[tmtranscripts] N. Idaho TeaM 10/12/03

[rickgiles]

North Idaho Teaching Mission Group
Topics: Ambassador/Citizenship, Assurance, Confidence, 
Conviction
Teachers: Lantarnek, Jessona

October 12, 2003
  
*	Lantarnek (Jonathan TR):  Greetings, this is Lantarnek.
	Take a moment to reflect upon the security you feel as one 
who belongs to a particular country.  You may not derive 
security from the political state of any country, but you know 
your residence, your surroundings, your belonging.  In those 
countries that are beneficial to the individuals within that 
governing body, the citizens are content, reasonably so.  The 
result is that sense of belonging, feeling at home.
	Reflect a moment upon the many volunteers from Jerusem who 
came to your world to join the planetary government of Urantia.  
They became a part of its regime.  Their citizenship shifted to 
this world and was to be for many, many years.  Then, as if 
overnight, the entire structure changed and much confusion 
resulted.  You would not wish that to occur in your country this 
day or even throughout this week, that while the conditions are 
not perfect, they are reasonable.  Disenfranchisement is 
unsettling and begins the search in the individual for belonging 
and the establishment of order.  Those who remained loyal to the 
original purposes of this planet shifted their citizenship back 
to their original state and then became ambassadors assigned, as 
you may say, overseas.  Their loyalties shifted to higher 
bodies, and they began the work of restoring Urantia.
	I present this to you for you individually each have also 
undergone the shift of your citizenship, that while you are a 
resident of this planet, through the course of your life you 
have become so to speak a naturalized citizen of your system, 
and now you become a visitor to Urantia.  Your role is unique, 
for you have a dual status, one who is native to this planet and 
one naturalized to the system of Satania.
	Michael has called you to be his ambassadors, and you have 
readily accepted the assignment.  While he chose his original 
twelve likewise to be ambassadors and sent them afar to proclaim 
his gospel, he assigns each of you to remain in your locality to 
establish your ambassadorial headquarters where you are this 
very hour at each point in every day.  The shift of your 
awareness of belonging to Michael and Nebadon’s governmental 
structure is equivalent to the more physical sense of being sent 
overseas to a foreign country to act as an ambassador.  Instead 
of your displacement, the very foundation, the very country you 
are in itself, changes while you remain as you are.
	The relocation of your loyalties from the preservation of 
life as you know it on this planet to the proclamation of life 
as Michael distributes it throughout Nebadon alters forever your 
approach to life, your decisions, the merit of any undertaking 
and its impact upon your ascension, and your contribution to 
planetary upliftment.
	The designation of ambassador may be far too grand for 
anyone of you to adopt as your own.  It may be hard to muster 
the assurance that you are capable of such a position.  I will 
dissect that word “assurance” in order to encourage you to 
further develop an ambassadorial outlook to your life.
	Assurance is granted to you in relationship through the 
expression of evaluation by another of your ability.   Coupled 
with this external recognition is your acceptance, your 
receptivity to the observation.  It will never be complete, not 
as regards a living, growing creature.  You will be only as sure 
as your experience and wisdom can provide and your counsel is 
capable of delivering.  You will, of necessity, engage in your 
assignments as an ambassador of Michael only as sure as you are 
at any point.  This is largely a result of the rebellion and 
default upon your world that you undertake such assignments with 
limited sense of worth and ability.  If this planet had retained 
its headquarters you would proceed more with confidence, a sense 
of belonging to the resident government, the planetary spiritual 
government.  In its absence confidence also becomes difficult to 
possess.  Therefore you must proceed with assurance.  Michael 
gives you that assurance.  He has anointed you as ambassadors.
	Your government has shifted.  You are now stationed in a 
foreign land as a citizen of a distant “country”.  Your loyalty 
is to Nebadon.  You are in a unique position as an ambassador in 
this regard, for, as I follow this method of exchanging 
diplomats between countries that you use on this world, your 
countries can call home their ambassadors when there are 
difficulties, conflicts.  But you are born and raised in this 
other land. Your citizenship has shifted.  It is more difficult 
to clearly distinguish the two.  So, I observe that many of you 
falter in the maintaining of the perspective that you are 
ambassadors of Michael.  Your surroundings are so familiar; it 
is after all your home, this planet.  I am here today to remind 
