Tag: church

25. Who Can Live With Consuming Fire?

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

rootoutidolsAre we willing to root out of our life the idols that would otherwise keep us blind, deaf and dumb in the things of God? We saw what some of them were last time. The reason they would keep us blind, deaf and dumb is that they themselves are blind, deaf and dumb. A carved image has no life, it has no voice, it has no vision. So we will be aimless, powerless and ineffective if we do not deal with our soul. This is what God is saying to us right now.

Consuming fire

There is a verse which asks, “Who among us can live with the consuming fire? Who among us can live with continual burning?” (Isaiah 33:14b). It is a good question: can we live with consuming fire? The answer is, we can’t, not without being continually burned. If we are to live with the fire then we will be continually changed and purified. “Who among us can live with the consuming fire?…He who walks righteously and speaks with sincerity, he who rejects unjust gain and shakes his hands so that they hold no bribe; he who stops his ears from hearing about bloodshed and shuts his eyes from looking upon evil…” (Isaiah 33:14-15). We will need to not only be righteous but to walk in righteousness; there are things we will have to stop looking at, things we will have to stop our ears from hearing, because we must be found willing and ready.

Fix our attention

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you (Romans 12: 1-2, The Message).

We are to fix our attention on God. His eyes are fixed upon us, and those eyes of fire can see right through us. When we have God in our spirit, and the glory of God coming through our spirit, it will restore our soul. We will be changed from the inside out, as it says in this passage.

I have said before that the gathering angels are here among us. There is a time very soon, in fact it is about to come upon us, when the true church is going to be separated: there are things which are going to be taken out of the church, but the world also needs to come out of our lives. Then we will be able to shine like the sun, transfigured with glory; able to be true sons of God, revealed to the world in which we are living.

Ancient anointings

And I believe that all the ancient anointings and mantles that God has released in history are going to be released in these days, and restored to the church. The mantles of authority and power of every revival there has ever been are going to be conferred upon the church in the last days.

We can be eager for that, but if you have listened to and read the stories of revival, you know that virtually every one of the people who were involved in leading those revivals eventually fell into sin in some way. They ended up either dying early, or their ministries fell; and this happened to them because they were not pure and holy. God is not going to trust people who are not pure and holy with the mantles and the anointing that he is going to release in these last days. This is the reason He is wanting us to prepare our lives: if we are to carry this anointing and these mantles – and not fall – then we have to do now what is necessary in order to be ready.

Be hungry and thirsty for more. There is more to come, therefore be changed. God is wanting to  prepare us,  to equip us, to empower us; He wants us to truly be sons of God, to be superheroes of the faith. That is what God is looking for in these days, and we cannot afford to hold on to anything that will keep Him from finding us prepared and ready.

If He says to let it go, we let it go.

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8. The Sword Comes to Divide

Mike Parsons –

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Heb 4:12).

This passage is not talking about the Bible, despite what we may have been taught. This sword of the Spirit, the word of God, is going to divide our soul and our spirit. It is going to divide what is of the flesh, what is of the soul, and what is of the spirit in our lives, and in the church, and the world. This is the living word spoken into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. He may use scriptures, especially if that is a way we are used to hearing from Him; He may not.

The sword is coming

The sword is coming to our lives, and we cannot avoid it. It is coming from the mouth of Jesus. It is going to divide the thoughts and intentions of our hearts. It is going to show us what our hearts are engaged with, and it isn’t going to be easy, but it is going to transform us and the world in which we live.

The sword is coming to the church. Not just this church, but the church, and it is coming to cause division: ‘Who are for me, and who are against me?’ It will cause division because there is so much of the church that isn’t really the church, it is just people who go along to church.

Church is not a building, we know that, but it’s not a meeting either. The church is a people called out and gathered to meet with the presence of the living God and to serve Him. In charismatic circles we jettisoned the idea that church was about buildings years ago, but then it became about meetings, about going to the meeting. Actually it is nothing to do with meetings, it is about Him, and is about who we are: we are His people and church is 24/7. It is about who we are every day of the week, in our jobs, in our homes, in our neighbourhoods.

A level of holiness

And God is bringing a sword to the church. We need to get ready so that we are prepared to see what God is going to release. We have got to see into that supernatural realm of what is to come. We need to be prepared to be transformed, because if our lives remain in the state they are in now, then when the glory of God starts coming we will not be able to bear it.

