Tag: divine intimacy

493. Training For Reigning

Mike Parsons – 

Kingdom people used to say, “We’re in training for reigning!” I don’t think they had any idea what reigning really was…
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Kingdom people used to say, “We are in training for reigning,” and I do not think they had any idea what reigning really was. I think they thought of it more as an earthly thing rather than something beyond that. But we are in training, and I do want to learn, and I want to enjoy the journey of learning, particularly when it comes with my Dad. I love that relationship with my Dad. It is an intimate one. I feel his pleasure, and I know that if I could help people, or any other beings, feel the pleasure that I feel from God, that would be a good thing. How could I do that? I do not really know, but I do know I feel God’s pleasure, when I am in creation; I feel his pleasure that way, and it is a joyful thing.

So any environment that I was responsible for creating, I would want to be filled with joy, peace and love. Would I make people with free will to go and choose to do something apart? Well, if you do not have free will, you cannot choose to love, so it is not love, is it? But I would not want someone to love me. If I was creating something, I would want them to love God, who created me. That is different, and I do think about that quite a bit. If I had total creative choice, would I want to create a mess like we have got? Because then I would be responsible for it!

Being an ascended father is not being God: I do not think I have the capacity to be connected to billions of people all at once and process everything at the same time. Unless my mind was totally transformed, that would be like the film Bruce Almighty. At first he is loving it, saying, “Oh, I can do this and I can do that,” and then suddenly, “What are all these voices? What are all these voices?” “Well, they are praying.” “Oh no,” he says, “I didn’t sign up for that!” So no, I don’t think it means we will be like God in that sense. But the more we become like him, the greater our capacity might be. It is an interesting one.

I do enjoy the multi-dimensional ability to be at rest, enjoying life here without having to cognitively do everything I am doing in the heavens. It would be impossible, really. I could not be in eight places doing eight things, one after the other, in a linear fashion. Being free from linearity, free to be multi-dimensional, was a joy when I discovered it.

I was doing all that before I even knew I was doing it. I had an inkling that something was going on because I was receiving insight and revelation from my spirit that I had no memory of actually engaging with. So I thought something more must be happening. Then the Father showed me, “You are here doing this, and here doing that, and here, and here.” They were all familiar places, not beyond my experience, but actually being in that state of multidimensional connection…!

When God spoke to me about it, he said, “You have had glimpses of these things, but now I am taking the blinkers off and showing you what this reality really is.” And I thought, wow, that is awesome. Now I can just relax and enjoy being here, knowing all that is being outworked there without me having to think, “Oh, I must do this today or that today.” It is who I am. That was the key: this is who I am.

When God says, “I am that I am,” I know that I am who God made me to be, and I only have to be in “I am” to outwork that. Not “I am” independent, but “I am” in the image of “I am.” If I really get hold of that – who he made me to be, my true identity in that wondrous union of intimacy and relationship – then I can be at rest. I do not have to worry, be anxious or rushed.

Life is so much more joyful and connected to creation now than when I was still learning how to do everything. I think back and realise how much I learned. It was a lot, but that was the journey God took me on. I learned how to do it all, but I did not realise I was doing it until he showed me. Then I saw how we have this amazing capacity to go beyond what I could ever have imagined or thought I could do in my own understanding. Looking back, that was the learning process that got me here.

I rejoice in that and I am very thankful to God for all he did to bring me to this place where life is now much more joyful, peaceful and restful. I feel his pleasure when I am enjoying life. I live quite a simple life. I enjoy being in the garden, in the workshop, just hanging out. I enjoy having fun. I laugh a lot, much more than I ever did. We have a very similar sense of humour, so we laugh together a lot, and we laugh at each other too, because we know each other’s little ways. It is lovely.

I never lived that way before, and it really does make life enjoyable and fun. We laugh a lot every day, about all sorts of things. God laughs too, you know. He is a God who laughs. People often think he is miserable, worrying and anxious about the world, but he is full of loving emotion. I know he has laughed at me plenty of times. I have brought him much mirth with the things I have done and the scrapes I have got into. I know he was laughing, because it was amusing, even if It was not very amusing to me at the time. This is a picture I used to use sometimes of a lion with its paw over its eyes, and I think that must be God looking at me, saying, “Oh no, what is he up to now?”

Can you imagine the Lion up in heaven, going ‘What are they up to now?’

These days I feel more and more in tune, living in that union with God’s heart. I feel and sense him all the time now, which makes life so joyful, and not something I would have thought possible, because you only know what you know, don’t you? You don’t know there is something better until you discover it. I did not know my life could be like this until I am living it like this. It was not something I asked God for, because I would not have known what to ask for. I might have asked in general terms, but not in specifics. Now I am so grateful for the specifics. I live with a real attitude of thanksgiving and gratitude because I appreciate it so much. It is a joyful life, to be lived.

432. From Within: Cultivating Your Relationship with the Father

332. Embracing Multi-Dimensional Living

377. Living in Rest

459. The Dark Cloud 1 | Why Would God Hide From Us?

Mike Parsons – 

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Where do we get our value from? Where do we get our identity from?