you of your true citizenship and of your assignment abroad, even 
though it is in your home location of Urantia.  You are more 
invested as an ambassador in this manner, for you truly love the 
location that you are assigned to, for it is the location you 
are native to.  You are thereby more qualified to address the 
difficulties and to promulgate the ideals and goals that this 
world has, needs, and deserves.
	With the wrapping up of quarantine for Urantia, the 
reestablishment of your planet in the circuits of other worlds, 
and the jurisdiction of higher administrators, there are 
beginning to come to your world many qualified administrators, 
high celestial ambassadors.  But this undertaking is gradual, 
and you are required to be the staff for these greater beings.  
Those of you who have an understanding of the celestial 
arrangements of governing bodies from your studies anxiously 
await the establishment of normalized governing bodies upon your 
world who are loyal to Michael and are skilled enough to bring 
Urantia to Light and Life.  But in the interim in reality there 
is only each one of you.
	When Jesus ascended his apostles were alone.  They did not 
feel as strong and assured or confident of their purpose for 
their master.  They gained in strength; they built their faith, 
and then they received his Spirit of Truth.  They were then 
capable of journeying to distant places never to have the same 
fellowship and camaraderie they had had before and yet carried 
on the mission of Michael laboriously and gloriously.  You today 
are in the same situation.  You do not have the immediate 
contactability of such a magnificent personality standing 
literally in your midst to lean upon.  You are on your own 
physically.  However, just as the apostles had the Spirit of 
Truth poured out upon them, you are accompanied, difficult of 
discernment that it may be.  You are equipped and supported, and 
I encourage you to go into those distant lands, in this case, 
those troubled areas you discover in your lives, and bring the 
gospel, the light, the peace.
	Not only are you receiving assurance, you are requested to 
be of assurance.  Many falter in faith because of the lack of 
tangible celestial guidance.  Tangibility falls to you.  You are 
that which makes spirit concrete.
	It is a large task, but you are not truly going it alone.  
It is a solemn responsibility, but is not solitary.  Continue to 
prepare yourself, for this world is receiving much more guidance 
than it has in the past.  You who are paying attention to these 
developments and undertaking this Correcting Time Teaching 
Mission are beginning to discern these changes.  While as yet 
there are some refinements to be presented to you in your 
comprehension of what is transpiring, you are discerning, 
acting, and giving these supernals great hope that all the world 
will one day respond to this upliftment process.  Be assured you 
are capable.  Acknowledge that you will encounter limitations, 
and know that the corps of beings, the celestial staff, can 
compensate for your limitations.  They may bring to you another 
human being that you may in concert compensate for limitations 
and strengthen one another in this complementary manner.  If you 
begin a project faithfully, devotedly, then discover 
inabilities, you will receive assistance.  That is when that 
gift arrives.  To sit theoretically and imagine an undertaking 
and only note your limitations, the compensation will not 
arrive.  What will come your way is further encouragement to be 
about the Father’s business, for when you begin grace flows.
	There is much work ahead.  I trust all of you who devote 
yourselves to Michael, to Mother Spirit, and to this great 
“land” of Nebadon and all its substructures, systems and 
constellations.   Until you leave Nebadon, this is your country.
	Michael has asked you, and I further encourage you, to go 
forth and proclaim that gospel, to accept your ambassadorial 
status to bring all into the fold.  Do not make the mistake of 
requiring all to adhere to your comprehension of this universe 
of Nebadon.  When tempted to do so, reflect for one moment on 
how vast this Nebadon universe is.  It cannot possibly adhere to 
your singular perspective.  But don’t let that prevent you from 
reaching out to the many souls who desire belonging, who have 
unique contributions to make to the advancement of Nebadon to 
Light and Life.  Take yourself to them and take them to Michael.  
That is your simple task.  Michael will bring them into higher 
levels of understanding.  His administrators are beyond your 
count.
	I will retreat from this contact and give over to Jessona to 
receive your questions to allow her to address you.  Thank you.

	Tom:  Thank you, Lantarnek, I needed to hear that.
	Assurance and confidence were mentioned.  How does 
conviction play a role in this preparedness for preaching the 
gospel or doing the Father’s will?  What is conviction, specific 
to healing?

