Heavenly Encounters – Sons of Issachar

504. Lucid Dreams and Divine Visions

Mike Parsons –

The difference between a lucid dream and a vision is really only that you are asleep rather than awake when you have it.

The difference between a lucid dream and a vision is really only that you are asleep rather than awake when you have it. They are basically the same thing, just in a different format, one being asleep and one being awake. If you are conscious of what is going on in the dream and you are engaging with the dream, there is no real difference to being conscious in a vision, having an encounter and engaging that vision.

Sometimes it is simply a way that God can engage with us when we are not in control of our conscious thinking, like when we are asleep. If it is a lucid dream and you are interacting with it, then is it a dream that God is giving you and you are in an encounter with God, and are the other people who come into the dream part of that encounter? Either they are visionary, in that God is showing you a person and interacting with you, or that person’s spirit is engaging in your dream.

Again, it all comes down to what God’s purpose is. Therefore you have to go back to God and ask him to show you what he was trying to communicate, what the significance was of a particular person, whether known or unknown, within your dream. Just like a lot of people have visionary experiences but do not know what they are about, they then have to go back to God and ask him.

If you are interacting with the dream and things are happening, those things can be actual things that are going on, or they could be symbolic of something that is going on. Again, you have to discern that. On many occasions where I was engaging things, visionary encounters and experiences, I was there engaging them and things were happening to me. If I was in conversation with God within that experience, then I could trust what he was saying. If God was not there and I was seeing things or doing things, then I would be more cautious in my interpretation of what was happening.

Usually I would then check out what happened with God to ensure that I was not putting my own spin on it. When I first encountered, for example, the high chancellors’ houses, and wisdom took me there and I engaged with the high chancellors and all of the houses, God was nowhere in that encounter. I believe God totally inspired that encounter and wisdom interacted with me in many different ways on God’s behalf. But I always went back and said, “Okay, I need deeper insight into this. What were you trying to show me?” I wanted to make sure that it was a pure experience, not something I was spinning through my own filters or trying to understand through my own experiences.

When God was with me, showing me something and speaking to me, I was more confident. I was sure this was God. Sometimes he told me things that were very clear. He has also told me things that were not very clear. I did not mistrust what he said, I just did not understand it at that point. That usually lodges in my heart and then works out in a future situation, where suddenly I understand what it was about. God will say something to stimulate my attention, where I think, I do not know what he is talking about, or I am not fully understanding this, and then I pursue the understanding of it.

When it comes to people, I have encountered people, or people have told me that they have encountered me in a vision or a heavenly experience. I did not remember those experiences because I was asleep at the time, usually at night, and my spirit engaged them. But when I focused on it, sometimes my spirit gave me information that affirmed that encounter. It was like my spirit said, yes, we did. Sometimes I would say, well, what did we talk about? When they described the conversation and what went on, it was very much in sync with what they said I had said. It was like, yes, that was exactly what I would have said if we had had that conversation.

There are different ways in which you experience and encounter things, and they are all good. Every time I go to sleep at night, I make my spirit available for whatever God might want me to do, outside of all the other things I am doing. It is simply saying, I am available for anything you might want me to engage with. That could include engaging other people. Often those people will gain something from the experience that they are seeking.

I cannot remember engaging a person in that type of visionary experience where I was seeking them, but I have engaged the cloud of witnesses for specific things where I felt there might be some insight. I have engaged people like Esther, David, Daniel, Jacob and Joshua at various times during my journey, and then gone back and re-engaged them at a future date to find out more. There is no real difference between a person who is alive and you engaging their spirit in a dream or a vision, and someone who is physically dead but you are still engaging their spirit and soul within a vision. Hebrews describes them as the firstborn enrolled in heaven. They are still active and we can still engage them.

One of the questions I would ask is whether I can have these experiences when I am awake and not sleeping, because then I can engage the experience more fully. I journal everything. I want a record of the things I have encountered. If you wake up having had that experience, it can be harder to journal exactly what happened in a dream or visionary setting. I have come back and written those things out, but mostly what I do is journal while I am having the experience, so that I am totally aware and completely lucid, writing down what is happening during that experience with God or any other encounter.

