Unconditional Love – Sons of Issachar

524. What Does Love Mean? Experience, Belief and the Nature of God’s Love

Mike Parsons –

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Understanding Love Through Experience

What do we mean when we use the word love? What do we think and feel when we hear the word love? The answer to those questions will have been influenced and affected by our personal experiences. For some, you hear the word love and it is a really hard thing to hear because you may have been affected by broken relationships and promises of love which never came to fruition.

John (who I believe experienced a depth of love) when he wrote John 14, was expressing something of his own personal experience and what Jesus was revealing to him. John also wrote in 1 John 4:16, “we have come to know,” and that means by personal experience, “and have believed.” When you have personal experience, you do believe. It is not that you believe and then that gives you the experience. The experience gives you the belief.

That is why faith is not based in what we experience, but in the realisation of what is already true. Therefore, we do not have to have faith. God has faith in us, or God imparts His faith to us. So as we experience it, we will inevitably believe it, unless we have a real problem with trust and we are suspicious, and that does happen.

309. Experience love – and be free!

Experience Produces Belief

I have seen miracles happen. I have seen miracles performed as I prayed for people, and people have watched and observed amazing things, people’s legs growing and things like that. And then they are sceptical of whether they really saw that, whether it was really true, whether it really happened. And they were there watching it, but they did not have the experience.

I guarantee that the person who had their leg grow, and therefore were not lopsided in their walk and no longer had a problem with their back and everything else that caused, did not have a problem believing that they were healed, because they experienced it themselves.

So this verse in 1 John 4:16, “we have come to know and believe the love which God has for us,” is the key to restoring first love. It is the love that God has for us from the beginning, that we knew in the beginning.

God is love, and the one who abides in love (abiding meaning dwelling, living) abides in God, and God abides in him. When we are abiding in this love relationship, we are abiding in God, and God abides in us. This is the way God described, and John described, what Jesus said in John 14. This relationship with love brings about an abiding where we live in love, and therefore we live in God, and God lives in us.

The Meaning of John 3:16

We know John 3:16 as a verse. It is probably one of the most famous verses there is. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish,” (or actually “be lost” is a better translation, because the word perish means lost) “but have eternal life.”

So God so loved everyone and everything that He gave, because He was totally committed to the restoration of us to that love, so that we could have eternal life, which is a return to the origin of life, the eternal nature of that origin. This does not just mean that we go to heaven one day when we die. It means a return to the true origin of what life was intended to be with God.

400. Living in Union with God: Embracing Our Original Design

One Word, Many Meanings

Love is one word in the English language with many different meanings. Other languages have multiple words that differentiate its meaning. Greek and Hebrew both have different words for love.

But in English, we have one word. I can say to someone, “I love you,” or I can say, “I love ice cream.” I do love ice cream. But does that carry the same weight as loving a person? No. The words are the same, but the context gives meaning. They are very different concepts, but we use the same word, and therefore it can be misunderstood.

Hebrew Words for Love

Hebrew words for love include:

Ahav – spontaneous, impulsive love
Hesed – deliberate choice of affection, kindness, covenant love
Racham – to have compassion, brotherly love

These are different words expressing something that in English we describe with one word.

Greek Words for Love

Greek also has multiple words for love.

Eros – Erotic love is not found in the New Testament, but is present in Greek literature. Other words include phileo and storge (pronounced stor-gay), which are found in the New Testament and have specific meanings.

Phileo love – means to have a special interest in someone or something, often with a focus on close association, affection, or friendship. It refers to a strong liking or friendship. We love things we strongly like. So I can say I love ice cream in that context. But I am not in love with ice cream. I might say I love my car or I love the way your hair looks. These uses of the word do not convey the full depth of what love is intended to mean.

Storge – refers to the love and affection that naturally occurs between parents and children. It can also exist between siblings and between husbands and wives in a good marriage. You can have storge love in a marriage, but if you add agape love to that marriage, it goes to a completely different level.

