Tag: choices

273. Sons Invested and Enthroned

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

A sound from heaven

For several years now, the Father has been releasing a sound from heaven designed to connect to the deep desire within us all for both relationship and responsibility. It is represented within much of the music being performed by Christian musicians in recent times but it is not itself necessarily a sound audible to the natural ear. Some have heard it in the spirit and responded already, but that sound frequency continues to intensify, encouraging all His children to be spiritually open and sensitive and to resonate with it. Let it penetrate as deep calls to deep to awaken your sonship. As you become aware of it, learn to rest and relax in it, to be immersed in His presence in it and to resonate with His intention for your life as that is conveyed to you in the sound.

Revealed sons

The Father has been calling us as His children to come and take our places in heaven; to find and fulfil our heavenly roles so that we can bring heaven to earth through our lives. All His children have a destiny that involves our inheritance and birthright so that we can all be mature sons of God, revealed out of heaven into the earth. He is always giving us opportunity to come to Him to obtain a deeper revelation of our identity, position and authority.

All of us are seated in heavenly places in Christ (Eph 2:6), but few are actively functioning from that position. We are called to a new level of sonship, to access the assemblies and councils of heaven and take up our governmental roles. We can be involved in the decision-making of heavenly government. No-one ever told me that! I thought that God did all the heavenly part and that He would tell me what He wanted me to do on earth. But then He invited me into heaven and I discovered that I had a part to play in establishing things there as well as in outworking them on the earth. We get to be involved in the ‘as it is in heaven’; the more we get involved, the more authority we receive and the more responsibility we carry. The mantles are prepared and the scrolls are ready: all that is needed is for us to accept responsibility as sons and be willing to pursue maturity.

Sometimes we need the old ways to stop working before we will even begin considering the new ones. At that point it can seem like nothing is working while we learn how to operate in the new. If that is you, you are not alone. Right now, we are all learning that. We are all in a transition period between what we have been used to, an old way of doing things, and the new way God is revealing.

Creation is groaning

Investiture, succession, enthronement, coronation: God gave me those four words many years ago. They describe the process of a king coming into the fullness of his power and authority. We are invested with authority as sons of God but for there to be succession the old king has to either die or abdicate. The old king in this context is our soul, in the sense that it has been controlling our lives (which was never its intended purpose). Then we can take up our throne(s) in heaven (enthronement) and be recognised by creation as the sons we truly are (coronation).

Creation is groaning in its bondage to corruption and decay (Rom 8:22). That groan demands an answer and we, the sons of God, are the only ones who can supply it. We are called to administrate and oversee the fruitfulness and increase which come from the face-to-face restored innocence of relationship, not the decay and death which are the consequences of independence.

Living in dual realms

Living in dual realms is the key. At a certain point in my process, I became aware that although my soul and spirit were engaging heaven together daily in a visionary cognitive experience, I was still stepping in through the veil and stepping back out again each time; I was visiting but not inhabiting and living in dual realms. I spent two years going in and out of heaven every day, learning about thrones, mountains and courts and at the end of that God took me through a four month period which led to my surrender. I surrendered my soul’s right to rule in my life; my soul and spirit were separated and reintegrated; and from that experience in 2012 until now, my spirit has been in the realm of heaven and I have learned to connect with that realm and flow from it all the time.

That separation and reintegration of my soul and spirit took place when I entered into the dark cloud of His Presence. You can read what I have written before on this blog about my dark cloud experience but we will look at it again in coming posts. It was a difficult process for me, because a forerunner goes through extremes to establish a way which makes it easier for others who follow. Easier, not easy: it is never going to be easy because the soul has been ruling for most of our lives. Our surrender has to be genuine, and in order to count the cost and enter into it freely, we need to understand what the consequences are. He will be in the process with us and will walk us through it but He cannot do it for us, nor make us surrender against our will. We have to choose.

Pursue and choose

We can be proactive. God had to manoeuvre me into a position where I was faced with making the choice (one way or the other), but once you know the choice is there to be made, then you can choose when to make it. That is why I share about it and teach about it. You can pursue it if you want to. You can ask God to take you into the place where you can surrender and then learn to operate in dual realms. The process for you may be different than it was for me, but the principle will be the same: your soul needs to surrender. Whatever that looks like for you, your soul and spirit will be separated from the control the soul has on the spirit so that they can then be reconnected to flow from the inside out, the spirit to the soul, and not the outside in.

Will you accept God’s call and actively take your place of heavenly government? Your new covenant inheritance gives you access to an open heaven through the torn veil: do not let the veils of the old religious restrictions limit the full scope of your sonship. The call is not just to keep ascending but to dwell in dual realms, consistently functioning in heaven and on earth as responsible, mature sons. Until that happens, and new order ekklesias and embassies of heaven multiply on the earth, the true mountain of the house of the Lord will remain in the shadow of the religious systems of men.

Note: this post and the two which will follow it are drawn from Mike’s teaching in the Sons Arise! Into the Dark Cloud intensive, the Sons Arise! Invested and Enthroned conference and our Engaging God subscription programme.

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Mike’s new book, ‘Engaging the Father’ is the first volume in the Sons Arise! series, due to be published on 7th June 2023.  You can (pre-)order the paperback from your favourite local or online bookshop or get the ebook NOW from our website.

More info: eg.freedomarc.org/books

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272. One Conclusion: God Is Love

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

So much better

What is the Father really like? Because if we are going to enter into a relationship with Him, we need to know that. And you can only get to know what He is really like by meeting Him and engaging with Him yourself.

As I began to meet Him, I discovered that He was not at all like I thought He was. And the more I get to know Him, the more I realise He is less and less like I thought. He is so much better!

Who He is not

In fact, the Father is not at all who religion or culture makes Him out to be.

The Father is not an old man with a long white beard, some Santa Claus type figure, generous with presents if you have been good – but if not, ‘You’d better watch out’, as the popular Christmas song says. He is not watching, waiting for us to get something wrong so that He can punish us.

The Father is not a wrathful, distant deity who needs appeasing with animal sacrifices, as you might think from a superficial reading of the Old Testament (see Heb 10:1-10). He is not the angry face of a two-faced God (with Jesus as the good-natured side). They are both exactly the same. Jesus said, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). So the Father is not a cosmic child abuser who killed His Son to satisfy His anger and wrath. He is not a parent who turned His back on His Son on the cross but one who went through it all with Him.

God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them (2 Cor 5:19).

The Father is not a disinterested creator who, having made everything, then just sits back and allows it to work out however it will. Nor is He a script writer who sovereignly and fatalistically decided how everything should be.

