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The Revelation describes faith sons as "sons of grace and mercy". I think we all know what mercy is, but what is grace? What does it mean to be a son of grace?

(448.2) 40:6.3 All evolutionary worlds of mortal habitation harbor these faith sons of God, sons of grace and mercy, mortal beings belonging to the divine family and accordingly called the sons of God.
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i dunno what they mean but what comes to my mind is our individual personal capability to identify as children of God and just the existence of the entire finite realm itself and the vast array of descending ministers and teachers devoted to our growth toward the Father etc. etc. is all an act of Gods grace. in the final analysis, it exists because God wills it and it's gracefully characterized with kindness and friendship because God is Love.
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If you recall the "Holding the Basket" conversation between John Mark and Jesus, you hear Jesus provide the reasoning for Mark's eventual life in union with the Universal Father in paradise. Because Mark's parents reared him in a household filled with a combination of "Love and Wisdom".

Okay so Grace and Love in the English language are similar because they describe what "goes into" the sense-perception. I believe that Wisdom and Mercy, in a similar respect describe the power-potentials of a human individual: mercy in his ability to find the most equitable solution, and wisdom (sic) in the ability to finish such act.

So Mercy and Wisdom can be well-understood to describe the concious reasoning and choices that a human individual make.

But what is grace? This is the challenge to describe, but from my experience, I believe that grace is the existential energy from the central universe that is experiencible by the mind of the soul. Just an opinion and not going to try to explain this any better.

So the Creator Michael is an eternally existing being, whose nature is love. But we who are born of his universe Nebadon, require grace in order for God's indwelling to create or eventuate our individualised innate forms, the forms of each of our preexistence. We have to "return" to Paradise, unlike Michael the Creator. And to do so, you need to learn what love really is, through your experiencial appetite for grace. When I feel grace, I also feel the existential central universe opening His Doors to welcome me more, and how greater to live that life of the universal father.

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Last edited by SEla_Kelly on Sat Aug 10, 2019 12:48 pm +0000, edited 1 time in total.

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Makalu wrote:
i dunno what they mean but what comes to my mind is our individual personal capability to identify as children of God and just the existence of the entire finite realm itself and the vast array of descending ministers and teachers devoted to our growth toward the Father etc. etc. is all an act of Gods grace. in the final analysis, it exists because God wills it and it's gracefully characterized with kindness and friendship because God is Love.


I agree with all of that. Since I started this topic I decided to go back and read all the references to grace in the Revelation. There are numerous mentions of grace being a ministry. I believe there are different avenues for the ministry of grace. Here's a reference to personality credits and the ministry of nature and grace. I'm left wondering what the ministry of nature is too.

(556.6) 
48:7.6 4. Few mortals ever dare to draw anything like the sum of personality credits established by the combined ministries of nature and grace. The majority of impoverished souls are truly rich, but they refuse to believe it.
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But what about the times you ask as a mortal, what will the life or sojournings of your experience in the central universe be like? You pray to god to know that, but the answer comes through your foreknowledge of that existence you will have as an ascender-citizen of Havona. You pray to God for the truth but the answer must come from the fact you wouldn't answer even to your own self, in these experiences, unless you know that you have been travelling on the path of wisdom eternally, and then the things that you ask of yourself, can be given as an experience of knowing yourself as a citizen of Havona worlds or of Paradise. But then you would have to find a way to carry forward such insights in a way that is not disturbing to your family or the culture of the communty you live as on Urantia. You learn to have mercy upon yourself as a lowly mortal of limited intellectual capacity, and then grace to know how such inleadings could have been requested or bestowed form a sovereign being.

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But you see how it needs to overlap, how that can be acceptible if you are already seeking entrance into Paradise.

In terms of society, I guess I should disclose I am doing everything I can to become a parcel of that life that the Universal Father has in the central universe, his kingdom of heaven. However, it is simply necessary when we discuss in terms of Urantia "an aging population", and how/where does the father bestow his grace in this situation!! haha, the simple needs of transition for economic finance within the household, and the need for you as fathers of your own households, to manage all of this resource and tumult of sordid Urantian affairs.