Romans 10:12 talks about philo storgos, encouraging us to be loving and kind to each other, expressing that brotherly and familial love.

Agape: The Nature of God’s Love

Then there is the Greek word agape, which was seldom used in Greek literature but is used extensively in the Bible. It refers to the love of God, the kind of love God has for us, and the love we are to have for God and for people.

You can agape love your enemies, but you cannot phileo love them. That is because agape is not motivated by feelings or emotions. Agape is the very nature of God, who is love.

Agape love is known by the action it prompts towards others. It motivates positive action. It is not about doing things because of feelings, obligation, or duty. It is the motivation and empowerment to love; but it must be received in order to be expressed. Agape love is not simply an impulse generated from feelings. It is an exercise of the will, a deliberate choice.

That is why God can encourage us to love our enemies. We can choose to do what God has done for us, not based on whether they deserve it, or how we feel, but because of His love. He is not commanding us to feel something towards our enemies, but to act in a loving way towards them. Forgiveness is one way of expressing that.

Agape love is therefore related to choice and commitment, not just emotion.

Biblical Expressions of Love

Loving someone is to be like God towards them, seeking their long-term blessing and good.

There are many biblical references to agape love:

Matthew 5:43–44 – love your enemies
Matthew 22:36–40 – the great commandment, love God
John 3:16 – God so loved the world
John 13:34 – a new commandment, love one another
John 17:26 – that the love with which You loved Me may be in them
Romans 5:5 – the love of God poured out within our hearts

Did we feel it? Did we experience it? Do we know it? It is important that we do. Even if we have not experienced it yet, we can still come into that experience.

Love as Fulfilment and Empowerment

Romans 13:10 says love is the fulfilment of the law. 1 Corinthians 13 says the greatest of these is love. 2 Corinthians 5:14 says the love of Christ controls us; not in the sense of forcing us, but empowering us, inspiring and motivating us. Galatians 5:6 speaks of faith working through love. Galatians 5:22 says the fruit of the Spirit is love. 1 John 4:7 says everyone who loves is born of God.

God expresses His character through restoring first love, to inspire us, motivate us, and empower us to love Him, ourselves, and others. If you do not love yourself, then you have not experienced God’s love. That raises an important question: how comfortable are we with loving ourselves? How do we even think about that concept?

Some people struggle with that, but God wants us to know His love so that we can love ourselves, knowing how loved, valuable, and worthy we are, and from that place, love others.

What Love Is, and Is Not

Love is not just a virtue, a value, an ideal, or a moral principle. It is not just a feeling, a sentiment, an impulse, or a passion. It is not just romance, benevolence, or amicability. Love is the most powerful force in the whole of creation.

John 13:34 says, “I am giving you a new commandment, that you love one another.” And the most important part is this: “just as I have loved you.”

It is impossible to agape love someone without first experiencing God’s love. We may have emotions, and we may even sacrifice for others, but when we know we are loved by God, we are empowered in a completely different dimension to love others. That is the key. That is how the world awakens to love: when people feel and see others loving them and one another the way God intends.

328. Experiencing God’s Love: A New Approach to Evangelising Christians

The Source of True Love

Only God can express His character through love to us, to inspire and motivate us to love ourselves and others with agape. Love is not a psychological predisposition or a genetically produced social habit. That is what you will often find if you look for explanations of love. Agape love can only be expressed by us when it is derived from God.

Love is the essence, nature, and character of God, experienced by us and then expressed through our lives. God’s love has practical features to be expressed and demonstrated. Love is not defined by the act, but by the character of God within the act.

You can do something that appears loving, but not be motivated by God’s heart in doing it.

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518. My Spiritual Awakening | Angels and More

Mike Parsons –

The Role of Angels

The angels were involved from the very beginning, because I did not fully understand what was happening. Only in hindsight can I see the cycles of change in my life, one after another. One significant moment was when I was baptized in the Spirit. I discovered several books that challenged my understanding of spirit, soul, and body. There was one particular book, probably the thickest I had ever read, The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee, exploring the nature of the spirit, soul and body, and how they interact. I devoured it because I was hungry for understanding. It began to reveal the role of the Holy Spirit and my own spirit in ways I had never considered.