The Father is not a parent who has favourites amongst His children, so that He has chosen some to be with Him forever and others to be separated from Him and punished forever. He is not a torturer who will be endlessly tormenting most of His children because they did not do things His way. He is not the kind of parent who abandons, disinherits and disowns His children when they turn away from Him and ignore His advice because they think they know better.

The Father is not a cosmic heavenly sugar daddy that we can manipulate to give us anything we want by trying to please or appease Him with our good behaviour. Nor is He impressed by our tantrums.

Do you see how the Father has been misunderstood and misrepresented by religion to be someone He is not?

A loving Dad

Jesus is His express image and likeness and we can come to the Father for ourselves through Him. He is fully represented in and by His Son and is a loving, caring, compassionate Dad who deeply desires for all His children to enjoy an intimate love relationship with Him. He does not look at us the way we look at ourselves, or the way anyone else sees us. We are all the apple of His eye and the treasure of His heart, and He wants only good things for us. He desires to constantly bless us.

He is a loving parent, who will never force His children to do anything but is patient, tolerant and kind. He has a love for all His children that will never end, will never fail and will never give up on any of us. He is passionate about all His children and is patiently working and waiting for all of them to return to an intimate loving relationship with Him. His discipline is not punishment but loving correction, to help us make better decisions in future.

We are His passion. He does not hold Himself aloof from us because ‘He cannot look upon sin’. That is religious dogma built on half a verse in the Old Testament. Read the other half: the prophet is complaining that, somehow, He still does (Hab 1:13).

The Father allows us to make our choices. He so loves all His children that He is constantly working with all our choices and decisions, even the worst and most stupid of them, to produce something good that can even be woven into the fulfilment of His heart’s desire.

Conversation

One time, the Father said to me, “I want to show you My mind”. I thought “Wow! I’m going to be in the firing neurons of the creativity of God” but it was not like that at all. I found myself in the midst of a conversation between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And I kept hearing my name, which got my attention. He was constantly connecting and reconnecting with me, making corrections to ensure that I could still follow the path, even if I have gone off into some side track. He will even use the side track that I walked on as part of the story. He engages with us in the ‘eternal now’ – it is not past, not present, not future for Him, it is just ‘now’.

He is my Dad and is always available, never too busy for me, never leaves me, always wants the best for me, is always interested in me, always welcomes me into His open arms of love. My loving Dad is the most wonderful, faithful, trustworthy, patient, kind, good, joyful, peaceful, fun-loving, awesome Father who is always sharing His heart and thoughts with me. I love spending time with Him. He is fathering me.

And He is your Dad too.

Circle of the dance

So you do not need to be concerned with the arguments of those who do not know Him face to face or with the opinions of those who are conditioned to think they know Him because of what they have been taught by religion. Some people will always believe what they have always believed because they interpret everything in a way which backs up what they already believe. But if you are open to new revelation, God will show you who He really is.

You can see the Father if you can see Jesus, the Son. Get to know Him. Allow Him to deconstruct the false images you have of Him. This will inevitably stretch your understanding. But once you have been in the circle of the dance of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you know there is only one conclusion: God is love.

He asked me, “And what does 1 Cor 13 say about love? That it torments and punishes? No! Love is kind and bears all things”. Those ‘all things’ are the ‘all things’ He is looking to see restored, by the way.

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails… (1 Cor 13:4-7a).

This post was extracted and edited from Mike’s teaching during the Sons Arise! Engaging The Father conference held at the Freedom Centre, Barnstaple, UK in 2018. Material from this event also features in Mike’s new book, ‘Engaging the Father’, the first volume in the Sons Arise! series, due to be published on 7th June 2023.  You can (pre-)order the paperback from your favourite local or online bookshop or get the ebook NOW from our website. More info: eg.freedomarc.org/books

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265. Love’s Good News

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott

If we are to fulfil our sonship mandate and bring restoration to the earth, we need to mature as sons and take our places enthroned in the heavenly realms. As we mature, we will grow in confidence in our relationship with Father, Son and Spirit so that we come to know each of them intimately and spontaneously recognise their voices and their shared heart. This will be key as we explore and journey beyond our present knowledge and experience.

A journey of discovery

And there is so much more for us to discover. We are walking with God on a relational journey to discover Him and ourselves, and He will guide us through our experiential encounters with Him. The more I have engaged Him, the more He has exploded out of the box that I was unknowingly trying to put Him in. There are many things He has shown me that I do not yet fully understand cognitively but I park them and move on, trusting that the revelation will be uncovered when the time is right. There have been many things that I was convinced were true that I now realise were merely someone else’s opinions masquerading as objective truth.

We do not need to fear being deceived as long as we are not blindly following man’s DIY doctrines but are checking everything out with God ourselves. Please do not believe something just because I say it, or someone else says it. All of us have the Spirit of Truth Himself in us and with us as our guide. We have Jesus the way, truth and life in us and with us to disciple us. We have our loving Father in us and with us to father us into our sonship. If there is a plumb line we measure and test everything against, then that plumb line is not the Bible (as many of us were taught) but Agape Love, the very nature of God.

The Bible narrative

This does not mean that we reject the Bible. Far from it! It is just that we need to go beyond the limitations of sola scriptura. We need the Truth, the living Word of God, Jesus, as our only mediator.

“We came up with the idea of inerrancy because we needed another mediator between God and man other than Jesus.” – T.F. Torrance.

The Bible’s narrative covers God, Creation, Man, the Fall, redemption and restoration. Various writers contribute to the story, using their own perspectives of their encounters with God and with other people. The love story of God’s relationship with mankind is its overarching theme, the big-picture metanarrative which unites all the micronarratives of smaller themes and individual stories. We are all involved, woven into the story like a big tapestry.

Our own micronarratives derive from those things we believe about ourselves and the world, influenced by the metanarratives we adopt. Everything we believe about ourselves is framed by the bigger picture, paradigm or worldview. The gospel reframes all history in a light that directly affects our own stories.

Choices

No one really has free will. We are all influenced by something. What we do all have is choice. Religion of all types is a type of metanarrative that frames people’s lives from the particular viewpoint that they have been exposed to. If we have been around Christians for any length of time, that applies to us, too.

So what is it that influences our choices and frames our lives? A set of values, ideals or principles revealed in a book (that may be called the Bible, Torah, Koran or Veda etc.) or a personal, experiential, love relationship with God? God desires all of us to have a face to face relationship with Him.

