Tag: authority

148. Be still and know

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

In seeking to build our spirit, we have seen how important it is to give God first love, first place, first priority in our lives, and also how praying and singing in tongues is a key. The third point, which we are going to consider in this post and the next one, is waiting on the Lord and being still.

Be still

Be still, and know that I am God (Psa 46:10).

What does it mean to be still? Firstly it means we do not move; that we stop whatever it is we are doing. And then we can know that He is God. If we are always ‘doing’, we are not allowing Him to be God in our life.

The NASB translates this phrase as ‘Cease striving’. God wants us to stop fighting (‘striving’ comes from the word ‘strife’), and surrender. We need to stop striving to do things in our own strength and submit to Him. We have to stop doing things in our way if God is to lead us in His way and into the destiny He has prepared for us.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart 
And do not lean on your own understanding
(Prov 3:5)

He makes me lie down in green pastures
He leads me beside quiet waters
He restores my soul
He guides me in paths of righteousness
(Ps 23:2-3)

Physical calm

So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered his rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest (Heb 4:9-11).

This requires diligence: we have to actively pursue God’s rest, His peace. For every one of us, there is a place of rest that He wants us to find and enter into. God rested on the seventh day of creation, and He intends rest for us. We do not get just one day in seven: we get every day, because our rest is in Him. In relationship with Him, we allow Him to work through us and our destiny can be fulfilled.

Focused attention

relay

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Heb 12:1-2).

Those witnesses are the men in white linen who are appearing in various places around the world, the saints of old who have gone before us. They are cheering us on. In a 4x400m relay race, the first three runners do not pack up and go home once they have completed their lap: they stand and cheer and encourage the last runner. I believe God is saying that we are on the last leg, and all those people are watching us and cheering us on. I have met some of them, and they want to be involved in our lives and help us.

‘Let us lay aside every encumbrance’: if you are running a marathon, you do not wear a suit of armour, unless you are foolish (or running for charity – people wear all kinds of strange things when they run for charity). No, you get prepared, you wear a running vest and shorts, and proper shoes. Maybe you even cover your body with Vaseline so that you won’t rub. You do not carry anything with you that is not essential. We have to get rid of everything that will hold us back and keep us from running effectively. God wants to set us free from the things that are holding us back so that we can run the race. We do not want a ball and chain around our leg.

‘For the joy set before Him’: The joy set before us is that of achieving our destiny, just as it was for Jesus. Each of us has a destiny prepared for us to fulfil, and there is a race to be run if we are to get there. It might be 100m or it might be 26 miles: every race is different and will require something different of us, but we all have a race that God has prepared and set before us. Are we going to run it? Are we going to allow God to prepare us for it, to train us and to equip us?

And how are we going to run? Fixing our eyes on Jesus. We take our eyes of all that surrounds us, we take our eyes off ourselves, and we fix our attention on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. He authored our faith by dying for us on the cross, to set us free, to release our destiny to us, and He will also enable us to complete the race if we keep our eyes fixed on Him. He did all that for the joy that was set before Him – and the joy that was set before Him was us.

When He embraced the cross; when in the garden He looked into a cup and saw all of our sin  (yet still said ‘not my will but Yours be done’); when He took every sin, every sickness onto Himself, onto His own body on the cross; when He died our death which is the wages of sin; He went through all that because He loves us. He did it because He wants us to enter into our destiny and fulfil the joy; He wants His joy to be in us, and He wants our joy to be full and overflowing.

And then, when He had done all that, He sat down at the right hand of God, higher than every authority in heaven and earth, and He wants to raise us up to sit with Him in those realms of authority too.

Let be

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Phil 4:6-7).

‘Nothing’ and ‘everything’ do not leave much room for argument. We do not need to be anxious about anything at all if we are handing control of our life over to God and trusting Him to meet our need, to provide for us. If we are willing to surrender and stop trying to do it ourselves, He will do everything we need in our lives.

Be receptive

Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. 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 15:4-5)

Abiding in Him speaks of a relationship. We cannot produce fruit of any eternal value unless we are connected to the source through the Vine (Jesus). We may be a branch of that Vine, but the branch does not provide the nutriment and supply of life in itself. If you cut the branch off, it dies. The life is drawn up through the roots and the plant to produce the fruit. Fruit in our lives comes from the flow of being receptive to the life of God flowing through us. If we want to fulfil our destiny, the call of God on our lives, we need to abide in Him.

Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident… (1 Cor 3:12-13).

When fire comes, gold, silver and precious stones survive. Wood, hay and straw do not. If we do anything outside of God and our relationship with Him, it will be burnt up and be worthless in eternity. We trust Him, we live in Him, we allow Him to live in us, and we produce the fruit that is lined up with our destiny.

