Tag: choices

81. Come Up Here – Bringing Heaven To Earth

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

Over the past few posts we have looked at the first 20 characteristics of the Joshua generation. Before embarking on the other 20, this time I just want to explore something I have hinted at before but not really opened up fully with you.

The Moses generation

Remember how the Moses generation failed to enter in? They came out of Egypt but turned back instead of entering the Promised Land. The reason their mistakes are recorded in scripture is so that we can learn from them.

For I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea; and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and all ate the same spiritual food; and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them; and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not well-pleased; for they were laid low in the wilderness. Now these things happened as examples for us, so that we would not crave evil things as they also craved.

Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written, “THE PEOPLE SAT DOWN TO EAT AND DRINK, AND STOOD UP TO PLAY.” Nor let us act immorally, as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in one day. Nor let us try the Lord, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the serpents. Nor grumble, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come (1 Cor 10:1-11).

A billion labourers

The Moses generation did not cross over into their Promised Land because they saw they would have to face giants. Will we cross over into ours? The Joshua generation are going to equip a harvest of a billion labourers, equip them in the supernatural, to bring heaven to earth. Those billion are just the harvesters, who will eventually bring in the full and final harvest at the end of the age. There will need to be that many of them because the battle is going to become more and more intense, as light comes into the darkness, challenges it, and overcomes it. Those harvesters are the Jesus generation, the ones who will see Him return.

Some of those reading this will be of the Joshua generation and some of the Jesus generation; I hope none of you are of the Moses generation – I do not want you to stay in the wilderness.

On earth as it is in heaven

So here we are. God is outworking His purposes, and the ends of the ages have come: we need revelation from Him if we are to engage with how things are in the heavenly realms and bring them into the earthly realms. That is what it means when we pray ‘on earth as it is in heaven’: it is up to us to bring heaven to the earth.

The Joshua generation will be forerunners who have spied out the land. What we may not have realised fully until now is that our Promised Land is not only about earthly things. To operate in the fullness of the kingdom, we need to operate in heavenly as well as earthly realms. Some of our spying out will be done in the realms of earth, but some of it will be in the realms of heaven.

God offered Moses’ generation the land of promise, but the vast majority of them said, ‘We can’t go in’. And earlier in their journeying, He had been willing for the whole nation to meet with Him on the mountaintop, but they were afraid of the thunder and lightning, the fire and the smoke, so they said to Moses, ‘You go, and tell us what God says. We can’t go in’.

In the same way God offers us all access to the heavenly realms now, because Jesus has opened them up for us – that is what was signified by the veil of the temple being torn in two at the moment of His death. His purpose is that we can experience everything He intends for us. Like the children of Israel, though, many are saying ‘We can’t go in’.

Responsibility

The kingdom of God is about government, about authority, about rulership. God wants us to learn how to rule in our own lives, and how to rule in the realms of the spirit to bring heaven to earth. We need to learn how to lead and equip the Jesus generation to possess  the land of promise. The Hebrew word for ‘possess’ means ‘to inherit by seizing, dispossessing and become heirs’. We were made as spirit beings, to have access to the spiritual realms. When Adam was first created, he had access to the heavenly realms. There was nothing to stop him. Only sin [essentially a loss of identity] caused him to lose that access. The glory that he was clothed with was removed. Let me put it like this: it is as if a bandwidth of revelation was removed from him, so he could no longer see into the things which were of a higher bandwidth – the realms of heaven.

Now, everything about God’s kingdom has a beginning and an end, but the beginning and the end are always the same. That is why Hebrew thinking is always circular, not linear like Greek thinking. Linear thinking speaks about layers of heavens – first heaven, second heaven, third heaven – but the heavenly realms are not really that way at all. They are dimensions of authority. It may have seemed simpler to our western minds to express it as first/second/third, but it has been misleading. We read ‘third heaven’ in Paul’s writings and leap to the conclusion that there must at least be layers below that of a first and second heaven through which we have to travel to get to the third. Hebrew thinking implies no such thing.

For God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven, it will involve us fulfilling Adam’s mandate: to rule in the spirit realm and by so doing to reconfigure the natural realm. When we fulfil that mandate, we will see God’s glory fill the earth (Num 14:21).

We have to have experience of operating in the heavenly realms ourselves if we are to bring other people into it, and that is what God is doing amongst His people right now. He is opening things up so that we can gain that access, and begin to operate in two realms, earthly and heavenly. We learn to rule in heavenly realms, and then we bring that rule to bear in the realm of the natural.

Operate in authority

Before we can rule in the earthly realm, we need to operate in authority in heavenly places.

We have to go up and down before we can go to and fro. The trouble is, we have tried to bring heaven down while standing in the earthly realms. That is why we have been beaten up so much by the enemy: we have been trying to come against the spiritual forces of wickedness and darkness with the earthly dimension of authority we have here. We need to bring heavenly authority in order to defeat them. It is a different dimension of authority. To exercise heavenly authority we need to go up, and bring heaven down with us.

On the island of Patmos, in the spirit, John heard a voice saying ‘Come up here’ (Rev 4:1). That voice is still speaking to us today. Do you hear it?