Occasionally I go back to an experience because I feel there may be some detail I missed. Often when I am listening and talking to God, I am not paying attention to what is going on around me unless he is pointing something out. Particularly in the early days, when all this was new, I would revisit experiences to make sure I had not missed something. As time went on, I became much more confident in my ability to discern, write down and engage.

So ask God whether you can have these experiences when you are not sleeping, and see what happens. If there is a particular person you are unsure about, ask the Father to show you what to do. Sometimes a person may appear in a dream and prompt you to pray for them, protect them, or respond in some way. Until you get into the flow of it and discover what was behind it, there can be many different specifics.

Sometimes a person may speak to you and tell you something, just as a prophet might come and prophesy. Sometimes a person can be speaking on God’s behalf. That is something I believe I have done on a number of occasions when engaging people in that realm.

Ultimately there is no right or wrong in this. It is all part of learning to discover and journey through encounters and experiences, becoming more discerning and more able to pick these things up. If we are open and we have a lucid dream experience, then it is because God wants to speak to us that way. It may be more difficult for him to speak to us while we are awake, perhaps because we are distracted. When you are asleep there is less conscious activity to interfere.

So ask him, and see if he has insight for you and a purpose for each encounter you are having. I do not see a difference between lucid dreams and visions or lucid visions. They are essentially the same sort of encounter, one when you are asleep and one when you are awake.

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499. Hook, Line and Sinker: Why Do We Believe False Prophecies?

Mike Parsons –

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Once you are susceptible to programming because of the nature of the organisations you trust – being fed by your pastor, and being fed by the apostle, or being fed by the prophet – and that they hear from God and tell you that God said this, then you are susceptible to receiving beliefs which are clearly not true. But because you trust the system you’re in, you believe them.

Hence, all sorts of conspiracies.

Hence, all these prophetic people come out with all this political stuff. It gets bought hook, line and sinker by people because they are conditioned that those people must be right because they are prophets: they must hear God.

And the reality is, we need to hear God for ourselves.

And don’t buy anything anyone else says, including me and anybody else, unless God affirms it to you.

426. The Nature of God: Rethinking Our Beliefs

231. Meet the Real God

154. Grow Your Own

480. The Heart of Evangelism | Meeting People Where They Are

Mike Parsons

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The Importance of Showing Real Interest

God loves people and takes a genuine interest in their lives. If we fail to show any interest ourselves, how will they ever believe that God is truly interested in them? Demonstrating care means asking about their situation and engaging with their story. It is not about forcing a single message upon someone, insisting that they must receive it whether they want to or not.

Instead, it is about recognising that God personally meets each person in their own circumstances. He cares, He desires to help, and He longs for them to discover who they truly are. In doing so, they can understand that God already loves them. This is a very different approach, one that treats each individual as unique rather than as a commodity, project or statistic.

Meeting People Where They Are

In the past, many forms of evangelism tended to focus on strategies and techniques. Courses often emphasised how to deliver a message and how to ensure that people listened. Yet this approach often missed the point. Evangelism should not be about ticking boxes or securing conversions. It ought to begin with real interest in people themselves—the realities of their lives and the struggles they face.

Rather than asking, “How can I insert this message into a conversation?”, we should be asking, “How can I develop a genuine relationship with this person, one that may open the door for them to encounter God for themselves?”

A Personal Approach

People need to meet God in us. They need to see and sense something of Jesus expressed through our lives. This may not always be conscious on their part, and sometimes it may not even be conscious on ours, yet God shines through us all the same. In this way, we carry His presence into every encounter.

As Scripture explains, Jesus was the clear image of the Father, revealing to those around Him what God was really like. Many have no true idea of God’s character until they encounter Christ.

Treating Individuals as Unique

In the same way, we are called to be ambassadors of reconciliation. Our role is to represent God’s heart faithfully and to help others to see that He has already done everything needed to restore their relationship with Him.