Spontaneous Flow

Our spirit needs to flow in the life of God. We need the living flow of the life of God in us and flowing out of us to transform the world around us. It is His spirit and His power which will bring about that transformation, but He has chosen to flow through us to achieve it.

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

We will look some more at what it means to ‘be still’ in the next post.

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
Equipping a Joshua Generation of supernatural sons of God to live according to the order of Melchizedek

Get started today!*

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

132. Broken Cisterns Hold No Water

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

Everything we are writing about in this series on Preparing For Destiny comes down to (or builds up to) one thing: what will we choose to do? Will we choose to do what Jesus would do? Or will we choose to do what our own flesh tells us to do?

Holy Spirit flow

If we are to choose right, we need to be flowing in the Holy Spirit.

We need a connection with the Holy Spirit. We need to be baptised in the Holy Spirit. We need to be speaking in tongues. Praying in tongues is a major flow of the life of God which is within us. It builds up an environment around us which draws the presence of God, so that God comes and fills that space.

Dead to God

This is what we were like before we came into the realisation of being born again:

We had a soul. Our heart had natural needs, we had a body of flesh through which it did its best to meet its natural needs, and we had a spirit that was dead to God, separated from Him in our own understanding. That is why we read in Jeremiah:

For My people have committed two evils:
They have forsaken Me
The fountain of living waters,
To hew for themselves cisterns,
Broken cisterns
That can hold no water.
(Jer 2:13).

diagram: Dead to God

Believing itself separated from God, our soul had no alternative but to try to get its needs met however it could. So it tried to meet those needs by drawing on the world. We all have a built-in need for love, acceptance, security, significance and purpose. But the world cannot fully meet those needs (it was never intended to) and as a result, our soul is damaged and we experience hurt, pain, rejection, insecurity, fear, disappointment, guilt, and shame.

Alive to God

Then we hear and respond to the gospel. Our spirit now comes alive to God, and suddenly we realise it is possible for us to have our needs met by Him. But we are used to getting them met by the world. So we have to transfer our source of acceptance and love; we need to transfer it from the world around us, to God, who is on the inside of us.

We start to look inwards, to God in us; not outwards, to the world.

As we do that, as we are transformed, as we are restored in our soul, then God deals with that damage. We do not need to look to the world to meet our needs. We look to Him. And we can then start to manifest through our body the life that flows from the spirit. You have seen Christians who positively glow with the life of God within them. More than that, we can be literally transfigured.

Spirit senses, soul senses

Diagram: Alive to God

Here is another way of looking at this: we are born again, in our spirit we have the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the glory of God in us, and we have nine spiritual senses that begin to develop through practice (we will look more at those another time). We know God’s love, we have access to the heavenly realms, and can enjoy real intimacy with Him, which enables that love to be outworked in our lives. Then our soul senses develop too, and eventually we start to manifest around us the glory of God: deliverance, the works of Jesus, miracles, supernatural works, healing, greater works (John 14:12), signs and wonders: all start to flow out through our lives. Or that is what should happen.

Blockages

But there are blockages. There is a blockage between our spirit and the heavenly realms, because probably no-one ever taught us we could go there (in fact mostly they taught us that we could not, at least until we die). There is a blockage between our soul and our spirit, because our soul is used to being in control. There is a blockage between our soul and our body, preventing the flow of life streaming out from us to the world.

But as we are transformed, these blockages are removed. Our spirit and soul start to work together. We begin to feel God’s love, as well as to just know God’s love for us. We learn to access the heavenly realms, so we can express God’s love and manifest God’s kingdom in and through our lives to the world around us. We are changed, transformed, transfigured.

And this last diagram sums it all up.

Diagram; Connected

With the new birth, the DNA of God is in our spirit: we have access to the fountain of life; we have access to our destiny; we are a dwelling-place of God, through relationship. Our spirit now needs to produce the fruit and the gifts. The river of life flows through the garden of our soul, so that our whole life is manifesting God’s glory. We have access to the kingdom of God within us, and the kingdom of God in the heavenly realms, and as we learn to operate there our life is transformed.

Practice

As we have said before, the key to this is practice. You have to practise to train your senses. You have to practise how you transform your soul.

But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. (Heb 5:14)

We have to train our spiritual senses; we have to train our soul senses, to be connected up with the kingdom of God in heaven to outwork on earth.

So we are going to do that, over the coming weeks on this blog. We are going to help you train your spirit senses, train your soul senses, and we are going to see transformation taking place.

You have been invested with authority, but you have to come into that place of succession so that you can be enthroned. To bring God’s kingdom from heaven to earth, you have to dethrone the soul. Now that is not an easy process, but you can do it.

With God and our spirit working together, we can all do it.

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 this 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.

Featured image attribution: “Nabatean Well Negev 031812” by Mark A. Wilson (Wilson44691) – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons – https://goo.gl/ycuom2

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.