Religion hates that idea. It fears subjective, experiential relationship and seeks to impose external checks and balances upon us. Without an objective reference point, it expects that we will fall into skewed DIY behaviour and selfish, man-centred micronarratives. Religion thrives on law and on the identity derived from a set of shared behaviours which line up with that law.

But there is nothing to fear when a love relationship with God gives us a healthy understanding of our true identity.

Just like our Dad

It is our responsibility to discover who we really are, and who God made us to be. We will find our identity, position and authority by beholding God in the mirror of a face to face relationship that fully reveals our sonship. We are called to be restored into that image and to participate in the restoration of all things. Creation is waiting to be set free from its bondage to decay into the freedom of our glory as sons.

“Jesus is God’s mind made up about us” (Francois du Toit, Ephesians 1:4 Mirror Bible). If our thinking does not line up with His, then our thinking needs to be renewed. This is what metanoia (repentance) really means.

When we know our true identity we will express God’s love through our lives in ministering to others. To be a follower of Jesus is to be part of the story by being the good news, not just in our behaviour, in our outward actions, but also in how our story reveals our value and worth as a son of God; in how it reveals just how much we are loved.

Then, much of our story will be that of our restoration from brokenness. The truth of love’s good news will be embedded into the fabric of our being; we will sum up our love stories, not in a superficial “Jesus loves me” kind of way, but in a way that emphasises accepting and embracing our brokenness and fragmentation, retelling our story of receiving ever greater levels of healing and peace in a way that releases hope to others.

God does not expect us to be perfect (and so condemn us to the bondage of continual, repeated failure because we feel obligated to an external standard of perfection). He wants us to mature through an internal desire to be sons who are just like our loving Dad.

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Expanding Our Reality

“We use the creative power of our consciousness to create reality. We do it all the time, most of us unintentionally! If you want things to be different, you have to make intentional choices…”
Mike Parsons, Expanding Our Reality Intensive

Free to watch on this blog: this YouTube video of the first session of Expanding our Reality, our final Sons Arise! event of 2018.

You can purchase all 12 sessions, including downloadable HD mp4 video, mp3 audio and PDF slides, by clicking here. The cost of the full intensive is £72 (inc VAT).

The instrumental music featured in this series is by Samuel Lane (SML Music) and can be streamed from SoundCloud.
His 3-track album Renewing The Mind is available to purchase on iTunes and other digital music platforms.

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*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. 

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253. Framing Your Reality

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

Living an illusion

True reality is not what we have come to know through our earthly experiences. The ‘world has been pulled over our eyes‘: we have been living in an illusion veiled as reality. We see what we see, and confirmation bias kicks in to make sure it is all we will ever see… unless something extraordinary breaks in to challenge that.

Outside the church, many people are exploring the possibilities of changing their reality: one popular author promises the ‘definitive guide to bending reality for beginners’. He is pushing the boundaries of what can be done in this created dimension. The trouble is, we will never be truly limitless until we expand our minds and our thinking to include revelation of the Truth from the dimensions of eternity.

That is what we are being called to engage in. Let’s allow God to unveil this for us. When we come to know the Truth we can experience true reality.

What is your reality? Is your reality shaped by what you have experienced and what you have seen? Can you trust what you see? Some scientists investigating the apparent paradoxes associated with black holes believe that our universe demonstrates characteristics we would expect of a holographic projection. In that case, what are you really looking at?

Is your truth relative or absolute? If you see only from your own perspective then it is relative; it only becomes absolute when you see from God’s perspective.

Creation responds

Our consciousness functions as a series of electrical impulses in our synapses passing along neural pathways. We have learnt to interpret those signals: our brain interprets them as thoughts and sensations. But we can also use those signals: science confirms that the world of matter and energy responds when we learn to focus them by meditation (or worry).

Your consciousness has the ability to affect energy and matter from a
quantum perspective. The double-slit experiment demonstrates that light is an energy wave that carries the potential to become a matter particle depending on whether it is observed or not.

The Truth may be beyond what I can presently imagine or think (Eph 3:19-21). ‘Renewing our mind’ (Rom 12:2) is the expansion of our consciousness to know our true potential. God chose the foolish things to confound the wise (1 Cor 1:27) – we do not need a degree in quantum physics, only Jesus the Truth, in order to operate in these things. In fact if we do have worldly wisdom, we are likely to continue getting the same old DIY results.

Our minds must be enlightened or illuminated by the light of Truth. The vast sum of God’s thoughts about each of us (Ps 139:17-18) reveal that we are sons of God, created in His image, with a destiny to rule the universe with Him. That truth will unlock the true potential of our sonship, the creative image we are made in.

Waking up to knowing the Truth as a person (Eph 5:14) will set us free to be who God intended us to be. It will challenge our present perception of ourselves: we can know the truth from God’s perspective and align ourselves with His thoughts about us. We can see ourselves free from addiction; we can see ourselves healed; we can see ourselves loved, accepted, affirmed, significant…

Quantum power

Our conscious thought has quantum power and the universe responds to the focus of our consciousness. The mind of Christ confers on us the capacity for the ‘greater works’ which Jesus spoke of (John 14:12). It is time to embrace the potential possibilities of who we are because of who He is.

One of the core principles of quantum physics is the idea that reality (the photons that produce the light-illusion we all occupy) exists in infinite possible states… until we observe it and thus collapse all potential versions of reality into the one single option we have chosen to live inside.

Here is a practical example of how it works:

Imagine you are sitting on your sofa at home and you are struck with the desire to do something different. You could do an infinite number of different things. As you weigh things up, what you start to focus on becomes more likely to occur: you could get up and go to the bathroom; you could switch on the light; you could walk outside; you could go to the kitchen; you could turn on the TV or your computer or check your phone; you could go to the off licence (liquor store) or you could go to a drug dealer.

Past rewards, memories and compulsions can drive you towards your choice of reality. The possibility exists for you to immerse your consciousness into any reality you want but you must decide which action you will take. You must make a choice of which reality you want to ‘observe’ coming into existence at the cost of becoming ‘blind’ to all other options.

As soon as you select a reality, the options you did not select begin to fade out of conscious thought, out of observation, and become less likely to occur as you continually move away from them in pursuit of your selected reality.

But that option which you did select – well, its photons are now becoming more vivid, turning from abstract imaginary choice into tangible forms you can interact with (whether it’s the light switch, the TV, bathroom, drink, drugs or whatever). In this way your internal consciousness, those chemicals produced and synapses manipulated by your thoughts, can alter the physical photons that surround you.

God or DIY?

