Morning Devotion Reflection -- The Way to Revive Yourself - July 21, 2020

Morning Devotion Reflection

 Title: The Way to Revive Yourself"

 July 21, 2020

By Rafael E. Ablong

Thank you, Dr. Yong for reminding me about the importance of attitude. Yes, it is true. Even though the content is principle and right, but if the attitude is off the line, it makes little sense or none at all. Attitude can make or break the meaning of whatever we say or do. So please, forgive me for not being consistent. Anyway, I am still alive, and I can always correct myself and get back up again.

Honestly, the morning devotion messages are making me shed tears most of the time. Sometimes, I just have to close my eyes, wash my face, and take a deep breath before starting again. I feel like I have been acting "new normally" during this devotion period. I remember before stopping to write my reflections for more than a week. I was crying and crying. I decided just to sleep because my eyes cannot see the words, and my eyeglasses are always wet either with tears or moisture from the rising temperature around my eyes. That attitude of resting and reflecting is not good when I have done it differently at the beginning, in the first place.

The devotion messages of Dr. Yong are always profound, and "sanitizing" the spirit. If I were a coconut, I would feel like my husks are gradually chopped off by the sharp words of truth to get to the hard shell before scooping the meat. Sometimes, I feel like I am a dirty cup half-filled with water, just about to be thrown away and replaced with a new one or washed with a strong detergent.

Today's message about "Revive Yourself Through God" is straightforward to the point and brings me back some unforgettable experiences. By experiencing the trials and difficulties in life, we can understand God's heart and situation. How do we keep the quality of our spirit all the time? How can we know God's heart? When we experience hardship and difficulties, we are undergoing the experience of God's heart. So the more we experience hardships in life, the more we understand God's heart. We cannot understand God in a happy place but miserable and stressful situations or difficulties. God intends to make us experience His hardships so we can understand His situation. We cannot revive ourselves by our effort. We can only be revived through God.

Suffering and hardships are the best opportunities for us to grow. We become strong and more capable of handling more hardships. We should not look at them as our own but as a representative of humanity who have always been longing for a touching relationship with Heavenly Parents and True Parents. We become stronger each time we overcome trials and challenges. We go wiser every time we respond to these challenges.

Understanding His situation and being with Him would promote unity and an excellent heartitistic relationship between parents and children.

We should not complain when we are placed in the position of suffering. However, we need to be grateful and thankful for them because they help us to become mature, strong and resilient to future challenges in life. It is like the "development through our responses to challenges in life" as suggested by the British historian, Arnold Toynbee.

Father's ministry started in the bottomline of human hardships and miserable situations. It was God who put Father in the Hungnam prison for the sake of God's providence. As a parent, God sometimes puts His precious children to experience hardships so they will get to understand God's heart.

We need to treat our hardships and suffering as good learning experiences. They bring us opportunities to understand God's heart better. Anyone who complains to God for these hardships and suffering are ignorant of God's Will and situation. Moreover, they lose the chance to grow in heart and closer to God, our Heavenly Parent. If we do not feel and understand God's heart, we cannot revive ourselves.

The Hungnam prison experience is the worst one ever for True Father. God placed the True Father there so he could experience God's painful and sorrowful heart. The terrible situation battered him. God brought Father there and released him the day he was about to be executed to death.

The fall of Adam and Eve brought God to His sad state. Without experiencing His sorrowful situation, we will never know His heart and painful condition. Father cannot stop his tears from falling as he realized God's agony for many years. Complaining about our troubles and misfortune is a sign of ignorance and irresponsibility. When he allows us to undergo hardship, God's intention is to make us learn and grow from it. Through encountering trials and challenges, we become mature and united with God's emotion and will.

How painful must God feel before we can even notice his bleeding heart for man? Can we imagine when Father was in Hungnam prison? It was the lowest position he could go but still, he witnessed and gained disciples. He looked beyond his circumstances and determined to decimate all Satanic obstructions by starting a new ministry to liberate God and humankind.

Father had to stay in that subhuman condition at the Hungnam prison camp armed with a clear vision to overcome everything. The only weapon he had was a longing heart for God and a loving heart for humankind. So many trials came to Father in Hungnam prison, and although God was there, He could not intervene and overcome those trials and difficulties for Father.

Without understanding God's heart , we will never understand Him as our eternal parent and cannot even prepare ourselves to teach our young generation.

Those of us who have stayed long in Japan must have felt so much hardship and suffering in this country, especially during the early years. For me or for some of us who have worked day and night to provide for our family and achieve our church's financial goals, life was hard but filled with internal and eternal rewards.

How much more for our Japanese wives? It must have been doubly difficult and challenging for them since they were raised in this country of Spartan discipline, financial challenges, and strict traditions. They have kept their sanity and composure despite the family, social and traditional pressures, and our public mission. I respect the Japanese wives for their stability under pressure, sanity over some insane necessities in life, and their faith in God and True Parents. I truly appreciate them for being victorious over countless hardships and immeasurable stress brought by circumstances, including the husbands' difficulties. It was rewarding because even if we gave a part of our hard-earned money from a difficult situation, we felt so touched and elated by the turn of events after that. Modesty aside, it is my or our happiness to give something because some of us experienced how it is to have nothing.

When Father thinks about being in prison, he thinks of God's heart. Under the most miserable situation and closer to God's heart, I can be easily revived again. There is no way for us to restore ourselves without connecting to the suffering heart of God. Without God, there is no way for us to be revived. To meet God by going through the path of suffering is a guarantee of reviving our spiritual life. Thus, encountering God through difficulties is a blessing. We need to be thankful for God's active involvement in our daily life.

The secret of overcoming our trials and hardships is to look beyond our suffering. As connected beings to the original giver of life, we need to connect our pain to that of God's sorrowful and painful heart. We need to construct a connection of anything we experience based on the heartistic relationship between parents and children.

We must follow True Father's sterling example. Even in the most difficult situation, he would still offer his food, place, or things to other people. Like when he was in Hungnam prison, he would cut his normal food ration into three so that those who want more will have fewer. If our neighbors do not have food and we have a little Then, we can still give even if we have little.

To maintain our first love and motivation.
We need to go to the frontline When there is too much freedom and less responsibility to make our children relax. We even have to cry to witness other people. We need to cry out to witness other people. God's top priority is the salvation of His children. Salvation is witnessing. When we focus on salvation or witnessing, we can inherit God's heart. So without seeing, we cannot save people and we cannot feel the heart of God.

We are God's sons and daughters. The salvation of God's Children also rests on our shoulders. As long as we focus on salvation and witnessing, our spirit will always be alive. If you focus on witnessing, you will meet God. If you are not seeing, you will feel dead. If you witness, you gain more life. One of the essential things in life is to gain experience out of witnessing.

God's Top Priority

What is God's top priority? It is saving His children. Saving means witnessing. Why are our blessed families having different kinds of problems? If we do not go to the frontline to do witnessing, we feel nothing. We will feel dead. Witnessing is about giving life. When we give life, we get life as well.

Thank you so much, Dr. Yong, for another day of positive and healing inspiration. Your messages actually clean us internally and externally. It gives us new hope, new life, and a lot of energy. Thank you so much again for everything.

---Raffy Ablong