130. The Seat of Government

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

Within us

The kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17:21).

If the kingdom is within us, what else is?

Our own spirit.
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The kingdom of God – the seat of God’s government of heaven
Our heart – our subconscious mind
The garden in our heart, in which we can engage God.
Rivers that flow from heaven, flowing through our spirit, our garden, and out to the world.
Our scroll of destiny, in our heart.

That is quite a list of what is in us, things we have to learn to engage with, and we have to understand how they all function in us, so that we can work with them.

Here is an outline image of a body, showing all those things within us.

Within Us (diagram)

You can see our heart, and within our heart there is a scroll. Our heart is our subconscious mind.

There is a throne, the seat of God’s government within us.

Where is our spirit? I was talking to Ian Clayton, and God started to speak to me about it. Our spirit man lives in a membrane which goes over the brain and down our spinal column. That membrane is not connected to the blood. That is important because our blood supply carries the record of our DNA and past generations, and it needs to be purified, cleansed and changed. So our spirit is not connected directly to our blood supply. It is connected through our heart.

There is a door in our spirit, that Jesus spoke about in Revelation 3:20. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are dwelling within our spirit, and we have to let them out. God will not force Himself upon us. We have to open that door and let Him out, every day, into our spirit. Our spirit is within us and is connected to the seat of government in our lives.

The seat of government

When we are first developing in our relationship with God and we invite Him to come in and fill us, He occupies the seat of government in our lives. Then as we grow and mature, He gives us more and more access to that seat of government. The kingdom of heaven is both within us and in the heavenly realms, so we are also seated there in authority: we are seated with Him in the heavenly places.

He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.
(1 Cor 6:17)

The more we are surrendered, and the more we become transformed into His image, the more we experience the reality of becoming one spirit with Him. We start to rule together. That is what the kingdom is all about: ruling together.

That seat is within us and as we open up the door, God comes and sits on that seat.
Then we can invite Him to come into our heart. That is a phrase people often use when praying a prayer of salvation, but what does it mean? If He comes into our heart, He comes to change us and transform us.

The DNA of God

He comes into our heart, and starts to reprogramme our heart, and the blood that is in our heart, with the DNA of God. That is why we take communion, to be reprogrammed with the DNA of God, to be transformed by the life of God in us. Then that transformation spreads out from our heart, carried by our blood to our brain, where it transforms our thinking, and renews our mind.

Blood circulates. It goes around our body, and back again to our heart. In our natural bodies it goes to our lungs and picks up breath, oxygen. So in the spiritual sense our heart needs to draw life from our spirit, send it around the body to transform our life then go back to the spirit for more. That is what the heart does.

As we sit in the seat of government and rule together with God, the kingdom of heaven comes to manifest around us. Rivers of living water and anointing and power start to flow out through us. We learn to walk in His ways, keep His laws, and rule.

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 this 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.

Subscribe to Engaging God

Get 2 weeks free – then pay just £12 GBP per month (around $14 USD – but dollar amount varies slightly each month as the exchange rate changes).

Engage God through Jesus (the Way, Truth and Life) in the realms of heaven and within your own spirit and heart; and take up your responsibility as a mature son [daughter] in God’s kingdom.
Terms and conditions apply.

128. Building A Strong Spirit

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

God wants us to come into that place of relationship and responsibility into which Adam would have matured if he had not chosen to follow the DIY pathway of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

For that to happen, we have to build our spirit. If we are not strong in spirit, we will not be able to overcome and dethrone the soul.

We were created to be spirit, soul and body, with the spirit taking the lead. But because our spirit was dead to God, our soul has become accustomed to having its own way. When we are born again and our spirit comes alive, that has to change. The soul must submit to the spirit, but it will not do so willingly.

How to build our spirit

There are a number of things we can do to build our spirit. We will look at them in more detail later on in this series, but I will just list some of them for now:

1. Make sure we give God first place, first love, first priority.
2. Pray and sing in tongues.
3. Wait on the Lord and be still.
4. Meditate on Bible verses and passages.
5. Praise and adoration, soaking in the presence of God.
6. Come to God and ask Him to build our spirit. Often we do not have because we do not ask (James 4:2).
7. Confess and call things into being. Call forth our spirit. Speak it out.
8. Persevere. You don’t build your spirit in a day.

If you want to get fit and have rippling muscles in the natural, you have to go to the gym and train, session by session, week after week, until you build muscles. It is the same with your spirit. Your spirit grows stronger through exercise; spiritual exercises train and equip your spirit to connect with God, to flow in revelation, and to rule in your life. You have to persevere.

Desire, discipline, delight

If we give up on exercise, it is usually because we don’t enjoy the discipline. Discipline itself is not very pleasant. I would love to have a real six-pack, and the body of Mr Universe, but I have not got the discipline to go in and train myself to do it. It would take a lot of training, and I do not want it enough to submit to the discipline.