So what reality do you want to create? From which source will you draw your choices? God or DIY?

If you are choosing from your past you may be:

  • hiding your passion and creativity because you’re afraid you may not be good enough.
  • agreeing to plans you don’t really want to be a part of so that you can ‘fit in’.
  • staying in a job that doesn’t fulfil you because you need the money.
  • pursuing relationships that you know aren’t healthy because you don’t want to be alone.

Our present reality is controlled by the programming of our past experiences and knowledge. Our future reality will continue to be a self-perpetuating fulfilment unless we choose to see from a new heavenly reality perspective.

If you do decide to escape your own DIY source and get God’s perspective, then you will have the power to envision a future reality that does not currently exist. So rather than simply choosing from an existing menu you wish to engage with, you can instead create new photon-forms that never existed before and inject them into reality.

We have this incredible ability called imagination: to envisage something in our mind and then summon it into being. Everything you see today: buildings, cars, planes, the device you are reading this on, even the clothes on your body, they originally existed only as thoughts formed inside someone’s mind. They were all once inert pieces of quantum possibility until someone came along and chose to pursue their creation.

Creating reality

This quantum wave collapse is called ‘popping a qwiff‘. You can see or observe a God qwiff (something God shows you that is not yet real in this dimension) and, by popping that qwiff, cause that potential to become your reality. Information flowing from your future possibilities is waiting for you to observe and ‘call those things that are not as though they were’ (see Rom 4:17).

“The quantum leap of knowing your purpose and assignment is waiting as a God qwiff for you to pop!” – David Van Koevering.

God has dignified man by giving him the power to choose, and to create his own reality aligned to those choices. The choices mankind has made independently of God, and without the reference point of love, have created the chaotic DIY state the world now exists in.

When we are reconciled and restored in relationship with God himself our mind can be renewed. This opens up the potential for us to access the eternal mind of God, and then our future reality can be realigned from an eternal, godly perspective.

DIY methods of framing reality (drugs, alcohol, food, pornography, relationships, religion – or whatever) will keep you in bondage. Choose another future, focus on another reality; see your freedom and your God-given destiny, and you cause them to materialise around you.

Sons arise!

Let’s not be limited by our DIY past: instead let’s be creative sons of God, creating a better future. All of creation has its eyes fixed on us, looking for true sons to be revealed.

Will you be one of those sons?
Will you accept the call?
Will you embrace your destiny?
Will you accept His yoke and learn from Him, the Truth?

Let the sons of God arise!

Let the sons of God arise! Declaration by Mike Parsons via YouTube.

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*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. 

250. Pillars In My Mind

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

The truth that love reveals

When we behold God face to face it can lead us to experience metanoia (a radical shift of thinking), removing the veils and renewing our minds. In the last post I described how my introduction to the mind of God was like a conversation: communion, fellowship and oneness between God the One as Three and the Three as One.

He told me “Son, you can be one as We are One: your body, soul and spirit at oneness, unified and restored to godlikeness to be the light of love to the world. Let the conversation of love surround you and immerse you and fill you. Let the truth that love reveals define you; let it unveil your true image in Me. Know who you are by reconnecting with who you have always been. In Me, see your true image framed in love’s conversation, revealed in love’s true expression.”

One time the Father said “Come, walk with Me”, and we were walking in His garden. We were in a place of total rest, the most beautiful, living, vibrant place I had ever seen, felt, smelled or engaged with. Then it changed before my eyes into something completely different in colour, form and fragrance. And then it totally changed again. He said “Look through My eyes” and for just a moment I glimpsed all the infinite possibilities which exist all at once and I felt His pleasure and enjoyment in it all.

It was like a mind-expanding trip to prepare me for what was to come.

Free from limitations

Again, the Father said “Come, walk with Me.”

This time everything was dimly lit and it took time for my eyes to adjust. There were light pathways crossing and connecting but it was as if the power was down. He explained that we were walking in my own mind! We came to a gulf, and beyond it I could see doors that I somehow knew were closed but not locked. The Father said He would bridge the gulf for me, just this once. I saw a path extend across to one of the doors and knew the possibility of new pathways developing in my mind. I felt and sensed the potential possibilities of the eternal reality of who I was always intended to be as a son. Capacities that have been locked and hidden can now begin to reconnect. God wants us to be free from the limitations imposed by following Adam’s DIY tree.path.

We walked across the light bridge He had made for me. I knew it was up to me to open the door, so I reached out with my mind. I embraced the possibility of opening that door to discover new dimensions of reality. The door opened and I just gazed with amazement at ‘now’; seeing beyond time and space, I could envision all the possible creative choices I could make at that moment.

“Which one do I choose?”

That was my first thought. It was a fear-based response, the fear of getting it wrong. Because I was walking with the Father as a son, heart to heart, I immediately felt that fear just melt away. I saw a golden thread intersecting my time streams, fixed at both ends but flexible and movable by my choices, and I realised that as a son and heir all my possible creative choices were good and acceptable and would all lead to positive outcomes.

Pop the qwiff

I saw beyond the boundaries and limitations of my consciousness disconnected from true reality. I saw that I could choose a possibility, that I could (in quantum language) “pop the qwiff” and collapse the possibility into a reality.

I came out of this encounter and immediately I was faced with an opportunity to apply what I had just learned. I looked at my watch: it was 7.45am and I was due to meet Jeremy in my office at 8am. I saw the reality of being there on time and I chose to realise it and felt at peace. So I went upstairs and got ready to go out. When I came down and looked at the kitchen clock it was 7.55 but my watch (a Citizen Eco-Drive which never stops) still showed 7.45am.

I decided to test this reality. So I went out into the garden to water the plants in my greenhouse and feed the fish. After all that, my watch was still at 7.45am. Just as I was about to leave, my wife Deb reminded me that she needed the car that morning. I was going to have to walk. It is not that far, it takes about 10-15 minutes, so I set off. It was still 7.45 by my watch. Halfway there I noticed it had started to move again and I got to the office at 7.55am.

Pillars in my mind

“Son, walk with Me”.

We walked again within the recesses of my mind. “Son, look at the dysfunction of the broken paths. Look at the mindsets that are like obstructions blocking the pathways. Look at the rigid networks conforming and framing the pathways within your mind. Now see fluidity and beauty of the pathways that can be formed by your renewed mind linked to Mine.”

I saw the comparison. I saw the simplicity of the truth of the ‘now’ possibilities and compared it to the complex construct built from the interpretations of truth and reality that come from religion and culture.

“Son, let Me renew your mind to a new level, open up your mind to Me. Let the truth remove the cages constructed by following the pathways of the knowledge of good and evil.”