By accident, I found another book, Nine O’Clock in the Morning by Dennis and Rita Bennett, written in the late 1950s in the United States. It focused on baptism in the Spirit and spiritual gifts. At that time, I was in the Brethren church, which did not embrace any of these ideas. Reading the book, I was astonished—it shared how encounters with the Holy Spirit transformed lives.

I began asking questions, but many dismissed it. Some said, “Oh, that is not for today,” while others claimed those experiencing it were deceived. It was a difficult time, and God had to change my mindset. This cycle of change, with the Holy Spirit active in my life, ultimately brought about transformation. I realised I needed confirmation for myself. I could not simply accept, “Yes, God said it, it is true.” I required evidence.

Baptism in the Spirit

I found confirmation through Martin Lloyd-Jones, a well-known preacher at Westminster Chapel in London. His recordings and his book Baptism of the Spirit convinced me theologically that baptism in the Spirit is for today—and I desired it. It still took several years before I received it, but I pursued it diligently.

Cycles of change were facilitated by both people and angels. At one point, a childhood friend I had not seen for years returned to my life. He had become a Christian and was baptized in the Spirit. He laid his hand on my head in a small group, and I experienced a powerful encounter with God.

God orchestrates these cycles; He is active, not passive, in bringing us into the maturity of sonship. Receiving baptism in the Holy Spirit opened another cycle of change. I became more open to hearing God and understanding His purposes. This led to a fresh perspective on eschatology—understanding kingdom and covenant in ways I had not encountered growing up in the Brethren church. God revealed truths beyond the futurism and premillennial rapture teaching I had known.

Community and Mentorship

After several years, I found an old book by Archibald Hughes, which affirmed all that God had been teaching me. Deconstructing my previous beliefs had taken time. I did not teach these truths for twenty or thirty years, fearing controversy. Eventually, I could no longer remain silent. The insights were so radically aligned with Jesus’ teaching that they opened a broader understanding—about covenantal judgment on the old system, the generation, and God’s ongoing work in the world.

God’s orchestration of my life was evident in these cycles of change, often interspersed with periods of rest. I saw the angels’ involvement and recognised God as the conductor of an orchestra—the symphony is the song of my life, and He directs the rhythm. I may not fully understand how conductors work, but the orchestra responds to His guidance: speeding up, slowing down, and emphasising particular movements. God’s involvement in every detail is remarkable.

Deconstructing Beliefs

We do not need to understand everything fully; our role is to participate and cooperate. Over time, I learned not to resist or demand full comprehension before embracing God’s work in me. I became proactive, recognising cycles of change and the timing of God’s intervention. He is gracious, merciful, and loving. He knows exactly what we need and when, helping us enter into His processes rather than resist them.

Our backgrounds influence how easily we assimilate new truths. Some of us, like myself, require much convincing. But as I grew sensitive to God’s work, I learned to embrace transformation willingly—stepping onto the altar to be refined and purified without hesitation. Previously, I clung to control, needing to be convinced to release things. Now, I trust Him completely. God is always good. If He leads us through something, it is for our ultimate blessing, making it easier to say “yes” quickly.

God does not intend to harm us or make life unnecessarily difficult. Often, it is we who make things harder for ourselves. Trusting Him accelerates our willingness to embrace His work in us because we recognise His goodness, mercy, and love. He is a good, loving, wonderful Father, always seeking the best for us.

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314. Limiting Mindsets and Beliefs

516. The Poison Tree | Eschatology Unravelled:

398. Embrace Transformation and Renewal

513. Who Are You Really? Unpacking Identity

Mike Parsons –

I believe the world is beginning to experience a series of awakenings. A love awakening, a grace awakening, a joy awakening, a peace awakening. A true God awakening to the reality of who God really is. We are part of that awakening, helping people discover the truth as we discover the truth ourselves, and then share it and live it. It is important that we embrace these awakenings. As we do, we begin to carry and express them naturally.