Summary: When our lives reflect His presence, others can begin to sense His love and discover for themselves the truth of who they are in Him. By treating people as individuals rather than commodities, we embody the message that God cares deeply for them. Evangelism then becomes not about delivering a formulaic message, but about relationship, love and presence.

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307. God’s Unconditional Love For You

319. Face to Face with God

417. Awakening to Love | Finding Your Place in God’s Heart

392. Training Your Spirit | Practical Steps to Engage with God

Mike Parsons

It is a journey to come into a dynamic where you’re able to engage with God and feel His presence, sense His presence, and know His presence in different ways. These ways vary, and different people have different experiences, so you can’t rely on someone else’s experience—you need to find what works for you.

That being said, there are things you can do. The Engaging God programme, which we run, helps people journey from the beginning to mature experiences as sons of God. It delves into practices and exercises to build your spirit, train your spirit to engage, and teach it to sense and discern. Hebrews talks about training our spirit through practice—repeatedly doing something to make our spirit active.

In my own journey to seeing in the spirit, which I’ve shared online, I can trace it back to around the year 2000. That’s when God began speaking to me about meditating. At the time, I didn’t have any concept of meditation, but He guided me through it, teaching me how to hear His voice. I would encourage everyone to focus on hearing before trying to see.

By hearing, I don’t just mean an audible voice, but also sensing God’s thoughts within your mind. The mind is where everything is received—natural vision and sound are all interpreted by electrical impulses in the brain. Similarly, spiritual information is processed by the mind and decoded into things we see, hear, feel, sense or know.

I spent four or five years learning to hear the voice of God, initially through the Bible. I meditated on Bible verses, sometimes even on one word, mulling it over in my mind, repeating it and focusing on it. For instance, I meditated on the verse, “Be still and know that I am God.” I would focus on the word be: “Be… be still… be still and know…” As I did this, I found that thoughts came into my mind that weren’t mine—thoughts from the Holy Spirit. It took me years to become confident in this practice.

Eventually, I began to speak to God directly rather than relying on the Bible. I would picture Jesus sitting opposite me, ask Him a question, close my eyes and wait for His thoughts to enter my mind. His thoughts were distinct from mine, and over time, I learned to hear Him clearly. After mastering this, I eventually learned to see, although now I no longer need visions to know where I am, what I’m doing, or what I’m engaging in spiritually.

It’s important to come to a place of rest before pursuing anything. I now use a meditation called “Meditation for Rest,” which is just five to ten minutes long. It helps me calm down, stop striving and relax. The harder you try, the harder it becomes. You need to let go of your own agenda and allow the Father to set the direction. Rather than asking for specific outcomes, just come into His presence and share your heart, asking Him to reveal His presence to you.

To activate your imagination, you can use a physical object. I often use a door. Think about a door in your home—its colour, material, handle, and details. Picture it in your mind. You can even stand in front of the door, look at it, then close your eyes and visualise it. Imagine opening the door and engaging with Jesus or the Father. This is not about forcing your imagination to create something, but about perceiving what happens.

The word “see” in its root meaning is to perceive. Communication and engaging with God is about perceiving, not just seeing. Perception can come through seeing, hearing, sensing or simply knowing. Many people feel impressions or just know things intuitively. Practice and allow your senses to lead you into deeper connection.

If you find yourself falling asleep during meditation, that’s fine—your spirit is still engaging. Often, our minds get in the way, and sleep helps the mind step aside, allowing the spirit to fully engage. Eventually, your spirit will communicate with your soul, and you’ll begin to understand and experience what you’ve engaged with spiritually.

Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice,” so it is always your time to hear Him. God isn’t holding anything back. The process is about training your senses and coming to a place of rest where you can receive. Sometimes, blockages can come from our own pressure or desperation. Instead of striving, desire His presence and trust that He will meet you.

Jesus is the door to the Father, and that door is already open. If you struggle, it might be due to a mindset shaped by tradition or past experiences. These can be renewed so you can engage fully with God’s unconditional love. You don’t need to earn or perform for His love—just let Him love you. The key to entering rest is to allow God to love you in the way you need to be loved.

