Man Doo. Shin means “new” and Man Doo means “dumpling”. “Hey ‘new dumpling’, how are doing?” Playing with his name. This was driving the boy insane; it was driving him really crazy, he didn’t want to go to school anymore, loosing all his energy to study, etc. He was really stressed about this, talking to us all the time about it, didn’t want to go to school anymore.
But he used a brilliant strategy. He used his head. The bully’s name was “Ko Tung Un”. So Shin Man one day thought of a nice strategy to discuss this issue with him. He said, “You know what, if you keep calling me Shin Man Doo, I’m going to call you Ko Tung Oh!” That’s actually a type of fish. Ko Tung Un is his name but Ko Tung Oh is a type of fish. “If you keep calling me “Man-doo” I’ll call you “fishy.” They made a peaceful agreement not to do this to each other. Now I heard last night they are the best of friends. I’m going to give it up for my boy today! Applause.
This is when Shin Man stood up. He approached this in a skillful way, approached this conflict resolution in a skillful way. He took a risk. He had to stand up. He could have been beaten up. Whatever situation could have happened, he took a risk to stand up, to believe in himself, to believe that he didn’t have to put up with somebody harassing him all the time. He said, “Enough is enough.” But he didn’t use violent means. I always teach my kids -- and this is a principle we learn in martial arts all the time -- that we don’t solve things by violent means. He used his intuition, his intelligence, used his skill to pull this off. I was so proud to see this as his daddy, so proud. It inspired me to say, “You know what? Enough is enough, for me, too, in my own life!”
When we look at the Unification Church tradition, we can be bullied by thoughts in our mind. We can be bullied by thoughts that say, “You’ll never be really relevant in society. The Unification Church is really small; it’s not really that much of a voice. Unification tradition is really not that powerful, doesn’t have a really strong message; it doesn’t have a really strong teaching."
We can be bullied by these kinds of thoughts that can ruminate in our minds. In fact, there are many people even in our community that repeat these things in their minds. I’ve heard it many times. But you know, I realized that enough is enough. I’m not going to believe that anymore. I’m not going to believe that our teaching doesn’t have any relevance or that it’s not appropriate for this age. I’m not going to believe anymore that we are going to be continually just criticized and always be sub-par. In my own mind, enough is enough. I am going to start believing, and just like Shin Man, stand up for my faith, stand up for the church that I represent, stand up for the teachings that we represent as a movement.
You know, I thought about it a little more. "I’m sick and tired," I thought in my mind, "of being criticized as a cult, being slandered as a crazy religion, a new religion, etc. We are going to stand up to fight these bullies in our minds. Not with hot tempers, not by attacking and getting angry. This is not the way; but by faith and mind and patience, teamwork and truthfulness. These are the things that overcome this kind of discrimination."
When we look at the Biblical tradition, we see all the stories from Moses -- you know, he had to face the Pharaoh. He had to stand up and risk his life. He had to stand up to the most powerful man in that region. He had to ask him to free his people. Of course, he was rejected, but he had to continue to battle, continue to fight, to overcome and to free his people.
Joshua and Caleb, after Moses led them to the wilderness, had to enter into Canaan. They also had to fight for their tradition; they also had to stand up for themselves. They had to go in and defeat the kings of Canaan, so that they could achieve the promise that God had given them. This was not just merely problem solving in daily lives, but this was a real fight for their faith, for the identity, for their people. It was a struggle. They really had to put their necks on the line. This is a really important thing for the prophets: They really put their necks on the line, to stand up for their faith.
Every great historical figure -- we can see -- even the figures for non-violence, had to fight oppression and tyranny. Martin Luther King Jr. had to fight bigoted white supremacy and risked his life. He was assassinated. Gandhi had to fight against age old caste traditions, which were very hard to change. He had to challenge an oppressive government, risking his life. The current Dali Lama continues to fight by non violent means, continues to challenge the nation of China to free Tibet. He continues to fight for the progress of that nation.
When Kook Jin hyung came to Korea, there was a huge battle here. It was a non violent fight. But he was trying to change the culture in our movement, change the culture of people trying to get into positions of authority, so that public funds could be used as private assets. This is not appropriate. He had to change this, he had to fight this. He was assaulted; they had demonstrations in front of his office saying “Go home!”
He said he fought this with transparency, with patience, by making real results, financial results, in the businesses, reporting with brutal honesty to Father. Even though it upset Father, he reported so brutally to Father at times that it would upset him. Kook Jin hyung had to go through this. He had to stand up for the Unification tradition because he wanted to see the church develop into something that the people he works with in the outside world could respect and look up to; because he wanted to see a tradition that is improving and becoming more transparent, becoming stronger as an organization. He invested himself, put his neck on the line.
