142. Present A Living Sacrifice (2)

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect
 (Romans 12:1-2).

Transformation is complete, thorough, radical change. It enables us to prove (to find out and be sure of) what is the perfect will of God for us (that is, what is our destiny), and then to outwork it.

Present ourselves daily

But it involves sacrifice.

Worship is surrender. Worship is obedience. So we come to Jesus, our High Priest, and we present ourselves at the altar as a living sacrifice. This is something we are to do every day. We present ourselves to God so that He can use us, He can transform us, He can change us. It is not the sacrifice who is responsible for the changing. We do not have to transform ourselves: we merely have to present ourselves and God will do the changing.

So by faith we enter the Holy Place, in the heavenly tabernacle, in the heavenly realms. There is an altar there. Not the bronze altar where Israel used to offer sacrifices: Jesus was offered on that altar once and for all. We come instead to the altar of incense. When we give ourselves to God as a living sacrifice, the fragrance of our submitted lives goes up before Him, and He loves it.

Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus… (Heb 10:19).

Because of Jesus’ sacrifice and death, we can come right into the Holy Place. We do not come on our own merit, we come by the blood of Jesus. The blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:17).

Jesus is our High Priest, and He prepares the sacrifice that we give Him: our life. We have to present ourselves to Him and allow Him to deal with us. So we come by faith to surrender. We have looked before at the details of how the sacrificial lamb was prepared for sacrifice. It is really helpful for us to understand how those steps apply to us. If you are not familiar with this, please do take the time to read about it before moving on.

Click this link to read our earlier post (opens in a new window or tab): Present A Living Sacrifice (1).

Preparing the sacrifice

It is a picture of what we need to have done to us. The priest slit its throat, drained its blood, chopped off its head, skinned it, split it open, right down to the marrow of the backbone. Everything was opened up before God. All the inner organs were washed and  the legs cut off. Then the pieces were put on the altar.

We have to surrender our lives to Him, fully, for Him to do what He needs to do. Jesus said, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it” (Luke 9:23-24). We surrender our life to God, and exchange His life for ours. That is the meaning of sacrifice.

Dead, but alive

Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
(Rom 6:11-13).

If the flesh has to die, how is it a living sacrifice? It is because the flesh dies, but we carry on living in the spirit. Then our flesh does not get in the way, and the members of our body can be presented as instruments of righteousness, so that God can use us for His kingdom purposes. ‘Not my will, but Yours be done’, as Jesus said.

For the Word that God speaks is alive and full of power [making it active, operative, energizing, and effective]; it is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line of the breath of life (soul) and [the immortal] spirit, and of joints and marrow [of the deepest parts of our nature], exposing and sifting and analyzing and judging the very thoughts and purposes of the heart (Heb 4:12 AMP).

We are allowing God to open us up and reveal the deepest parts of our nature, to cleanse us, to purify us, and restore us; to expose, sift, analyse, and judge the very thoughts and purposes of our heart. And because he loves us, He will change us from the inside out, so that we are more like Him.

‘In like manner’

In our daily walk we are surrendered and obedient to what God wants to do in us. We walk by faith and not by sight; according to His will and not ours, only doing what we see the Father doing. And the Father in us is able to do all His works through us. That is how Jesus lived every day, and He wants us to live every day that way too.

We cannot do it in our own strength. We cannot do it by the flesh. We can only do it in the spirit. We have to surrender.

Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner” (John 5:19). If Jesus could do nothing of Himself, how much less can we?

Faith of the Son of God

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20 KJV).

When Jesus was on the cross, bearing our sin, we were crucified with Him. He is living in me, and that life is lived by faith of the Son of God (I have purposely quoted a translation that says ‘of’: it is not even my faith that I live by, but His). Jesus surrendered His life so that we could have full, abundant life. I want to encourage you, every day to present yourself as a living sacrifice before God. Surrender, and allow Him to prepare you, to change you, to transform you from the inside out, to deal with your soul so that your spirit can flow in the life of God.

We are going to pray, and I want to encourage you to be willing to daily deny yourself and allow the Spirit and the life of God to flow through you, out from you, and to change you.

Every day, present yourself. I do, every day; so that every day, God can use me.

Father, I thank You that You sent Jesus
to die on the cross for me
to take my sin, my sickness,
and everything about my flesh,
and to die in my place.

I choose to surrender myself as a living sacrifice to You,
and allow You to prepare my life
for the life of Jesus to flow from me.

Prepare my life as I surrender,
so that everything that has come through nature
can be transformed
everything that has come through nurture
can be transformed,
everything that has come through trauma
can be transformed,
so that I live a life flowing in the Spirit and in the power of God
bringing the kingdom of God from heaven to earth,
living as a manifestation of Your presence here on earth,
that Your light would shine through me.

I open up my life in surrender to You.
so that You can do Your work through me
and that I might bring glory to You.

Jesus, as You gave Your life for me,
I choose to give my life to You, daily,
as a living sacrifice,
in order to fulfil my destiny
and the purposes of God, here and now in this time,
so that in eternity I will be able to fulfil all You have for me to do there.

Father, I praise You,
Father, I bless You,
In Jesus’ Name

.Amen.

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141. The Flesh Profits Nothing

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

God intends us to be spirit, soul and body, in that order. Our soul and body should be subject to our spirit, now that our spirit has come alive to God. If we want to build a strong spirit, we saw last time how praying in tongues on the inside and on the outside is something we need to practise.

Meanwhile we also need to deal with the soul.

Nothing good

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.
(Gal 5:16).

Our spirit needs to be strong to lead, direct and guide us in our everyday life so that we will not carry out the desires of the flesh. The desires of the flesh are not good, and we have to accept that. We want to believe there is a bit of good in there somewhere, but there is not. There is nothing good about our flesh whatsoever. It always gets us in a mess.

For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please (Gal 5:17).

So whilst my spirit is flowing from the Holy Spirit, and the purposes of God for my life and my destiny, my flesh has tried to get in the way and has to be brought into line. Our flesh wants to please itself; our spirit desires to please God.