As you practise this and come into a deeper awareness of His presence, things will begin to open up. Let God guide you, and over time, you will find it becomes easier. You are unconditionally loved, and God is not holding anything back. Just rest, relax, and let Him lead the way.

359. Unlocking the Power of Angels

Mike Parsons

Mike explores the various ways angels assist us in our daily lives. From facilitating meaningful connections with others to providing support in everyday tasks, Mike shares personal anecdotes that illustrate the divine guidance we can receive. He delves into the concept of judging angels and emphasises the importance of cooperating with them to fulfil our eternal purpose.

Angels: Helping in Everyday Life

How do angels assist us? Well, they do so in various ways. Sometimes, they help us connect with people, facilitating seemingly coincidental meetings. There are moments when angels can communicate and help orchestrate these encounters. For instance, I’ve personally asked my angel to help me find a parking space. I imagine that the angel goes ahead and stands in the spot, and for some reason, no one else sees it or takes it. When I get there, there’s a space waiting, and I always thank my angels for their assistance.

This leads me to the concept of “judging angels,” which some people misunderstand. They think it means deciding whether certain angels are bad and should be punished, but in reality, judgment is simply a verdict. When angels do something for us, saying “well done” and thanking them is a form of judgment. It helps build a relationship with them. Angels aren’t our slaves; they’re here to work with us in fulfilling God’s purposes.

Engaging with Angels in Spiritual Realms

I’ve had personal experiences with heavenly angels. For a long time, I didn’t realise I had an angel assigned to my mountain and throne, spiritually speaking. We’re all seated in Christ in heavenly places, but it took me a while to truly engage with this reality. When I finally did, I discovered that I could sit on the throne, learning about ruling and decreeing from my heavenly position.

During an activation exercise, where I guided people to connect with their thrones and mountains, I noticed a large angel standing behind my own throne. It was the first time I’d truly seen this angel, even though it had always been there. When I asked what it did, the angel responded, “What do you want me to do? I’m here to help you.” This angel had been helping me all along, even though I hadn’t been consciously aware of its presence.

Angels and other heavenly beings

Angels often help us grow and mature, and my angel has been instrumental in that process. Particularly in my younger years, it guided me towards books and revelations that challenged and transformed my understanding of God. These revelations set me on a path of growth and change, often accelerating my spiritual journey. As I matured, I learned to engage these cycles of change myself, needing less direct involvement from angels.

But it’s important to note that angels aren’t just there for the early stages of our journey. I’ve worked with other heavenly beings, like Wisdom and Prudence, who’ve shown me more about how heaven operates. They’ve taken me to heavenly courts and assemblies, revealing how the government of heaven functions. In the beginning, angels helped me navigate these spiritual realms, but as I’ve grown in my relationship with the Father, I now receive revelations directly, through heart-to-heart connection with Him.

In my journey, angels have been incredibly helpful, guiding and supporting me as I’ve grown in understanding and maturity.

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344. Training Your Senses to Engage

Mike Parsons

When you do an activation, there’s more happening than you realise!

Video Summary

When you do an activation, there’s more happening than you realise! Beyond just seeing or feeling, your spirit is engaging. These spiritual experiences form a foundation for your life, guiding you, even if you’re not consciously aware of that. If you struggle to picture or sense things, start simply and practise.

Most people haven’t learned to open the eyes of their heart. Your physical eyes receive information, and your brain interprets it, but ultimately, you’re seeing with your brain. As babies, we learn to focus and interpret visual information gradually. This information is stored in our brains for life. Similarly, in the spirit realm, we need to learn to see with the eyes of our heart—our imagination screen. Dreams are images projected by our soul, and whilst we don’t have to learn to dream, we do need to learn to remember and interpret them.