Soundtrack: Open Door – Janine John Band (via YouTube)

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80. Characteristics of the Joshua Generation (#16-20)

Mike Parsons
and Jeremy Westcott –

God is raising up a Joshua Generation in our day: a generation who will enter into their inheritance and enable others to do the same. We have been looking at some of the defining characteristics of such a generation and considering to what extent those characteristics can be seen in our own lives.

16. The Joshua Generation will be obedient to God’s direction.

Only be strong and very courageous; be careful to do according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, so that you may have success wherever you go (Joshua 1:7).

We know our God, and love Him; and because of that we want to serve Him. We want to do everything He is calling us to do, and to do it out of our love, our passion and our desire for Him.

But we do need to be careful: with greater revelation comes greater responsibility. We cannot mess around with what God shows us. If we are to operate in the fullness of God’s power in the coming days, then the level of holiness required of us is going to go up, off the scale. That is both because of the level of revelation we are beginning to enter into and because of the kind of people we need to be.

For those who hear, but turn back (rather than being ‘careful to do’), there is a danger – and we need to be aware of it. To avoid the danger, we must be ready to do all that God is calling us to do.

Yet not out of fear, but out of love.

17. The Joshua Generation will be prosperous and successful.

You see, if we are able to meditate and obtain that revelation from God, and if we are careful to do the things that God reveals to us, it will give us success. This generation are willing to press in and receive. We will learn to overcome and we will learn to prosper.

Prospering is not just about financial things: the word means ‘to succeed to the highest level’. And we need to succeed to the highest level in the spiritual as well as in the natural realm. If we are receiving wisdom and revelation to the highest level, then as a result of that we will be prosperous and successful. Everything around us may be falling apart, and it will do so when the world’s systems crash, but we need to be able to operate in God’s systems, in God’s kingdom.

The financial system is just one example of this, in which we may well need to learn to do miracles and to multiply things as Jesus did. Jesus told Peter to find a coin in a fish’s mouth to pay their taxes. There may be occasions when we too can do something like that and supernaturally find finance. And we must stop saying, ‘Oh, but that was Jesus’. Everything Jesus did, He did as a model for what we should do. He said we would do the things He did, and greater things (John 14:12).

This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success (Joshua 1:8).

18. The Joshua Generation will know that they walk with God.

We need to walk with God as our daily lifestyle.

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go (Joshua 1:9).

When we are walking on the path that God has prepared for us, when we are walking in our destiny, then we know God is with us. And we need to know what is our destiny, what is written on our scroll: and if we do not know, then we can ask God to show us.

Psalm 23 is a key to this lifestyle of walking with God, to finding rich nourishment in those green pastures, to seeing our true image in those quiet waters of reflection. And we need to know that even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death – which is just daily life, really – that God is with us all the way. His rod and His staff (His word spoken to us and His Spirit leading us), they comfort us. He anoints us; our cup overflows. I want to encourage you to get hold of this psalm, to meditate on it and draw out the truth from it; because God is with us, and His goodness and mercy and lovingkindness will follow us, and will be identifying features of the way we live our lives.

19. The Joshua Generation will be equipped to prepare provisions, to live by faith.

Pass through the midst of the camp and command the people, saying, “Prepare provisions for yourselves, for within three days you are to cross this Jordan, to go in to possess the land which the LORD your God is giving you, to possess it” (Joshua 1:11).

We have to be able to teach people to live under the provision of God. Each one of us is responsible to possess our own inheritance. We each need to be equipped with the weapons we will need, the revelation we need, the lifestyle we need. God will provide everything we need to take the land, to take possession of all that He intends for us and has promised to us. We need to know how to access that provision, to take hold of it for ourselves, and to teach others to do the same.

20. The Joshua Generation will equip the people to be consecrated (or sanctified) –  set apart, dedicated and holy.

Then Joshua said to the people, “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the LORD will do wonders among you” (Joshua 3:5).

This is where many of us are in the process. When Israel were at Gilgal they dealt with the things from the past, embraced fresh revelation of the truths they had lost sight of, and were set apart for the purposes of God for their generation.

Do you want to hear ‘Well done, good and faithful servant’? Do you want it said of you that, like David, you served the purpose of God in your generation? I do. I want to serve the purpose of God in this generation that I am called to be part of, and I believe that God wants to raise up a whole people who desire to do the same.

Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the LORD will do wonders among you.

We are halfway through this mini-series on the Joshua Generation.
Let’s remember the questions we are asking:

  • Are you ready to be part of the Joshua generation?
  • Are you ready to be equipped by the Joshua generation?

If so, I urge you to get hold of these things and press in.
And over the next few weeks, we will look at the next 20 characteristics and begin to press into those too.

Image: The text on the ‘Still Waters’ image at the head of this post is from God Believes In You by Francois du Toit (the author of The Mirror Bible).

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77. Characteristics of the Joshua Generation (#1-5)

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

We have seen that in our time God is raising up a Joshua generation, who will enter into their inheritance and enable others to do the same. This is what that generation will be like:

1. The Joshua Generation will be victorious warriors, dependent on God’s Spirit for supernatural victory.

Do you remember the story in Exodus, when Moses was standing and needed support for his hands, because as long as his hands were raised, Israel was winning the battle? Even at that point, Joshua was being prepared to succeed Moses, and there was a supernatural dimension to what was happening:

‘Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write this in a book as a memorial and recite it to Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” Moses built an altar and named it The LORD is My Banner; and he said, “The LORD has sworn; the LORD will have war against Amalek from generation to generation”’ (Ex 17:14-16).