Two completely different agendas, because if you please yourself you cannot please God (and our flesh does not even want us to understand that).

“I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing”
(John 15:5).

Nothing of any eternal value or significance can be done apart from Jesus; apart from Him who dwells in our spirit, and flows through our life.

“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing…” (John 6:63).

Trust

That is really hard for the flesh to take. We really like to think we can at least do something. I went through a time in my personal times with God in which I was engaging Him in the garden of my heart, but I was in complete pitch-black darkness. It was not a place of fear, just of not being able to see anything and resting in complete stillness before Him. I found it so hard. I really wanted to know what was happening.

But God said, “Will you just trust Me? Just stay still, and let Me do what I need to do to prepare you for what is to come.” I thought, “Of course I can do that.” But when it came to it, my flesh was desperate to know what was going on. I remember one day I cried out to Him, “O God, what is going on?” And He answered me, “I don’t need your assistance, just your surrender.” It was really difficult. But what it came down to was this:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
And do not lean on your own understanding
(Proverbs 3:5).

I had to realise that maybe I did not trust Him as much as I thought I did. I had to die to that need to know what was going on. I had to choose to trust God even if I could not see anything. I had to trust that whatever He would do would be the best thing for me. So I know it is hard when we have to deal with the flesh.

Humanism is independence from God. It is doing things without God. That is what Adam and Eve bought into when they sinned. Satan offered them the opportunity to gain knowledge without God. Everything in dealing with the flesh is dealing with humanism and dealing with independence. There is nothing good that comes from independence.

Self

We need to die to self.

Self-centredness: it is very difficult because of course we are at the centre of all that goes on in our life, but that has to flow from the spirit, not the flesh. Selfishness is wanting to put myself first above everybody else, whereas when Jesus came He said, “I have not come to be served, but to serve.” That is a completely different attitude, and I should also seek to serve rather than be served. There is no place for selfishness or self-centredness in that. We are so accustomed to being self-centred, and life revolving around us.

Anyone who is married knows that when you get married, life does not revolve around you as a single person any more. You have to think about somebody else. When we become Christians, we enter into a relationship with God in which we are no longer in first place: He is. When we become Christians, we say that we make Him Lord of our life: we must make sure that He really is.

We need to die to self-importance, self-promotion, self-reliance, self-sufficiency, even self-belief. There is nothing of the spirit in these. We can have no self-righteousness. Self-help, self-expression.

You might think, ‘Surely they are not all negative?’ Anything that comes from the flesh is negative, and however hard we find that, we have to surrender.

Self-respect, self-esteem, self-worth. If my self-respect comes from what I have done in the flesh, if my self-esteem comes from what I can do, they are not good. I want my esteem to come from how God sees me; from knowing who I am as a child of God, knowing the love of God, knowing the value He places upon me. My worth comes from knowing that I am God’s child, that He loves me and has a purpose for me. My self-image is not how I view myself, but it is seeing myself as God sees me. If we could really see ourselves as God sees us, it would transform everything about our lives.

Some things are more obviously negative: self-gratification, self-indulgence. Making ourselves feel good, using food, shopping, sex, drugs, alcohol. Whatever it is, if the self is involved, it needs to die. It needs to go on the cross.

The cross

The cross is not a pleasant place. When Jesus went to face the cross, when He was in the Garden of Gethsemane, His soul was in anguish. Literally, He sweat drops of blood, He was in so much anguish. He saw what He was going to have to carry on the cross; He looked into the cup, and in that cup was every sin we have ever committed, every negative thought, every sickness that has been on our body, every sin committed against us: He took it all physically upon Himself, because He loved us so much.

He chose to say, ‘Not My will, but Yours be done’ even when His flesh, His soul, looked into what it was going to have to carry. Being sinless, because He loved us so much, He was willing to go to the cross and take our sin, our flesh, our self, and be crucified. He also represented us there so that we could identify with Him through the bread and the wine.

I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me
(Gal 2:20 JUB)

He died so that we could be free from the flesh, because our flesh died with Him.

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140. Pray Without Ceasing

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

All the flow of the life of God comes through us from the inside out. The choice is ours whether we surrender, and allow it to flow, or not.

Last time we looked at various prayers and declarations (you can read them by clicking here). I want to encourage you to use those declarations to unblock your conscience, reason, imagination, mind, and all the other gates; use them every day.

Spirit, soul and body

In this series on Preparing For Destiny, we are looking mainly at two areas: how to build up the spirit and how to restore and refine the soul. In today’s post we are looking mostly at building the spirit, but we need to have both things going on at the same time. It is no good trying to deal with the soul if the spirit is not strong enough to assume its rightful place. It is no good having a strong spirit if our soul is still battling to remain in control. We need to deal with both aspects together, so that we become spirit, soul and body (not body, soul and spirit).

If our spirit is really weak because it has never really been used, then it is going to find it difficult to rule. And if our soul is really strong because it has become accustomed to being in charge, it needs to submit. We have to learn how to build up our spirit and how to have our soul restored and refined so that everything is in its proper order in us.

When God created Adam, originally his spirit was in charge. His soul was not connected to the outside world but through his spirit and his relationship with God. He had no self-awareness apart from awareness of God, and God’s Spirit. God wants to restore us to that condition.

We looked before at a list of some things we can do to begin to build our spirit.

First of all we saw that we need to give God first place, first love, first priority.

Praying in tongues

The second area to focus on is praying and singing in tongues. This was probably the most important breakthrough for me in training my senses to engage the heavenly realms: learning to pray in tongues without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

People have taught it as if that verse just means we should pray regularly. That is not what it says. It says, ‘Pray without ceasing’. That means all the time. 24 hours a day, our soul can be directed by our spirit because our spirit is connected with God and praying without ceasing, and receiving a constant flow of revelation as it does so.

We begin by praying in tongues on the outside. We pray out loud in tongues, and we begin to train our spirit by praying in tongues and getting connected with God. And we can also pray in tongues on the inside. Most of us find it easy enough to pray inwardly in tongues when we are quiet and not doing anything else.