What I discovered on this journey of restored first love and identity was that I had been getting my value, worth and identity from what I was doing. And therefore, if I was not doing those things, I struggled with how I felt about myself.

Lessons from Hebrew Marriage

We have been exploring the restoration of first love through the lens of the six aspects of Hebrew marriage found in the Old Testament. God revealed to Israel that He desired a marriage relationship with them. However, they failed to accept that invitation. Instead, they set up their own system of Hebrew marriage, based on what they believed God had done—but something was missing: relationship.

It became a relationship based on contract, not covenant.

We looked at:

  • The Garden (Lakah) – God drawing us into intimacy and revealing His love
  • The Dance Floor (Segullah) – where He entwines with us, revealing our identity and destiny
  • The Mikveh – the soaking room of preparation and transformation, where He prepares us to come into His presence
  • The Ketubah – the covenant of relationship (which, in my case, I initially misunderstood and approached from the soul)
  • The Kiddushin – the betrothal, the dark cloud of surrender
  • The Huppah – the bridal chamber, the consummation of deeper union

False Identity

I was on a journey to have my first love identity revealed, which meant my false soul identity had to be exposed. I did not know who I truly was, and therefore, I was operating in the power of the soul. The soaking room began that process; the dark cloud completed it.

Today, I want to talk about that dark cloud experience—what led to it, how it unfolded, and how it changed everything. The Father’s goal was intimacy and union—symbolised by marriage and consummation in the bridal chamber—which would lead to a face-to-face experience of God’s person, far beyond experiencing His presence.

Into the Dark Cloud

I reached a point on my journey where the soaking and fire of preparation were drawing me towards the bridal chamber—to that consummation, to deeper intimacy, truth and knowledge than I had ever imagined. But first came the dark cloud of separation and reintegration of soul and spirit, which brought about total surrender of the soul. That was, without doubt, one of the hardest things I have ever gone through in my life—but also the most beneficial.

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Exposing the Thoughts and Intentions

This transformation revealed the need for that separation and reintegration. It exposed the thoughts and intentions of my heart, which were so soulish that I was shocked by my own reactions when God tested me. But He did it for my good, knowing that it was the only way to bring me into my true identity and reveal His true nature to me.

It was incredibly hard. The motives of my heart were mixed. Some of my intentions were shaped by the programming of wrong religious belief systems. Those flawed intentions were exposed when I attempted to make a ketubah—a marriage contract—with God, instead of entering into the new covenant that had already been prepared for me to be included in. The whole process had been flawed from the beginning, and it brought to light the root of my soulish motivations.

The Father used those stages to help me see the false perspective of the soul, in contrast with my true identity—created in His image and likeness, as a son. The flaws in my thoughts and intentions became apparent when I tried to make demands of God—rather than surrendering to relationship and trusting Him.

Contract vs Covenant

That is the problem with a contract—it does not rest on trust. A contract says, “If you do this, I will do that.” These are your demands; these are mine. And if one party fails to meet those conditions, that is seen as marital unfaithfulness and could bring the relationship to an end—because it was never based on trust.

That is what I discovered. I might have claimed I trusted God, and believed I did, but the truth was my relationship with Him was not built on trust. It was built on reward: being rewarded for what I was doing and drawing my identity from my works for God.

Now, none of the things I was doing were wrong in themselves—but I was doing them from the wrong motivation. I was driven by a need for self-validation. I found that I could trust God only when I understood what He was doing. If I did not understand, I could not trust. I did not realise that until He revealed it to me—and when He did, it absolutely shocked me.

Some of my intentions were definitely performance-driven, not pure.

The Nature of the Dark Cloud

My dark cloud experience will be different from yours. You might not go through the same darkness and inability to see that I did. Others have shared different stories of how God brought them to deeper relationship. But I do believe we all must experience a separation and reintegration of soul and spirit.

We are all born into this world with our souls shaped from the outside in. Everything we learned about ourselves, the world and even God came through our physical senses. Our soul interpreted that data and built a worldview, a belief system, based on upbringing, experience and, often, religious or educational systems.

God wanted to bring me—and wants to bring each of us—into the bridal chamber for consummation, into a face-to-face encounter with the Father’s person. For that to happen, He must reorient our inner being so that our relationship is led by the spirit and not the soul. It must move from spirit to soul, not the other way round—so that we can be joined to the Lord and become one spirit with Him.

The Season of Preparation

After a period of soaking and fire around August 2011, in which I had some profound soaking room experiences, then between August and October 2011, in times of corporate worship, I began to experience what felt like a thick, dark cloud. I did not understand what it was. I was not afraid—but I was confused and disoriented. What was going on? Why was I having these experiences? What was happening? I asked a lot of questions.

Why Would God Hide?

So I began to look into it—what are dark clouds all about? I started exploring the significance of dark clouds in Scripture, and what I found was that God hides within a dark cloud to protect us from the intensity of His presence before we are fully prepared and ready to meet Him face to face.