But what I do want enough is a strong spirit, and therefore I am willing to do whatever it takes to train it. I spend a lot of time training my spirit. Hours, every day, training my spirit to discern the words of God, to flow, and to build up my spiritual senses. You can do the same. We will look at each of them in more detail in coming posts, but there is nothing in the list of 8 things above that you cannot do. It just takes practice and perseverance.

It starts with a desire, it takes discipline, and then it becomes a delight.

Related articles

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 this 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.

Subscribe to Engaging God

Get 2 weeks free – then pay just £12 GBP per month (around $14 USD – but dollar amount varies slightly each month as the exchange rate changes).

Engage God through Jesus (the Way, Truth and Life) in the realms of heaven and within your own spirit and heart; and take up your responsibility as a mature son [daughter] in God’s kingdom.
Terms and conditions apply.

127. Relationship and Responsibility

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

On this blog we are just at the beginning of a new series of posts about preparing for our destiny.

We prepare according to God’s Prophetic Timetable of events for the future, so that we will be ready for what he is doing and ready to play our part in it. From a place of intimacy with God, we will allow Him to change and transform our lives, removing from us everything that is a hindrance or a stumbling-block.

prophetic-timetable-overview20

He is raising up a Joshua generation who will press into their own inheritance, and lead the following generation into receiving theirs too. We need to receive that inheritance so that in the situations we will face in the coming days and years, when the world’s systems have broken down, we will be ready with the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit operating in our lives. We must be like Jesus: He brought the kingdom, and He calls us to do the same.

From eternity, God has a destiny appointed for us to fulfil, and we have been invested with authority to fulfil it. We need to wake up and take hold of who we are as the sons of God.

Man’s destiny has always been to rule, to bring heaven to earth (Gen 1:28). We bring the rule of heaven to earth so that we transform not just this planet but the whole of creation – our universe and even beyond that – which is groaning and longing for the sons of God to be fully revealed.

Psalm 24:7 says ‘Lift up your heads, O you gates’. It is talking about us being lifted up to that place of rulership and authority, so that we become a gateway for the King of Glory to come in and fill this world through our lives. That is what God wants to do through us: everything He is, grace, power, mercy, would be channelled through us, and that we would manifest them here on earth.

The Angel of the Lord admonished Joshua, the High Priest, who was standing in the presence of God in the heavens and said,

“If you will walk in My ways
and if you will perform My service,
then you will also govern My house
and also have charge of My courts,
and I will grant you free access
among these who are standing here”
(Zechariah 3:6-7).

This involves a progression of relationship and of levels of authority and responsibility that would bring us to our sonship.

We live here on the earth, with the atmosphere of the earth around us. In that atmosphere at present are the principalities, powers and rulers of wickedness. It is a kingdom in darkness. We ‘walk in His ways’ here, and we recognise that the kingdom of God is within us, but that we are also connected to the kingdom of God realm in the heavens.

As we keep the laws, the principles of the kingdom, as we administer righteousness and justice, so we learn to be lords, kings, and sons at that level in the heavenly realms (and also within us). Once we understand who we are and what our identity is, we can start ruling the house (our own house, but also the house of the Lord).

Then we can start judging the courts. The kingdom has foundations of righteousness, and justice, and it is God’s people who are eventually going to judge angels, and fallen angels. We have a right to bring judgment to change things in this realm, and eventually to have access to stand among those who are operating in the heaven of heavens.

When we start doing that, we remove those hierarchical authorities from the atmosphere of the earth, and we can rule. We rule in light, rule in love, rule in righteous power. The influence we have in the heavens will be manifested here on earth. God wants us to understand and to access those realms. The more we do so, the more we will bring the kingdom of God on the earth, both in us and through us, so that we shine with the glory of God.

That will deal with sickness, disease, poverty – all the things which rob God’s people (and the world) of their inheritance – and all that stolen inheritance will be restored.

We will manifest the rule of heaven on earth, just as Jesus did.

Related articles and resources 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 this 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. 

Subscribe to Engaging God

Get 2 weeks free – then pay just £12 GBP per month (around $14 USD – but dollar amount varies slightly each month as the exchange rate changes).

Engage God through Jesus (the Way, Truth and Life) in the realms of heaven and within your own spirit and heart; and take up your responsibility as a mature son [daughter] in God’s kingdom.
Terms and conditions apply.

125. Preparing For Destiny

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

Our destiny, our scroll, the book of the life God has prepared for us, was written for us before the foundation of the world. It comes out of eternity; it is a decree, and a commission, and it carries both purpose and provision within it.

We can access it in the heavenly realms, and within our hearts. We have the choice whether to pursue it or not, but that choice has consequences, both for us personally and for the whole world. In fact it has eternal consequences.