We need to know the Name of God, Jehovah-Nissi:  the Lord our banner or victory. ‘The Lord is my banner’. There is something here that we need to get hold of in our spirit. We use banners in this dimension of warfare, and that banner of victory is what will enable us to overcome. This battle will be in every generation. This is something which God wants to equip us for, to see Amalek destroyed.

There is a reason God wants it destroyed. The Amalekites were descended from Esau – they personified evil, and were inheritance robbers. They were those who competed for the Promised Land. For us they represent the tares, the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod, who seek to rob us of our inheritance. We need to destroy them; and there is going to be a battle in our generation. We need to know the Name of God, Jehovah-Nissi, because of the level of warfare which is going to come. When the world is falling apart, we have to be able to be overcomers in the midst of everything that is going on around us.

2. The Joshua Generation will have a servant heart.

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (Matt 11:28-30).

This is a key scripture to understand about being servant-hearted. It is about not doing things in your own strength but in knowing your identity and being of gentle and humble heart. That’s what Jesus said, “if you take My yoke upon you, learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in heart”. A servant generation will know true authority and true identity through submitting it all to God.

We need to understand that Joshua had a call, and yet he was Moses’ servant: ‘So Moses arose with Joshua his servant, and Moses went up to the mountain of God’ (Ex 24:13).

3. The Joshua Generation will know the glory of God as a consuming fire.

We are already beginning to experience this in the heavenly realms, but there is so much more of it still to come.
On Mount Sinai, when God gave the commandments to Moses, Joshua also went up with him to the mountain top. Most people don’t read that or realise it, but that is what it says. And what happened there was that ‘the glory of the LORD rested on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days. .. And to the eyes of the sons of Israel the appearance of the glory of the LORD was like a consuming fire on the mountain top’ (Ex 24:16-17).

God is inviting everyone to come to the mountain top, to come into the fiery smoke, and to meet Him face to face. It is an awesome thing to look into His eyes. Face-to-face encounters with God will characterise the Joshua generation.

4. The Joshua Generation will be hungry and thirsty for the intimacy of God’s Presence.

We will not be satisfied with anything less. We need the intimacy of God’s presence. We need to press into it. We need to be so hungry and thirsty for righteousness, and for the presence of God, that it is going to transform our lives. And God is going to start stirring that hunger, by giving you experiences that make you crave and hunger for more. Don’t be satisfied with just an experience: it needs to become a lifestyle. We need to live in the presence of God in the dual realms of heaven and earth. We need to press in.

‘Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses returned to the camp, his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent’ (Ex 33:11).

Joshua stayed in God’s presence even after Moses left, and that will be a characteristic of the Joshua generation. When some people give up, when they have had enough, the Joshua generation will press in for more. You are not going to be satisfied until you have received the fullness of your inheritance.

5. The Joshua Generation will be chosen as forerunners to enter the Promised Land.

Some of you are going to have experiences that go beyond, and you are going to help other people to come into it. When I went on the fast two years ago, and began to enter into heavenly encounters, my desire was to facilitate others coming in. Our intention is always to open the door for others. We are not exclusive. The purpose of being  forerunners is not to keep others out, but to encourage everyone to come in.

Joshua and Caleb were sent out as spies: they saw the promises – and they saw the giants – first hand. But they had a different attitude to the others: they were willing to press in.

…and they spoke to all the congregation of the sons of Israel, saying, “The land through which we passed as spies is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land which flows with milk and honey. Only do not rebel against the Lord; and do not fear the people of the land, for they will be our prey. Their protection has been removed from them, and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them.” But all the congregation said to stone Joshua and Caleb with stones (Numbers 14:7-10a).

These are just the first 5 of 40 characteristics of this generation which I believe God has shown me. Do you recognise these things in you? Is this a generation of which you are called to be a part?

We will look at some more next time.

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76. A Generation Of Forerunners

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

As we saw last time, God will have His way: His will is going to be done, and our choice is whether we want to be part of it or not. All the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord.

The Moses generation

Moses’ generation came to the borders of the land… and chose not to go in. As a result, God told them, “your corpses will fall in this wilderness, even all your numbered men, according to your complete number from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against Me. Surely you shall not come into the land in which I swore to settle you, except Caleb… and Joshua” (Num 14:29-30).

Those aged 20 years and up were responsible. There were a whole lot of people under the age of 20 who wandered round in the wilderness with their elders; but when their time came to make a choice, they chose to embrace their destiny. God is calling that people forth today. Caleb and Joshua were of the older generation; but how they lived, how they believed, how they acted, what they did – that was what set them apart from their contemporaries and inspired the younger generation. They are a key to understanding what it takes to inherit, what it takes to become a Joshua generation.

A billion labourers

The Moses generation failed to receive their inheritance, and died in the wilderness. The Joshua generation, I believe, are going to equip a harvest of a billion labourers in the supernatural. I say ‘in the supernatural’ because we cannot succeed by natural means in all that lies in store for us; it is going to have to be achieved by supernatural means, and by a people equipped to operate in the fullness of God’s kingdom power.