This is not God keeping us away—this is God protecting us, but also preparing us. He draws us into His presence by leading us through a dark cloud of trust. The question becomes: will I trust Him enough to go through that dark cloud to enter into His presence—or will I back off, be afraid, and run from the experience?

Israel’s Encounter

In Deuteronomy 4:11, we read about Israel’s experience:

“You came forward and stood at the foot of the mountain. The mountain was burning with fire to the heart of the heavens—darkness, cloud and thick gloom.”

Of course they were afraid. They had spent 400 years in Egypt, in bondage, with little to no real relationship with God. And when they came out of that, they carried so much of Egypt with them—control, manipulation and fear. So, when God invited them up the mountain to meet Him, they were afraid. They drew back, and they failed to accept that invitation.

The Glory in the Cloud

In 2 Samuel 22:12, it says:

He made darkness canopies around Him, massive waters, thick clouds of the sky.

And in 1 Kings 8:10,

When the priests came out of the holy place, the cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house.

Now, when we think of the glory of the Lord, we usually think of light—but actually, God had to protect them from the fullness of His glory, from the intensity of His essence, from the blinding light of His presence. Solomon understood this. In verse 12, he said,

“The Lord has said that He would dwell in the thick darkness.”

So Solomon recognised that this thick cloud was not hiding God out of reluctance, but protecting the people. Even in that cloud, they could not stand—the weight of God’s presence was too great. But within that dark cloud, when God came to occupy the Holy of Holies, He was actually shielding them from the light of His presence—until Jesus came to reveal the light as the Light of the World, to reveal the true nature of God.

All Mike’s books, including Into the Dark Cloud and Unconditional Love, are available to order from online and local booksellers; or you can buy the ebooks and download them instantly from our website.
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Hidden in Mystery

Psalm 18:11 says, He made darkness His hiding place, His canopy around Him, darkness of waters, thick clouds.

The Passion Translation renders it this way:

Wrapped in thick cloud-darkness, His thunder-tabernacle surrounded Him. He hid Himself in mystery-darkness. The dense rain clouds were His garments.

This is an invitation. God is calling us into that mystery—to see whether we will trust Him. Are we willing to go through the dark cloud in order to encounter His person?

Psalm 97:2: Clouds and thick darkness surround Him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne.

So why does God hide in a dark cloud? Because without it, He is unapproachable light. But He desires to prepare us so that we can approach Him in that light.

From Cloud to Light

Eventually, when I went into that light—having been prepared and having passed through the dark cloud—I could not remain there for even a fraction of a second. It was far too intense for me at that time, because the process of deconstruction and the renewal of my mind was still ongoing.

But I returned—and now I dwell in that approachable light. I dwell in the realm of light, in perfection. I abide there. It is my home, constantly, continually. And that was only possible because I went through the dark cloud. My soul and spirit were separated, then reintegrated. I was reconnected. And now, I can dwell in the realms of heaven continually.

Hidden Until We Are Ready

Interestingly, the Hebrew word for thick and dark is the same. It means that God is unseen or hidden from our direct sight—until we are ready, until we are prepared to meet Him face to face. And that is our destiny. That is the purpose of restoring first love. God does not want to keep us at a distance—but He wants us to be safe and secure in His presence. And that requires transformation.

Activation: Guided Meditation

I encourage you to just close your eyes.
Get relaxed.

You may want to lie down.
Just begin to relax your body.

You may want to start focusing on your breathing.
Breathe in slowly… and hold it…
Then breathe it out slowly.

And as you are breathing in and breathing out,
Begin to focus your thinking on God,
The Father, who is love.

As you begin to breathe in,
You are breathing in unconditional love—
The love of the Father for you
As a son, as a daughter, as a child.

Breathe it in…
And as you breathe it in,
That unconditional love begins to flow through your whole being—
Touching every cell of your body:
Your mind,
Your emotions,
The whole of your soul, spirit and body.

So you can be still…
And let God love on you.
Let Him show you how much He loves you.

As His love fills you,
Let joy and peace come and overwhelm you—
Cocoon you.
Let all of His being begin to flow in you.
An atmosphere forms around you—
A cocoon of love, joy and peace
That you are just resting in,
Relaxing in.

Be still.
Wait.
Just rest.
Just wait—expectantly—
For whatever God wants to do with you right now.

This is a safe place.
You can get out of that boat—figuratively.
You can choose to abandon yourself:
Sink into that vast ocean of unconditional love,
Where God’s love is so strong, so powerful,
That you can trust Him—
That He is a good God—
That He wants the best for you.

Just go deeper and deeper into that love,
As He restores that first love to you.

You can sink deeper…
And deeper…
There may be things around you that you sense or feel.
Be willing to go deeper and deeper into love.

336. Get out of the boat… and SINK!

274. Separating and reintegrating soul and spirit (1)

275. Separating and reintegrating soul and spirit (2)