Training your spiritual senses through practice is necessary for engaging the eyes of your heart. Training your imagination starts with simple exercises, like visualising a door. By repeatedly thinking about familiar objects, you store this information in your memory; similarly, with practice, you can store and recall spiritual information. Some people are natural seers who can easily picture things with their eyes closed, but it’s not that simple for everyone. Many people get impressions rather than clear visuals. For example, if I think about my front door, it’s not a full-colour picture, but the impression is clear: the porch, wood on the right, the house name ‘Robins’ on the left, and so on. The more I focus, the clearer it becomes, but whether it’s visual or not doesn’t matter—it’s the information that’s important.

When you experience God, you might not see a whole vision, but you will receive something. Focusing on what you’re seeing helps it form. Perception is key; it starts simple and builds. During activation exercises, don’t strive to see—just be still and go with the experience. Then, reflecting on experiences helps store them in memory, forming a framework for future experiences. Repetition is crucial for ingraining these memories.

For example, I couldn’t describe a hotel I visited once years ago, but I could navigate my house with my eyes closed because I’ve walked around inside it many times. Exercises need to be repeated to fully develop the experience in your memory. Meditation helps by mulling over the experience, not by seeking an instant result like much of our world today. Extraordinary experiences, like my first visit to heaven, get etched in your memory because they’re so different.

Learning a new skill requires practice and patience, which many people lack. You need desire to persevere. If you have an agenda during engagement, it can limit what you receive from God; relaxing and just being helps the process. Find a comfortable position, maybe a favourite chair where you feel peaceful and can calm your thoughts. Keep practising and building on your experiences, taking time to assimilate information into experience. Racing through material like Engaging God without practising engagements over and over doesn’t work well; it takes time and patience.

334. Embracing Spiritual Rest

Mike Parsons –

When you say you’ve never felt more loved, at peace, and joyful, but it doesn’t seem to go anywhere, that’s not a bad thing! That is the mature state.

In reality, you are probably doing things in your spirit that you don’t necessarily need to know in the soul. Coming to that place where you don’t need to know is probably the process you’re in, because God wants you to get to that place where you can be and not just do. The doing flows out of the being.

I would say in everything that I’ve done in all my journey, I am now in a state of being rather than having to consciously think about doing because my spirit is living in the realms of heaven. I’m functioning in the realms of Heaven all the time, multi-dimensionally, in many different places synchronously, and I don’t need to know what it is most of the time. That, for me, is a state of rest, and I think you’re getting to that place. So don’t try and think you need to understand everything. You’ve surrendered to God. You’re in a place where you’re feeling loved. That’s the place where you’re able to do things in the spirit because you’re letting that happen.

I had to go through that process. My soul had to let go of the need to know and understand and just embrace the reality that sometimes I wouldn’t, but I trusted God anyway. I think you’re probably in that process as well. So just surrender. You don’t need to know. If you did, God would show you, and He will show you if you need to.

So relax. Don’t strive for seeing, engaging or doing things when you are already doing things. God is allowing you to see you can be doing things without necessarily having to be cognitively aware of all those things. The things I’ve done are because I’m a teacher, and my destiny is to equip other people into doing these things. So I do have a record of all the things I’ve done in the past to follow through a linear process to help people understand. But now, I’m in a state of being, which is a state of conscious awareness of just being. Communion to me is now a state of being. I don’t just take communion when I eat or drink; I am in a state of communion. So I’m constantly in communion, fellowship and intimacy. Therefore I’m constantly in that place of the love of God; and the power of God and the grace and mercy of God and the frequency of God’s love are transforming me, transforming my DNA, and cleansing everything in my life that might be a hindrance to me fully entering into everything that God has designed for me.

So, of course, yes, I did apply the blood of Jesus to my DNA. I did apply communion. I did do those things. I did go to my mountain and govern and rule, and I did go to the courts and do various things. I don’t do that consciously anymore. It’s not that I’m not doing it, but I don’t have to be focused on it because my spirit is capable of doing that while I’m functioning here and enjoying life. God wants you to have a place of love, joy and peace here, to enter into rest and enjoy life. Actually, if we are consciously having to do all these things, if I had to consciously do all of the seven or eight places I am in the spiritual realm now and do all the things that I’m doing simultaneously in those realms, it would take up more than 24 hours of my day. My spirit can do it because it’s not functioning in the same time scale.