That is why we have to take back ground that has been given to the enemy. Occult and New Age people are operating in spiritual power and doing things most of the church would not begin to know how to do, but they are occupying ground in the counterfeit that we should be ruling in the authentic if only we were operating in the true power of God.

We need to stand up and be counted. We need to take back that territory, in the face of intense opposition (and most of that opposition will come from within the church). If we are to see this next generation raised up, we need to begin to operate in the realm of the supernatural beyond what any of us have experienced so far. We have to make ourselves ready for a whole new revelation of the supernatural, and when we are ready God will lead us into it.

We need to equip a generation who will see Jesus return. To see a final harvest in which everybody who is going to be saved will be saved. The Joshua generation will be forerunners who have spied out the land. Many of us have already been forerunners. We have experienced a foretaste of some of the things which are going to take place. We have glimpsed it. In our spirit and in our heart we know there is more. We have been hungry for more, some of us have been that way all our lives. And there are more forerunner experiences still to come. It will be like spying out the land. We will not yet have received the complete fulfilment of all that God intends, but we will have glimpses of it, get a taste for it, begin to realise what it is going to be like.

Crossing the Jordan

The Church is crossing the Jordan, and it has been happening for a while. I look back into the eighties and I can see the beginnings of it. I remember some of the things that were prophesied then (and people didn’t really know what they were prophesying): about Joel’s army; a whole different breed; a nameless, faceless army of God’s people who were going to be raised up; no superstars, just ordinary people, operating in the supernatural power of God. They were prophesying some of the very things we are now beginning to see take place.

This generation has been entering in over that whole period of time, but we have not progressed far beyond the other side of the Jordan. The church is still at that place called Gilgal. For Israel that was where the reproach of the past was removed, where they were all circumcised again, where they took the Passover again: the things which were necessary for them to do as preparation to going in to fight the giants and take the whole land. I believe that this is where the church is in these days, days of preparation.

We have experienced the Wine, Fire and Wind of God, but there is more coming. We have to be able to lead and equip the Jesus generation to possess – the Hebrew word means ‘to inherit by seizing, dispossessing, and become heirs of’ – the land of promise. This is about the violent taking the kingdom by force. The Joshua generation is a warrior generation who will fight on behalf of others and bring them into the land. They will bring God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven: fulfilling Adam’s mandate in both realms. They will rule in the spirit realm and influence in the natural realm, to see God’s glory fill the earth (Num 14:21).

The Joshua generation will experience the land for themselves, but will also equip others to be able to live in the Promised Land and to fully possess it. It will mean living in a completely different dimension in terms of the supernatural.

We are all called to enter: some of us are called to go before, and to equip, but all of us are called to enter. Or you can choose to be like those who turned down God’s invitation and died in the wilderness. Everyone has that choice, but God is inviting people to enter in. Even in Joshua’s day, there were people who crossed the Jordan, were part of fighting the battles, and yet they chose to go back and live on the other side. Two and a half tribes, or nearly a quarter of them.

There are some ministries who have been forerunner ministries, who have been in the forefront of what God is doing, but who will choose to go back, and as a result will miss out on the fullness of their inheritance. I do not want to be one of those. I want to be part of a generation who enter in, possess, and enjoy the land; and who equip others to come in and do the same.

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56. Covenant Blessings, Covenant Judgments.

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

In looking at Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 21-25, we saw last time that we need to understand covenant blessings and judgments. So today let’s consider Deuteronomy 28:1-14 (blessings) and 15-68 (judgments, or ‘curses’).

Above all the nations

Now it shall be, if you diligently obey the LORD your God, being careful to do all His commandments which I command you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth… But it shall come about, if you do not obey the LORD your God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes with which I charge you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you… (Deut 28:1, 15).

‘High above all the nations of the earth’ – doesn’t that sound like the mountain of the house of the Lord being lifted high above the other mountains? All the other nations were supposed to stream to them. They had a kingdom mandate. If they kept covenant and were obedient, they could expect blessings. But if they were disobedient, judgment would come.

Peace?

What would it be like when that judgment came? Deuteronomy 29:19-21 tells us:

It shall be when he hears the words of this curse, that he will boast, saying, ‘I have peace though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart in order to destroy the watered land with the dry.’ The LORD shall never be willing to forgive him, but rather the anger of the LORD and His jealousy will burn against that man, and every curse which is written in this book will rest on him, and the LORD will blot out his name from under heaven.  Then the LORD will single him out for adversity from all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant which are written in this book of the law.’

‘Peace’. The first time this covenant judgment came upon Israel was when they were exiled to Babylon. At that time their prophets were prophesying peace and blessing, when they should have been prophesying judgment. ‘Stubbornness’: that sums up the attitude of the Pharisees and Sadducees, the rulers of Israel, who didn’t expect Jesus and didn’t accept His coming. There were bound to be covenant consequences (variously called ‘wrath’, ‘doom’ and ‘woe’).

As the eagle swoops down

Not so for us. Let’s be clear on this. God’s ‘wrath’ is not aimed at us, ever. It is an expression of His burning passion for us, not against us. But we will see where that wrath did fall.