But we can train our spirit to pray in tongues on the inside whilst doing something else on the outside, and also to be praying in tongues on the outside whilst meditating on God’s word on the inside. It takes practice to do those things, and we have to take the time to do spiritual exercises so that we learn.

Two exercises

We can try two exercises now.

We begin by praying on the inside, silently, in tongues for a minute or so.

Then, as we begin to flow in that and our spirit engages (and without stopping praying in tongues on the inside), we read aloud Psalm 23:

The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside quiet waters.
He restores my soul;
He guides me in the paths of righteousness
For His name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I fear no evil, for You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You have anointed my head with oil;
My cup overflows.
Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life,
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

It seems strange at first, but with practice it becomes easier!

Now we are going to pray in tongues on the outside, whilst meditating on this same scripture on the inside.

We begin again by praying in tongues, but this time out loud, for one minute.

Then, as we begin to flow in that once more and our spirit engages (and without stopping praying in tongues on the outside), we begin to meditate on the first verse of the psalm:

The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want

We read it over slowly several times, a word at a time, on the inside, and allow God to speak to us about what we are reading, all the while continuing to pray in tongues out loud.

If this is new to us, we can feel that it is a stretch for our spirit, just like physical exercise is for our body if we are not used to it. But if we do this for a few minutes every day, then with practice and perseverance our spirit will grow stronger. And I now realise that the payoff for this is even more far-reaching than I understood when I first began doing it: we are rewiring our minds for living in dual realms of heaven and earth, aware of both at the same time, just as Jesus did.

The Night Watch

We are told to meditate on what God says day and night (Joshua 1:8, Psalm 1:2). How can you meditate when you are asleep? You can train your spirit to be awake, while your body is asleep. It is called the ‘night watch’ in the Psalms. We can be awake in our spirit and engaging with God even as our body sleeps. Then we need to have our soul be awake too, so that we can remember all the things we are engaged with, and all the revelation we receive.

Training, practice, discipline, exercise

When I was on the 40-day fast a few years ago, God told me that He wanted me to start each day by praying out loud in tongues for an hour. And as I was doing that, my spirit began to get really stirred so that I started to learn how to pray on the tongues on the inside. So now I can be praying in tongues while I am speaking to someone, or listening to them, so that I am receiving a flow of revelation.

Pursue love, yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 14:1).

That means we need to desire them eagerly. They have to be really important to us. If building our spirit is not important to us, our spirit will remain as it was: weak and ineffective, subject to the whims of our soul.

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As we have said before, if you want a strong physical body; if you want to be in good shape with plenty of muscle, you have to get regular exercise. You cannot do it any other way. Maybe you have seen those advertisements for devices you can strap on while watching the TV and they promise you will get a six-pack? Save your money. They don’t work. You have to train your physical body, and it is the same with your spirit. If we want a spirit that is like Jesus’ spirit, able to do all the things that He was able to do here on earth, we need to train our spirit, and go to spiritual gym. Praying and singing in tongues, and using other spiritual gifts, is spiritual gym. It builds our spirit up. The more we use our muscles, the stronger they become.

Paul writes, Now I wish that you all spoke in tongues (1 Cor 14:5) and, I thank God, I speak in tongues more than you all (1 Cor 14:18). The spiritual language that we have might be a language of men, it might be a language of angels; but it is a language we are given to communicate with God.

Building, edifying, strengthening

One who speaks in a tongue edifies himself (1 Cor 14:4): he builds himself up, strengthens himself. If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful (1 Cor 14:14). That is exactly how it is supposed to be with praying in tongues. We have to put our conscious mind in its rightful place, which is in subjection to our spirit. And sometimes we might wonder ‘what am I praying when I am praying in tongues?’ Actually we are not supposed to know, in our head, in our conscious mind. Our spirit will know, and we may get to know consciously if a flow of thought comes spontaneously to our mind from our spirit. But not the other way around.

But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit… (Jude 1:20).

So praying in the Holy Spirit, when our spirit and the Spirit of God are joined together as we pray in tongues, builds us up in our faith and it strengthens our spirit. And we need a strong spirit that is able to rule, able to be in charge.

So I pray in tongues while meditating, while reading the Bible, while doing everything I can possibly do. I pray in tongues while I am ministering to people, so that I get a flow of revelation. I pray in tongues when I am seeking God for revelation and direction. Because it is a flow of the thoughts of God that flow from the spirit. Praying in tongues keeps me connected to God who is on the inside of me.

He knows everything, so if I need to know something, where is that going to come from? It is going to come from the revelation that flows from His boundless knowledge. He is all-powerful, so I can be connected to His power, so that His power can flow through me to change things around me. He is also omnipresent, and since I am in Him, I can see things outside of my physical domain. I can see things in other parts of the world (or cosmos), I can see things that are going on in the heavenly realms. I can do that because He is everywhere. He is in all things, past, present and future, and I can be connected to Him. But I have to be flowing, and my spirit (rather than my soul) has to be strong, in charge, and ruling.

Rivers of living water

Tongues keeps the flow of the life of God coming.The more I pray in tongues, the more the Spirit is filling me, moving me, leading me. The rivers of living water flow from within me (as Jesus promised in John 7:38), because my spirit is open and allowing the Spirit of God to flow out through my life to touch people around me.

This is just how it happened for Jesus. We are here, as Christians, to be ‘little Christs’. That is what the word means. Anointed ones, just as He was anointed: we are anointed by the Holy Spirit to fulfil the purposes of God.

You will be like a well-watered garden,
like an ever-flowing spring.
(Isa 58:11 NLT).

The flow of life comes from within our spirit out through our lives. We need to build our spirit up. I would encourage you, pray in tongues as much as you can. Even if you are doing something else, because you do not need to engage the left side of your brain to pray in tongues. It is a right-brained activity. That is the same area of our brain where visions can be projected, from the inside out, from our spirit onto the screen of our imagination. Then we can see them, see the things of God, and have visitations with Him.

Praying in tongues is absolutely key to developing all of this. We need to practise it.