I saw a framework, a construction with pillars holding it up and a grid or series of connecting cross members as if bolted onto the pillars. He started to shine a spotlight onto these pillars:

“Son, these are the pillars upon which your paradigms are built.” He focused the light of truth on each of the pillars in turn:

  • Evangelicalism
  • Sola Scriptura
  • Greek thought
  • Hebrew thought
  • Augustinianism
  • Protestantism
  • Scientific rationalism
  • Cultural relativism
  • Humanism

It was not lost on me that there were 9 of them. There are 9 fire stones, stones of revelation which Lucifer the light-bearer was intended to reflect. Those 9 stones became counterfeited and perverted as 9 veils that frame our minds. Each veil filters the light of God and distorts the image of God and His image in us. Each veil controls how our mind interprets the data we receive.

The covering cherub’s role was to absorb and reflect the light released from the throne of God. He was responsible to release frequencies that would carry the image of God, revealing our sonship; but instead he chose the DIY path and led mankind down it too.

The veils are mindsets established from beliefs that someone has taught us; revelation from old theological truth meant for a previous day, the resting place of words that frame our belief systems. There is a new revelation of truth for our day to discover.

Deconstruction

“Do you want Me to deconstruct your mind?”

I did not answer right away but pondered for a while. Several days, in fact – I even had to google what some of those pillars were! Eventually I said “Yes, Lord, deconstruct the frameworks of my mind. Strip away the presumptions and the assumptions of my thinking. I want to think like a son.”

“Son, I can continue dismantling this from the outside or I can remove the foundations of the dogma, the pillars and supports of the constructs so that they collapse. This may be traumatic and disorientating for a short while but will be the most effective and quickest way to free your mind and consciousness from its constraints and restrictions.”

“Father, please remove the dogmatic foundations of my beliefs and restore the true foundations formed from eternal truth. Pull the pillars out!”

“But please do it one at a time!” I added quickly.

Mindquake

As the pillars were ripped from my mind the constructs began to become unstable. It felt as if my mind was wobbling – like I was having a mindquake. The truth began to challenge my established and entrenched beliefs and my mind was being set free. I started to see things I was not able to see before and realised how many assumptions and presumptions I had been living according to.

“The limitations are being removed and the realities are being expanded. Son, you are created and crafted with the creative nature of I AM as a son of God. Your true potential is limitless but is controlled by the boundaries that exist within your consciousness. Rest in the deconstruction at the end of the 7th day to embrace the new beginnings of the 8th day reality.

“Son, I am the master of all reality. Everything is contained within Me. I AM, therefore everything is contained within the infinite potential possibilities of My mind. You have access to My mind so your mind can be conformed and freed from its limitations.”

Beyond

These things are beyond what we can imagine with our present knowledge and ways of thinking. By faith you too can open up your mind for Jesus to walk in it, to reveal the veils and constructs operating in you, and invite Him to remove the pillars. You may share some of the pillars my thinking was built on; you may not. Like me, you may want to say ‘Please do it one at a time’.

But if you are to move on into the fullness of sonship, they are going to have to go.

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242. Enjoy The Ride!

Mike Parsons
and Jeremy Westcott

God is Love. He really is! Having a relationship with Him does not involve trying to please or appease Him. He loves us unconditionally, and there is nothing we can do that would cause Him to love us more (or less). He is Love.

Our view of God has become so distorted that many people, not only outside the church but even within it, believe He is angry with us and only keeps us in line through fear. They are getting Him confused with some other god. Love that is forced, coerced or demanded is not love at all.

“Heresy!”

Ironically, this deep truth that God is love is often seen as heretical by members of the religious institution because they hold to a warped theological image. If anyone dares to challenge doctrinal assumptions and presumptions it always provokes accusation. I have been told myself that I am ‘on the slippery slope away from orthodoxy’ as if that is something I should avoid at all costs. The implication is that backsliding and a complete loss of faith are the inevitable result.

I am not so sure. I believe that God is challenging our preconceived, pre-programmed ideas about Him. Those preconceptions and programming are largely a consequence of our place (and century) of birth, our family traditions and other sociological factors. In another time or place the received truth about God passed along to us would have been different anyway.

All roads lead to…?

God does not want our knowledge of Him to be conditional upon when or where we were born, or the religious tradition we were first introduced to. I do not believe He wants something so important to be based on that sort of accident. Regardless of our religious beliefs (or lack of them) He is reaching out, looking to engage every single one of us in a personal relationship. To that end He pours out His Spirit on all flesh (Acts 2:17).

‘Does that mean,’ said Mack, ‘that all roads lead to you?’
‘Not at all.’ Jesus smiled as he reached for the door handle to the shop. ‘Most roads don’t lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you.’ (William Paul Young, The Shack).

Orthodoxy

Orthodoxy is an interesting concept in itself. The word is defined as ‘an authorized or generally accepted theory, doctrine or practice’. With our 20000+ denominations you can easily see how rare ‘generally accepted’ might be! So whose orthodoxy is it that we are in danger of slipping away from? Roman Catholic orthodoxy? Anglican or Presbyterian orthodoxy? Reformed, evangelical or charismatic orthodoxy? Or even Orthodox orthodoxy (take your choice of Greek or Russian)? We cannot slip away from most of those since we never actually subscribed to them in the first place.

Almost all of us, if we are honest, believe something different today to what we believed 10, 20, or 50 years ago. God never changes, but through fresh revelation He is continually unveiling aspects of Himself we have never seen before. We call this ‘progressive revelation’. Any ‘orthodoxy’ can only be a snapshot of someone’s view of God at a particular point in time, which perhaps explains how many versions of it there are.

But The Bible Clearly Says…

Every scripture we read today is a translation into English (or one of dozens of other modern languages) and they all reflect the translator’s particular viewpoint or understanding (those compiled by committee no less than those by individuals).

The Passion Translation and Mirror Bible state their viewpoints front and centre. The translators of the King James version had to adhere to a set of rules drawn up on the King’s behalf by the soon-to-be Archbishop, Richard Bancroft. For example, they were explicitly prohibited from translating ‘ekklesia’ (church) as ‘community’, ‘assembly’ or ‘congregation’, most likely in case people realised it was supposed to have a legislative, governmental role. There is no such thing as an objective, definitive translation (even if you do call it ‘Authorised’).

Those who are able to read the original languages fare little better. We do not have complete manuscripts and where more than one version exists it is clear that alterations to the text have occurred.