Everything about that destiny is about bringing heaven to earth:
Your kingdom come,
Your will be done
On earth, as it is in heaven
(Matthew 6:10)

It is not about healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out demons – that is just the ordinary basic stuff we should all be doing anyway as disciples of Jesus. Those things are not what our destiny is about (unless having a healing ministry or a deliverance ministry is actually written on your particular scroll).

Jesus warned us that people would say to Him, ‘We prophesied in your Name, We did miracles’ but that He would reply, ‘Depart from me, I never knew you’. Not that He did not know them in the sense of salvation, but He didn’t recognise them compared to how they should have been, according to their destiny.

All of us are called to rule, that was God’s mandate to man from the beginning, to demonstrate dominion and authority. We need to do that in heaven and bring it to earth.

Your destiny, everyone’s destiny, is to administer heaven to earth. Each of us has a different part to play, but we each have a sphere of authority we are supposed to operate in. And God wants us to bring that to earth from heaven.

That destiny is in time and eternity (Jeremiah 1:5). He has appointed each of us for a purpose. What we do in time, in this earthly life, will determine what we do in eternity. It is vital for us that we fulfil what God has called us to do in this realm.

And your destiny is not something you can just do, it is not something that you can step into without any preparation. Over the next series of posts we will be looking at what it takes to prepare for our destiny.

We cannot do this half-heartedly. It will take time, and it will take commitment. But it will be worth it.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

Support Freedom ARC

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

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. Or you can use the blue button to contact us about making a one-time gift.
Thank you!
*Note Sadly, because of abuse by scammers we can no longer offer a ‘click to donate’ option. However, if you contact us, we will get back to you with a simple means of giving. 

Subscribe to Engaging God

Get 2 weeks free – then pay just £12 GBP per month (around $14 USD – but dollar amount varies slightly each month as the exchange rate changes).

Engage God through Jesus (the Way, Truth and Life) in the realms of heaven and within your own spirit and heart; and take up your responsibility as a mature son [daughter] in God’s kingdom.
Terms and conditions apply.

124. Transforming The Atmosphere

Mike Parsons
and Jeremy Westcott – 

I closed yesterday’s post by calling forth people’s destinies, to fulfil that purpose of God for their lives. That calling forth of destinies is something written on my own scroll. Fulfilling their destiny is important not only for the individuals themselves, but also for the church and the purposes of God going forward.

Everlasting Doors

heavenly-realms-concentric1

Here is a diagram showing the sphere in which we live, the sphere of the earth, and the atmosphere of the earth that is around us. Within that atmosphere there are principalities, rulers and powers. Then there are the heavenly realms.

Think of these as dimensions that are around us. Not linear, 1, 2, 3, going up, but dimensions that we can access by simply stepping into them. And between the atmosphere of the earth and the heavenly realms, there are everlasting doors. We read about them here:

Lift up your heads, O you gates!
And be lifted up, you everlasting doors!
And the King of glory shall come in.
(Psalm 24:7 NKJV)

These doors were open in the time of Adam, but they were closed when God set the cherubim and the fiery sword to prevent him having access to the Tree of Life. When they are closed, they block the way between the two realms.

Mountains and thrones

Within the heavenly realms there are mountains and thrones of authority. Every church has its own mountains and thrones of authority, seven of them, but so too do each of us in our own lives, in the Kingdom of God heavenly realm.

We are supposed to rule there, and to bring heaven to earth. We have access to the Kingdom of God because it is within us, as well as being in the heavenly realms. When we are ruling there, it enables us to bring the glory of God through from that realm into this one.

We must see people raised up to occupy those dimensions of rulership in the heavenly realms. When that happens, the principalities and powers and rulers get forced out. When we just bring the light that is in us and the light of the presence and the glory of God into that realm, then they cannot stay there. Darkness cannot remain in the presence of light.

If you put a candle into a dark room, it is no longer dark. You cannot add more darkness to smother that candle, but you can bring more light in to dispel more of the darkness. The brighter the light, the more the darkness has to go.

Let’s bring the light of God’s glory from the heavens into the earth.

Arise, shine, for your light has come
And the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
(Isaiah 60:1).

The atmosphere of the earth

The devil is called the ‘prince of the power of the air’ (Ephesians 2:2), but only because we have not yet taken back that realm. So as we start to fill and occupy that space in the atmosphere of the earth, bringing the authority and rulership of God there, the everlasting doors are opened. When they are, we start to see the manifest presence of God in our midst. Maybe we call it ‘revival’.

There are everlasting doors associated with each of our mountains of authority. We have seen that we have seven mountains of authority, seven spheres in which God has called us to have influence. Within each mountain is a mandate from God, and there are thrones upon those mountains, from which we are to rule.

