Grace

Grace is all of the things that you have attributed to it. It is a force to deliver a gift. It is a gift from the Father. It is all these things combined. It is your cooperation, your engagement, with this grace which brings into reality the gift of grace. The gift of grace is there on the table for each and every one of you to pick up at any time. It is correct that it is your growth that both allows you to see this potential of grace and also to access it. By the act of involving yourself with this grace, growth is inherent. By the act of choosing to involve yourself with this grace, growth has been present. It is more than an ideal, and by describing it as
a potential I would not minimize its effect on your lives.

Grace comes to you as you are able to accept it. As you recognize it, it arrives on the scene. As you use it, it
manifests in reality. It requires your action to complete the circle and requires your recognition and growth, as well. But it is indeed never withheld, always available to you as you already and can be viewed as the reaching down of the Father to complement the reaching up of the mortal. 

It takes both to reach together to join hands and complete the circuit. The Father is ever willing to reach down in His gift of grace to you. As you are able and willing to reach up to the Father, you actualize this grace, you realize this grace. You make this grace real in your life and in those lives around you when you take active part with the Father.

Grace does not shower gifts down upon you which you have not earned. It is not divine providence upon which you can lean. It is active between you and the Father. It must be fluid between you and the Father.  When an opportunity arises, presents itself, that is grace. When you present yourself within this opportunity, that is your growth. Together you make this grace real; you manifest this grace. Would anyone else care to share any perspective?

Jonathan: Grace seems to come in the middle of an experience. It is neither a reward nor are we deprived of an experience. It is a commingling of our experience and God's, that active participation, the point of impact where grace is realized.

Elyon: Grace may be seen in that scenario as the experience and what you chose to do with the experience.  The experience exposed itself to you; this is the gift from the Father. Then you present yourself to the experience; this is your gift to the Father. Together you both make the most out of the potentials inherent in the experience.

Mary: When you first gave us this assignment you said that you were giving it so that we might be better able to acknowledge the way that God is at work in our lives. The more we discuss it the more I come to believe that grace is an overall presence. Our awareness is the activation. When we talk about synchronicity in our lives, angel bumps, feeling guided, all of these could be described as grace. Grace is another word to
describe God in our lives. The more we acknowledge God, the more we become real, tuned in, and graceful.  
Elyon: Very well said. The grace is, indeed, in the form of many different experiences in your lives, and you remain the facilitators to actualize the grace potential. If you were to only be aware of the opportunities of grace and not act on these, you would not be completing the full cycle; you would not be reaching and grasping the hand of the Father as He extends it towards you. You would simply acknowledging that the hand of the Father was there. Your step to follow up the gift of grace is to take the hand of the Father and fully materialize and realize the potentials inherent in the gift He has given you.  

Evanson: You have been instructed and understand the idea that to recognize God in the lives of others and for God to be recognized by others in your life you must bear or witness the fruits of the spirit. In a manner of speaking grace is the garment of God that reveals Himself directly. It is the fruit of God. Sometimes He comes to you in overcoat, hat, and boots that you may better bear the adversities in your life.

Sometimes He comes in festive adornment that you may worship, commune, and celebrate with one another.  He will bring His cane; He will bring His hankie. These are the ways that the Father touches you. At your level of perception and abilities to perceive, as well as mine, we are only able to perceive God through His revelations. The fruit of the spirit you bear in your lives is one more ramification of the action of God in the world.

Grace can have a secondary application. That is, it can be received by you from another of your kind and likewise received from another by you. As a servant to the Father you can be a guide for conveying the gift of grace for another's growth. You can be diligent in recognizing guidance of a brotherly nature from others and thereby receive God's grace. The Father reveals through His grace, and you reveal the Father through your fruits.  
       
Daniel: I pick up that fruits of the spirit are a revelation of God. So, as far as we are revealing God, we are
producing fruits. Are they synonymous or are fruits applicable to something else also?

Evanson: The teaching of the fruits of the spirit has been derived from the master's teaching that you know a tree by the fruit it bears. But to the untrained eye a tree is a tree. When it bears its fruit the kind of tree is recognizable; the inner qualities are revealed, spiritually speaking. The fruit, in a spiritual sense, is the outworking of grace in your life intermingled with your reactions and your decisions. They, combined, become a revelation for another.  

It may not be a revelation to you to recognize the fruit you bear. It can be an enhanced awareness and appreciation of your current growth level. Bearing the fruit of the spirit is something that, in the manner of a tree, you must do through simply providing the fruit on your own limbs. A tree does not give its fruit to you; you must take the fruit from it. Therefore, the bearing of the fruit of the spirit in your lives is a revelation only when another takes this display of spirit reality into themselves.  

Daniel: So, it is a contribution to the Supreme?

Evanson: Good. Yes. 