Canon of Scripture

Proponents of protestant evangelical orthodoxy would have us believe it is very different from its Roman Catholic counterpart, but in reality much of its theology stems directly from the councils, doctrines and creeds established by the early Roman Catholic and Latin Church.

The very concept of a ‘canon of scripture’ was only introduced in 397 AD at the Council of Carthage. Carthage was the one school (out of six) in the ancient Christian world which held to an angry, retributive view of God, possibly because it was also the only one where Latin, not Greek, was the language in common use. Augustine was from Carthage, and he had no understanding of the Greek in which the gospels and letters were written; if he had, he would never have developed such a distorted view of God.

The Council delegates bartered over what books were to be included. Perhaps they forgot that Jesus warned His disciples of the leaven of the Pharisees and Herod, of political and religious spirits, but their eventual selection was more politically than divinely motivated. So although all scripture is ‘God-inspired’ (1 Tim 3:16), we may well have differing views about what Paul meant not only by the word translated ‘inspired’ but also by ‘scripture’.

Fear and control

The Emperor Constantine united church and state for his own political ends. Almost 1300 years later King James directed the Bible translators to translate in a way that would ensure there was no conflict between church and state and would maintain his control over all sections of society. In fact, much of the history of the Western church can be summarised as the exercise of fear in order to control people, and the notion of ‘orthodoxy’ is still being used in the same way today, to defend and protect entrenched positions and to suppress valid questions and ideas.

Fairy tales

It is very healthy to doubt what you believe, rather than just accepting it as the truth. There is far more to God than any theology or doctrine can contain. I agree with this statement I heard quoted by Brad Jersak “When doubts appear in me it means that I have outgrown my incomplete idea of God, my imperfect knowledge of Him” (Metropolitan Anthony Bloom: Doubts).

It is only through experience that the nature of God can be known. It can only be subjective, and that is not a bad thing. People will warn us that without something objective to rely on (usually they mean the Bible) we will end up believing fairy tales. Well, I suggest we have been believing fairy tales already and God now wants us to come to the knowledge of the Truth (a person, not a doctrine). Love will always be our plumb line.

Mind-quakes

Many of my experiences have revealed God’s love at a new level I would never have believed possible. They have challenged and unravelled most of my theology and doctrine and I am not looking for new ones; nor am I asking you to do anything but to be open to engage God’s love for yourself and see where that takes you. Where it has taken me is into an experiential relationship in which heaven has opened up.  I have come to know ‘the breadth and length and height and depth’ of that love (Eph 3:18) and how ardently He desires everyone to experience it for themselves. Even death is not enough to stop Him loving us.

My encounters with God created cognitive dissonance within me (that is, they caused me mental stress and discomfort as I tried to hold on to two or more mutually exclusive and contradictory views, ideas or values). I had a choice: I could fight to hold on to what I had thought to be true or I could allow the Truth – Jesus – to renew my mind. I chose the second, and it was not easy. It wobbled my head. It felt like ‘mind-quakes’. Explosions of truth shook loose the belief systems I had.

Conversation

God spoke to me a lot during the process. He told me, “Reveal the Truth, unveil for people your testimony of who I am… Son, reveal Me, the true Me. Let the Joshua generation know the true Me unfettered by the old orders of the theology of intellectual information”.

One day, God said, “Let me show you My mind”. I am not going to describe it visually, but it was like being in the midst of a conversation between Father, Son and Spirit that is continual and is all ‘now’.  I got just a brief glimpse of God’s reality, and saw that He was connected to everyone that had ever lived, is living or will live, all at once (that is 108 billion and counting). He was connected to everyone in the ‘now’, knowing every choice and every decision made every microsecond. His loving desire was to bring good out of every choice, to redeem even the most stupid decisions of every person (and we all make them). This love is not limited to a select group of people but is extended to everyone at all times and in all places.

It was a living experience of what Paul described in Romans 8:28, that ‘the love of God causes everything to mutually contribute to our advantage’ (Mirror Bible). Our view of God influences how we see ourselves and the world that we live in, and this experience changed that for me. Our view of everything has to be aligned with Love. His love won’t relent. God desires us to know Him (Love) by personal experience so we can know ourselves as His children and bring His kingdom of love to the world.

The real slippery slope

I love Chuck Crisco’s acronym for ‘heretic’ (I have tweaked it just a little):

Happy Enlightened Righteous Exploring Truth In Christ.

On those terms, I’m willing to be called one. So for myself, I have joyfully stepped off the slippery slope that for 1800 years has been taking us away from a relational, loving God towards a false image of Him horribly distorted by religion.

I encourage you to do the same: to discover for yourself the true nature and character of God who is Love.

I joyfully jump onto the slope that goes from the pinnacle of modern theology and doctrine back to the beliefs of the apostles and early church fathers who were relationally discipled by Jesus and His disciples in love.

I encourage you to jump onto the same slope – and enjoy the ride!

Soundtrack: You Won’t Relent (Jesus Culture) via YouTube

This blog post is adapted from Mike’s teaching in the ‘Engaging God‘ subscription programme. Find out more…

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226. Nothing Can Stop Us

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope (Jer 29:11).

How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! (Psa 139:17)

Do you know what God thinks about you?
Not what you think, or what the world thinks, but what God thinks?

Not Mission Impossible

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will (Eph 1:3-4).

He has chosen us to be sons, to be part of His family, to be those who will engage with the earthly and the heavenly, the natural and the supernatural, in order to fulfil His commission to restore creation to original purpose and design. This may not be Mission Impossible but still, “Your mission, should you choose to accept it…”

Sorry, Frank

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;
And the government will rest on His shoulders;
And His name will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace,
On the throne of David and over his kingdom,
To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness From then on and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this
(Isa 9:6-7).

God’s intention is that Jesus’ kingdom will have no end. It will bring peace and wholeness, not just here, or in this time, but through everything else that is out there and through all eternity. And God is going to get His way: all He asks of us is whether we will be part of that or not. That is our choice: the pathway to eternal life or the pathway of humanism. The pathway of the tree of life, or the DIY pathway of the knowledge of good and evil.

His way, or My Way (sorry, Frank).

Don’t miss your destiny

Many biblical figures lost their birthright or only partially outworked their destinies. Here are just a few from the Old Testament (I am sure you can think of others):

  • Adam and Eve
  • Cain
  • Esau
  • Jacob
  • Reuben
  • Simeon and Levi
  • Judah
  • Moses
  • Solomon
  • Jeroboam

Let’s check our hearts: have we become cynical, sceptical, critical or judgmental because of past experience, disappointment and disillusionment? That is what can happen when we allow life’s circumstances to affect how we see ourselves and our future, rather than what God says about us. The same is true if we have become earthbound rather than heavenly, settlers rather than pioneers, apathetic, passive, lazy, selfish, fearful, rebellious, comfortable, safe or materialistic; none of those will help us fulfil our destiny.