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139. Declarations For Transformation

Mike Parsons 
with Jeremy Westcott

If you are willing

If you have reached this far with us in this series on Preparing For Destiny, we are going to make some declarations together (if you have just come across this blog today, you are welcome to join us, but you might want to read a few recent posts first). So, if you are serious about wanting to surrender your life and allow God to change you from the inside out, then let us make these declarations together of our willingness to allow the Holy Spirit to show us what is going on inside us, and to transform and to change us.

Please only pray these prayers and make these declarations if you are willing. Otherwise, what if God takes you at your word, and does what needs to be done to transform you? If you are not willing and do not cooperate, it will feel like He is putting the squeeze on you like you have never known. It is better to just read over them and wait until you are really ready; better not to ask Him to do this if you’re not up for it.

Speak them aloud

But if you do mean it, if you truly want to change, then I would encourage you to stand up and to speak these things out loud. Actually speaking the words carries a power to cause them to begin to come to pass in you. If you cannot do that where you are right now, please make sure to come back and speak them aloud later.

We are giving permission to God. He is going to listen to what you’re saying and the authority that you are giving Him in your life, and He is going to start to move. At the end of the declarations, there is a prayer in which there will be a release of the angelic to operate in your life: seraphim angels with coals from the heavenly altar, and the gathering angels who will come to remove the stumbling blocks from your life.

Let’s say this out loud together:

Father, I choose to give You full permission
to do whatever it takes
to change me and transform me into the image of Jesus.

I give You full permission
to remove all stumbling blocks from me.

I give You full permission
to use whatever means You see fit
to purify, refine and restore me to my original eternal condition.

Father, I choose to deny myself
and surrender control of my life to You.

I give You my conscience.
I repent of and renounce everything that has damaged it.
I ask You to purify and restore it.
Direct and protect me through my conscience
by a flow of reverence and fear of the Lord.

Father, I choose to deny myself
and surrender control of my life to You.

I give You my reason centre.
I repent of and renounce doubt, unbelief,
rationalism, skepticism, cynicism and denial.
I ask You to cleanse me
of all false doctrine, philosophies and ideas.
I ask You to renew and restore my reason.
Use my reason to interpret Your thoughts
and understand Your ways.

Father, I choose to deny myself
and surrender control of my life to You.

I give You my imagination
I repent of and renounce viewing
any image that has polluted me.
I ask You to blot out every negative image
with the blood of Jesus.
Purify and restore my imagination
Restore my screen, vision and revelation.

Father, I choose to deny myself
and surrender control of my life to You.

I give You my heart, my sub-conscious mind.
I repent of and renounce
all strongholds, negative belief and value systems,
vows, words, curses, doctrines, triggers,
coping and defence mechanisms.
I ask You to cleanse every negative memory.
Purify, restore and reprogram my heart
with Your truth,
with Your values
and with my destiny.

Father, I choose to deny myself
and surrender control of my life to You.

I give You my emotions.
I repent of and renounce
all unforgiveness, bitterness and anger.
I ask You to purify and restore my emotions.
Use my emotions to let me feel Your heart
and guide me through intuition.

Father, I choose to deny myself
and surrender control of my life to You.

I give You my will
I repent of and renounce
all sin, rebellion, stubbornness, wilfulness, control,
fear, doubt, unbelief, indecision.
I ask You to purify and restore my will
and restore courage, perseverance and boldness.
Use my will to enable me to do Your will
through obedience and true worship.

Father, I choose to deny myself
and surrender control of my life to You.

And Father, I choose to follow my eternal destiny
into lordship, kingship and sonship.
Display me as a son of light on the earth.
I choose to do the works of Jesus
and the greater works.
I choose, as an ambassador,
to administer the rule of the kingdom of God
on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Amen.


Father, as we have made these declarations together
I pray you would release the gathering angels to operate in our lives
to remove all stumbling blocks, 
to restore and heal and make our lives whole.
Bring us back into an eternal destiny and purpose.

I release the seraphim angels into our lives
to bring coals from the heavenly altar
to purify our lips,
to purify our hearts in every way
so that we are conformed to the image of Jesus.

I release the anointing of your presence
over the next weeks and months
to transform our lives
and change us into the image of Jesus
so we can be Jesus here on earth
manifesting the kingdom of God
on earth as it is in heaven.

I pray that each day
we will surrender ourselves as a living sacrifice
to allow you to change us.
We give up all effort to change ourselves
and we allow you to change us
from the inside out
as we surrender.

Father we thank you that you love us.
You are not punishing us
but you are disciplining us
to transform us
into the person you called us to be from eternity past.

We bless you and thank you in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

Support Freedom ARC

If our free or paid resources are a blessing to you, please consider sowing into and supporting this ministry with a financial gift. Thank you!

Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits.

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

Or you can use the blue button to support our work with a one-time gift*.
Thank you!
*Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation. For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead. 

Are you part of the Joshua Generation?

We developed this just for you:

Engaging God on the Heavenly Pathways of Relationship and Responsibility is our online school for equipping a Joshua Generation of supernatural sons of God to live according to the order of Melchizedek.

Your first two weeks free!
Click here to find out more and get started today*

*Technology permitting: automated process on setup of payment arrangement and completion of online registration form. Terms and conditions apply.

138. Own it, Repent of it, Renounce it

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott

Each of us has a destiny, a plan and a purpose God always intended us to fulfil. In preparing for that destiny, we have a choice, whether we want to go through this process and allow God to change us. Today I want to look a little more at our soul gates.

Conscience

Our conscience gets dulled because of sin and rebellion, and therefore if we have operating in our lives any weaknesses, patterns of sin, ‘normal, acceptable behaviours’ (which are neither normal nor acceptable to God because He sees the damage they do to us), we have to be willing to own them.

We cannot argue with God in this process. If we do, we will lose the argument and it will be much harder to be transformed. I have learnt to confess it, own it, repent of it and renounce it. Repentance has nothing to do with feeling sorry, or with doing penance! The Greek word metanoia really means ‘having the same mind as God’, so to ‘repent’ is to change your mind and think about something the way God thinks about it.