So that brings you to a place of just coming to a place of rest, just trusting whatever the Father is doing. So many people would be desperate to feel so loved, so at peace and so joyful, because they’re not in that place. You’re in that place. Don’t get out of that place. Just stay in it. Don’t put an agenda on it. Just let God, and you’ll find that anything you need to see, He’ll show you. But don’t assume you’re not doing anything or going anywhere because I guarantee that you are. He is just freeing you to realise you don’t have to know everything about it all in that way.

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332. Embracing Multi-Dimensional Living

Mike Parsons –

So the Father said to me, “It’s time for true reality in multi-dimensional living, so you can fully enjoy the bliss of rest from your labours by learning to just be.” Now, I could meditate, and I did meditate on that for a long time, but I still didn’t get it. I didn’t get what He was trying to say. But I never give up; I just treasure things in my heart, and I got the fact that it would be blissful to be at rest. I didn’t quite understand what my labour of learning was, but I discovered that all the things I learned to do by engaging Heaven were labouring to enter that rest of being, to just be.

Glimpses

The Father went on, “I have shielded you from the knowledge of what you are as a nonlinear, multi-dimensional being.” That is important because if I had known, I would have tried to do it or figure out how I could do it, and that’s not possible in my own strength. So He hid from me some of the knowledge of what I was doing in a nonlinear, multi-dimensional way and what I was accomplishing in the spiritual realms by giving me small glimpses that provided limited understanding, which began to expand my belief system and my consciousness to accept more that was coming.

He said, “I will take the blinkers off your mind so your consciousness can expand to take in multi-dimensional reality, so you can truly appreciate your capacity as a mature son of God.” I believe God can do this for all of us. This is the immortal quality of our lives. God was trying to show me that I was not limited to what I could see or feel or operate in a one-dimensional way of thinking. This was a process; it didn’t just happen all at once. When God said that, I began to embrace my desire to encounter it. Through meditating and embracing it, I eventually became aware of who I was. That happened as an experience, built on all that God promised was going to come, which I treasured.

I began to brood over it, and it began to become pregnant within me. Eventually, it was brought to birth. That’s the sort of process God does in my life. He says something I don’t get; I meditate on it, and it begins to grow and form. And eventually, it comes to birth.

Quantum moments

What happened in that moment? I began to become aware of what I am doing at higher levels of consciousness in an expanded state of reality. Now, that sounds weird and a bit ‘out there’, but that’s the only way I can describe it. My mind expanded to begin to perceive what I was capable of being in multiple places, at multiple times, doing multiple things. I wrote, “I am, therefore I exist in manifoldness like my Dad, in nonlinear quantum moments that are the fulfilment of my destiny.” (A quantum moment is a particle of time, the smallest particle of time that can be. It’s not a second followed by another second. Within that moment, all moments exist, and therefore you can live from a perspective of expanded moments.)

I’ve given testimonies about contracting and expanding time and all of that: this was a way of being, a way of thinking that embraced what this meant. I can’t say I understood it all at the time, but I began to get some experience of it. I began to realise that my capacity for understanding it was growing, so I was fulfilling my destiny in the spiritual realm and the physical realm, which were totally connected.

Unrestricted

In those moments, I began to see all the things that I was doing. I became aware of the amazing scope of who we are as sons of God, what we have the capacity to become: nonlinear, multi-dimensional beings unrestricted by the limitations of time and space. I am within I AM, therefore I am in multiple places, doing multiple simultaneous things.

Before my mind was deconstructed and I had the capacity to think nonlinearly, and before I was engaging in the Eternal Now (which I couldn’t do consciously at first), I could only go there in the spirit. Eventually, I could engage it consciously because my ability had expanded to be able to rest there without trying to figure it out. If I had tried to figure out living in the Eternal Now, I would have probably gone crazy, but I didn’t. I parked my understanding—my desire to understand—and I just embraced the experience. That began to change and expand my thinking, enabling me to take in all that would have been too much for me.