When Jesus looks at the destiny written on our scroll, is that what He sees in our lives? Does He recognise the person He created us to be? Or, like the bridegroom in the parable of the wise and foolish virgins (Matt 25), does He say ‘I do not know you’? That chapter continues with the story of the talents, representing the destiny God has given us. Let’s be like those who took a risk and gained more as a result, rather than the one who dug a hole in the ground and hid the money.

‘Throw out the worthless servant into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’ (Matt 25:30). This is not ‘hell’ by the way. The weeping and gnashing of teeth is an expression of anger and frustration when those who have wasted their destiny realise that they have missed out on God’s best for them.

Choose

We can choose to serve God or we can make ourselves god; but we can’t do both.
We can choose to follow what God says or we can choose to follow the philosophies of men; but we can’t do both.
We can choose to worship in spirit in truth or we can choose the worship that pleases us; but we can’t do both.
We can choose the lifestyle of holiness or we can choose the lifestyle of the world; but we can’t do both.

“If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve… but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15).

Our destiny is designed for us to make an eternal difference. Choose it, and nothing can stop us; we will not allow our past to rob us of our future. We are intended to be overcomers, prevailing over every obstacle that is placed in our way.

So will you choose your eternal destiny?

Today I choose to accept my mission.
Today I choose to accept my calling.
Today I choose to accept my destiny.
Today I choose to accept my commission as a son of God.
Today I choose to surrender my will and my ways to You.
Today I choose to serve the Lord.

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“Nothing can stop us, we’ll be running through the night
And our passion will not die…”

The image of Frank Sinatra, taken from the trailer for Pal Joey (1957), is in the Public Domain.

224. Called According to His Purpose

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose (Rom 8:28).

Do you know His purpose for your life? That is what we mean when we speak about destiny. Destiny is not ‘fate’, not ‘que sera sera‘, predetermined without any choice or pursuit on our part. It is God’s pre-agreed plan for our lives – and we can choose to pursue it or not. That choice has consequences for us, not only in this life but beyond.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jer 1:5).

We are not all called to be a prophet to the nations like Jeremiah. But each of us is called according to God’s particular purpose for us.

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.
How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
(Psa 139:16-17).

Supernatural record of God’s intention

At conception there is a flash of light. Our natural DNA carries the natural record of our genetic ancestry, but when our spirit enters at that point, it carries our destiny, the supernatural record of God’s intention for our life. It is deposited within us for us to discover. It is like a letter of decree, a commission for us. We can access our scroll of destiny in the heavenly record room, or have it revealed around the arc in the heavenly tabernacle, but God also wants us to seek out and pursue the promptings within us which draw us towards His purposes for us.

And along with the destiny comes all the provision necessary to fulfil it. If we stay on the path we will find the provision, but there is no provision for pursuing our own agenda if we get off the pathway.

God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule” (Gen 1:28).

Adam forfeited his destiny through rebellion and disobedience, choosing the pathway of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but Jesus came to restore and unlock our destiny for us so that we can follow the pathway of the Tree of Life. Creation itself is longing for the day we step up and fulfil our destiny to rule both in the earth and in the heavens (see Rom 8:19-20).

Maturity

Now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave although he is owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by the father (Gal 4:1-2).

We want to grow into mature sons, not to remain as immature children. Our heavenly Father assigns angels, the seven spirits of God and the cloud of witnesses as those managers and guardians who will help us come into maturity so that we don’t miss out on our destiny.

Thus says the Lord of hosts, “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” (Zech 3:7).

There is a process revealed here which leads to maturity, following the pathways of relationship and responsibility; a progression from the earthly (servant, bondservant, steward, friend) to engaging in the heavenly (lords, kings and sons). Both heavenly and earthly pathways are necessary for us to fulfil our destiny. When we hear the heart of God, it will lead us to fulfil the call of God: everything we do will come from relationship with God, not for a relationship with God (which only leads to religion and bondage). And God really wants us to hear His heart.

Walking in the garden

Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden… Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden east of Eden to cultivate it and keep it (Gen 2:7-8,15).

They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day (Gen 3:8).

Our destiny is both heavenly and earthly, so we can access both the heavenly and earthly gardens (which originally overlapped). We too can hear ‘the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden’ – and that sound is a frequency, a harmony, a song, a fragrance. The Tree of Life is available to us once more, and the River of Life is flowing out of heaven to water the earth. It is our destiny to engage in this overflowing river: we are its channel as it flows through the garden of our own hearts and out into the world around us. It is a well in us springing up to eternal life (John 4:10) and becoming rivers of living water from which those who are thirsty can come and drink (John 7:37).

Our natural DNA vibrates with the chaos it was created in, but our destiny scroll vibrates with God’s eternal purposes. That frequency, vibration, sound, is being released from heaven right now. Are we hearing it, feeling it or sensing it? Let’s choose to resonate with it; it is calling us back into alignment with our heavenly destiny. If we are not yet tuned in to it, let’s be willing to train our senses through practice to recognise it (Heb 5:14). It is wooing us into relationship, into knowing God by experience and encounter, restoring our identity and authority as sons.

The eyes of your heart

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened (opened), so that you will know what is the hope of His calling (destiny), what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints (Eph 1:18).

We can engage the river and engage our destiny through the eyes of our heart, our imagination. Our reason is limited, but not so our imagination. As Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited; imagination encircles the world.”

Open the door

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me” (Rev 3:20).

In the centre of our spirit is the door of first love. Behind it is a river of life waiting to burst through.

Open the door and let the source of life flow from heaven into your spirit.

Picture a river flowing by a green pasture
Lie down in the pasture
With Jesus, the Shepherd of your soul, beside you.

Enjoy His presence
Feel His love, His joy, His peace.
He restores your soul
Touching the deep areas of your life
to bring wholeness, healing and blessing.

Stay there for a while…
Step into the river 
Feel its energy
Touching every atom, every fibre of your being
Flowing through you.

You can breathe in that water
You can drink that water,
Receive life in abundance.

The river flows on
Through the garden of your heart
Watering that garden with life
And out into the world.

Turn, and follow it back upstream
Through the door, back into heaven.
Breathe in the atmosphere of heaven.
Sense its energy, its life, its purity.