If God shows me something, He is always right about it: I am not going to deny it. He knows what is there. I do have sin areas, weak areas in my life. And God showed me patterns of sin when I went through this process that I had to own and say ‘yes, I have acted like that’. And I did not realise it, until God showed me, until I opened up my heart and asked God to show me what goes on inside me.

In doing that, I was able to repent (in the true sense), renounce, and my conscience became really sharp. I applied the blood of Jesus to it. I received forgiveness and cleansing. I refused to feel guilt, shame and condemnation (which are things the enemy brings). Every one of us needs to know that we are righteous. That is part of ‘having the same mind as God’ – He has made me righteous, and He calls me righteous! Then reverence can flow through that conscience gate and guide me and direct me in everything I do every day. But if that conscience gate is damaged, or blocked, affected by sin, it will lead me astray. I need to have it transformed.

Reason

Rationalism, scepticism, cynicism, denial, projection: our mind will fool us into putting the blame on somebody else, and not dealing with what is on the inside of us. We might have words, ideas, philosophies and doctrines in us that need changing, familiar spirits or religious spirits operating in us, behaviour cycles that we recognise. Just own it. Do not argue, give up. Surrender. Stop fighting for the flesh, and surrender to the spirit. As we do, we apply the truth of the word which God speaks to us. The mind of Christ will start flowing through us: the thoughts of God flowing through us; revelation and faith flowing through us.

Imagination

Every one of us has seen a great many negative images in our lifetime. We have to deal with them. Otherwise the enemy will bring them back and use them to pollute our imagination. We want to be able to see revelation, images, and visitations, both in the heavenly realms and in this one; we may be hindered from doing so if our imagination is polluted.

TV, films, games, magazines, books, fantasies – even life itself:  we are going to need to get rid of whatever we have seen that is negative. Again, I owned everything I saw as sin. I repented and renounced it and I painted it out with the blood of Jesus.

I now no longer have any of those images in my memory. They are completely gone. It is like having a filing cabinet in my mind that has folders in it. Each one has an index tab with something written on it; but when you look inside the folder, there is nothing in it. I can remember the things that have happened in my life but I can no longer remember the details of them or recall the images of them because they have gone. They have been cleansed: all those images are completely wiped out of my memory.

So if you have images that you are plagued with, put them under the blood of Jesus and paint them out so that they are no longer there. We can have a purified memory and a cleansed screen, so that we are able to see visions and have dreams, and experience revelation from God flowing.

We will have the eyes of our heart opened and enlightened: a flow of hope, and a flow of revelation: visions, dreams, visitations in the heavenly realms, all because our imagination is now clean. We can be cleansed. But we need to actually allow God to do it.

Subconscious Mind

It is the same thing with our subconscious mind. All the memories, words, vows, curses: every trigger that I experienced in my life, every defence mechanism, every coping mechanism. I owned it, repented of it (changed my mind about it) and renounced it. As we apply the blood of Jesus, that soil of our heart will be dealt with. The hardness will be dealt with; the stones, and the weeds. We will just get a flow of revelation knowledge from God; it will flow through our subconscious and trigger the right things, and we will be moved by the things that move God.

Emotions

Our emotions are affected by all the trauma, all the hurts, all the betrayal, all the abuse: disappointment, pain, and rejection we have felt and experienced. And we have to admit we have hurt other people as well as being hurt by them. If you are feeling anger or withdrawal or depression, all those things arise from emotions that we have not dealt with. We either turn in or we turn out.

We need to own all those mechanisms: we need to repent, forgive and release all the hurt, repent of everything we have done to hurt others, and renounce it all. Then we are going to start to get a flow of God’s heart, of intuition, of being moved by what moves God.

Will

If you are stubborn and if you have been rebellious, willful, or controlling you have to own it. Fear, doubt, unbelief, indecision: if they are operating in your life, own it, repent and renounce it, and in that process apply the truth of the blood of Jesus, and God will begin to work things in you, positive things: patience, boldness, courage, perseverance. You will begin to get into a flow of worship, a flow of obedience, in which we are outworking the truth of God’s word day by day.

I know this is a lot to take on board all at once. I am putting it all out there and I am just encouraging you to use the gateways diagram (or spinner) to begin to deal with whatever of this is in your life. Ask Jesus to come and stand in the gateways with you, and show you what he sees. It may not be a quick process, but with a bit of application you can do it.

Own it, repent of it, renounce it. All it takes is surrender, and allowing God to deal with it.

Related articles from Freedom ARC
Related resource from Freedom ARC

RELEASING TOXIC EMOTIONS

Seminar with Kari Browning

Get the recordings here!

We were delighted to host internationally renowned speaker Kari Browning, teaching on this topic for the first time in the UK.

Toxic emotions are often the source of emotional pain, relational difficulties, and physical illness. By releasing toxic emotions you will come into a place of rest for your soul and health for your body.

The technique Kari uses to release toxic emotions involves prayer, the laying on of hands, and the use of therapeutic-grade essential oils.

These recordings from Kari’s seminar here at the Freedom Centre in August 2018  include downloadable video and audio versions together with PDF files of her presentations. The cost is £36.17 GBP (inc VAT). Available at https://freedomarc.org/kari

This blog post was the last day of our participation in #NaBloPoMo – a post every day for the month of November 2013

Support Freedom ARC

If our free or paid resources are a blessing to you, please consider sowing into and supporting this ministry with a financial gift. Thank you!

Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits.

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

Or you can use the blue button to support our work with a one-time gift*.
Thank you!
*Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation. For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead. 

Are you part of the Joshua Generation?

We developed this just for you:

Engaging God on the Heavenly Pathways of Relationship and Responsibility is our online school for equipping a Joshua Generation of supernatural sons of God to live according to the order of Melchizedek.

Your first two weeks free!
Click here to find out more and get started today*

*Technology permitting: automated process on setup of payment arrangement and completion of online registration form. Terms and conditions apply.

paintedout

137. Our Need For God

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit (Galatians 5:24-25).

Sin

Sin, and all the ‘sins’ we commit, are an indicator of our need for God.

