When we think of God we tend to think of a someone or something far above us and somewhat removed from our day-to-day lives. But our Heavenly Parent never intended for our relationship to be like that.

In the past, the way to become spiritual emphasized a lone course of sacrifice. Separating oneself from the world was considered the ultimate path to God. Rev. Moon exploded these concepts by introducing a family-centered theology that places the family, and relationships, at the very heart of our search for God. Our Heavenly Parent’s original intention was not just to dwell in individuals but to dwell in the family. It is in the family that God becomes evident, real and present.

The song, “I Saw God Today” by George Strait https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q06AvQF5NOw reveals this truth about the role of families. The line “I’ve been to church, I’ve read the book, I know He’s here, but I don’t look near as often as I should….His fingerprints are everywhere.” I think we could all say that line! The fullest way to come to know God is to invest in loving those whom God has put in your life. You can make all kinds of conditions and prayer rituals, and of course they do play a role in the development of faith, but the super highway to God is to learning to love others.

Understanding the value of the family in this way enables us to get beyond seeing those around us as nuisances or impediments to our happiness! Being in relationships is messy and sometimes annoying – the habits of others can grate on our spirit, but learning to love everyone is the superhighway to knowing and loving God.

An Integrated Life

Loving God can be abstract until you make it substantial and the only place to do that is in our relationships. Rev. Moon put it this way:

 “You should know how to love nature and love people. You should know that those who cannot love people or love nature cannot love God. Because all things of creation are symbols of God and because people are beings of His substance, those who know how to love all things of creation and people will come to love God.”

Coming to know God is an exciting journey that includes learning to love those around us – investing in them, praying for them, helping them and enabling them to know their value because God’s love is reflected back to them in the eyes of another. This produces a new worldview for you because it changes your foundational purpose for living. It integrates your life: the spiritual, physical and familial all come together.

Every Day Can Be A Good Day To Love

When you want what God wants, which is to experience the fullness of His love in the midst of every relationship, all of sudden life starts to make sense and each moment can be connected to a much higher purpose. Your adventure is to see the other from God’s point of view, to embrace their uniqueness and value them for who they are. When you live life this way, no day is ever wasted.

You are not waiting for the people around you to be perfect, rather you are perfecting your love by embracing others wherever they are in their journey, and finding God in the midst of that relationship. So you can say with confidence, “every day is a good day because every day is a good day to love!”

And the Adventure Begins…

Our immediate biological family is precious but there is a much larger family out there that we are all connected to and that is God’s family. This is founding principle for the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification. We are all unified in the presence of God’s love. That’s the goal. It has to start with each one of us taking the initiative to share God’s love.

Many people do not know God’s love for them. They don’t believe in God and dismiss the idea or perhaps don’t even think about it. Today is Father’s Day. Imagine if you were a father and your own children ignored you and wouldn’t talk to you. There is no greater pain. Knowing this, it makes sense for us to invest effort to share God’s love with others. This is what religion was meant to be about.

However, once religion becomes codified and organized it has a tendency to become more like a business and less like a faith family. Over time, so called “experts” are established and so some people are experts and others are not. Everyone becomes crushed by a system of expectations and regulations. Power struggles often ensue and the real mission is lost. This is why Rev. Moon had the concept that everyone is an owner of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Who are the real experts when it comes to faith?

The real experts are the people who love God with all their heart and soul and love their neighbor as themselves.

This was spelled out by a fellow Manchester Pastor, Bo Chancey, in his book, Pray for One. His church, Manchester Christian Church, has a simple motto “Pray for One.” Sometimes we get lost in complicated or overwhelming goals – we must save the world or grow the church by X%. Pastor Chancey simplified everything down to pray for one. When you pray for one you are opening yourself to allowing God to work through you in the life of another. You are saying to God, “I’m here – please use me to help my brother or sister.”  This is when life becomes exciting because you directly experience God working in you and through you and there is no greater rush than that.

A local miracle

“Pray for One” was put to the test in Manchester, New Hampshire. This simple prayer awakened the members of Manchester Christian Church to the needs of their homeless neighbors. They realized there were no shelters or services to provide breakfast on Saturdays and Sundays and decided to respond to that. Soon a ministry began taking shape. The ministry was named “Do You Know Him?”

This ministry now has more than 150 volunteers. Someone I work with volunteers for it. I knew her as an ordinary bookkeeper but came to appreciate she is no ordinary person. She is a true religious expert because she is not just reading her Bible but is living as a disciple of Jesus. Her “Prayer for One” led her to love others in unexpected ways. There is no “us” and “them” in this ministry.