Look at the riverbed.
See the scrolls and the gems that are there for you
To provide for you, to bless you, to be your source.

Stand under the waterfall cascading down from the garden of God
Feel it pulsating down, energising you
Let deep call to deep
Revealing the deposit of your destiny within you.

Go up the waterfall (you can do that in heaven)
At the top, walk towards the garden of God.
Jesus is waiting on the bridge ahead of you
Look into His eyes
Feel His love

He is inviting you to hand over every burden
Every weight of responsibility you are carrying
You don’t want to be carrying all that when you go in and meet the Father.

Hand it all over.

Walk through the archway into the garden of God
Experience what it is to be in the presence of your Father who loves you
The One who destines you to rule in the heavens and on the earth.

Just learn to be.

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219. Redemptive Gifts (3) and Other Influences

Mike Parsons – 

Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly: if prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith; if service, in his serving; or he who teaches, in his teaching; or he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who rules, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness (Rom 12:6-8).

We are continuing to look at the seven redemptive gifts mentioned in these verses: Prophet, Servant, Teacher, Exhorter, Giver, Ruler and Mercy. We receive those gifts at conception, and they affect the course of our lives. But there are other contributing factors that will also influence how the redemptive gifts are expressed in a person’s life.

Parenting

Every child’s parents have their own redemptive gifts, which impact how they view the world and how they raise their children. So the parents’ gifts will leave a very significant imprint on the children, independent of what the child’s own gifts are. Any potential character weaknesses of a parent’s gifting can shape the child as well.

If a child’s parents are servant and exhorter, for example, the child may grow up in a home where the exhorter is financially irresponsible and is living in denial. The servant parent will try to help meet the child’s need, and the child may grow up lacking the knowledge needed to be financially responsible and a good steward of resources, which will be a particular problem if their own gifting is giver!

On the positive side, a child who has the redemptive gift of prophet and is raised by an exhorter will most likely be much more relationally oriented than others with the gift of prophet.

Birth Order

Firstborn children tend to be more driven and perfectionist by nature. Second-born can be competitive or very passive, and the baby of the family is often much more relational and horizontally focused. Being firstborn can intensify all the strengths and weaknesses of any gift (perhaps double the benefit, but also double the challenges).

Maturity

A person’s level of maturity will colour how they live out the characteristics of their redemptive gift at different times in their life. Those who are immature (or those who are not seeking to live in the fruit of the Spirit) will exhibit the weaknesses of their gifts more than the strengths. Whilst none of us has reached perfection, we should all be working on our character issues to grow up to maturity. The recognised weaknesses of our gifting are not an excuse for immature behaviour.

Gender

It is easy to stereotype certain gifts such as prophet, ruler and teacher as being more masculine and servant and mercy more feminine, so that men often reject the idea of being a mercy or servant because they perceive it as being weak. In fact, the gifts of servant and mercy have some of the strongest spiritual authority.

Women with the gifts of prophet and ruler often find it hard to be accepted, validated, and nurtured in a church setting, since the natural boldness and strength of their gifts can intimidate some men who traditionally occupy those roles.

Both men and women need to see the beauty of God’s design, instead of trying to be something other than who God made them to be.

Woundedness

Everyone has experienced painful situations and relationships that have left them wounded. Wounds can change our perception of ourselves and of God.

For example, someone who grew up with an abusive authority figure may become very self-sufficient and independent because they believe they have to make it through life on their own. If they are an exhorter, servant or mercy gift, this will seriously conflict with how God designed them to function.

How we are broken, the pain in our soul, our wrong response to pain, the coping mechanisms, and how we compensate for those wounds will influence how our gift is expressed. Any walls of self-protection we build as a way of surviving painful circumstances may hinder the proper expression of our gifting.

Left-Brain vs. Right-Brain

Whether a person is right-brained or left-brained is an organic issue.

Right-brained people tend to see the whole picture. They are generally more creative and emotional because emotional concepts and messages operate in the right half of the brain. Left-brained people see the various parts, process logically and in a linear fashion, and think more strategically.

Some people have a fairly effective blend between the two sides of the brain and can transition between them with ease, whilst others may be dominated by one side or the other.

Each of the gifts will be expressed differently, depending on whether the person is right-brained or left-brained. For example, a left-brained teacher will look different from a right-brained teacher. Left-brained teachers will enjoy spending hours researching in the lab or in the library, whereas right-brained teachers will flourish in the classroom and light up when their students “get it”.

Prophet and ruler tend more toward being left-brained in their basic God-given essence and expression, whilst the servant and mercy gifts are more right-brained and therefore may tend to be more emotional and expressive through actions, rather than vocally.

Culture and Time Frame

The family, community and time in history in which a person lives can have a radical impact on how they perceive themselves and express their gift.

A woman with a gift of ruler who lives in a culture where women are subservient will likely have a large reservoir of untapped potential if she is not given an opportunity to shine.

Your nation and family of origin also have an impact.

Your family and your community or country have influenced you because of what they needed or what was expected. If you were raised in a nation with a redemptive gift of prophet (such as the United States or Germany), you will have a natural affinity for more of the characteristics of prophet, because it is what your culture affirms and cultivates. But this does not mean that your redemptive gift is prophet.

While we are on that subject, notice that redemptive gifts are not restricted to individuals. Nations, regions, cities and churches have them too. Here are some more examples of the gifts of nations, as identified by Arthur Burk:

England – Ruler
Wales – Exhorter
Scotland – Prophet
Ireland – Teacher
Brazil – Giver
Canada – Mercy
France – Exhorter
Germany – Prophet
India – Servant
Italy – Exhorter
Netherlands – Giver
Norway – Mercy
Spain – Prophet
USA – Prophet

In summary, then, we may not know a particular individual’s redemptive gift, but we can observe the external behavioural characteristics of the seven gifts. We can observe whether someone is quiet or verbally expressive, whether they prefer to work alone or to be in a group, or whether they are task-oriented or relational-oriented. But we need to bear in mind that we cannot always tell just from observation whether what we see is a true expression of their redemptive gift or is being affected by one or more of the influences we have mentioned.

Here again are the links we gave last time, to questionnaires which can help you identify your own primary and secondary redemptive gifts. But before you jump into them, you might like to read what Arthur Burk thinks of tests such as these!

[Please remember that all of these are only indicators which may give different results, and that those results may be skewed because of the ‘other factors’ we have looked at in this post].

Related articles from Freedom ARC
Other resources from Freedom ARC
Recommended resources from Arthur Burk

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