God loves people and takes a genuine interest in their lives. If we fail to show any interest ourselves, how will they ever believe that God is truly interested in them? Demonstrating care means asking about their situation and engaging with their story. It is not about forcing a single message upon someone, insisting that they must receive it whether they want to or not.
Instead, it is about recognising that God personally meets each person in their own circumstances. He cares, He desires to help, and He longs for them to discover who they truly are. In doing so, they can understand that God already loves them. This is a very different approach, one that treats each individual as unique rather than as a commodity, project or statistic.
Meeting People Where They Are
In the past, many forms of evangelism tended to focus on strategies and techniques. Courses often emphasised how to deliver a message and how to ensure that people listened. Yet this approach often missed the point. Evangelism should not be about ticking boxes or securing conversions. It ought to begin with real interest in people themselves—the realities of their lives and the struggles they face.
Rather than asking, “How can I insert this message into a conversation?”, we should be asking, “How can I develop a genuine relationship with this person, one that may open the door for them to encounter God for themselves?”
A Personal Approach
People need to meet God in us. They need to see and sense something of Jesus expressed through our lives. This may not always be conscious on their part, and sometimes it may not even be conscious on ours, yet God shines through us all the same. In this way, we carry His presence into every encounter.
As Scripture explains, Jesus was the clear image of the Father, revealing to those around Him what God was really like. Many have no true idea of God’s character until they encounter Christ.
Treating Individuals as Unique
In the same way, we are called to be ambassadors of reconciliation. Our role is to represent God’s heart faithfully and to help others to see that He has already done everything needed to restore their relationship with Him.
Summary: When our lives reflect His presence, others can begin to sense His love and discover for themselves the truth of who they are in Him. By treating people as individuals rather than commodities, we embody the message that God cares deeply for them. Evangelism then becomes not about delivering a formulaic message, but about relationship, love and presence.
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In the last post, I talked about evangelising Christians. Now I turn to those who do not consider themselves Christians at all.
Challenging Preconceptions for Non-Christians
When it comes to talking to people who are not yet Christians or not yet believing, or have not yet realised what Jesus has done for them, I would start at a different place. I would probably begin by challenging what they think they know about Jesus and God, because it is probably not the truth. I would likely challenge some of the preconceptions they think they know from whatever religious upbringing they have had. I would say, “You may have thought you needed to do this or this or this, but actually God has done it all – you just have to receive it.” I would use illustrations like: “When someone buys a gift for you, they wrap it nicely, present it well, put your name on it, and then hand it to you. You didn’t buy it, you didn’t deserve it – it was a gift they gave you. But it wasn’t yours until you received it, even though your name was on it. Only when you reached out, took it, opened it, and received it as a gift could you say ‘this is now mine.’ Until then, you haven’t received anything, even though the gift is there.”
The Gift of God’s Grace
That is essentially what God has done. Jesus has reconciled everybody. He has taken away ‘the sin’ – the lost identity, their amnesia from who they really are. He has revealed the Father (as Jesus is the express image of the Father). He has shown people that it is all about love: He has called people to love one another, forgive one another. I would challenge them to see what Jesus said in light of our religious thinking – an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, vengeance, God being angry and needing appeasing. To say, “It’s already been done! God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. He’s already made a relationship, already given you the Spirit and made you alive so you can know Him. He’s already done all these amazing things – why don’t you just let Him give you that experience?”
Receiving the Gift
So give them the opportunity of having that experience as well. Probably having knocked down some religious ideas like “you have to go to church, pray, read the Bible” and so on. You can say, “Who said you have to do any of those things?” and open up a whole different vista of who God really is. It’s like the book “The Jesus I Never Knew” by Philip Yancey – he was probably brought up in the Bible Belt but never knew Jesus for who He really was. I would try to present Jesus as someone they may have thought they knew, but there’s more – a truth that probably challenges what they thought they knew.
Then I would stress the need for experience – that it is a relationship, God with us. God is in them already, wanting to reveal Himself to them. Ask them to give Him a chance. Then you can use something like “Behold I stand at the door and knock,” and say, “God is in you, within your spirit. He wants you to let Him into the rest of your life – to bless you, heal you, make you whole, remove all guilt, shame, condemnation, give you your true identity as His son, empower you to succeed and prosper.” Then get them to close their eyes, picture a door, open it, and see what happens.
