2002-05-17-Faith, Trust, & Expectations
Pocatello #220
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Faith, Trust, & Expectations
o 1.2 Group: Pocatello TeaM
• 2 Facilitators
o 2.1 Teacher: Daniel, Tomas
o 2.2 TR: Bob S.
• 3 Session
o 3.1 Opening
o 3.2 Lesson
o 3.3 Dialogue
o 3.4 Closing
Topic: Faith, Trust, & Expectations
Group: Pocatello TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Daniel, Tomas
TR: Bob S.
Session
Opening
Unknown being (Bob S): My children, hear these words of your elder brother. Fear not anything that you do for it has been determined that your faith is such that you have risen to the level of full sons and daughters of the Most High. Therefor, fear not. Amen.
DANIEL: (Bob S): My children, how we enjoy your banter. This is Daniel, your elder brother, your teacher, your guide, your friend and your curious companion. Curious because we never know what some of you are going to say or do. (Comments from group.) We had a lesson prepared for tonight which we may yet get to. However, we felt it important to address some of Bob’s concerns in your earlier discussion regarding faith, hope and love.
Lesson
TOMAS: (Bob S): This is Tomas. (Group welcomes Tomas.) I had thought that there might be questions regarding my words to you last week. Therefor, I asked to be present again tonight to expand upon the issues I raised last week. To the extent that you are having trouble defining terms, I shall attempt to be more precise. To me the word faith and trust are synonymous. They convey a level of spiritual maturity or acceptance in one’s life that God is your father, and as such, He is the basic guide in your life’s decision-making. The word hope means the extent to which one expects that what one wishes will come to pass.
Let me further say that hope conveys the human side of the equation while faith indicates a more God-based idea. To that extend what we are attempting to portray is a combination of God and mankind, and when those two become one, you are approaching unity (to use Kenneth’s words). Let me say, as Daniel has pointed out, full personality development, unity, does not take place at fusion. When you and your Indwelling Spirit become one, you are what you might call past the point-of-no-return.
You have committed your life, not fully, but full enough to indicate to us, and your Indwelling Spirit, that you are fully committed to take the next step. And at that point your Thought Adjuster and you become one to assist you to complete that decision which you have made and now have faith enough to implement. Putting it another way, your hope at that point becomes almost negligible for it has guided you, encouraged you, motivated you to the point where you have crossed the threshold to a more spiritual existence.
We find difficulty in conveying some of these more esoteric concepts in your language, and our understanding of English is not always as deep as it could be. Hence, we sometimes use words which mean different things to different people. With that in mind, it is always wise to ask for clarification. We are always interested in creating the clearest and most understandable concept that we can, so we encourage all of you when you hear or read something which is confusing or incomplete to be sure and call that to our attention. We are most happy to oblige. Now, are there questions or comments about my attempts to further delineate the differences between faith and hope?
Dialogue
Ken: Again, thanks for being here, and greetings to you. You touched upon every one of the topics in reading last week’s lesson. Great enlightenment, just superb. Thank you.
TOMAS: (Bob S): Thank you, Kenneth, for your observations and critique. We, your teachers, are not perfect. Our experience and wisdom is greater than yours; however, it is not yet perfect. That is another reason why it is important to comment, to question or ask for further clarification when our attempts fall short of your complete understanding. Are there other questions or comments regarding faith or hope? Very well, I will now turn the time over to Daniel. Thank you, all of you, for your patience with me. I will return to Mexico Albuquerque, but I am confident that I will be attending your TeaM meetings on occasion. Again, thank you for your warm reception and your words of encouragement. I shall convey your comments to Gerdean when I am back in New Mexico.
Ken: Thank you, Tomas. Our love to you.
DANIEL:(Bob S): This is Daniel. Friends, I wish to comment briefly upon the words faith and hope myself. To many people these two words are often used synonymously. Bob has pointed out that to his mind they are quite different. This is one of the difficulties of using languages such as English. We would, of course, prefer our morontial tongue which we feel could much more adequately clarify the picture, but that would not help you. We are left with a language which is sometimes inadequate. My own interpretation of the words faith and hope most likely agree with Bob’s, so I will not comment further on that unless there are questions.
(Ed: In an earlier discussion Bob said faith was an expectation, and hope was more a wish or desire.)