In our own work of ministry, we’ve been doing this for a year and a half. Sometimes it feels like a huge battle trying to solve one problem after another in the organization, caring for the congregation. Many things have to be addressed in the organization, even trying to fight for the change of our image when people in society look at us as Unification tradition. This is a real battle. Whenever we do interviews, or discussing, people ask us hard questions. We are really trying to fight for the change of perception when people look at us.
Even when I was inaugurated as International President, I put my neck on the line. In front of Father I said, “We are a religion.” There was so much identity confusion in our church. We were confused: are we a family, are we a federation family, are we just an educational institution, or are we a religion? I said clearly, "We are a religion. This is what I believe. I studied religion. We have everything that a religion has. We have theology, liturgy, belief, cosmology, ritual, organization, etc. We have everything that a religion has. We are a religion."
I believe that calling ourselves Unificationists, being proud of ourselves as Unificationists, is something that we don’t need to hide under a cover of the Family Federation or other names. We should be proud to be Unificationists.
This is important because this is showing transparency. This is showing that we believe in what we believe and that we are honest about what we believe that we don’t try to hide it, that we are proud of our religion, proud of our faith. Two years ago we were confused about what our identity was; we couldn’t stand up for our tradition. We didn’t know whether or not we were a religion, or what kind of tradition we were.
We had somehow come to believe that we were a federation that promotes conservative values. Something like a Steven Covey Institute. Or a John Gray true family education center. But we forgot that we believe that True Parents are the Messiah, the Lord of the Second Coming, the inheritor of God’s true love, the one chosen by God to fulfill the mission of Jesus Christ, the Savior. This is one of the central aspects of the Unification Church belief system. We forgot that we are to share this message with the world, the message about the True Parents of Humankind. We forgot that we are to create believers and filial children of True Parents for the growth of the Unification Movement as well.
Almost two years have passed, and I have seen an incredible transformation. I have seen people go from being complete doubters to becoming believers. People said, “We are not a religion, we passed that stage; that was in the past ages of the New Testament. Now we are in the Completed Testament.” But the people saying that became people who are proud of our religion as the Unification Church and sharing it. I’ve seen people say, "We will never be able to witness. Korean people will never be able to witness, we can’t be relevant, we can’t witness to Americans, it is so hard to witness." But these people have become incredible witnessers.
I’ve seen people change from saying, "Tithing is completely useless" to becoming people who understand that tithing is a central faith practice, that tithing is supporting the community of the faithful as a central faith practice. I’ve seen people who doubted that the Unification Church would do anything relevant in their lifetime, making a real impact as a religion, to becoming people who are standing up and fighting for Unification Church to become recognized in the society and in the world as an honest, transparent, mature, professional, growing religion that truly empowers others to live and inherit the selfless true love of God.
I’ve seen people change from people who criticized Cheon Bok Goong. When Abonim first announced Cheon Bok Goong, it was, “Oh, a mega church, why do we need a mega church?” They became people who actually offered to the building of Cheon Bok Goong and see it as a symbol of hope and victory for our tradition, seeing it as something that can really move the nation. I’ve seen a great transformation in our lives, in the church work that we do. Even in the business groups and all the other areas, I’ve seen a tremendous change in the way we think about ourselves as Unificationists. I think this is really important.
Brothers and Sisters, what can we learn today? It is really a key to learn to choose our battles wisely in our life. These battles can be in daily life with our family, our friends, but they also can be in our life direction and purpose. If one is resorting to violence to win others, against others, this is very immature. This should be avoided at all costs. But choosing to stand up for yourself skillfully, this is important, just like my boy when he stood up to that child. I’m very proud that he stood up and did not let himself be a doormat to that person. People like Martin Luther King and Ghandi had to stand up for a great cause. They created history because of that.
In our own life as Unificationists, I do believe it is time for us to stand up as a religion, to stand up to say, "We WILL be here. We will not go away. We are going to keep growing, and we will be the tradition that is opening up a new era for the world." We have to have the confidence to say, “Enough is enough!" We believe in our teaching, we believe that it has meaning, it has power. We believe that it is true.
I studied with a wonderful theologian when I was at Harvard. She was a brilliant professor, she taught me Christian theology. She was a fantastic woman. She was a theologian from Britain, just so intelligent. When I studied with her -- she is an Anglican priest -- she said that in doing ecumenical work she was asked the question whether or not she believed Christianity was the truth. Her answer was very clear: “I do believe it is true, that’s why I’m an Anglican priest.”