The original ‘sin’ came about through losing sight of our true identity (that is what Adam and Eve did in the garden); individual ‘sins’ are things we do to make us feel better about ourselves because we fail to see ourselves as He sees us. Those who struggle with lust, it is because they desperately desire intimacy: God is the best there is if we are looking for intimacy and love.

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me (Galatians 2:20-21).

Am I willing to love God in return, and give myself up for Him? For Him to change me, transform me and conform me to His image, so that I become more and more like Jesus here on the earth?

I did this as a crash course and worked through every year of my life, to deal with every blockage in every area of my soul, and I did it in three weeks. Now, I had three weeks I could set aside to do this, and I know not everyone can do that, but I am encouraging you to make a choice today to start working through the things that have accumulated in your life and to allow God to change you.

Emotional damage

The First Love gate is the key. All of us have emotional damage through relationships, spouse, parents, family, friends, or authority figures. That damage causes us to lack trust, and to put barriers up to protect ourselves. When we want to let God in, those barriers get in the way. We are often afraid to ‘let go and let God’ come and be in control. We have to deal with those things.

Unmet needs will affect my soul’s desires and motives. Unhealed hurt will affect my emotional desires and motives. Unresolved issues in our lives will affect our trust. We have to surrender and allow God to do what only He can do. And if we have problems, we need to work through them: forgive people who have let us down and disappointed us, repent of and renounce the things we have done to meet our own needs and protect ourselves.

God will meet our needs

All of us need acceptance, love, affection, value and worth; approval, significance, affirmation, identity and purpose; security and safety. They are all needs that God has built into us: they are all needs that He wants to meet in us Himself. He does not want us to try to meet those needs through the flesh,  but all of us have tried exactly that. As a result, all of us have been damaged, and all of us need to be transformed and find God’s love.

I worked through these areas: my conscience, my imagination, reason, subconscious mind, emotions, choice and will. I worked through each one, to deal with the things that were blockages and stopping God flowing through me and working through my life. Is that really complicated and difficult? No, it is a choice. Do I really want God’s presence and His power? Do I really want to be manifesting the kingdom of heaven on earth? Or am I content to carry on living the way I have always lived?

God will do it: the choice is mine.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

Note: This post has been around for a while. More recently Mike has had even more startling revelation about sin…
https://www.facebook.com/freedomarc.uk/videos/1612916992092902

Image attribution: Background image of a hand reaching up through the clouds by ds9hselee from Pixabay

Support Freedom ARC

Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits.

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

Or you can use the blue button to support our work with a one-time gift*. Thank you! *Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation. For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead. 

Are you part of the Joshua Generation?

We developed this just for you:

Engaging God on the Heavenly Pathways of Relationship and Responsibility is our online school for equipping a Joshua Generation of supernatural sons of God to live according to the order of Melchizedek.

Your first two weeks free!
Click here to find out more and get started today*

*Technology permitting: automated process on setup of payment arrangement and completion of online registration form. Terms and conditions apply.

136. Gateways of the Soul

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

We have looked at the gates of our spirit, through which we want God to flow from the inside out. Now we are turning to our soul gates.

Soul gates

Our soul gates are: conscience, reason, imagination, mind, emotions, choice and will.

Conscience

Our conscience is the ears of our heart. It is our protector and our director, our guard, and our guide. Our conscience will keep us from wrong and direct us to good. Sadly, our conscience can be dulled or seared by repeated exposure to sin (Titus 1:15). We need  our conscience cleansed, clear and sharp.

Reason

It is not that we reason and try to work it out with intellect: this is about being able to translate and interpret what God says to us, whether in scripture or other ways God uses to communicate with us.

Imagination

The eyes of our heart. It is absolutely key that we develop our imagination.

Our western culture and education system have trained us to neither use nor value our imagination. But our imagination was given to us by God so that we could see what He is doing; so that we could see visions, see dreams, see the heavenly realms, on the screen of our imagination. We need to learn how to use it again and train it so that it grows and develops.

Mind

Our mind, conscious and subconscious, is where the storage programs are. Here we find our memories, the things God has said to us, and belief systems. It is like the hard drive of a computer. Everything is stored there. The subconscious mind, our heart, sits somewhere between our spirit and our conscious mind. Memories, beliefs, values, lies, truths, mindsets. Jesus called this ‘soil’ and it can have all kinds of seeds sown into it.

Our subconscious mind is affected by our DNA nature, from our parents, that sets up defence mechanisms and coping mechanisms. Our patterns of behaviour come from what we believe. Nurture has an effect too: we have had a whole lot of experiences of life during our upbringing and education which train us to operate in certain ways. Trauma too, the things that happen to us and cause us to make vows and decisions based on our experience. All those things also get connected with familiar spirits assigned to our life. They know us, and they lie to us, in order to get us to operate from a false belief system.

All those things on the inside of us manifest on the outside in the way we think. So things like our reactions, our attitudes, our responses, fear, worry: all come from the inside and manifest in our mind.

When revelation comes, from scripture, from heavenly or earthly experiences, from the Holy Spirit, things can start to change. Then we have an opportunity of surrendering to Him, and He can deal with familiar spirits who lie to us. Our behaviour patterns start to come from the revelation of the truthof what God says (or from Jesus, who is Himself the Truth), especially about who we are. Our mindsets are based on the truth of who God says we are. Our attitudes, suggestions, the ideas that flow from our spirit into our minds are flowing from the inside out.

But if we do not deal with all those things on the inside we will continually have triggers which set us off thinking in a particular way, and that is where the conflict takes place. We have to be willing to allow God to transform us from the inside out.

Emotions

Our soul has emotions, where our responses and our feelings are, where we are moved, where we get those gut feelings. Emotions affect our esteem, our worth, whether we feel love, security, acceptance and value.

We have all had unmet needs. Maybe as a child, or in relationships, we did not receive all we should have received in the way of love, security, acceptance, encouragement and so on. Then we end up with low self-esteem, or disappointment in our life. Those can result in our feeling insecure, rejected, being dependent on other people, or in co-dependent relationships.