Daniel: In order to contribute to the Supreme does there have to be a recipient other than yourself?

Evanson: No. Simply to bear the fruits is the contribution, but the recognition of these fruits by another is
how you reveal. Much like grace and growth, bearing of fruit has the complementary element of receptivity by another. You may bear the fruit of spirit in complete isolation, but you reveal spirit in your life by socialization.  

Daniel: So you discover God as fruit in your personal, and you share or reveal God when someone can benefit from it?

Evanson: Yes, the receptivity must be present much as you have discussed grace being a potential that is realizable at the moment of receptivity.

Jill: Would it be correct to say that the bearing of fruit is a daily conscious action as we choose to be the Father's will, regardless of whether there is a recipient at each moment?  It's continuous as we seek to be the Father's will?

Evanson: Yes. May I put it this way: Imagine you are an orange tree, and you bear fruit season after season, much of which falls to the ground and moistens the soil. When another plucks the fruit and peels it then revelation is taking place.

Mark: It's like if a tree bears fruit in the woods and nobody sees it, does it still bear fruit? The answer is yes
whether or not it has been revealed to others.

Daniel: Is it still an experiential attainment of the Supreme?

Evanson: It is within the orchard of the Supreme. 

Daniel: But not necessarily for sharing with the overall consciousness of other beings?

Evanson: Bearing fruit spiritually is in itself an end, for it is a revelation of the inner state of one's being. It is
not a way of masking one's interior through artificial appearances. Grace is the garment of God which reveals who He is. He does not dress in costume. Your bearing of fruit is a result of your life, not a bag of tricks in order to entice another into spirit living. Such being the case, your contribution to the Supreme is the result of the added benefit, is when another receives nourishment from your bearing. They must then
internally bear their own fruit. They do not adopt yours; you stimulate their own production. Each individually within themselves produces another revelation of the Supreme. 

Tom:  The qualities of grace that one might cultivate in order to be a more effective healer?  Also is the healing mission connected to the mission of nature and grace? 

Jessona: Healing ministry through spiritual means, contact of personality to personality, soul to soul, is compensatory of the incomplete evolutionary development of physical life. Through the Life Carriers, nature provides you with a physical mechanism in which to live, your body. You know each world is conditioned by events which have contributed to or detracted from the biologic development of this life vehicle. In a larger perspective, even the developments of life on differing worlds condition what type of vehicle you inhabit on this planet. In order for the Father and Michael and Nebadonia to allow for the growth of even the Life Carriers, we find ourselves in a position where we must live in an environment with inadequacies. Herein enters the grace of healing ministry. In understanding the scope, the conditions which bear upon a specific event of illness, you are better able to be a conduit for healing; you are better able to understand who receives the credit for healing, and you are better able to cope with the apparent failure of healing, for even tragedy itself may be working great miracles in the advancement of a larger arena of beings.  This is where the element of faith must be applied, for the compassion of one's heart that longs to be of service in this form of ministry is good and ought to be bestowed for another's benefit. But therein ends your task, for you must in detachment defer your desires to the overcare of the Father.  

When you have heard the phrase that all things work to the good, I would underline the word "all", for there are times when singular specifics do not appear to work for the good. Eventually healing will disappear when the universe is settled in Light and Life, for all things will function appropriately. In the mean time, as you are motivated through compassion, you can be the Father's means for providing the grace of healing another, if it be His will.

In the overall presence of God in our lives we can discern patterns of love, grace, that manifest as opportunities, growth, beauty, goodness. It is our awareness of these presences that grows. Our ability to recognize these influences increases with experience. The ability to draw on these experiences and direct them toward an understanding of God will develop more fully with the passing of time. Within your hearts and your minds and your actions you must develop a coordination. You must strive for unity within these aspects of your being. The influences and graces of God bear down upon you to assist you in the unification of these contrasting aspects of your lives, the activities of your minds, the desires of your hearts, and the actions that you take.

Try to remember to call on God and the many influences He has provided to assist you. You are not alone in your struggle. Avail yourselves consciously and with effort to the reception of these many gifts and graces.

In these realms of the Supreme grace exhibits an entirely different quality than that which is displayed in the eternal universe of Havona. Grace there is the bestowal of godly qualities that are the inherent nature of the creatures therein. They are bestowals of actuality. In our realm the word "grace" becomes the indicator of the bestowal upon you by God of potentials.

As much as we each crave to receive blessings from the Father, in our spiritual progress we have come to understand that the blessings bestowed are not replacements for our efforts in attaining higher stature as spirit beings. Grace is therefore an essential building block in the process of growth. Grace is like an electron or proton or even the entire atom, given to you such that you, with this potential, create the molecules of growth.

