The goal of strengthening our faith seems paradoxical. If genuine knowledge is our quest, a strengthening of faith seems like it might freeze us in place, and inhibit our growth as opposed to facilitating it. Can Creator explain how strengthening one’s faith is in fact NOT synonymous with closing one’s mind?

The two are not synonymous but can be under certain circumstances. If one’s faith is limited to embracing dogma that has built-in constraints, the end result might be shaping oneself around a set of precepts that will carry you just so far and no further—that will end up being a diminishment and, in effect, becoming a dead end. You see this in the fate of those who embrace the Scriptures as the be-all and end-all of knowledge. Even though there is much divine wisdom on display, it is not by any stretch of the imagination a comprehensive compendium of all that is possible to know. It is a mere snapshot of some teachings people were privy to in a time 2,000 years ago when most people were highly ignorant and primitive about many things. In that environment, it was simply not possible to teach more because it could not be understood or absorbed with the thinking of the day represented by the human population in ancient times. To devote oneself avidly to memorizing many biblical passages or lessons from the Quran to be recited verbatim as a kind of litany and proof of one’s devotion is "an exercise in limitation" by definition. You were not created to memorize a handbook and only do what was contained on its pages. You were created to add to the possibilities of existence, to grow beyond the limits of your forebears, to widen your reach and extend the capability of humanity to grow and prosper and bring new ways of thinking and acting into existence as creations of your own. None of that can happen if you are stuck between the pages of the Bible and cannot leave the page. In many ways, the Scriptures are a set of rules but they are not meant to be a cage. There are many ways to view truth, fairness, ethics, and justice because circumstances evolve, things can become more complex, multifaceted, requiring many nuances, special circumstances, and special treatment at times to maintain a fair balance under extraordinary circumstances of all kinds. This requires ingenuity and creativity, which is in your toolkit, especially when aided through maintaining a divine partnership, which will guarantee receiving inspiration and guidance of the highest order. When you are in a divine partnership, there is nowhere you will go where we are not also present, so in that sense, you are enjoying our limitless capacity for expansion because as you yearn for more to happen and to experience, we can expand things to allow that to happen and help you bring it into reality. Whether it is your impulse or ours, all will benefit, and that, after all, is the point of having a partnership, that it will be a magnificent sharing and the achievement of something with a grand total far greater than could be done singly by either party. We can create many things you cannot, but there are many things we create you might have no use for. This is why a partnership will serve you, because your input and desires are integral to what will come about through that partnership. We will not have a desire to implement things you will reject or ignore. Within the partnership, what is produced will all be things that serve you, first and foremost, because that, to our way of thinking, is the purpose of that partnership with you personally. Anything you create or wish to have happen that we might bring into existence on your behalf benefits us by the doing; it helps us to be more than we were before, to enlarge our scope. Everything we might do for you on your behalf is by definition "an act of loving kindness," and that is what raises up all, the acts of loving kindness bestowed on others as well as the self at times when that is appropriate. After all, as a divine human, an extension of our consciousness, why should it not be the case that you can call forth miracles?