“All the nations will say, ‘Why has the LORD done thus to this land? Why this great outburst of anger?’ Then men will say, ‘Because they forsook the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which He made with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt. Therefore, the anger of the LORD burned against that land, to bring upon it every curse which is written in this book; and the LORD uprooted them from their land in anger and in fury and in great wrath, and cast them into another land’” (Deut 29:24-28).

Initially this judgment was fulfilled in the exile to Babylon, but with a prophetic promise of return. After a time, God restored them to the land and gave them another opportunity to be obedient. If they continued to be disobedient, then further consequences were inevitable, and this is what Jesus is warning them about. He is referring to passages like these in Deuteronomy:

A people whom you do not know shall eat up the produce of your ground and all your labours, and you will never be anything but oppressed and crushed continually… The LORD will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as the eagle swoops down, a nation whose language you shall not understand … It shall besiege you in all your towns until your high and fortified walls in which you trusted come down throughout your land, and it shall besiege you in all your towns throughout your land which the LORD your God has given you (Deut 28:33, 49, 52).

legion-444126_640The final fulfilment of this prophecy was that Jerusalem was indeed besieged and subsequently destroyed. That happened at the end of the generation to which Jesus was speaking, in AD 70. And look at the phrase ‘as the eagle swoops down’: you can also see how that could speak of the Roman armies, which carried an eagle as a standard.

This was to be followed by spiritual restoration. There was a promise of physical restoration after Babylon, which was totally fulfilled, and they were brought back into the land. But afterwards, all the promises relating to the new covenant were of a spiritual restoration in Christ.

“Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people” (Jer 31:31-33).

Restoration? Yes, for everyone, in Christ. This is new covenant language, and we see it again in Ezekiel. There would be a physical manifestation of this restoration, but it would be the kingdom of God filling the earth.

So much for the covenant background. Next time I want to consider in detail what Jesus said about all this, back in Matthew 21-25.

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54. Salvation and Judgment

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

Stone and Mountain

I want to begin today by looking again at two scriptures we have seen before:

Now it will come about that In the last days
The mountain of the house of the LORD
Will be established as the chief of the mountains,
And will be raised above the hills;
And all the nations will stream to it (Isa 2:2).

You continued looking until a stone was cut out without hands …But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth (Dan 2:34-35).

This Stone and Mountain are very important: Jesus taught about it, and so did the apostles. The Stone is Jesus and the Mountain is His kingdom; the house of the Lord is God’s people. The kingdom is manifest (or demonstrated) through the church as God’s people, not through the institution called ‘church’.

The kingdom of God is going to fill the earth, in our time. As we have seen, tares have been sown into the church in terms of false doctrine which has put that off to another time or another people.

There has only ever been one people of God: people of faith. Faith is the key: it is not about being born into a Christian family. It was never even about being born into a Jewish family: you were not of the true Israel unless you had faith. It really wasn’t a national thing, as we will see.

‘Two sides of the same coin’

When God comes in righteousness, He often comes in judgment as well as in salvation: they are two sides of the same coin.

‘Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne (Kingdom); Lovingkindness and truth go before You’ (Ps 89:14).

lumberjack-199694_640

“The axe is already laid at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire… He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Matt 3:10-12).

  • The Flood brought salvation for Noah and his family, but judgment for the world.
  • In the Exodus, in the crossing of the Red Sea, there was salvation for Israel, but judgment for Egypt as all their army was swept away.
  • At the Cross there is salvation for believers, and it is open to everyone. But if you do not receive it, there is judgment.
  • In fact in all Jesus’ comings – and there are many comings of Jesus, ending with his Last Coming – there is both salvation and judgment.

Speaking of that Stone again:

This precious value, then, is for you who believe; but for those who disbelieve, “THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED, THIS BECAME THE VERY CORNER stone,” and,  “A STONE OF STUMBLING AND A ROCK OF OFFENSE”;  for they stumble because they are disobedient to the word, and to this doom they were also appointed (1 Peter 2:7-8).

The Stone, we know, was Jesus. Those builders who rejected Him were the Jewish people at the time. Not all of them rejected Him of course: the earliest church was made up of Jewish believers. But for those who did reject Him, those are strong words. ‘Doom’, like ‘woe’ in Matthew 23, is a covenant word.

No peaceful co-existence

Jesus ascended back up to heaven in around the year AD 30. The destruction of Jerusalem and its temple happened in AD 70. That 40-year period was a generation in which the old covenant people co-existed with the new covenant people. It was not a peaceful co-existence. Saul, before he met Jesus and became Paul, was sent out by the Jewish leaders to persecute Christians. They were trying to stamp out what they saw as heresy. Later on, in every city where (as Paul) he went to preach, he spoke to the Jewish people there first as God’s people and inheritors of God’s promises. When he showed them that these could only be received in Christ, most of them persecuted him, though some believed. That is why he was beaten and stoned.

So in this period the Old Covenant (with its Natural Country, City and Temple) was still in existence alongside the New Covenant (with its Spiritual Country, City and Temple). Much of the New Testament was written from the perspective of the persecution which arose because of this.