Grace is like the seed that initiates the development of a crystal. What the Father does for you, He in reality does with you, and this is the meaning of growth through grace. Grace is therefore an initiator rather than a consummator of your spiritual progress. This provides insight into your understanding of salvation through grace rather than salvation through works. It is not that grace finishes your salvation, it is that grace initiates the causes and effects that result in your awareness of belonging to the Father as His child.

It is good for you all to seek to receive the grace of God, knowing fully that you are asking for the reception of His powers wherein you may continue your ascent. Receiving grace is accompanied with increased responsibility to apply its gift for your benefit, the benefit of others, and the benefit of the Supreme. Grace is formulative of future attainment.

I can sum up my discourse by restating your humorous phrase that you can give a man a fish, and he can eat for a day, but teach him to fish, and he can eat for the rest of of his life. Grace takes on this second perspective.

Mary: I see how your portrayal of grace differs from my concept. In my mind grace connotes some sort of help that God sends you. Also I thought of it being a pat on the back that God gives you, help that flows to you when you have hard times, or blessings, a reward of God's gifts. So now I include the idea that it incorporates a challenge to push forward.

Elyon: You express the grace of God which is bestowed upon you during trying times, the comfort of the divine presence. I am sure you recognize that this comfort always beckons the Father's child to face these difficulties with renewed enthusiasm rather than erase the difficulty, creating a false sense of having done away with the problem.

Mary: The form of help might be additional strength, perseverance, patience. Grace would come in the form of virtues that help you handle what you have to deal with in life.

Elyon: The Father would not through grace bestow wisdom, but He could through grace provide insights which lead to you growing in wisdom. I as a guide am merely a platter upon which grace may be served which you may ingest and thereby grow. But I must make clear that I am an external agency that provides grace, but there is within you an internal agent which is a direct source for the reception of grace.

Evelyn: I was thinking of the word gracious and what that means. When someone is gracious they are doing what you are doing, providing grace on a platter. A person who is gracious exhibits grace in their behavior, offering insight, encouragement, attentiveness to others.

Elyon: For one who has made progress in their character development, graciousness is a recognizable result to others. Graciousness is an attainment, and it is not something you practice in order to attain, it is a result of work. I enjoy your perspective of graciousness as the serving platter for grace.

Mary: I picture the Havona natives as graceful, inherently. We are graceful by increments.

Elyon:  The acquirement of graciousness can be compared to the idea of politeness. You can make attempts to be polite in order that you may become a nice person. But true politeness is the result of already being a nice person.

Mary: Graciousness is genuine. You can be polite on the surface; the definition doesn't include that it necessarily comes from within.

Elyon: Good comment. I will return to the notion of a crystal and its seed. If this seed were to be a color and the crystal clear, grace, the colored seed, would reflect throughout the grown crystal and be observable as graciousness. The gracious reflections are magnified because growth has been made.

Mary: I suggest that we take a moment to open ourselves to the reception of the gifts of grace and love that God has for us and to count ourselves worthy of these gifts and to actively take a moment to open ourselves up to receive them.  (pause)

Elyon: Father, teach us to understand that, as we reach up to You to receive Your grace as it rains down upon us, that this shower of Your goodness becomes useful to us when we acknowledge that this rain is collected within us and rises as a spring of grace to nourish our souls, to motivate our personalities. May
we ever be willing to allow this grace to well up within as we are ever seeking Your grace as You pour it down upon us.

Machiventa: How many human beings have asked themselves what great contribution can one make to a world so large and so peopled that one feels so insignificant? You need not seek to teach multitudes. You may significantly instruct one individual, and that individual may be your own self. As students you are ever alert for the opportunity to recognize truth and to acquire wisdom, to learn and to grow. You have gained through experience an understanding of the value of this process. This in itself is a teaching from you to you.

If you visualize this universe age of supremacy as a balloon, if you imagine yourself within this balloon at the very surface, interiorly, you can through your own growth push the boundaries, expand the volume, and thereby create capacity for any within to experience a similar expansion of their being. What Michael did for Nebadon was in effect define the capacity for expansion within Nebadon. So I encourage you always to ever be active both as a student and as an instructor, for even if there are no other ears to hear what your own being can express, you always have your own two ears to which you may apply your understanding and your wisdom for increased attainment. We melchizedeks are self governing for we apply this principle as a group and as individuals.

Elyon: I would encourage you this week in an exercise of alertness. Make effort to recognize a grace potential already given and resident within you. Go the next step following recognition and exert yourself in
transforming this grace into growth. If you find it difficult in recognizing the grace that yields growth, try the reverse and reflect upon growth attained and pursue from there back to a point when grace was received that made your growth possible. Since grace can seem ambiguous, work at finding specific descriptions of this gift in order that you may broaden your comprehension of the work of the Father in your life.

The reality is 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.

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 Earth 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. 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.

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. 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 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.

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.

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!

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.