Grace is like a cache, a treasure, yet its resonance is reflecting something that is of an eternal quality.

Much like Aristotle, you have only your current means at your disposal. Yet if you device the ultimate ends, say your life as a father unto beings of the Central Universe, you can see that the aim cannot be any different even now as you strive the like likeness of an Urantian flesh. I just tell you: I am willing to set down all of my words, and to reconsider them later as a citizen of Havona, and I can only hope that they help you to become that as children of the universal father, sons of grace & mercy, whoever you want to call yourself.

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SEla_Kelly wrote:
But what is grace? This is the challenge to describe, but from my experience, I believe that grace is the existential energy from the central universe that is experiencible by the mind of the soul. Just an opinion and not going to try to explain this any better.


If you mean the energy of love and goodness then I agree. I think we are able to find the Father through his ministry of grace, the love he shares with us all, especially through his Sons and the Spirit.

53.6) 3:6.8 God the Father loves men; God the Son serves men; God the Spirit inspires the children of the universe to the ever-ascending adventure of finding God the Father by the ways ordained by God the Sons through the ministry of the grace of God the Spirit.

SEla_Kelly wrote:
But what about the times you ask as a mortal, what will the life or sojournings of your experience in the central universe be like? You pray to god to know that, but the answer comes through your foreknowledge of that existence you will have as an ascender-citizen of Havona.


I don't think humans have any foreknowledge of Havona or Paradise. But our Thought Adjusters certainly do, and so does the Spirit of Truth and the Holy Spirit. I think they are always responding to our faith as sons with their ministry of grace to urge us toward Paradise. But I think it's even more than that. I think the ministry of grace is essential for the awakening to the blessings of being a member of a universal family. We are told that we must grow in grace through faith.

(1656.6) 147:8.5 And then long into the night Jesus propounded to his apostles the truth that it was their faith that made them secure in the kingdom of the present and the future, and not their affliction of soul nor fasting of body. He exhorted the apostles at least to live up to the ideas of the prophet of old and expressed the hope that they would progress far beyond even the ideals of Isaiah and the older prophets. His last words that night were: “Grow in grace by means of that living faith which grasps the fact that you are the sons of God while at the same time it recognizes every man as a brother.”
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SEla_Kelly wrote:
Grace is like a cache, a treasure, yet its resonance is reflecting something that is of an eternal quality.


I like that. Very poetic. How do you think we discover that treasure and open that cache?
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When you praying to know what this life is as in the central universe, but then your pray answered by the eternal being who you are: fused with the first source and center, speaking into yourself as a father of your past experiences, and performing the same delicate task of simply admonishing as you itare and make the best of your circumstances for your family. Of course that confidence is different according to each person's personality and awareness. It is just a prayer to know yourself as you are in the Central Universe, as a citizen, but how is that prayer answered you must act according to the dual constriction of legal obligations in the communities you currently exist on Urantia, but since it was your intent to know how that would be possible, to become a human individual with the full liberties of Paradise, haha much more than I would have ever requested to know!, you have to change your own nature in worshipping the universal father, bearing his likeness, sadly, in order to bring the requisites of the central universe into the common order of Urantia. But that does not go against our currently existing laws, and I think it must be possible, and since you are willing to make it so, I wish you success!

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The funniest thing, is that I think you are already acceptable as unto God the Most High Father of All Creation. In certain respects, I am depending on you to have I already found this guidance and wisdom that I needed personally Katro, through grace or love. I believe in you like that you will be/already have been inducted into God's Holy Family, and yes pray for the salvation of, do what I can to protect, your children on Urantia.

This is an eternal experience, I and I want to be able to share this with mind that I have with you in Havona. I would forebear all of my Urantian inclinations so that I could give that to you. I do not want to be the only one from Urantia there, you know: I expect you to be there.

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Last edited by SEla_Kelly on Sat Aug 10, 2019 2:37 pm +0000, edited 1 time in total.