I tell you, Ananias and Sapphira couldn’t lie to the Holy Spirit without dropping down dead. I don’t want anyone dropping down dead around here, but the level of holiness required for the church of Jesus Christ to perform the works of Jesus in the world is far higher than the level of holiness we are living in right now. Levels of relationship and responsibility are going to increase, and at the new level God is calling us to, a new level of His presence, there is a corresponding new level of holiness required. What we could get away with before, we will not be able to get away with in what is coming.

And God is going to open up and reveal those things to us. We have to be prepared. We have to be prepared to act. We cannot sit here and do nothing.

We have to be prepared for warfare, because warfare is coming, and what we see today is nothing compared to what we are going to see. We have to be prepared to be ambassadors for the kingdom of heaven on earth. We cannot live by the ways and means of the world; we have to be in it but we cannot be of it. We have to live by the kingdom, and the presence and the power of the kingdom of God. We are ambassadors to bring heaven on earth.

Bring heaven to earth

That is our commission, to bring heaven to earth. As it is in heaven, so it is on earth, through our lives. That’s what God is calling us to. We have to be prepared to be revealed as sons of God, who are going to shine with glory. Because Jesus was transfigured here on earth, that means we can be transfigured here on earth. People are not going to know what to make of it when the glory of God starts shining out of us visibly. But Jesus did it as a demonstration of what we are to do. What did He say? ‘These works that I do, you will do also, and greater things than these’ (John 14:12). Greater things: there’s a whole load more that we will have to grow into. We have to be prepared to take dominion.

God called Adam and Eve to take dominion over the planet. Satan took that from them, Jesus came to restore it. We have to be prepared to operate in the ways of God’s kingdom.

‘Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’.

Related posts from Freedom ARC
Available in other languages

Engage with God like never before!

Engaging God on the Heavenly Pathways of Relationship and Responsibility
Equipping a Joshua Generation of supernatural sons of God to live according to the order of Melchizedek

1. About

Freedom ARC (Apostolic Resource Centre) is an expression of the apostolic mandate of Freedom Church, Barnstaple, UK. It represents our heart to serve the wider body of Christ by making available any teaching, insight and revelation which God opens up to us.

We believe that Jesus intends the church (ekklesia) to be instrumental in transforming human society (indeed, the entire cosmos) here and now, rather than waiting for some event in the future. This is what we understand Peter to have meant by the restoration of all things (Acts 3:21). Freedom ARC aims to be a resource for the church to help her become all that God intends her to be and to enable her to bring heaven to earth.

Sons of Issachar blog

Why ‘Sons of Issachar’? Sue Davies prophesied over Freedom Church that we would be like the Sons of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what needed to be done (1 Chronicles 12:32). God remains the same, but He focuses on different things at different times and seasons, according to His eternal plan and purpose.

Mike-Parsons

On this blog we post content including the teaching of Mike Parsons (photo above) and others on accessing the realms of heaven and stepping into our destiny. We  will also give you advance notice of any special events organised by Freedom ARC.

Follow Mike’s teaching in chronological order by clicking on the  link, which you will normally find at the very foot of each post, below the comments. You will find a Previous link there too on all posts except this one. Use the search box (in the right menu) if you know the subject, or part of the title, of the post you are looking for.

Over time Mike’s revelation has developed, so you may find that in more recent posts he is saying something quite different to what he said about the same subject several years previously. On the blog home page you will find posts in reverse order, starting with the most recent.

Freedom ARC website

Please check out the teaching resources now available on our Freedom ARC website. We offer the first session of many of our teaching series completely free in our podcast area, and you can usually listen to Mike’s latest published message each week.

Engaging God

If you are really serious about pursuing a deeper relationship with God and fulfilling your destiny, we recommend you join around 800 other pioneers and adventurers worldwide on our Engaging God programme.

This interactive programme runs on a dedicated website. It will enable you to learn how to access God in the realms of heaven and within your own spirit and heart, and take up your responsibility as a son in God’s kingdom. The cost is £12 per month (likely equivalent to around $15 USD, depending on the prevailing exchange rate), but you can try it for two weeks FREE when you register and set up a payment plan. Read more about it here.

YouTube

Mike also posts ‘Supernatural Mentoring’ video clips on his YouTube channel. [Please note that we are not accepting any new applications to take part in these, and that they are not part of the Engaging God programme].

Community outreach

We demonstrate the heart and love of God in our community through our social outreach charity Freedom Community Alliance (the new name for Freedom Social Projects and Freedom Communities), which runs a day centre for those suffering from poverty, disadvantage and social exclusion, and a therapeutic community for men recovering from life-controlling addictions.

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