DANIEL: The lesson which we had prepared before dinner this evening has to do with expectations. Expectations are those future events which you plan on occurring. When and how sometimes cause difficulty, and are a problem for most mortals, because God’s time and God’s plans often are different than yours. But if we can set aside for the time being those two area’s of importance, let’s just focus for the time being on the event itself. When one expects something to happen one makes plans for that event.
These plans often require modification which may be related to time or a different interpretation of the event itself. But those who have the faith and trust that God is indeed in charge of the universe and His will shall come to pass, know that, have the faith, fully expect that to come to pass. If one were to find it otherwise, suppose your expectation does not come to pass, how would you feel? What would this turn of events do to your thinking? It would, at least initially, cause a loss of faith because you have been disappointed and your expectation did not come to pass. This is how hope is impacted in Tomas’ faith and hope relationship. If you have once been burned you would, of course, be more reticent and less hopeful the next time. Let me seek to add further clarification.
The time that one spends anticipating the future, planning for your expectations, is in itself growth- producing. Similarly when expectations are not met they have a negative influence on faith and hope. Since hope is, or can be characterized, as somewhat the human-side of the equation it is usually impacted the most. Hence one’s own experiences have profound effects upon one’s ability to hope. To that end faith and hope rise or fall, grow or wane together. Even though they are different ideas, they are connected. Without the human-side of the equation, mankind would not make the effort necessary to develop his faith. If the results of his hope do not achieve some positive expectation, then both sides, hope and faith, are affected. But, working together, God and man, faith and hope produce a more loving individual.
Now, how does joy fit into this relationship? (Ed: Daniel talked to us about joy April 26.) As I said earlier in my lesson on joy, as the Apostle Paul correctly deduced, joy and the other “fruits of the Spirit” are the product of positive hope and positive faith producing great or positive love-growth. And when the individual does that, he or she is becoming more joyful or any of the other attributes Paul alluded to, as well as many others one could add to the list. Are there questions, comments, concerns any of you would like to make at this point?
Ken: Can you relate the word or term desire, that was in our discussion earlier as being synonymous with hope?
DANIEL:(Bob S): My sense is that the word desire has more to do with faith than hope. I would characterize it as a God-based idea rather than a human-based one.
(TR experienced increased difficulty transcribing at this point.) [Ed note: This sentence may be garbled or even reversed in meaning?]
DANIEL:(Bob S): My children, the difficulties which we are having are not unexpected. As we attempt higher and higher spiritual concepts, we fully expect such confusion to increase. We always try to anticipate where points of confusion may exist, but we do not always correctly anticipate all such difficulties. With this in mind it seems most appropriate to end tonight’s session, and we will go back to the drawing board and try again next week. Before leaving however, are there other questions or comments which any of you would like to make?
Ken: Daniel, the food that you brought to dinner tonight was very delicious food for thought, and something that will nourish us and give us something to think about next week with the rest of the team. Thank you very much for your presence, for your love.
DANIEL:(Bob S): Thank you, Kenneth. As always we appreciate your gestures of cooperation and understanding. Are there other questions or comments?
Carol: I would just comment that I think that even in our discussions, with many words in the English language, there are many connotations. And even though we speak one-on-one we do not always come away with the same understanding, or the terms do not always mean the same to each of us. So I think this helps us in sorting out what these terms mean or should mean because we all have different interpretations of English language words.
DANIEL:(Bob S): Thank you, Carol, for your comments. Your understanding and background provide you a place to make wise comments and interpretations of this language with which we struggle. Any other questions or comments? Hearing none, let us close tonight’s session by standing and holding hands. Let us be at prayer.
Closing
DANIEL: Oh Most High and Holy Parent of us all, we seek more faith. We seek more hope. We need Your love for we understand who and whose we are. In that vein we pray for our brothers and sisters who struggle; those who have lost their way, those who feel lost, that they may, in their condition, be found by You as we feel strongly that we have been found by You. It is nothing we deserve. Your grace is beyond our understanding.
To our brothers and sisters, members of this group not present with us tonight, we hold out our hand of love fully expecting they will soon return to our midst. Now in the name of Him, our Father-Brother Christ Michael, we send these our younger brothers and sisters to their homes, to their lives, fully expecting that they, too, may one day stand with us before the God who created us all. Amen.