A measure of God’s glory?

As we have begun to see people raised up to rule on the mountains in their own lives and on mountains associated with the local ekklesia, we have begun to see a measure of the glory of God coming down through those everlasting doors. We see salvation, healing, deliverance; we see the angelic operating, and the presence of God’s kingdom manifesting among us.

But we want to see God’s glory filling our area, transforming our community, the fullness of God’s kingdom being manifested, and at the moment that is not happening so much. We are seeing a little here and there, now and again. Some of the time, when someone operates in that realm of authority, we have a manifestation of the glory of God, but it is not there continually. Sometimes we see miracles, sometimes we see healing. It is increasing, but not enough. And I know that it is the same elsewhere too.

If we want to see these things happen consistently, we need people raised up as lords to operate in authority on those mountains. We need them ruling and bringing the keys of the kingdom, and using the declarations of authority that they have been given. Then we are going to see the kingdom of God manifested in people’s lives, opening their eyes to the goodness and kindness of God towards them and revealing that He has been at work in them all along.

So there is a task to be completed, and it is what this blog and the other resources we have available are all aimed at bringing about: to see people raised up as sons to occupy those places of authority. There may be much that you need to learn, and understand, and operate in, whether you are ruling on your personal mountain, on a church mountain or on an embassy of heaven mountain: but with practice, every one who is called to that realm can learn these things.

Change the atmosphere

That will change the atmosphere of the earth from darkness to light. The enemy will do all he can to prevent it, but the only authority he has is what we give him. Our attitudes form an atmosphere around us which operates in the spiritual realm to draw things towards us, whether good or bad.

Fear is always the number one weapon he uses. But there are also specific things he will use to block each everlasting door, attitudes and strongholds which specifically oppose the area of authority concerned. Our strengths in those areas that God has called us to can also be our weaknesses, because the enemy will attack them.

Refinement and purification

Ultimately, this is about us all surrendering our lives. It is about allowing God to purify us and refine us and bring us into a place of holiness, so that the authority that our sin gives to the enemy is removed. And God is challenging us to do that now, bringing us to a place of refinement and purification.

We will see open heavens, blessing, and a harvest. We will see transformation. We will see the glory of God streaming in through those everlasting doors. We will see people raised up to occupy their place in the heavenly realms. You can be among them. That is our mandate: to encourage you and teach you how to come into that place.

The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Everything we need to fulfil our destiny is within His presence and within our relationship with Him.

Together, let’s pursue it.

Related articles

Support Freedom ARC

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

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. Or you can use the blue button to contact us about making a one-time gift.
Thank you!
*Note Sadly, because of abuse by scammers we can no longer offer a ‘click to donate’ option. However, if you contact us, we will get back to you with a simple means of giving. 

Subscribe to Engaging God

Get 2 weeks free – then pay just £12 GBP per month (around $14 USD – but dollar amount varies slightly each month as the exchange rate changes).

Engage God through Jesus (the Way, Truth and Life) in the realms of heaven and within your own spirit and heart; and take up your responsibility as a mature son [daughter] in God’s kingdom.
Terms and conditions apply.

117. The Proof Of Desire

Mike Parsons
and Jeremy Westcott – 

‘Pursuit is the proof of desire’, as our friend Graham Jones says. If we truly want to fulfil our destiny, let us set our heart towards it, set our desire upon it and go after it.

These are some thoughts on pursuing our destiny: I am just going to put them out there for now, without really developing them, but I would encourage you to read them with your spirit, and see what they spark in you…

  • There are two pathways into the heavenly realms: the pathway of relationship and the pathway of responsibility. Both offer opportunities for transformation. At times my focus and attention will be on one, at times on the other, but I will always be following both pathways.
  • I will not get anywhere without first enjoying intimacy with God. That involves seeing, hearing, feeling and experiencing both who He is and who I am.
  • We are not all the same, we each have our own song and destiny. I need to learn to resonate and come into agreement, come into harmony, with the whole symphony of heaven. There is a wonderful sound in the heavenly realms and it is beginning to be heard even in this realm: I can resonate with it, come into harmony with it and contribute to it my own unique sound and melody.
  • I will believe, and be in faith. ‘Without faith it is impossible to please God’. I have to trust Him, and go for it.
  • I will engage that desire for my destiny, step into alignment, and submit my life daily to the government of God and the lordship of Jesus.
  • I will purposely live for the unravelling of my scroll. I will not be content until I see it and am living according to it. No settling for second best; nothing half-hearted; totally committed to my destiny.
  • There are things I need to know (by experience, rather than know about). I need to know the testimony that is written in heaven for me. I need to know the blood of Jesus as my overcoming power, I need to know the revelation of my sonship. I need to know the courts in the heavenly realms, the gardens, the treasury room, the wine room, the record room, the mantle room and all the other places in the heavenly realms: places I have been, or other people have been. I need to know.
  • I need to know what is in heaven is in order to manifest it here; I need to know the authority I have there, in order to bring that rule here.