Conclusion
So ultimately it all comes down to the same point – encouraging both Christians and non-Christians to experience things. But in both groups you may need to remove some preconceived ideas about what they think it is all about and what they think might be the truth. Then help them find The Truth as a person – Jesus – through that experiential encounter with the reality of who God is and what He has already done.
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If you are starting with people who are already professing to be Christians, you will begin in a different place than if you are engaging those who don’t.
I will get on to evangelising non-Christians in my next post. Ultimately though, both need to know the love of God and experience that love themselves, through a revelation of who He is, to fully come into the knowledge of who they are.
Beyond Religious Conditioning
I would always start in an experiential way. If they are Christians, I will quote scriptures that point to the fact that Jesus and the Father very clearly desire an intimacy that is not religious and not based on works, performance or the old covenant. I would definitely look at the New Covenant wineskin for believers who may be conditioned or programmed by various religious beliefs. What did Jesus say we should expect? We should expect to be where He was, in the “I AM” relationship with the Father. He came and breathed on them to receive the Holy Spirit on the day of resurrection, affirming them as the new representatives of humanity: just as Adam was the first representative through whom all died, now they were the new representatives where all are made alive.
Experiential Encounters
I would emphasise that Jesus wanted them to experience His presence. Even when He told the disciples to wait in Jerusalem, it was so they would be clothed with power from on high – an experiential encounter affirming what they had already experienced in being indwelt by the Holy Spirit and received new life when He breathed on them, just as the Father breathed life into Adam. This challenges the idea of a certain number of people being “born again” at some future point, when the reality is that all were born again at that resurrection moment, affirmed when He breathed on them. As He said in John 14, “On that [resurrection] day you will know I am in you and you are in me, and we are in the Father.”
Challenge the conventional
I think always stressing the experiential side is key – that we have been called to hear His voice, come boldly to the throne of grace, and enter the realms of heaven experientially because they are open. Expressing this in a practical way removes the spiritualisation of the concept and sets the expectation for what our relationship with God should be. We can challenge the conventional vaguely hopeful expectations of ‘going to heaven when we die’ with affirmations of what Jesus said we should expect in this life – being in union with each other, our love relationship allowing the world to see what it means to be in relationship with God.
Summary
In conclusion, I would definitely give people an opportunity to have their own experience of God. Make it simple, easy and accessible – don’t complicate it. Give them the opportunity of encountering God through experience, and from that point, you can open the door for them to understand so much more.
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Salvation is not dependent upon a prayer or altar call: Jesus has already accomplished everything needed. Unfortunately, this truth has been turned into a gospel of works, suggesting that specific actions are needed to attain salvation. Instead, let our focus be on making people aware that God already loves and accepts them. The Gospel is not about works but about the grace of God already operating within individuals. The story of Paul’s revelation on the Damascus Road underscores this point, as he discovered that Jesus was already in him, preaching a message of inclusion based on this realization.
Understanding the reality of salvation requires acknowledging that God is already in us, and we need to open the door to let Him fill us: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” Salvation is not a future event but an ongoing experience of being alive and resurrected in spirit. The Gospel is truly good news, emphasising that God has done everything, and our role as disciples and evangelists is to make people aware of His unconditional love now, not in some distant future.
Key Takeaway
The Gospel is Good News: The essence of the Gospel is truly good news, proclaiming that God has already done everything; and our primary role as ambassadors and evangelists is to make people aware of His unconditional love in the present, not in some distant future.
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We saw last time that, as those called to be forerunners in the new, like Joshua and Caleb, we need to give a good report. We cannot just keep this to ourselves, have a great time exploring the realms of heaven and write off everybody else as if we are somehow better than them. There are so many people out there, believers and not-yet-believers, who need to hear a good report of the inheritance that is theirs if they will cross over and appropriate it for themselves! We need to reach out, to call out to our brothers and sisters in the wilderness to come and see the promised land of their inheritance as sons of God. And when they come, we need them to cross over to take their heavenly positions as sons beyond the veil.