I love that clarity that she expressed. She did not just fall under the weight of pluralism. She did not say, “It’s true relatively...,” but she said, “I am an Anglican priest and I believe that it is true.” And she is teaching at Harvard. I found that very courageous and very brave. It actually changed my own expression of how I pursue and how I talk about Unification tradition as well. I also can profess that I believe it is true. Brothers and sisters, I believe that is one of the most important keys as we move forward, to really be able to stand up for our faith, not just for education or a program, but really as our religion, to be able to witness and share.
If we do that, I do believe that by standing up for our faith, being confident of who we are as Unificationists, being the best we can be in whatever work we do, whether as a lawyer, as a CPA, and truly are not shy to share we are Unificationists, I believe that we are advancing the Unification tradition. I believe that we are creating value for the community that our parents have shed their blood, sweat and tears for, and I believe that, if we do that, and stand up for our faith at this time, while we are moving towards the world temple, we will find ourselves definitely with more victory, with more illumination, with more peace and be a greater blessing for others.
If you receive the message, let’s give it up for God and True Parents. (Applause)
Homeland Meditation Practice:
Let us now visualize ourselves not in this sanctuary. Let us visualize ourselves walking on a beautiful meadow in the middle of spring. We feel the weather is warm, the air is clear. We feel the softness of the earth, the steadiness, the support that we have from below.
As we look toward our left, we see a beautiful stream that is meandering down. We notice the beautiful birds that are bathing in that stream... flying away... flying towards the stream. Let us take a minute to listen to that stream, the sound of its story.
As you walk up ahead you see beautiful flowers blooming near a field. As you look towards the sky you see a beautiful blue sky... limitless and vast. As you look up ahead, you notice that True Parents are there waiting for us. Let us be seated in front of True Parents. True Father with his right hand, True Mother with her left hand, place their hands on top our heads. They give us their blessing. “May you inherit the true love of God,” they say. Allow that blessing to move from the top of your head all the way to the bottom of your feet. If there are any sick cells in our body, any stress cells, let them be completely healed and rejuvenated.
As you breathe in, in our hearts let us say “I’m alive”; as you breathe out let us say, “Thank you.” As you breathe in a second breath, say "I’m alive"; as you breathe out a second exhalation, "Thank you’". Third inhalation, "I’m alive"; third exhalation, "Thank you".
I will inherit the true love of God, true love which is God’s essence, His divinity, the divinity that is selfless, that can bring even the worst enemy to natural surrender. We’ll inherit that by living the blessed life. By inheriting the true love of God, we will become greater blessings to our world, our community, our city, our tribe and to our families. Let us now join our hearts in prayer.
Final Prayer by Hyung Jin Nim:
Heavenly Father, thank You so much for this day. Father, we pray that we may have strength and confidence in our minds. Father, in this most auspicious age You have prepared such an incredible historical course and providential course. You have prepared such an amazing truth for this world which is that we are to inherit the true love of God, that true love is Your essence and that we can actually inherit that. Not by selfish means and not by trying to become more powerful ourselves, but by selfless true love action that is able to bring the worst enemy to natural surrender.
Father, we know that if we are able to inherit this we become Your object partner. We become those people who can share TRUE joy and true love with You. Father, we thank You so much for giving us this opportunity, because no longer are we separated from You forever as just the sinful human beings. Father, You have allowed us to realize the human potential that You gave us from the very beginning, and True Father and True Mother have allowed us to realize through the teachings of the principle, that we can actually receive Your divine value. Thank You so much for giving us this time.
We pray that we will be able to be strong, we may be wise in our lives, we may not be haughty or arrogant, or go forth and scream and attack people. Father, let us be wise and patient, let us be always working on our inner selves, to truly substantiate Your true love, Your selfless actions. Let us become better each day even just a little bit. That’s a great victory. Father, we thank You.
We want to stand up in this age. We don’t want to keep sitting down, and we know we are standing here because of Your grace. We know we want to get forward, too, and really be able to establish Cheon Il Guk here, so we can bring tremendous joy to You, and You can establish Your kingdom here on earth. Father, we thank You so much for this day that You have offered to us. We want to go forward this day, leaving the sanctuary with a new strength, with a new confidence in ourselves as Unificationists, with a new belief in our faith, that we can share this and that it is attractive.
Father, there are so many new people being witnessed to today. Let us see that as evidence that our faith is attractive in this age. Thank You so much. Give us the confidence, give us the strength, let us not be held down by the weight of bullies in our mind or in our physical presence. But let us be strong, let us be wise, let us always be true to You. Thank You so much. We pray that You may give us strength once more. We offer all the glory and thanks, in our own names as Central Blessed Families together as one family, AJU.