Then I will live in the dual realms of heaven and earth, and manifest heaven on earth through me.

SoundTrack:

Jonathan David Helser – Intimacy (via YouTube)

Related articles from Freedom ARC

Support Freedom ARC

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

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. Or you can use the blue button to contact us about making a one-time gift.
Thank you!
*Note Sadly, because of abuse by scammers we can no longer offer a ‘click to donate’ option. However, if you contact us, we will get back to you with a simple means of giving. 

Subscribe to Engaging God

Get 2 weeks free – then pay just £12 GBP per month (around $14 USD – but dollar amount varies slightly each month as the exchange rate changes).

Engage God through Jesus (the Way, Truth and Life) in the realms of heaven and within your own spirit and heart; and take up your responsibility as a mature son [daughter] in God’s kingdom.
Terms and conditions apply.

109. Developing Our Spiritual Senses

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

First the natural…

Our natural senses take time to develop. Hearing is one of the first to function, and we know that babies can hear sound even in the womb. The hearing nerve is connected to every organ in the body except the spleen, and it even continues reverberating for a short while after death. But we only learn to begin to make sense of what we are hearing through constant repetition and practice.

Our natural sight improves gradually too. If I look at you, what actually happens is that light is being reflected from you and enters my eye. That projects an upside-down image onto the back of my retina, and my brain learns to interpret that as ‘you’.

But when we are first born, we can only see a few inches: just far enough to recognise our mother’s face, in fact. Over the next six months or so, our vision gradually improves until we see fully. That gives us time to process ever larger amounts of information, and gradually make sense of what is around us, the natural realm in which we live.

…then the spiritual

For most of us, that has not been our experience with our spiritual senses. Maybe we have become aware of spiritual things, but almost no-one in the church has been teaching about how to experience them, so we have not really given our spiritual senses chance to develop.

When we first started out following Jesus, we probably continued to live mostly in the natural world, with a little of the spiritual thrown in occasionally. Those occasions were perhaps when we experienced amazing times of worship or when a preached word really impacted us. But spiritual awareness is not reserved for special occasions, and it need not be subject to what goes on around us.

We can learn how to engage in the spiritual realm just as we learnt to engage in the natural. Let us allow our spiritual senses, like our natural senses, to develop through repetition and practice. Step into, and step out of, the realm of heaven. Then we will gradually begin to make sense of what is around us, the spiritual realm in which we also live.

We can do this. God intends us is to live in dual realms of heaven and earth at the same time, just as Jesus did. He intends us to manifest power and authority as the spirit beings we really are. He intends us to manifest our destiny in this world.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

Support Freedom ARC

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

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. Or you can use the blue button to contact us about making a one-time gift.
Thank you!
*Note Sadly, because of abuse by scammers we can no longer offer a ‘click to donate’ option. However, if you contact us, we will get back to you with a simple means of giving. 

JOIN US IN ENGAGING GOD!

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 get started today*

To find out more about the Engaging God programme, click here…

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

[This article was originally posted on 1st November 2013, as part of a blogging challenge to post every day for 30 days: NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). Spoiler alert – we did it! Some of these posts were a little shorter than normal though…
– Jeremy]

108. Destiny and the Age To Come

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

There is a song by U2 that I really used to love: “Still haven’t found what I’m looking for”. I would sing that and really mean it from my heart, because I knew in my spirit that there was more, and I had not found it. I can’t sing it and mean it like that anymore, because actually I have begun to find and walk in my destiny. My destiny was out in the realms of the heavens. It is not ‘written in the stars’, but it is to be in the stars.

Three Scrolls

Here are three scrolls (or books) that we find referred to in scripture:

1. Scroll of destiny

First of all, there is the record of your eternal destiny.

Your eyes have seen my unformed substance;
And in Your book (scroll) were all written
The days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was not one of them
(Psa 139:16).

2. Book of Life

Then there is the Book of Life.

Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it… and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds… And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire (Rev 20:11-15).

Richard Murray explains:

All our false names/natures are NOT written in the book of life, while all our authentic God-crafted names/natures ARE written in the book of life… What gets excluded from the book of life gets cast into the lake of fire. These elements are not our whole beings, but rather are toxic aspects of our non-being – false identities, sin masks which have deformed, debilitated, and impoverished us from manifesting our original created purpose. These forged identity masks have grafted themselves, with our consent, onto our souls and must be carefully irradiated and excised by the curative and corrective knife of divine love.

…to say that the personification of all the dark dynamics within us will be destroyed (i.e. NOT written in the book of life) is ultimately a wonderful thing, all our false sin-identities cast into the lake of fire nevermore to trouble us again1.