We try to get our needs met in these ways because we have not been in right relationship with God, and He is the only one who can properly meet those needs. We have looked to the world, and been hurt. We experience guilt and shame, and carry lots of unhealed hurts where people have let us down, and caused pain in our life. Since we have not learned to forgive and release them, this has set up anger, resentment, and bitterness, which are all emotional things.

Now those emotions can completely rule our lives – if we let them. We have to deal with them. They affect what goes on in our conscious mind and then they trigger responses all the time. Our behaviour does not just happen. Our behaviour derives from the things which are on the inside of us and God wants us to operate in forgiveness, and to be  restored, changed and renewed so that the strongholds and all the hurt and pain in there get dealt with.

Will

We also have a will. If we sin, through stubbornness or rebellion, our will is damaged and effectively becomes a barrier to what God wants to do. That sets up such things as unbelief, indecision, control, doubt and fear. As we deal with them, God wants to replace them with humility, confidence, boldness, courage, persistence, determination, perseverance, self-control (which is a fruit of the Spirit). All those things can happen if we allow God from the inside out to transform our life.

It is really important for us to understand what is going on inside us and how we operate. Some of us have been taught to peel back the layers to expose what is going on deeper down; that is OK as long as we don’t try to change ourselves from the outside in, because  if we approach it from that direction it is a battle we will ultimately lose.

If we focus on the problem, the problem gets bigger. If we focus on the solution, the problem gets smaller. In Jesus, nothing is impossible. Nothing will prevent God from doing what He needs to do, if we surrender to Him.

Choice

The final gate is choice. In the end, it all comes down to one question. Once we have cleared out everything which would lead us away from surrendering to God and allowing our spirit to rule, we still have to make a conscious, daily choice. What will we choose to do?

Let us press in, and get to the place where all these gates are flowing with the life of God and transformed. At the moment most of them are not like that. We cannot change ourselves. We have to invite God to come into those gates and transform us.

It would be really dangerous if the glory of God started manifesting through us, through an unholy life; dangerous both for us and for the people around us. He will not allow His presence to be manifested out of us until there is a holy life for it to flow through.

But He does want to manifest His presence through us.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

Support Freedom ARC

Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits.

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

Or you can use the blue button to support our work with a one-time gift*. Thank you! *Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation. For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead. 

Are you part of the Joshua Generation?

We developed this just for you:

Engaging God on the Heavenly Pathways of Relationship and Responsibility is our online school for equipping a Joshua Generation of supernatural sons of God to live according to the order of Melchizedek.

Your first two weeks free!
Click here to find out more and get started today*

*Technology permitting: automated process on setup of payment arrangement and completion of online registration form. Terms and conditions apply.

135. Aligning Gates

Mike Parsons
and Jeremy Westcott

We have seen that God is on the inside of us, and that we want to allow Him to flood our whole being with glory so that we overflow to transform the world around us.

Yesterday we looked at each of the gateways in our spirit through which He wants to flow. Tomorrow we will look at those in our soul, but today’s post is a little unusual…

One of the things we have found really useful here in Freedom Church is to make a rotating cardboard cutout of the ‘gateways’ diagram shared with us by Ian Clayton. Then we can line up different combinations of gates and ask Jesus to stand with us in them and show us how the river of life should flow through that particular combination.

To make one, you need to print off four copies of the gateways diagram – or click here for one with the cutting circles already drawn on – onto thin card (you can print it on paper and stick it to card if that is simpler). Then cut them out as in the diagram below, so that you have four different sized circles.

Make a small hole in the centre of all four circles. Finally, fasten them together in order, face up, with the smallest on top and the largest on the bottom, using a split-pin type paperclip pushed through from the top. You might want to put some sticky tape over the ends of the splayed pin because they can be quite sharp.

There is an image of the completed spinner in the header image of this post (and below). You will see that the first love, hope, mind, and ear gates are aligned from the centre. Spin each wheel separately to line up any combination of gates as a visual prompt as you work through them.

gates wheel perspective

Related articles from Freedom ARC

Support Freedom ARC

Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits.

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

Or you can use the blue button to support our work with a one-time gift*. Thank you! *Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation. For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead. 

Are you part of the Joshua Generation?

We developed this just for you:

Engaging God on the Heavenly Pathways of Relationship and Responsibility is our online school for equipping a Joshua Generation of supernatural sons of God to live according to the order of Melchizedek.

Your first two weeks free!
Click here to find out more and get started today*

*Technology permitting: automated process on setup of payment arrangement and completion of online registration form. Terms and conditions apply.

134. Gateways of the Spirit

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott

This diagram is based on one shared with us at Freedom by Ian Clayton (sonofthunder.org)

“He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water'” (John 7:38).

God has come to dwell in our innermost being. Now we want to allow Him to flow through us and out from us, transforming both ourselves and the world around us. As we open the gate of first love, we begin to allow Him to flood into our whole being.

And that is where some find the first blockage. As we have looked at our gate of first love, some of us have seen it blocked, closed, locked, even chained. But that is a projection of our soul. Even if our own experience of first love has caused us to put up barriers to intimacy (and I have written before about my own), we also have the ability to take them down again. We can clear it, unlock it, unchain it, open it. The enemy has no access here in our spirit. Jesus is knocking. Let’s let Him into our lives.

As we open that door of first love, the river flows out into our spirit. We surrender to the presence of God on the inside. In our spirit, there are different senses, or different actions of the spirit: we need to let the glory of God flow through these and activate them. It is the Holy Spirit coming through those gates, through those doorways in our spirit, coming out into our soul.

Fear of God, reverence, prayer, hope, faith, revelation, intuition, worship. And there is one more, our heavenly gate if you like, our access to heaven, which is back through that gate of first love into the heavenly realms, following the river of life back to its source.

The first few are to do with fellowship. The presence of God in us. Learning to identify and know God by experience of who He is, so we learn to fellowship and trust him in that place. And the others are to do with revelatory things, where God reveals Himself through us, where we see aspects of His kingdom, where we hear His voice, where we get to know what He is doing, and where He gives us visions and dreams and revelations of what He wants to do. Without the first, the second does not really function.