In particular, the whole of the book of Revelation was written about the covenant judgments (‘doom’) that were to come at the end of this period, the consequences of Israel’s rejection of the Messiah and their persecution of the church. It was written to provide comfort to those Christians who were suffering that intense persecution, to reassure them that God had a plan in it and that it would come to an end. It was not written about ‘the end of the world’. We need to get that out of our thinking, and then look at these scriptures for what they actually say.

That is a process we will begin in the next post. I want to look at the whole passage which leads up to the disciples’ question in Matthew 24, because that is essential if we are to properly understand the answers that Jesus gave them.

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33. The Day Of His Power

Mike Parsons –

Ever since the Garden of Eden, man has been trying to do things apart from God. All we like sheep have gone astray – we have all done things our own way. The whole world system has been set up to provide an alternative to God, but it is coming down.

The pride of man will be humbled and the loftiness of men will be abased; and the LORD alone will be exalted in that day, but the idols will completely vanish. Men will go into caves of the rocks and into holes of the ground before the terror of the LORD and the splendour of His majesty, when He arises to make the earth tremble’ (Isa 2:17-19).

God is going to arise and make the earth tremble, shaking it to its very core. When it crumbles and falls, what is left? The kingdom which cannot be shaken (Heb 12:28), the kingdom of God which is within us (Luke 17:21).

This is what is going to take place:

Now it will come about that In the last days the mountain of the house of the LORD will be established as the chief of the mountains, and will be raised above the hills; and all the nations will stream to it. (Isa 2:2)

The house of the Lord is the church, and the mountain is kingdom authority. It will be established over and above all those other hills and mountains, over every authority that exists in the world, and everyone will stream to it because the church will have the answers that the world is looking for. Are we really up for that? We need to be. At the moment, evil spirits are controlling those world systems: those spirits need to be dethroned, and God is going to use His people to dethrone them.

Light and darkness

This is a word that has been given over and over, here in Freedom Church and worldwide:  Arise, shine; for your light has come and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you (Isa 60:1). Jesus is coming for His church, and His church is supposed to be light to the world: we are to be children of light. There is going to be a period of great light where the harvest of harvesters is going to come in. But read verses 2-3:

Behold, darkness will cover the earth and deep darkness the peoples; but the LORD will rise upon you and His glory will appear upon you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.

When there is nowhere else to go, when we are shining in the darkness, when the glory of God is manifested through His church, when the Presence of God is manifest, then people are going to start to come. And then, in a great period of darkness, we are to shine even brighter for that end-time harvest. That is what God is calling us to. That is what He is preparing us for.

We need to start shining. We need to start getting the glory of God in our lives; we need to start letting the glory of God out of our lives. We must manifest the presence of God in our daily lives, not just in meetings, but everywhere. God’s glory must be so evident in us that people will start coming up to us saying ‘what must I do to be saved?’ They will come to us in desperation because everything they have put their trust in has come to nothing.

Choose

What must we do? It is time to choose who we are going to serve. A Joshua generation is being raised up, and we can be part of it. It was Joshua who said to the children of Israel:

Now, therefore, fear the LORD and serve Him in sincerity and truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served, and serve the LORD. Choose for yourselves today whom you will serve, but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD (Joshua 24:14-15).

It is time to get rid of the idols, time to decide to serve the Lord. At Freedom, as a church, we have made that decision. We are going to serve the Lord. No matter what it costs and no matter what it takes; no matter how much we have to do that we might rather not do, we are going to serve the Lord. And we want other people to be part of that, because God is going to raise up churches and ministries around the world to be part of this move, to equip this end-time generation.

It is also time to choose individually: who am I going to serve? Am I going to serve the idols of my past, or am I going to surrender and serve the living God? Have I been serving myself, have I been serving the enemy, or have I been serving God?  Who am I going to serve?

As for me, I am going to serve God.

He is going to pour out His light, pour out His Spirit: He is going to equip us beyond our wildest dreams. Honestly, some of the things I have seen, some of the things the other prophetic people have seen coming – that shaking of the world’s systems – it will be like nothing in history, nothing that has ever taken place before, and we have to be ready for it. But God is asking, are we ready to volunteer in the day of His power (Ps 110:3)?

He is looking for those volunteers, because the day of His power is surely coming.

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29. Surrender Your Whole Life

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

abandon

I believe that God is challenging us to surrender. And especially if you have been hardening your heart when you have seen God at work in revival, resisting what He is doing because things are not as you expected, this is an opportunity for you to surrender totally to Him, and allow Him to do what He needs to do.

All of us, everything

Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord (Acts 3:19).

If we are willing to turn away from ourselves and surrender to Him, He will refresh us with His very Presence. That is a promise: the question is, are we willing, or do we still want to do it our own way? Do we still want to do it according to our own thinking or are we willing to surrender that and allow God to do it however He chooses? Are we willing to give Him everything? He wants our heart; He wants our mind; He wants it all. He is not satisfied with what we are giving Him: all of us need to surrender everything.

Let us abandon ourselves to Him: be that living sacrifice we looked at last time, and let it all go. Let go of our past and let Him heal it and restore it. He will restore our soul if we are willing to sit in green pastures by quiet waters and look at His face. See His eyes, looking at us, loving us. Seeing our pain and our hurt, and bringing healing because He loves us. He went to the cross and took every sickness, every pain, every disease, every sorrow; He took every sin we have committed or ever will, every sin that has been committed against us, and He died for us. And He was resurrected and is alive to enforce the victory of the cross in our lives – if we will allow Him to do it.