For a long time, God kept asking me a simple but profound question: who are you? He asked it in various ways over a period of time. At first, my answers were always works-based, tied to what I was doing. Like many people, I identified myself by what I did rather than by who I was. My soul defined my identity, but God was seeking to reveal the true me. For that to happen, my soul had to accept it, and that was not an easy process.

All of us go through a process, and God reveals who we really are in different ways. At the same time, he exposes what hinders us from accepting that reality. Each of us carries things that God has to deal with. Our souls have constructed identities using the data collected throughout our lives: things that happened to us, information we received, and the programming we absorbed through culture, religion and family. Information flowed through our senses, shaping survival strategies that helped the soul cope and protect itself from harsh realities.

Those defence mechanisms, however, often become prisons. They falsely promise safety while preventing us from knowing who we really are. Until the soul surrenders control, we cannot fully trust God for protection, provision and direction. Letting go of control is difficult, especially when we have learned to do everything ourselves. Trusting God sounds simple, but it is not. I believed I trusted God implicitly until he began to challenge what trust really meant in my relationship with him.

So, who am I? That question sits at the core of most people’s inner life.

Imagine a scene. You are in a boat, adrift on a vast ocean. You do not know where you are, and you do not realise that this ocean is unconditional love. You have no sails and no oars. This is the position humanity often finds itself in, unaware of where it truly is and protecting itself from the very reality that surrounds it. This state of despair is an illusion, a deception that causes people to try to navigate the surface of an ocean of love through self-effort.

The answer is to get out of the boat and sink into the depths of unconditional love. There we discover who we really are and who God really is. We are never separated from God, because we exist within him. Acts 17:28 tells us that in him we live and move and have our being. Everything exists within God, who has created space within himself for relationship. Separation, therefore, is an illusion we have created through guilt and shame. That illusion keeps us from intimacy with God and traps us in a lost identity.

Getting out of the boat feels counterintuitive to the natural mind, which has been conditioned to follow an independent, self-directed path. Yet the question remains: who are you, and how will you find out? I would suggest that you will never truly know if you stay in the boat. Even when it feels safer to stay there, paddling with your hands requires constant effort and never brings you to truth.

Who do you think you are? Ten years ago, I would have answered differently than I would today. Five years ago, my answer would have changed again. Thirty years ago, it would have been completely different. Who do others think you are? That question matters, because if we allow it, the opinions of others can define us. Are you shaped by your past experiences, your circumstances, your parents, your friends, your boss or even your genetics?

The deeper question is this: who does love say you are?

Get out of the boat. Sink into the vast ocean of love. Surrender, be immersed and saturated in unconditional love. Return to first love, because it is there that we discover who we really are. God, who is love, defines us. He defines who you are.

So, who are you? I would suggest that we can only truly know through a restored, face-to-face love relationship with God as Father, Son and Spirit. It is that relationship which enables us to discover the truth and to live in it.

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272. One Conclusion: God Is Love

510. Discovering Your Worth: The Truth of Being a Child of God

336. Get out of the boat… and SINK!

511. From Selfishness to Generosity

Mike Parsons –

If you are believing for something, you cannot be negative about it or double-minded. You need to live in the reality that you have already received it. Jesus said to pray believing that you have received, and you will receive.

Of course, this can easily drift into selfishness. Bigger house, bigger car, better job, more of this and more of that. The real question is why we want something. Is it simply for ourselves, or is it so that it can be a blessing? God wants to bless us so that we can bless others. There is always a receiving so that we can give.

Some approaches to manifesting reality are rooted in self-centredness. The principles may appear to work, but they do not bring joy or fulfilment. People can have more possessions and still be no happier. Materialism cannot meet a spiritual need. At best, it offers a temporary fix. God is not opposed to blessing us, but the purpose of blessing is always relational and outward-facing.