In the old we would have prayed for it to happen. We might also have posted on social media, published some blog posts, done some talks, radio or TV interviews, maybe even written a book and arranged a big ‘launch event’. But in the new, we know it must be established in heaven first. So now we will seek to get heavenly strategy and produce legislation in the courts of heaven to enable it to take place. Then any of those other things we are mandated to do in the realm of the earth will carry heavenly authority and be far more effective.
The Law of Religious Freedom
This is a law which I received and which has been ratified in heaven for Freedom Church and our associated ministries to use.
I hereby authorise the law of religious freedom.
This law approves the right of the Joshua Generation to set My people free.
You are authorised to bring freedom to the oppressed, to release light into the shrouded darkness of the old Moses order.
You are authorised to administer Emmaus road-like encounters to those whose minds have been veiled by the coverings of men.
You are authorised to call for and administrate justice for God’s people. In love you are empowered to challenge the old wineskins and their associated mindsets. The old Moses-order mountains can be shaken with the Winds of Change*.
You are to call the Joshua Generation to action, to cry into the valley of decision and release heaven’s sound and light.
You have been assigned the ordinances of the angelic hosts to engage in visitations, dreams and visions.
God told me to “use this legislation wisely and with precision and many will be set free to receive their inheritance”.
This is what I declared when I used it:
I call for the veils to be removed from those covered by resistors and rejecters of the new heavenly order.
I call for justice on the basis of God’s judgement, the exposing of those refusing to take the people into the promised inheritance.
I call for a stirring and quickening of the hearts of those who have been covered and limited.
I call for a new generation to arise.
I call for mercy and the light of truth to shine brighter and with more intensity into the darkness of the coverings of men.
I call for justice and freedom from the religious evangelical spirit that is plaguing God’s people.
I call for a holy dissatisfaction to grow in the hearts of God’s people and the cry to go out from deep within “there must be more than this.”
I call for the sound of heaven to resonate in the hearts of those who will become hungry for more as they become dissatisfied with junk food and baby food.
I call for more angelic encounters, visitations, dreams, visions and supernatural engagements.
I call for new desire to rise in the hearts of those who have been misled and covered by religious veils of doctrine and theology that denies the supernatural as normal to our lives.
Make your own declarations. Ask God if you can use this law, or step in and get your own. Do something to reach out to those who are in the old: He wants to bring them into the new.
A note about heavenly legislation
Your spirit has permission to release laws from that spiritual place and to declare and decree them; I did not write that law from trying to figure out what to say, I just said it from my spirit and then wrote down what I had said. Every one of us can do that but it requires us to take the initiative from our own position in heaven and to start to operate in the authority we have there. So if we are to make and use legislation effectively then we need to see ourselves as God sees us, and start to conduct ourselves as sons and not slaves.
* ‘Winds of Change’ is the name of an angel and of an order of angels.
[This blog post is adapted from Mike’s teaching in the ‘Engaging God‘ subscription programme. Find out more… ]
Kingdom Talks– Mike Parsons interviews on the Ekklesia Arising Facebook group (public group).
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Please understand that, as we said before, He is always the same, faithful and full of lovingkindness, and He has never changed. But when we engage Him intimately, He reveals Himself in continually new, surprising and sometimes even shocking ways.
“Behold, the former things have come to pass, Now I declare new things; Before they spring forth I proclaim them to you”
(Isa 42:9).
“Do not call to mind the former things, Or ponder things of the past. Behold, I will do something new, Now it will spring forth; Will you not be aware of it, I will even make a roadway in the wilderness, Rivers in the desert”
(Isa 43:18-19).
God is revealing new things in our day, yet often we try to cling on to what is old, comfortable and familiar, just like the children of Israel did in the wilderness. Old forms of church wineskin, church government, ministry, prayer, evangelism, doctrine and theology are all being challenged by new, fresh revelation of truth.
Have you ever stopped to question how much of what we believe is because we have always believed it, based on what someone else has taught us, or from a religious construct, doctrine or theology? How much is derived from or influenced by our particular culture and society? And finally, how much is actually from revelation, coming out of our direct personal experience of relationship with God Himself? In short, how much are we ‘leaning to our own understanding’?
The Joshua Generation are forerunners of the new. We are finding a new level of experiential relationship with God, a new level of communication with Him, new ability to hear and see what He reveals. We are finding out what it means to have the mind of Christ!
