2005-06-05-Faith, Spiritual Fitness of Being

Session

Opening

Elyon (Jonathan TR): Greetings, this is Elyon. Once again we are associated in spirit and in consciousness, aware of one another, sharing the love that Michael extends to all of us. It is a vitality that nourishes the soul and energizes our common fellowship. You are all experienced in the extension of your faith.

Lesson

Faith, Exercise

While you were young in your spirit growth your faith began as a hope or an inspiration, an energy force that stimulated you to reach for God, reach for truth. Soon in the accumulation of experience you discovered that your faith not only served to entice you higher, but became itself the platform, the vehicle upon which you moved.

The acquirement of more faith changed from that hope and desire into the possession, a bonafide spiritual strength. Faith is like fitness. To become fit in body one undergoes many exercises. The goal may be to lift an immense amount of weight or to climb a cliff, to run many miles, but to do so requires multiple sessions of smaller efforts, without which you would utterly fail to reach your goal. Prior to the willful initiation of spiritual growth within a human being when the light of God is beginning to be perceived, one is like a fitness trainee who is changing into gym clothes.

There is the thrill of anticipation of becoming better, of growing, but the effort has yet to be made, that first faith exertion. That is the faith of perception. When once you begin actual training faith is now the exertion, your willful application of yourself to attain.

Over your years you have perceived many episodes in your life wherein small exchanges with another increased your spiritual strength. These small workouts build character; they are like your trust pushups, your hope crunches. They foster the development of reactions within you that make you more nimble, agile, strong, and forceful. The desire of the human heart is to serve our Sovereign Son once he is recognized as your Creator Father to effect upon this world the spread of love and light just as he did so well while dwelling here. Your ability to undertake such a mission is acquired through the small encounters, the mini workouts of every day. When one does not undertake such exertions daily there is a weakening of spiritual strength, an atrophying of faith. Then small opportunities are overlooked. Under such a condition when exertion is required there is the risk of injury.

But if each day some effort is made stamina is maintained, endurance is fostered, strength increased. Then when the opportunity strikes to excel your abilities are up for the challenge. Faith is a spiritual fitness of being. This applies to stillness, for one cannot expect to sit in the quietness of the presence of Father and expect an overwhelmingly illuminating revelation without the continual preparation of the mind and the will for receptivity.

One must lift ten pounds many times before being capable of hoisting one hundred. There is another element to this fitness and that is knowledge and understanding. Just as a fitness trainee will learn posture, limitations of the physical body, cycles of effort and rest, diet and hydration, so do you undertake the education through philosophy of yourself regarding cosmic reality, the comprehension of tried and tested exercises that others have discovered that leads to growth. You have learned how nourishing worship and fellowship are to your well-being and to your inspiration.

As time passes you acquire a fitness that becomes your base level of ability just as today you are stronger than you were at two or three years old. Your faith does not weaken entirely. It is a ratcheting effect. But in order to ascend higher there must be a period of training and exertion until you click into the next level. The approach will be identical in methodology each time. But your lessons and experiences will change, for they define what you will realize, what truth you will comprehend, what state of being you will attain. I applaud you all for understanding that spirit presence within yourselves is not merely a passive state of receptivity, of relaxation, but is at every point in time you are willing to exert yourselves, even if it is merely for preparation, understanding that at a moment of service performance you will be up for the task, capable with the eye to being successful. Thank you for pondering my words. I wish to receive your responses.

Dialogue

Service

Evelyn: Tom's tweak about helping an old acquaintance -- who probably now is a new friend -- is a good example of sustained effort, applying himself not only with the earlier wishful prayer to be of service, but then going beyond the call of duty when the opportunity came up.

Elyon: Jesus spoke of going the extra mile. To be able to go that second mile one must have already experienced the duration of traversal of one mile. Such repeated extensions of oneself in service to another affords the individual the ability and the drive and the responsiveness to enter into that second mile and present the ministry that that second mile provides.

Tom: From past transmissions I'm thinking we shouldn't concern ourselves with missing past opportunities for service. But with faith you don't want to miss those opportunities for faith strengthening, and a daily regimen of attention to that will add a corresponding higher ratio of visualizing and acting on service opportunities.

Elyon: Yes, my friend, well said, for in time and space opportunities for service appear to arrive and then end as a single event that comes to completion, the desired service rendered. But each one does add to a continuum of service undertakings. Faith is like the thread upon which is strung each undertaking, each service project. The stronger the faith, the more that necklace of service holds together. The stronger your faith, the greater your projects such that even a medallion of great importance in service to this world may be worn about you.

Closing

I will dismiss this classroom at this time. When your life appears to be a treadmill see it as an opportunity for spiritual aerobics, a time to exert yourself in the application of that which you have come to comprehend as truth and beauty and goodness, that each step has the force of spirit behind it. That force offers you the opportunity to turn, to leave the tread, and to travel the trail. I take my leave, farewell.