Everything operates at a frequency. Matter, thoughts, intentions, desires, all of it carries energy. When you intentionally release a desire aligned with God’s heart and purpose, that intention carries a frequency. It can connect with another person who is aligned in spirit.

This is something I experienced personally. When God spoke to me about having another relationship, it was not even on my radar. I was content living on my own and thought I did not need the complexity of relationship. When God challenged me, I initially questioned it. But then I realised my thinking had been centred on my own contentment rather than on being a blessing to someone else.

If I am loved unconditionally by God and I do not share that love, then I am actually withholding something that was never meant to be kept to myself. My thinking shifted. The question then became how this could even happen, since I had not dated since I was sixteen, which was many decades earlier.

When I asked God how this would work, He reminded me that I already knew how to connect. That meant I had to act. I chose to release my intention, carrying the frequency of a desire to love someone, to bless someone and to make them happy. That intention connected with someone whose spirit was open to receiving love.

I am not saying there is only one possible person, but I did find the right person for me. When we eventually met, I knew in my spirit that this was the person I had connected with through intention and desire. I did not explain that on the first meeting, of course. That would not have gone down well. But within minutes, we were talking about deep things. There was an ease and depth that was unusual.

I engaged her at a spiritual level, even though she did not initially know that was what was happening. She felt it. She sensed a level of connection she had not experienced before. What I was doing was simply mirroring what God had done with me.

God had drawn me into first love, into my origin and identity in Him. That restoration opened the door for me to love another in the same way. I never believed God could restore my ability to experience first love. I thought that part of me had been lost through pain and disappointment earlier in life. I had closed down emotionally to protect myself.

God brought healing. Then He restored my capacity for first love. I fell in love, but I fell in love after choosing to love. That was the difference. I did not start with physical attraction or emotional intensity. I engaged first in the spirit.

When we met again, we sat by a lake and talked for hours. Time disappeared. I could see into her heart, the hurt, the caution, the pain from past experiences. In that moment, I knew I had a choice. I could choose to love her unconditionally and create a safe environment for her to heal and open again.

That is what God does with us. He chooses to love us. I chose to love her. I gave her time and space, creating safety rather than pressure. As I engaged her spirit with mine, she gradually opened. I fell in love, and with that came the emotions of first love, but without the immaturity, fear or hormonal confusion of adolescence. It was purer.

God restored my ability to love fully. I opened the garden of my heart and shared who I really was. She felt it, even before she understood it. At one point she said, “You are getting under my skin in a good way. What are you doing?” I explained that I was engaging her spirit, something she had never experienced before.

What had died in a previous relationship was awakened again. I discovered who I truly was. Romantic, expressive, affirming, generous, desiring to bless and serve. I realised those qualities had always been part of me, but they had been buried.

This restoration began with a simple question: how do I connect with the right person? The answer was intention. I released desire, purpose and frequency, and I trusted that connection would happen.

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393. Nurturing Your Faith | Preparing for God’s Blessings

477. Transform Your Reality | Harnessing the Power of Intention

360. The Reality of Unconditional Love (Meditation)

500. Jesus, The Ultimate Fact-Checker!

Mike Parsons –

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Just don’t accept anything from anybody as gospel truth without actually getting that truth from Jesus, the Truth.

And Jesus said to me, “I’m the best fact checker there is”. So I take anything that is dubious, or I’m concerned about, or thinking that can’t be true, or is that true? – I take it before him. And the more I hang out with the Truth, the more I pick up things that aren’t true because they carry the wrong frequency; they vibrate at a discordant frequency that is not harmonious with the truth.

And it becomes easier to discern what isn’t and is true because we practise by training our senses to discern, by hanging out with the Truth, who helps us discern what is true and what isn’t true.

And then love is always the backstop. It is always the backstop. Love is always going to be the thing that you ultimately use in that discernment process.