God is calling us to let go of the old and embrace the new: new mindsets and new paradigms, new worldviews. We must not be surprised if we encounter great resistance to change, and not only from the quarters we might expect it. Certainly some people in the old established churches will oppose what God is doing, but the greater resistance will likely come from more recent moves of God which have settled into maintenance mode.
Deeply ingrained
Even within ourselves, we may struggle to overcome the comfortable inertia of wanting to keep things the way they are. We experienced some of this within the church here: for a while the old pastoral form of church government steadfastly opposed and resisted the new heavenly apostolic order. We discovered just how deeply some of these things are ingrained into our thinking and practice. But eventually we made an individual and corporate decision to step into the new.
“… The dynamic of our strategy is revealed in God’s ability to disengage mindsets and perceptions that have held people captive in pseudo fortresses for centuries! Every lofty idea and argument positioned against the knowledge of God is cast down and exposed to be a mere invention of our own imagination” (2 Cor 10:5-6 Mirror Bible).
God has begun challenging the very pillars of our minds. We find ourselves in a time of transition, of uncertainty and change, in which we cannot be sure of anything we thought we knew. He has even told us,
“You have been invited to know the real Me, so that you can be forerunners of the glory presence”.
If He is inviting us to get to know the real God, what God did we think we knew? Is it possible that we have been seeing and presenting a false image of Him all this time? If so, we have only been introducing new believers to the same false image we have been worshipping. And if the world has rejected that image of God (and often, it has), then what might happen when we present the true nature of God, when we ‘show and tell’ what He is really like?
We need to meet Him and experience Him for ourselves. Then what we are offering people will not be some theoretical, theological perspective and doctrine, but a real relationship with a living God. And that is what the world needs; like us it needs to meet the real God, not the image that has been painted of Him up to now.
Seen Me, seen the Father
Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being.
“Jesus is the crescendo of God’s conversation; he gives context and content to the authentic thought. Everything that God had in mind for mankind is voiced in him. Jesus is God’s language. He is the radiant and flawless expression of the person and intent of God. He mirrors God’s character and exhibits his every attribute in human form. He is the voice of God announcing our redeemed innocence. This voice is the dynamic that sustains the entire cosmos. He is the force of the universe upholding everything that exists as the executive authority of God, enthroned in the boundless measure of his majesty” (Heb 1:3 Mirror Bible).
He declared, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father”. As Mirror Bible translator Francois Du Toit says, “the best translation would always be the incarnation”. So Jesus has to be the lens through which we both see and project what God is really like.
Transformation
As ‘forerunners of the glory presence’, we must get to know that presence by our own experience. The glory is the glory of the true God, not some dim, fractured, distorted image of Him. The principle is that we will be transformed into what we behold: if we see God as angry and vengeful, looking for every opportunity to pounce on us and strike us down when we get out of line, then we will display the same traits ourselves. So even as we look to unmask what Brad Jersak calls ‘the toxic representations of God’ so prevalent in the traditional church (and therefore in secular western society), we have to be careful to operate in love towards those we enter into discussion with. We can only do this if we are beholding the real God. The leaven of the Pharisees and Herod is still working its way through the lump: religious and political spirits love dispute. By seeing and revealing the truth and operating in love we can help people to engage God themselves rather than feeling they have to engage in argument.
When Joshua led Israel into the Promised Land, there was first of all a time of consecration. Alongside new experiences, new thinking and new levels and patterns of authority, we must display new levels of openness, honesty, sincerity, honour, respect and commitment.
Sacred cows
The old, the comfortable and the familiar have to be left behind when God brings us into a new day. If we are to receive all that God has for us we will need to let go of those old familiar ways because they will no longer be effective. Two and a half tribes elected to forego their inheritance in the Promised Land. We are not to be tethered to the past: old ways must not become idols we will not abandon.
So what are your pet doctrines, ideologies, methods and other sacred cows? Are you willing to meet God as He really is and ask Him to expose, remove and replace them?
These blog posts are adapted from Mike’s teaching in the ‘Engaging God‘ subscription programme.
Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits. Or you can use the blue button to contact us about making a one-time gift. Thank you! *Note Sadly, because of abuse by scammers we can no longer offer a ‘click to donate’ option. However, if you contact us, we will get back to you with a simple means of giving.
Sons of Issachar 