1997-11-30-About Grace

Session

Opening

Elyon (Jonathan TR): I welcome you again to another session in the classrooms of the Melchizedeks. I am Elyon, your friend, even more so than your teacher. I continue our discussion of grace and how it plays out in your life, for I detect interest on your parts in this recognizable element of the Father.

Lesson

You have understood the reality that love cannot be contained; it must be bestowed even as it is received. Of course the implication is not that you do not retain love, for love and its flow may be likened to a reservoir in a river. Much love pours into you that you may retain, but as you are filled it spills into the lives of others. Grace is quite the same.

When one prays, "Father, grant me the grace that I might..." it is best to approach your petition with the understanding that the grace will arrive during the interval of its need. You must apply your own faith and trust up until the very moment wherein the grace becomes active. Wisdom grants you the sensibility that you are prepared for new situations in your life, for you can review the array of experiences you have undergone in order to apply yourself, in order to act on the light and enlightenment you have gained. Unselfish service entails having no possession of grace until the moment it is utilized, for this gift is the Father's.

I referred to myself as a platter upon which grace is served. As your guide I may fill this function. As a servant in the master's kingdom, you likewise are platters for the service of grace. The result of the bestowals of grace upon your own life is the acquirement of virtues and nobility and righteousness of character to transform itself into the manner of being that Michael revealed to you. I seek to convey to you that grace is a mechanism whereby the Father interacts in your life rather than a possession. What you possess are gifts; how you receive is grace. It is similar to the helping hand of a friend who boosts you up over a fence. The lifting itself is grace. The gift is your attainment of altitude. When grace appears again in your ascent it is anew. (long pause)

I cautiously approach my next comments because I do not wish to convey a misunderstanding that the Father seeks that you be troubled in your life at His doing, for the Father takes pleasure in your growth rather than your chastisement. However, there are times when His grace may appear to be exactly the opposite, a lack of grace. Sometimes the Father does throw salt upon the dance floor that you may move easily. At other times He sweeps it clean that you may exert yourself from its absence and accomplish the very acts you seek with the aid of grace.

As one who serves in the ministry of truth to this world, you understand your function is to allow grace to function through your life. You can provide it, offer it on your platter. You are then released from all responsibility subsequent, for it is up to another to lift the grace from the dish and receive the offer. However, in your own ministry to your own being, it is not enough to recognize the grace you receive, but you must also lift it off and take it in to yourself. This is a difficult task to both recognize its forthcoming into your life and to continue in the process and receive it. Many of you understand the barriers encountered at the time such as a lack of worthiness, a sense of guilt, of separation, of a form of selflessness that allows you only to grant the arrival of grace for others and not for yourself. However, if you take a factual approach, it is obvious to you that grace is present at your doorstep, and who among you would leave a guest standing at the door? Welcome its arrival in your life; receive it with open arms. Watch this dynamic crystalize into talents that you become. You will observe yourself being transformed from a human of Urantia into a child of heaven. If you were to assess the composition of your being, much of what you are is already the bestowal of heaven. Only a small portion of you is of animal origin. Though the dimension in which you are exercising your willpower as a son of God seems to limit you to this small aspect of yourself that is coarse, trust the vast resources you already have within you to adequately handle your exercise of living a mortal life.

I might use another analogy. Being your holiday wherein you consume pies, to many a human being their view of self is as a pie dish with a single slice, that being your crude, human, flawed self. There is great hunger to acquire the rest of the pie and fill the dish. But I relate to you that from our perspective the dish is full. The human life is temporary, and we see in your eternal career, in a sense, a pie with a single slice missing. That slice is your sense of alienation or separation from the divine family. This we would like to see you remove.

I would continue to counsel that we in no way devalue your human condition, for in this pie, in order for it to be truly complete, all slices must be present. All ingredients within this pie, though distinct as ingredients, when blended take on a wholeness and, when baked in the experience of life, blend into a oneness.

When the master said, "Peace I bring you" and "Peace I leave with you" it was his hope that you end the war between yourself, the alienation between you and God and others, and allow the merging of all ingredients into a completed, exalted being.

As you have been so interested in this lesson, I extend my thanks. I would receive your feedback at this time.

Dialogue

Evelyn: In thinking back over our earlier discussion, it sounds like Kirk's experience of seeing grace as the Teaching Mission, and his growth was in receiving it, that sounds like it blends with what you are saying more than patience and courage (put forth by others as instances of grace in our lives). Grace is the situation more than it is our patience or courage in dealing with it. Am I getting closer?

Elyon: I have compared grace to love because, as you are aware, love is felt through its repercussions, be they compassion, affection, even guidance. The love is intangible, but its outworking is concrete. Grace is likewise in that you receive and are aware of your gift, a gift which came through grace. You might view this as you have spoken of Kirk's experience; grace was the opportunity, the gift the mission, the growth the acceptance. They are linked together.

Grace is a carrier wave. You know that God is love. When God acts, it's grace. The one is a state of being, the other a state of acting. Patience is a result of grace but more properly is viewed as a conjunction of the idea of gift and the idea of growth. You may have develop in your life the opportunity for patience along with the spirit presences within you to rise to the ability to be patient. But the critical and most important aspect of this entire situation is your choosing. This choice turns patience into a reality within you.

Do you have more to comment upon?

Evelyn: You said the evidences of grace are those virtues we acquire, that righteous character. That would be the patience or courage, the evidence of grace, the acting out.

Elyon: Yes. I would restate this process in another way, that grace is similar to the idea of invisibility, and the acquirement of talents and the reception of specific gifts is the visibility of grace. Where experience with the Father in your life yields the fruit of the spirit such that others in your life witness this, gifts and talents are the fruits of grace.

Very little in your realm is morontia in nature, but the presence of morontia realities becomes apparent in the development of soul in you all and the interaction of souls among souls. This is how you foretaste the manner of life that you will be involved in when you leave this world.

Other comments?

Tom: That's what last night was all about, wasn't it? (There had been a party and session of 12 TeaM folk.)

Elyon: Could you please specify your perspective?

Tom: The soul to soul, the interaction between the souls at the gathering.

Elyon: You are quite right. Interaction has many levels wherein it may take place. You are all being guided into higher understanding of the significance of interaction. Mortal life can be on the lowest level no greater interaction than to be bumping into one another. As you are infused with the sensitivity of the methods of morontia, you begin to elevate your interactions into higher circles of love, of grace conduits.

Not to be misinterpreted but to take a casual approach, I would say that the truest interaction is the sharing of the Father, and you can do this joyfully much as you pass the volleyball back and forth. The Father becomes the center of all your attention, and your greatest, keenest orientation is to be on the alert as to where the ball is, when it comes your way, and how soon you can pass it on. I also would continue by saying you know the damaging effects of spiking the Father at another!

Closing

Let us take a moment to turn our attention to the source of grace. May we be receptive to the love of the Father that pours upon us in this form of grace that becomes evident in our lives as we grow in spirit standing.

Father, we welcome You this moment; we aspire to be welcoming of You at every moment. We acknowledge that you are and have been with us all moments, even when we were yet unaware of You. In this we are ever grateful.

As you have received much to ponder over these last 24 hours, I would bid you adieu. Again, I am grateful to have such inquisitive students, ones who do apply themselves throughout the week. I would in a sense report that you have given your Father Fragments much to do. There is not an idle moment because of your enthusiastic desire to be a better citizen in this universe... and rise as is the Father's will... of personal being. Until next time, farewell.