If you want to see change, try praying for one, it can be as uncomplicated as “God please send me one person to share your love with.” This simple prayer and what follows will change your life and the lives of the people you pray for. It will transform the spiritual environment you live in and the face of our community.

Think about it – being part of God’s family means you are never alone. There is always someone to love and always someone to be with you.

A Transformation of Heart  

Asking God to give you one person to love connects you to His heartbeat. Faith is no longer intellectual or a matter of doctrine. It is all about two hearts beating as one; caring for another as God does. Sometimes this results in the most unexpected relationships, or learning to find God’s love in a person you don’t necessarily like. Everyone involved is transformed when you start praying for one.

Expect the unexpected

Pastor Bo Chancey tells a story that shows you can always expect the unexpected from God. He was praying to meet someone with whom he could share God’s love. One day while working out at the gym he literally bumped into another guy, James, in the locker room who had his hand over his mouth and looked terrible. Pastor Bo asked him if he was OK to which James nodded no and proceed to puke up the contents of his stomach all over Bo. That has to be in the category of weird and horrible moments, and yet this chance encounter was really the answer to a prayer – not just Bo’s prayer but God’s prayer. God wanted to share His love with James but needed someone to express it and help James on his journey. It made me think – whose life does God want me to touch?

Learning to love others is the way to spiritual maturity because it takes everything you’ve got! You have to get over your ego, put past hurts behind you and love people who think differently than you do. It’s not the same as choosing friends. Friends come and go and we can decide who we like, but family – and that includes God’s family – is chosen for us, complete with warts and all!

In throwing ourselves into the experience, we end up being passionate about what God is passionate about. Our prayers are transformed. We are not praying and thinking about what we want, which usually amounts to requesting that God do our will, instead of the other way round. We become focused on what God is concerned about. It is this consciousness that transforms our relationship with God, so try praying for one!

Praying for one restarts you heart

I used to be a nurse and worked on a cardiac unit. People would come in cyanosed, which means that oxygen couldn’t get to their tissues because their heart was not pumping properly. Their skin was usually a shade of blue and their breathing labored. Their heart beat was often erratic with a tendency to beat too fast. Sometimes they needed a shock to put their heart back in rhythm. “Praying for one” can do the same thing for our spiritual lives. Our spiritual heartbeat is erratic, our arteries are clogged and our lives are ridiculously frenetic, but the simple act of praying for one refocuses us onto what really matters and allows us to breath in and out the air of love. It takes the focus off of “me” and puts it on God, restarting the natural flow of love in our lives.

God wants to love others through us but that means three things: we have to be available, alert and aggressive with His love.

If we want to say that we love others the first thing we have to do is be available to them. Being present is the number one way to communicate love. God puts a face on love by using His people to be present in the lives of others. Never underestimate the power of presence.

I was reminded of this recently while visiting a close friend. He has a terminal illness and limited time on earth. The fixer in me wants to find a way to make everything better but I know I can’t. I had to come to terms with the fact that the best way to help was to be together. Sometimes the solution is to simply be beside someone, supporting them in their journey and letting them know you care and God cares.

“God comforts all sorrowful people. He is also the Lord who reigns over life, death, misfortune and blessing. That is why human beings want to rely on Him in any situation, especially when in difficult times. So when you have a heart to care for others, God will come to you even when you tell Him not to. It is because in such a place you form a base upon which he can relate to you as His counterpart. That is why whenever you do something good, God will come to you even if you ask Him not to. Wherever there is goodness God is present.” – Rev. Sun Myung Moon

God puts a face on love by using His people

In addition to being present you have to be alert to what others need. The best way to do that is to pray and then listen to your intuition. This is where you have to pray without ceasing for wisdom, courage and compassion or you will find yourself in over your head. People will see something different in you and open up in surprising ways.

All of a sudden you will know the right thing to say or do. Alternatively, you may find yourself at the right place, at the right time. You are in sync with God and everything falls into place. When this happens God is no longer an abstraction and you can start to rely on his guiding presence in your life. A relationship with God is designed to be exciting.

Praying for one sends out a spiritual thread from you to another person, whether it be a child, a family member, a friend or a co-worker. It prompts a relationship and opens the door.

Finally, you have to be aggressive. I think a Father’s love is very determined and always in pursuit of their child. God is aggressively seeking His children. If you pray for one, God will surely place people directly in your path.

Loving everyone is the end goal but it starts with learning to love just one person, and then another and another. And one thing is for certain: “Where there is parent’s love there is new life.”