The question is, will we let it go? We need to receive our true identity as sons of God. The only way we receive it is letting go of our old identity, letting go of our old way of doing it, our old strongholds and mindsets, to embrace our destiny. Every one of us has a destiny in God, God wants us to embrace it.

Today

And today, I really believe, is the time when we need to make a decision in our hearts. Some of us have been lukewarm, resistant, doing as little as we have thought we could get away with. If we have been thinking that would be OK, we need to recognise that is not enough anymore. It never was. It is not enough to play around with this: God wants our whole life: everything. And when we give Him our whole life, we receive His abundant life in return; we get everything we ever desired or wanted, but has been blocked by our stubbornness, because of the flesh and the strongholds that get in the way.  Today is the time when we can surrender.

Can we take a minute to be quiet, close our eyes, and be honest before God about where we are with Him right now? If we are struggling, to surrender that struggle. If we know there are things we have not handed over to Him, to hand them over now. Just count the cost of what doing things our own way might be for us, if we miss what God is doing right now. Consider where it will lead us and where it will take us, compared to what will happen if we surrender our life to God, compared to our destiny in God,  in the Holy Spirit, in the future Kingdom of God.

Selah

Please, pause for a minute to do that, and only continue reading this post when you are done.

Prayer of surrender

Now I am inviting you to pray with me if you are willing to surrender the whole of your life. Whether you have prayed a prayer of surrender like this before, or whether this is the first time, He wants to give you so much more than you can imagine or think, but He cannot if you are not surrendering everything to Him. Surrender to Him right now. Forget what anyone else is doing around you, just get in the presence of God.

Father,
I pray that You will receive the living sacrifice
That I am presenting before You right now.
That You will receive it into Your hand,
Receive my life, receive my soul,
My mind, my heart, my will, my emotions, my choice.
Receive me as a living sacrifice,
Heal, restore, make whole,
Empower, envision, equip;
Draw me into an intimate relationship with You, Father.

As I surrender to You,
Come, meet with me at that point of surrender.
As I surrender my life, give me Your abundant life;
As I surrender my hurts and pains, bring healing and restoration;
As I surrender my past, give me revelation of my future.
Open up the eyes of my heart to see, to hear, to feel and to know
Who I am as Your son.
Release my true identity as Your son,
Called to the kingdom for such a time as this.
Prepare my body with fragrant oils and fragrant perfume
To come into the presence of the King.

I come into the presence of the King right now
As a living sacrifice,
To present it before You in the heavenly realms
So that I can take my seat,
Seated with Christ in authority and power in the heavenly realms;
To manifest Your kingdom
On earth, as it is in heaven, through my life,
Manifesting the light of Your glory.
Take me, Lord God,
Take my heart, melt it with Your love.

With Your eyes of love
You are looking into people’s hearts, saying,
“Give Me your heart,
Stop being stubborn,
Stop resisting;
Surrender,
Be a living sacrifice.
I have so much to give you,
So much more than you can imagine or think.
Today, just surrender to me
And allow me to do what I want to do in your life.
Allow me to direct your life
In the way it should go,
To empower you and envision you;
Embrace your destiny.”

I pray, Holy Spirit, touch our lives today.
As we have turned away from our own way
And we have repented and turned to You,
Let times of refreshing come from Your very Presence.
Let Your Presence rest on us;
Open up the realms of heaven
As you invite us into the throne room
To meet the King.

God wants to give you new things: He wants you to be invested with new clothes, new robes of righteousness and kingly authority. He wants to put a ring of authority on your finger. He wants to release power and anointing upon you. You are called to the kingdom for such a time as this.

But first of all, He wants you to surrender.

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28. Present a Living Sacrifice (1)

Mike Parsons –

Paul writes to the Romans,

I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship (Rom 12:1).

A living sacrifice is a prepared sacrifice. It will help us if we understand what was involved in offering a sacrifice in the Old Testament. When they sacrificed a lamb they prepared it in a certain way so that it was able to be received as an offering. It was the High Priest who prepared and arranged the sacrifice on the altar, and we know that Jesus is our Great High Priest (Heb 4:14). So now we come into the holy place within the heavenly tabernacle and present ourselves on the altar of incense to be a sweet-smelling aroma to God; we invite Jesus to prepare us as a sacrifice: we know what He is going to do, and we deliberately allow Him to do it.

This is how the High Priest prepared the sacrifice:

  1. He slit its throat and drained its blood. If we are going to be prepared as a living sacrifice, we have to be willing to have our throat slit and our blood drained so that our life in the flesh is exchanged for His life in the spirit. Not literally, not physically having our throat slit, I hasten to add. But Jesus said, “You need to deny yourself, take up the cross daily, and follow me”. Lose our life, to gain His life. We are going to need to totally die to doing it our way, as a choice where we say, “I die to myself,  I deny myself”, daily.
  2. The head was chopped off. We cannot be in charge, with our head. We have to be saying, like Jesus, “Not my will, but Yours be done”. He is the perfect sacrifice. He did this every day. He presented Himself morning by morning as a disciple (Is 50:4). I renounce the right to my free will. Every time, my flesh would get in the way and I would choose to do what suits me rather than what suits God. Therefore, not my will, but Yours be done: I am not going to let my head decide what I am going to do.
  3. The skin was removed. We cannot have defence mechanisms, protection mechanisms and our own self-righteousness as a barrier: we have to be vulnerable and transparent before God, and before others. We cannot protect ourselves: we must live in His protection. We have the armour of light, the armour of righteousness, and the armour of God to protect us. We do not have any of them if we try to protect ourselves with inferior armour of our own making. It is time to let it go.
  4. He split the body completely open, and washed all the inner parts. God wants our heart purified, refined and washed in the living water of His Word and His Presence. We have to be willing to open up our heart, open up our life. That’s what a living sacrifice is, it is saying “Everything belongs to You. I am not hiding anything from You. You have it all”.
  5. Finally, He chopped the legs off. We cannot walk our own way, we have to surrender daily and walk according to how the Spirit leads. “I am going to do nothing other than what I see the Father doing” (John 5:19). That is how Jesus did His miracles: He saw the Father doing it. He is calling us to do the same: miracles, signs and wonders, being led by the Spirit daily, following Him, not doing our own thing and going off in our own direction, but every day surrendering that day to God and saying, “God, this day belongs to You. This is Your day, I am just here as a servant. You lead me, You use me, empower me, envision me, show me what You are doing”.

When we go to heaven and He gives us revelation there, when we spend time in our spirit, in communion and fellowship with Him; if we present ourselves as a living sacrifice, He will reveal Himself.  He will use us if we give Him the opportunity. But we have to surrender and allow Jesus to prepare us to be the sacrifice, and we cannot offer it half-heartedly; because if we do, He knows.

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26. The Spirit and the Word in Unity

crossMike Parsons  –

Now is the time

God is looking for hearts that are truly His. Every one of us has a destiny prepared by God, and we must make sure we don’t miss it for the sake of our own stubbornness, our strongholds, or our own way of thinking. It is time to give it all to God: He wants it all. This is a time of preparation, a time when He is inviting us to abandon ourselves fully to Him. So let’s give Him everything, let’s hold nothing back. Let’s not allow our pride or our past to get in the way of what God wants to do in our lives. Let’s not miss this opportunity: because for some, if you miss it now, you will have missed it completely – that is how serious it could be. Now is the time.

God is pouring out fresh revelation in these days because He is preparing for Jesus to return, preparing for the harvest that is coming. It is time for the church to rise up: He is calling us to ever deeper levels of commitment, and He is releasing ever deeper levels of power and authority. We have entitled this blog ‘Sons of Issachar’ (see 1 Chron 12:32), because God is calling us to be like them in recognising the signs of the times and knowing what to do. God wants us to know what to do, that is why He always reveals to His prophets what He is about to do.

The coming revival

There have been revivals in the past, but they are nothing in comparison to what is going to happen as we approach the return of Jesus. It is good to read about what God has done (and I would encourage everyone to read Roberts Liardon’s books, ‘God’s Generals’) so that we do not lose sight of our heritage and so that we don’t repeat the mistakes people have made before. As you read, you can’t help but get excited about what God is going to do, because all those things He has done in the past are going to come together in the end times. Every mantle of authority that has ever been given is going to be released again over us. It will be an outpouring of the Spirit such as has never been seen before. Smith Wigglesworth prophesied that the Spirit and the Word would come together, that churches of the Spirit and churches of the Word would come together in unity, and that the result would be to release a revival that would impact the whole world. We are in the beginning of those days, and we need to grasp hold of that right now.

We are starting to see the manifold wisdom of God being released. The light that is in us is starting to come through: the fruit of the Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit, releasing ministries, increasing revelation of the Spirit of God, offices being raised up. The kingdom is coming in more and more fullness.

Anointing

It is we who are the gifts, all of us: we are the ministries, we are the ones who are going to get revelation. This is not just for one or two people. Some are going to have ministries that are going to go around the world. Some will stay right where they are and build the foundations of the Kingdom of God. But everyone can have a part in this and it needs to be manifested through us. God wants to reveal Himself in the fruit and the gifts of the Spirit and in ministries being raised up because they are expressions of what He is like. The fruit of the Spirit: that is His character. The gifts of the Spirit: that is the anointing of the Sovereign Lord which was upon Him, and it is also upon us (Isaiah 61). Those ministries are the ministries that He raises up to administer the church.

Freedom Apostolic Resource Centre

God is wanting to move. He is establishing us here at Freedom as a revival centre, an apostolic resource centre for this region and beyond. He is calling us to be a habitation of God to equip others, to bless others, to give away everything that God has given us. I know people can take this the wrong way, thinking we are saying that we have it all. That is not what is in our hearts: yes, we want to give to others what we have, but also we would like to receive from them what they have.

I had a picture, a vision, of waterfalls being poured out over churches across Barnstaple and across the south-west of England. As I watched, all the rivers and all the colours came together as one river, releasing an explosion of life. That will happen (and not only here) if we are willing to give to each other, to receive from each other, and to live in unity with one another; honouring and respecting one another’s churches and traditions and so on, but all bringing what we have received and pressing in together into what God is doing.

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Soundtrack: I Surrender – Hillsong Live