3. Scroll of your life

But there is also a scroll of your life, the record of the life you have lived. We know that Jesus took away the power of sin and death and there is no further judgment for sin, but we will be judged according to whether we have come into our destiny or not, whether we fulfilled God’s purpose for our lives. What is written on the scroll of your life? Does it match up exactly with what is written on your scroll of destiny?

My personal experience is that it does not. But we can change that too. We can come into agreement with our destiny, and God can change what is written on the scroll of our life.

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad (2 Cor 5:10).

Where it mentions ‘good or bad’. it is not speaking about sin, but about the motives of our hearts.

You do not have to wait until you die, or until Jesus comes, to go to the judgment seat of Christ. I have been there, the scariest place I have ever been in the heavenly realms. It is a place of living, consuming fire, with eyes coming out of that fire. I was shaking – in fact, everything was shaking. The scroll, which was written on front and back, was opened, and I saw my life. God showed me all the good things, where I had lined my life up according to my destiny. But I also saw all the rest too, the missed opportunities to be obedient. The fire of God came and purged it, and I was given a fresh opportunity.

Every one of us can go to that place and see, does our life match up with our scroll of destiny? That is God’s intention, and He wants us all to make sure it does. Whether we are to be in the outer courts, the inner courts, the Holy Place, or the Holy of Holies: that will be decided by what is on those scrolls and how they match up. I know where I want to be.

The Age to Come

We will also have responsibilities in the age to come, which are determined by whether we are faithful here.

Our destiny is not just something which is to be accomplished in the here and now, in this physical realm. When Jesus returns, He will put the earth back into its central place in the Kingdom of God. It was removed from that place and put into time, in order to restrict the effect of sin. As we move into the age to come, the whole world will be cleansed with fire and brought back into the place where the physical and spiritual realms overlap and interact. And we will have new physical bodies, which are immortal, in order to operate in that realm.

When Satan fell, the light-bearer, light was removed from galaxies. In the age to come, those black holes which are at the centre of many galaxies will once again be filled with light. Who will get the opportunity of doing that? We will: the sons of light.

At present there is a river of dark matter flowing through the universe which needs to be transformed. Who gets to transform it? We do.

If Jesus created galaxies, who else gets to create galaxies? We do.

We need to take the blinkers off our understanding, and grasp what God actually says about these things. Our destiny goes way beyond this physical realm. It is awesome. When we first begin to go into the heavenly realms, our mind often gets in the way until we learn to see and operate there. He wants us to be free of the restraints which hold us back because of our mind and the way we think.

Choices

There is a preparation we need to go through so that we will be ready for Jesus’ return and for our destiny in the age to come. We need a transformation in order to be manifested as the sons of God – on earth as it is in heaven, and then beyond.

We all have a choice about whether we will be transformed; a choice about how we will spend eternity; a choice about whether we will fulfil our destiny. God gives us that choice, and the opportunity to outwork it day by day. There is always, has always been, a choice. There have always been two pathways: the Tree of Life, or the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil; the kingdom of God or the kingdom that is in darkness (which is just as close).

Kingdom in darkness, by the way, not kingdom of darkness. Satan has no kingdom. He only occupies the kingdom we were meant to be ruling over. He has brought darkness to that kingdom, and it is up to us to bring light into it. God wants us to transform the atmosphere of the earth and to bring light to that place of darkness, and to the places under the earth too. It is our right to rule there.

We need to rule and manifest the kingdom around us. We also need to preside over the heavenly courts for our own lives to bring the mandates that are ours into physical manifestation. This is something we can all learn. It is not magic, it is not mysticism, it is just our birthright to have access to the heavenly realms because we are spirit. We were all made a spirit, but now we need to be transformed into a son from glory to glory (that is the process we are in right now), and to be manifested as sons on the earth

God’s Prophetic Timetable all leads up to the time of Jesus’ return. After Jesus returns, we will go into our eternal destiny in the age to come. And that age to come is beyond most people’s capacity to imagine. Every one of us has been appointed to a purpose in the whole eternal destiny of God. Will we fulfil it? The choice is ours.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

1 Richard Murray, Saul’s “name” was NOT written in “the book of life.” https://www.facebook.com/richard.murray.1840/posts/1500495100010535

Support Freedom ARC

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

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. Or you can use the blue button to contact us about making a one-time gift.
Thank you!
*Note Sadly, because of abuse by scammers we can no longer offer a ‘click to donate’ option. However, if you contact us, we will get back to you with a simple means of giving. 

Image attribution: the image U2 Gelsenkirchen August 3rd 2009 at the head of this page is by SteBo (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons.

JOIN US IN ENGAGING GOD!

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 get started today*

To find out more about the Engaging God programme, click here…

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