Fear of God

We need to understand that within us there is the all-seeing, all-knowing, omnipresent God. That is an awesome thing. God who has created the universe, and everything in it, has chosen to come and dwell within us. We become a habitation of God. We have to prepare that place for Him to dwell. The all-consuming fire of God is on the inside of us.

Fear of God is not the same as being afraid of Him. If I know God’s love, I will not be afraid of Him. But this is an awesome thing, to have Him dwell within us, and He wants us to know the awesomeness of His presence.

Reverence

Honouring and respecting God. We will do nothing that will bring His Name into disrepute or dishonour. We will seek to bring honour to Him.

Prayer

That is not getting on our knees, putting our hands together, and finishing it off with ‘Amen’. It is about two-way communication, where the Spirit of God, where the mind of Christ, where the heart of the Father, are flowing through us in relationship. That is why praying in tongues is so important: it is our spirit praying and communicating with God. And we can do that without ceasing, if we train it to continue even when our conscious mind is elsewhere.

Hope

That sense where visions and dreams and opportunities are flowing, where God shows us His will.

Faith

Harmony, concord, understanding, knowing: where we come together in agreement with God. We start to operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the power of God as He flows through us.

Revelation

Inspiration, light, counsel, wisdom.

We need to activate these senses. They do not just automatically switch on.We need to be hungry and thirsty, desiring them.

Intuition

Gut feeling, instinct, knowing, as the Holy Spirit reveals the Father’s heart to us.

Heavenly

Back through our first love gate, our connection with the heavenly realms and a consciousness of what is going on in heaven.

Now all those are great, and you can have them all wonderfully working, but without one other thing, it doesn’t mean anything. And that is worship.

Worship

Worship is not singing. It is a state of complete obedience to God. It is complete surrender and total submission to the will of God for our lives, on a daily basis. Everything else that is flowing within us will lead to us saying, ‘God I choose to surrender myself to you’. That is what He wants us to do.

‘How to’

In the past, faced with this kind of exercise to work through, most of us would have thought and prayed about what might be blocking each gateway, and asked God for help in removing it. It might have been helpful for us too: peeling off outer layers of our issues, difficulties and blockages through traditional ministry.

But that is an outside-in approach. We want to allow the flow of God to work from the inside out.

I would encourage you to find Jesus on the inside of you, and take Him with you to stand in each gateway. Work through them one at a time, perhaps one a day. And not to assume that we know what any of the names of the gateways actually mean: ask Him to show you what that gateway means to you. Most of the blockages will have come from the outside in. Ask Him what they are. Ask Him to stand with you and work with you from the inside out to unblock them and allow the glory of God to flow through them.

It is all about feeling, sensing and engaging with Him: a very different way of working, but in our experience, very much more effective.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

Check out our website!

Support Freedom ARC

Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits.

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

Or you can use the blue button to support our work with a one-time gift*. Thank you! *Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation. For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead. 

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133. From The Inside Out

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

I have written before about how God gave me four words: investiture, succession, enthronement and coronation. Those four events happen in that exact order. First you are invested with authority, but you do not immediately move on to taking up your throne. Before you can be enthroned, succession has to happen: that is, whoever or whatever is presently sitting on that throne needs to die, step aside or be removed.

If we are invested with the power of the kingdom, then we have to dethrone the things that are ruling in our lives: our self, our soul; me, myself, and I. If I want to see the kingdom of God flowing through my life there is no place on the throne for ‘me, myself and I’. ‘I’ will only get in the way of it. ‘I’ will spoil it, ‘I’ will block it. ‘I’ need to be dethroned.

Nature, which has programmed me, programmed my DNA from past generations, needs to be restored and renewed. Nurture, environmental programming in my life: my upbringing, what has gone on around me, needs to be restored and renewed. Trauma, which is experiential programming, things I have experienced that cause me to respond in particular ways, needs reprogramming. I need to be transformed, restored to my original eternal condition. That is what God wants to happen here, in this realm; not just in eternity, because what happens here will determine what I do in eternity once time is finished.

This is a picture which describes how we can start operating in the kingdom of God (Ian Clayton saw something similar to this on a scroll he received from heaven, though the origins of the diagram go back to at least the year 1919).

It starts with the glory of God, His presence on the inside of us. In our spirit, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have come to make their home as Jesus promised. They want to occupy the seat of government in our lives. As we open that inner door of first love, the glory of God first flows out into our spirit and develops our spiritual senses. Then it flows out through our soul and transforms our soul. God comes into our heart, where our scroll of destiny is seated, and begins to transform us. Eventually His glory flows out through our body, a manifestation of transfiguration, where the light of God’s glory will shine through us.

Notice how the flow is always from the inside. Everything in the kingdom happens from the inside out. It is no good us trying change ourselves from the outside in. We need to learn to surrender ourselves to the presence of God on the inside, so that the presence of God flows through our whole being, and transforms us.

We begin by opening the First Love gate. That is where Jesus is knocking in Revelation 3:20.  He wants us to enjoy intimacy with Him, and He wants access to the whole of our lives, spirit, soul and body. The door handle is on our side.

Here is an animated version of that diagram, created by Adam Butterick for Son Of Thunder (click the ‘play’ button to start):

We will look some more at this diagram over the next few posts. There are gateways between each of these parts of our lives, and they have been blocked, often by things that have come in from the outside.

The things we have seen, smelt, heard, tasted and touched will have affected our soul. If we try to change them by the things we can see, smell, hear, taste and touch on the outside, it will not be effective because all we do is reinforce the operations of the self.

But if we allow the Spirit of God to flow through us, we allow His presence to change and transform us – from the inside.

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Are you part of the Joshua Generation?

We developed this just for you:

Engaging God on the Heavenly Pathways of Relationship and Responsibility is our online school for equipping a Joshua Generation of supernatural sons of God to live according to the order of Melchizedek.

Your first two weeks free!
Click here to find out more and get started today*

*Technology permitting: automated process on setup of payment arrangement and completion of online registration form. Terms and conditions apply.