You may not understand all the terminology of what I share, but all the things I speak of are places where I have encounters with the Father, the Son and the Spirit. They were all linear; they happened in time, sometimes expanded time in a heavenly perspective. Sometimes hours here meant days and weeks there, but they all happened sequentially, one after the other. I learned to function as a son in the realms of heaven in all the places I share.

Engaging God programme

This was ten years of my life, and it took time to learn all those things one after the other. Sharing my testimony of that journey is what the Engaging God programme is all about, which aims to help people go on their own journey to discover who they are and express that as sons of God.

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330. Find Truth Within: Trust Your Own Connection with God

Mike Parsons –

[In this online conversation Mike was talking to a particular individual, but it has relevance for all of us.]

Stop Listening to Others’ Opinions

You need to stop listening to other people – that would be where I would start! People have different views based on where they are in their journey, so some of the things they are saying are from their own perspective. They may say “the Father said this,” when actually He didn’t. Not every time someone says “the Father showed me this” is it the truth. Jesus is The Truth, not everything people say.

I would not look for people to affirm what you are hearing from the Father yourself. That is what you need to focus on. Maybe you had a wonderful experience, and then it feels like you let that be robbed from you because other people were telling you different things about certain important matters. But there is nothing more important than having time with God and enjoying His presence.

Measuring Truth by God’s Love

How do I measure whether something has the frequency of God on it or not? I use love. Is this loving? Is this a reflection of a loving God? If not, I am not going to believe it. There’s an American prophet who recently said horrible things towards the US President. He is not a prophet that spoke from God (that time). Has he spoken from God before? I’m sure he probably has, but that was not from God – it was coming from his own political agenda on the inside. That doesn’t faze me – because I don’t accept it as God since it’s not love. You can’t be cursing someone and it be from God. Sometimes you have to use love as the measure and say “okay, is this aligned with love?” If not, just reject it. But I would stop looking to a lot of different people to talk to you about different things.

Focus on Your Own Relationship with God

Personally, I don’t listen to anybody. I’m not saying that arrogantly – I spend time listening to God. Yes, I hang out with some people sometimes and talk, but I don’t listen to other people’s sermons, messages, or read their books generally. I have too much invested in my time with God and enjoying life to spend all that time looking at what God said to somebody else. Now if God asked me to listen to something, I would. I did listen to something recently from Brad Jersak on understanding why God seems so different in the Old Testament versus the New, and it was very helpful – it affirmed what I already knew. But generally, I am not looking for other people to give me that. You can become double-minded because you’re trying to understand what others are thinking and come into agreement with it, but you have to accept that some people are not talking from God, although they say they are.

The less you hear from people, the less you have that problem. It is not a problem to question what someone is saying and measure it against love. I am not going to publicly criticise those people, but inside I’m not going to accept what they’re saying because I’m questioning it and measuring against love. I would absolutely doubt what those people are saying. That’s not a problem… but doubting what God is saying to you because others are saying something contradictory or trying to sway you – or tell you what god ‘must’ be saying – now that is a problem. Don’t be swayed by the fear of man. Don’t think you need someone to affirm what God is telling you, because maybe He’s not saying it to anybody else. You need the courage of your convictions to say “I’m going to trust You, that when I come to You, what You’re saying to me is true.”

Think on the pure, lovely and good

So don’t allow things to make you crazy by letting other people affect you, whereas I won’t allow other people to affect me. Maybe the cloud of witnesses speaking to someone has a different message for that person at that point on their journey than for somebody else. Or maybe that person is just interpreting what they thought they heard through their own filters, coming to their own conclusion – it may not be what was intended at all. I don’t believe it is for us to judge somebody else, so don’t let it make you crazy. Just say “Okay, I don’t know, it doesn’t sound loving to me so I’m not going to listen to it.” Leave it there – you don’t have to go through it, it’s not your responsibility.