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SEla_Kelly wrote:
When you praying to know what this life is as in the central universe, but then your pray answered by the eternal being who you are: fused with the first source and center, speaking into yourself as a father of your past experiences, and performing the same delicate task of simply admonishing as you itare and make the best of your circumstances for your family. Of course that confidence is different according to each person's personality and awareness. It is just a prayer to know yourself as you are in the Central Universe, as a citizen, but how is that prayer answered you must act according to the dual constriction of legal obligations in the communities you currently exist on Urantia, but since it was your intent to know how that would be possible, to become a human individual with the full liberties of Paradise, haha much more than I would have ever requested to know!, you have to change your own nature in worshipping the universal father, bearing his likeness, sadly, in order to bring the requisites of the central universe into the common order of Urantia. But that does not go against our currently existing laws, and I think it must be possible, and since you are willing to make it so, I wish you success!


Well here we are again....Hmmm.....

Again with pre-existence!! Humans are not parents of Paradise citizens. We do not answer prayer...our own or anybody else's. We are not eternal beings until after fusion. Are you fused Stephen?! No you are not.

We have no pre-experience. We do not pray to our self...or should not anyway. We are not yet and have never yet been citizens of the Central Universe. We are not God Stephen. We do not have and are not father of any past experiences Stephen. Each mortal begins life on this world or so the UB teaches.
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Maybe I am not fused but I know that I can answer prayers. People have always told me that. Maybe I will become a fused mortal and do all that in the will of the father, just to know Katro better! and behold what she has become in the likeness of the first source and center!

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I know it sound so incredible, so I don't ask you to believe. I just tell you that for one moment I simply suspended my disbelief. Then, miraculously God revealed the life that we already have together in the Central Universe together, how is this possible, knowing fully to abide in the duty that I have now, as a son of grace, and utmost mercy. I will join my love to Katro's wisdom.

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SEla_Kelly wrote:
It is just a prayer to know yourself as you are in the Central Universe, as a citizen, you have to change your own nature in worshipping the universal father, bearing his likeness, I wish you success!


I think you're right about prayer. I condensed what you wrote to the part that has meaning to me, that prayer and worship can change us, it can open our hearts to grace and enable us to become more like our Father who is all goodness and grace. I think prayer and worship are what is meant by the term, "through faith". We grow in grace through faith, or prayer, or communion with our heavenly Father. It is written that the process of perfecting is achieved through effort but that effort is freely admixed with grace. I have to think that grace is God's gift given in answer to our faith. And even faith is a gift! So many gifts, a great treasure.

(361.4) 32:3.9 The perfection of the creatures of time, when finally achieved, is wholly an acquirement, a bona fide personality possession. While the elements of grace are freely admixed, nevertheless, the creature attainments are the result of individual effort and actual living, personality reaction to the existing environment.
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Last night I did some more reading on the subject of grace and noticed the term "saving grace". It's probably obvious, but grace appears to have something to with salvation, which is another gift of the Father. As I understand it, mercy, faith, salvation and grace are all gifts.

(38.2) 2:4.2 God is inherently kind, naturally compassionate, and everlastingly merciful. And never is it necessary that any influence be brought to bear upon the Father to call forth his loving-kindness. The creature’s need is wholly sufficient to insure the full flow of the Father’s tender mercies and his saving grace. Since God knows all about his children, it is easy for him to forgive. The better man understands his neighbor, the easier it will be to forgive him, even to love him.

Another link between grace, mercy and salvation has to do with personality credits which are lavishly gifted by the Father's Sons.

(314.4) 28:6.5 2. The Memory of Mercy. These are the actual, full and replete, living records of the mercy which has been extended to individuals and races by the tender ministrations of the instrumentalities of the Infinite Spirit in the mission of adapting the justice of righteousness to the status of the realms, as disclosed by the portrayals of the Significance of Origins. The Memory of Mercy discloses the moral debt of the children of mercy — their spiritual liabilities — to be set down against their assets of the saving provision established by the Sons of God. In revealing the Father’s pre-existent mercy, the Sons of God establish the necessary credit to insure the survival of all. And then, in accordance with the findings of the Significance of Origins, a mercy credit is established for the survival of each rational creature, a credit of lavish proportions and one of sufficient grace to insure the survival of every soul who really desires divine citizenship.
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