(*Translation note: 참다 could mean to endure or bear with and also to refrain from doing something or controlling yourself so you don’t take action.)
- 2 Corinthians 5:1 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.
- Colossians 1:5 The faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel
The key item of today’s message is ‘how to not sin and not do unrighteous deeds.’ People are affected a lot by what they see with their eyes and what they hear with their ears. Even if someone is an adult and a person who has made himself, they are affected by what they see with their eyes and what they hear with their ears because they are people. Telling someone to refrain from doing something while letting him stay in that domain is like saying ‘open your eyes but don’t look at the world.’ People try to solve problems by using the method, “Refrain three times a day. Endure everything!” However, there are specific things you should endure [and others that you should not endure]. The method of solving problems by enduring or refraining will fail in most cases. So the Holy Spirit said: “If you don’t want to sin, don’t just scold and rebuke yourself saying, ‘let me control myself and endure!’ Get out of that environment or that domain! If you do, there is no need to hold yourself back and endure. Get out of the thoughts that make you sin. Get out of the environment you are in. Get out of the domain of sin. If you do, both your heart and body will not sin.”
You know grenades, right? A grenade explodes if it is thrown after its ‘safety pin’ ‘is pulled off. It will never explode unless the safety pin is pulled off. However, there are times when a grenade will explode regardless of the safety pin. If a grenade is heated by placing it next to a hot stove, then it will explode regardless of the safety pin. Your heart and thoughts are ‘the safety pin of a grenade.’ Even if you don’t do anything with your heart and thoughts like leaving the safety pin intact, if heat is continually applied to either your body or your thoughts, it will eventually blow up like a grenade. No matter how emphatically you swear in your thoughts and heart that you will not do it, you will ultimately sin and do unrighteous deeds if you heat up your thoughts and body by putting them in that situation. When a person sees something with his eyes, the ignition is turned on in the brain. So, no matter how much the body refrains, it will keep feeling it. So, like a bomb heating up and blowing up, he will take action with his body.
The Holy Spirit said: “Why do you tell yourself to refrain while you, yourself see with your eyes and hear with your ears? If you don’t insert the key in a car, the car will never turn on for your entire lifetime. Don’t look at unrighteousness and then try to refrain from doing it. Instead, don’t look at unrighteousness with your eyes at all or hear it with your ears at all. If you do, it is like not inserting a key into a car. Therefore, you are safe in that regard because the ignition will not turn on for your entire lifetime. However, even if you don’t look with your eyes, if you think about it on your own, the ignition will turn on in your brain and you will get stimulated in that regard. That is why I tell you to come out of that environment! Even if you are commanded to not think it, if your thoughts are stimulated in that way, you cannot hear [the command]. That is why I tell you to come out of that environment. Hurry up and come out of ‘the decaying water’! Will doing something 100% perfectly just happen? People do it even after confidently telling God that they will not do it. Rather than telling your heart, body, ears, and eyes to refrain, get your heart, thoughts, and body out of there altogether.”
If you take action with a heart of wanting to take action, there is no one who is incapable of doing it. But why is it that with that tendency, you cannot love God, the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Son who give you eternal things, and cannot live the life that God wants you to live? Why do you use your love on looking at pornographic materials, use it for love of the opposite sex, use it on loving material wealth, use it for your own ambitions, use it for being lazy and slothful, and go crazy and love those things at each time? Control the unrighteousness in your heart and thoughts and do the things that need to be done at each time for just one month and see! If you do, you will find that you have done significant things and are at the destination as much as you have walked, run, and worked hard for a month. I hope that by closing your eyes and blocking your eyes from the unrighteous things and praying and putting the Word into practice in your present reality, you will make yourselves appropriate so you will get closer to the Trinity. Don’t expend your energy on complaining and grumbling. Instead, with that energy, try to be ‘greedy for righteousness’ and take action on it! Don’t use your energy on giving up and trying to die. Instead, with that energy, try to be ‘greedy to live’ and take action on it!
A righteous person is ‘truly a big and great person in the world.’ However, people do not become the righteous for nothing. You can become [a righteous person] by controlling the unrighteousness in your heart and thoughts, becoming one with God’s thoughts, and doing the things that need to be done at each time. God Almighty will grant your petitions well and He will also listen well to what you say. Also, when the righteous command creation, even creation will obey them. Why? It is because the righteous are united with God’s thoughts and action. Therefore, God created human beings and creation according to reason so that He will listen and even creation will obey if they ask.
In the spiritual world, money is ‘righteousness.’ In the earth too, there are your house and your house’s garden, right? And the sizes of each vary- some are a hundred pyeong*, some are a thousand pyeong, some are ten thousand pyeong, and some are a hundred thousand pyeong and etc.. (*1pyeong=3.306㎡) In the same way, in ‘Heaven,’ the world of the spirit, there are houses that belong to each spirit and there are gardens. There are myriad different sizes. Your spirit’s house and garden in Heaven are built according to what your body has done on the earth following God’s Word and according your merits. They are built as much as your body has taken action and as much as the amount of your body’s merits! I bless you to be ‘greedy for righteousness’ and take action on it! You will do well as much as you have done!