344. Training Your Senses to Engage

458. Spiritual Frequency | How God Hears Your Prayers

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484. Measure Everything Against Love

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497. Escaping the Cult of Fear-Based Religion

Mike Parsons –

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Deconstruction has continued to go on all the way through that period, so that I could be free from the religious perspectives that had kept me in bondage; kept me from knowing the true nature of God, the true nature of myself as a son of God and the true nature of creation and all of the wonderful things that we have embraced as being part of that. But it’s not an easy thing. You know, I’ve got to be honest, it is indoctrination.

People who have been in a cult and come out of that cult, it’s very difficult to get the cult out of them. They have to go through a process of deprogramming, which is not easy because the programs are based on reward and fear, which is exactly what the evangelical programming is based on. Fear of hell, fear of losing your salvation, fear of being punished, fear, fear, fear. But perfect love casts out fear. So where is God within that?

479. Unmasking Fear: How Religion Manipulates Belief

342. “God Punishes Those He Loves!”

254. Restored to Sonship

491. When I Let Go Of Penal Substitutionary Atonement

Mike Parsons

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Penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) was the first to go. When I began to express my doubts about it to others, one woman involved in mystic and mentoring groups emailed me, saying I was trying to take away ‘the cornerstone of her faith’. She was serious and angry at me because she wanted to hold onto PSA as the cornerstone of her belief.

I told her that if that’s where she wanted to remain, that was her choice, but I was moving on. Naturally, that upset some people, but many others resonated with the idea that it didn’t make sense for God as Father to kill or punish His Son. And when you investigate further, you find that PSA is actually a doctrine that only emerged in the tenth century…

299. PSA Sounds Nothing Like Jesus! (Penal Substitutionary Atonement [1])

304. Wrath is not the solution | Penal Substitutionary Atonement [2]

490. Can Changing One Belief Change Everything?

Mike Parsons

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“Do you want me to remove these pillars from your mind?” asked the Father.

I believe six of them were religious pillars, and three were cultural or scientific. It was then that I realised these pillars were framing how I viewed the world and understood reality around me.

The first and strongest pillar was evangelicalism. He removed that one first, shaking me to the core by taking it away. Every evangelical thought I had was challenged, especially the idea of penal substitutionary atonement, which was the first belief to be questioned. God didn’t just take the pillar out; he shook it, challenging my beliefs and creating instability in my belief system around those topics. And penal substitutionary atonement was the first to go.

363. Deconstructing the Pillars of Your Mind

299. PSA Sounds Nothing Like Jesus! (Penal Substitutionary Atonement [1])

250. Pillars In My Mind

304. Wrath is not the solution | Penal Substitutionary Atonement [2]

489. Nine Pillars That Shaped (And Shook) My Beliefs

Mike Parsons

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I’m not going to go far wrong if I interpret everything through love. I might get some minor things a bit mixed up or twisted, but the bottom line is that love won’t lead me too far astray if I lean that way. On the other hand, if I lean towards judgment, condemnation or other negative interpretations, I’m stepping beyond the scope of love.

I don’t go there any more.

It took a long time for my mind to be deprogrammed from my religious upbringing and the programming of evangelicalism, along with the other pillars of my thinking. He asked me if I wanted him to remove these pillars from my mind. About six of them were religious, as I was brought up very religiously, and three were cultural or scientific, influenced by an education that included cultural relativism and similar ideas.

443. Unconditional Love – NO RECORD OF WRONGS

363. Deconstructing the Pillars of Your Mind

488. Do You Only See What You Expect To See?

Mike Parsons

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All those people who say they have been in hell for ten minutes, or whatever, are framing their experience through their theological understanding of hell rather than the truth. They see what they expect to see. That is the problem. We can be confirmation-biased and create our own scenario around what God is really trying to show us.

This is why we need to let God renew our minds and trust him in that process, rather than resisting him. At the same time, we should not be naive enough to think that everything we are thinking is already correct, because we are all still in the process. Even so, I would rather err on the side of love in everything I think than lean towards anything else. If I interpret everything through love, I will not go far wrong.