If it’s making you crazy, it is because you are allowing it to. Don’t focus on it. As Paul said, think on things that are pure, lovely and good. Where there is conflict, confrontation and differences of opinion – those are not good things to think about. Just let it go. Focus on the good. Focus on being that bride, that person who Jesus just wanted to make feel special, because you are special and He wants you to feel that way. Other people may not want you to feel so special – some will always be negative. Don’t doubt your own experiences and thoughts with God just because someone else contradicts it. Don’t allow them to make you sad, or struggle thinking “this isn’t right.” You had that experience, you know it was right, you know how good it was. Don’t be robbed!

Conclusion

So I feel that for a time or season, it might be good to have a period where you shut off listening to other people, including me! You don’t need to listen to anybody – give all that time to just listening to the Lord, just listening to the Father, engaging Him. Set aside a day, week, month – whatever time you want – and just focus on that, excluding all the other voices from your head. Listen to the one voice – the Voice of Love, the Voice of Truth. Then I think a lot of these things will fall into place, and you’ll realise “Hey, I don’t need this. I don’t need other people’s opinions in my life. I’m just looking at God’s opinion – that’s all that counts.”

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329. Evangelising Non-Christians: A Fresh Perspective

Mike Parsons –

In the last post, I talked about evangelising Christians. Now I turn to those who do not consider themselves Christians at all.

Challenging Preconceptions for Non-Christians

When it comes to talking to people who are not yet Christians or not yet believing, or have not yet realised what Jesus has done for them, I would start at a different place. I would probably begin by challenging what they think they know about Jesus and God, because it is probably not the truth. I would likely challenge some of the preconceptions they think they know from whatever religious upbringing they have had. I would say, “You may have thought you needed to do this or this or this, but actually God has done it all – you just have to receive it.” I would use illustrations like: “When someone buys a gift for you, they wrap it nicely, present it well, put your name on it, and then hand it to you. You didn’t buy it, you didn’t deserve it – it was a gift they gave you. But it wasn’t yours until you received it, even though your name was on it. Only when you reached out, took it, opened it, and received it as a gift could you say ‘this is now mine.’ Until then, you haven’t received anything, even though the gift is there.”

The Gift of God’s Grace

That is essentially what God has done. Jesus has reconciled everybody. He has taken away ‘the sin’ – the lost identity, their amnesia from who they really are. He has revealed the Father (as Jesus is the express image of the Father). He has shown people that it is all about love: He has called people to love one another, forgive one another. I would challenge them to see what Jesus said in light of our religious thinking – an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, vengeance, God being angry and needing appeasing. To say, “It’s already been done! God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. He’s already made a relationship, already given you the Spirit and made you alive so you can know Him. He’s already done all these amazing things – why don’t you just let Him give you that experience?”

Receiving the Gift

So give them the opportunity of having that experience as well. Probably having knocked down some religious ideas like “you have to go to church, pray, read the Bible” and so on. You can say, “Who said you have to do any of those things?” and open up a whole different vista of who God really is. It’s like the book “The Jesus I Never Knew” by Philip Yancey – he was probably brought up in the Bible Belt but never knew Jesus for who He really was. I would try to present Jesus as someone they may have thought they knew, but there’s more – a truth that probably challenges what they thought they knew.

Then I would stress the need for experience – that it is a relationship, God with us. God is in them already, wanting to reveal Himself to them. Ask them to give Him a chance. Then you can use something like “Behold I stand at the door and knock,” and say, “God is in you, within your spirit. He wants you to let Him into the rest of your life – to bless you, heal you, make you whole, remove all guilt, shame, condemnation, give you your true identity as His son, empower you to succeed and prosper.” Then get them to close their eyes, picture a door, open it, and see what happens.

Conclusion

So ultimately it all comes down to the same point – encouraging both Christians and non-Christians to experience things. But in both groups you may need to remove some preconceived ideas about what they think it is all about and what they think might be the truth. Then help them find The Truth as a person – Jesus – through that experiential encounter with the reality of who God is and what He has already done.