*	Jessona:  Conviction is a result of experience.  It is more 
than the persuasiveness of argument; that is more an attempt to 
convince.  To be convicted is to know through experience.  
Lantarnek spoke of assurance and confidence, and you bring to 
the discussion conviction.  Assurance is presented to you and 
received by you.  It is a nudge.  In confidence you are adopting 
faithfully, decisively, what talents you have, what guidance is 
assigned to you.  Conviction is a result of earlier experiences 
of victory, of success.
	Let us return to the dynamics of Jesus and his apostles.  
Continually he assured them that they were capable of the tasks 
ahead or he would not have chosen them.  They grew in confidence 
as he taught them and went about his earlier exercises of faith 
training.  Each episode in their ministry that they experienced 
and grew through developed conviction, but these apostles, while 
truly spending very precious years with the sovereign-soon-to-be 
of Nebadon, never really received conviction until he left 
Urantia.
	Persuasion is not conviction.  Therefore, in the realm of 
healing, you approach assured of the presence of the healing 
circuits.  You are confident that if your will aligns with the 
will of the Father you will be successful.  Conviction may this 
day elude you, for your experiences have not been numerous 
enough to reflect back to your mind the success of your prior 
endeavors to give the gift of healing to another.  While you 
seek it to be better able, in reality it is received subsequent 
to your ability to transmit these energies to another.  In a 
sense it becomes the reward of your faith potential.
	Does this help?

	Tom:  Yes, it does.  Thank you.

*	Jessona:  I also encourage you to review a lesson given to 
this group a short while back on conviction, for this may help 
to augment my comments today. [Editors Note: See session dated 
March 30, 2003. Available at TMArchives.]

	Tom:  Would you mind coming with me today as a minister to 
my sick friends?

*	Jessona:  My friend, I am there already.  I address you from 
that location.  It is my duty to be abreast of the situation and 
to encircuit with these precious individuals, your friends.

	Tom:  Thank you.

	Evelyn:  Lantarnek was saying that assurance involves 
relationship, that someone gives assurance and you have to also 
receive it.  As ambassadors we could follow Lantarnek’s model 
today by assuring others of their ambassadorial effectiveness.  
We can also begin to accept it when we hear it and build that 
assurance ourselves.  I’m understanding it to be a two way 
relationship requiring both giving and taking.

*	Jessona:  Indeed, it does.  As you experience the granting 
of assurance along with the accumulated experience of receiving 
assurance then you become truly confident.  You feel like you 
belong to a larger family.  No longer do you need to be reminded 
or even assured.  You now know.  It is in the giving that you 
are strengthened in the belief that when you receive assurance 
it is true, for you know that as you have given it has held true 
to the one who received.  It is the same principle that is at 
play in forgiveness.  The ability to trust such contact, whether 
it is assurance or forgiveness, is strengthened in your ability 
to likewise extend assurance or forgiveness.
	I may attempt to group assurance, confidence, and conviction 
into a unit.  Assurance is a process of give and take.  It 
requires another or others to help you or for you to be helpful.  
Confidence is a sense of belonging to that brotherhood, that 
family of assurers.  Conviction allows you to stand on your own.  
Isolated you may be, but nonetheless faithful and loyal, 
determined and capable.  That is a strong state to attain.  It 
provides you with the ability to pursue through all difficulty, 
to take no concern when  all things appear to fail.  Even to 
feel alone in spiritual support you will not falter.
	These are not building blocks from one to the other.  These 
are interrelated and interworking.  One brings greater 
development of the other, for is it not true?, have you not 
witnessed? that one who is convicted has greater impressability 
of assurance upon you when you are receiving their counsel.

	Evelyn:  This has been an exciting session to think about 
being a citizen of Nebadon, an ambassador of Michael.

*	Jessona:  It is encouraging to me as well, for that is my 
assignment as master seraphim.  And to receive the support of 
the melchizedeks is very important in continuing our enthusiasm.  
We do not wane in our enthusiasm, but we do enjoy a bolstering 
of that enthusiasm.
	There is much work upon this planet to be done.  A wonderful 
goal is before us.  You have a precious spot in the history of 
the development towards this goal.
	I will bring closure to this contact.  I too thank you for 
receiving me today.