Tag: heavenly encounters

Mike Parsons

Mike: I don’t believe I’m out of the ordinary. I’m a normal sort of person who likes normal, everyday things. You know, I like sports, I like movies, I like normal, everyday stuff. I like making things, I like the garden. I’m not a mystic in a cave somewhere; I have a very normal, everyday life. If I can do it, coming from the background I’ve come from—which didn’t even believe in the gifts of the Spirit or anything, and had no real intimacy with God or any concept of what that might be—if God can do it with me and bring me to a point of dwelling in His presence and living this relationship, then I think that’s possible for everybody.

Mentoring participant: “Listening again to Kay Fairchild, her question this week was, What are we waiting for? She was speaking about Romans and the verse absent from the body, present with the Lord—and how we, as Christians, think we have to die and be absent from our body to actually be with God – and that’s not true. But she said our beliefs are the big picture, and what we believe determines our reality. That’s why people have believed they have to die to go to heaven. She believes we came here upright, that God had finished everything, and we were already upright but simply not aware of it. Because of that belief, these lies have dictated our lives, like penal substitution and other doctrines. She was using Romans 8:19, about the earnest expectation, and explained that our belief about waiting is wrong. There are different meanings of waiting, and essentially, we have to have the maturity to be the sons of God—we already have it.

Mike: Yes, there’s a sense that everything God has done—making us justified, righteous, reconciled, forgiven—all of that is already done from His perspective. But people don’t believe it, and because of that, people don’t experience it. We experience what we believe. So, while it is finished and the work is done, not everyone is living in that finished work because they either don’t believe it’s true or believe a twisted version of it.

Maturity is a measure of growth. You could say, “I’m a child, I’m not mature,” but you could also be an adult and still not mature. It’s not just physical but also about the knowledge of who we are and who God is. Maturity comes when we fully know who we are in the mirror of God’s face. If we have a distorted view of God, we’re not mature in knowing the reality of who we are, and we live in an immature state.

Now, if you think of maturity as growth, you’re not mature until you grow. I can’t say, “I’m 25 years old,” if I’m 3 years old. You have to go through the process of maturity, which is a relational process. In our relationship with God, the truth is unveiled and revealed, so we can then live in that truth. God has done everything for that truth to be outworked, but we don’t just know it as a programmed download.

While the work is finished, we’re not complete in the maturity process until all the things in our lives hindering us from knowing, understanding, and living that truth are removed. That’s a process of maturing, healing, and wholeness. I know some people will say, “Before the foundation of the world, I was perfect.” Yes, your spirit was, but when you came into this realm with a body and a soul, it was a less-than-perfect environment.

Our spirit is disconnected from what we learn in the soul through everyday life. We’re programmed by the life we live, not by what our spirit knows to be true. Until our spirit is reconnected to our soul through reconnecting with God, the spirit can’t bring the soul back into wholeness and agreement with what we always knew in the spirit. Cognitively, our soul doesn’t align with our spirit until this happens.

My soul has never been in the state that my spirit was before the foundation of the world. My soul was born with lost identity. Some say their soul was right, but I’m not talking about original sin or Adam’s loss—it’s lost identity. None of our souls know who we are because we’re born in a disconnected state from God, even though He remains connected to us, loves us, and wants us to know the truth.

That truth has to be relationally outworked on the journey to rediscover who we are from His perspective. Just because God says, “This is how I see you,” it’s not our truth until we mature into it. It is the truth, but it’s not yet true for me. There’s a distinction. What God says about me is absolutely 100% true, but it’s not yet the truth for me until I come into conscious awareness and it is outworked in my life.

This is a relational process that takes time. The time it takes depends on the relationship we establish with God. For some, their relationship with God is the absolute priority, and they spend nearly every day engaging with Him, knowing Him in ways most people don’t. Most people, however, have jobs, families, and responsibilities. These compete with their relationship with God. That’s not wrong. If you have a family, you need to be a good parent; if you have a job, you need to work well.

Still, our relationship with God should be prioritised. A young mother homeschooling four children will have less time than a retired person with no obligations. God understands this. It’s not about how much time you spend, but about the desire and intention. If my desire is for a relationship with God, I will pursue it to the best of my ability.

No one has more time than anyone else—we all have 24 hours in a day. It’s about what we do with that time. A parent may only have half an hour before the children wake up, but they can pursue God in that time.

The waiting isn’t about sitting back and hoping for the best—it’s about pursuing the relationship. It’s not about manipulating God through fasting or prayer. He’s already done the work. He wants us to relationally know the truth so it transforms us, renews our minds, and aligns us with the truth of who He created us to be.

There are various ways of looking at it. Some believe that the finished work of Jesus means everything is done, and therefore, it’s true in them now. However, I think those who teach that can inadvertently cause people to feel condemned when they don’t experience it that way, and many people, of course, don’t. It’s like saying, “I’m saved now because Jesus died for my healing,” and then assuming that everything in your physical body is instantly renewed and healed. But we know that’s not true for most people who have discovered a relationship with God. So, it’s not automatic—because if it were, there would be no relationship.

For me, the danger in allegorising everything in terms of the Bible is that it can make things seem unreal when they are, in fact, real, treating them as merely spiritual. For example, I’ve heard people like K. Fairchild say, “Heaven is in you,” and while there’s a sense in which the kingdom of God is within us, they almost suggest that there is no actual, real heaven to go to. Now, I know the presence of God in us is a manifestation of heaven with us, but it’s not heaven itself. The heavenly realms, the spiritual realms, and angels do not live within me. They exist in a spiritual dimension of a real place. It may not be physical as we know it, but it’s no less real.

The danger in saying that everything is allegorical or spiritual is that it could lead to dismissing literal realities, like angels, fallen angels, or even the devil, treating them as just accusations in our minds that cause us not to believe the truth. People who take that view don’t see angels as personal beings, and they miss out on a lot if they reduce everything to a purely spiritual matter between God and them.

There’s a balance to be struck. Often, when the pendulum swings back towards where it should be, it swings a little too far in the opposite direction before settling in the right place. Some people get caught in that swing, going too far one way. I believe in personal fallen angelic beings and literal angels, and I believe in a real heavenly realm that can be encountered. We are seated with Christ in these heavenly realms, and it’s not just figurative. While it’s true that we rule and reign with God in our lives, the heavenly reality is actual, and we must factor that in.

The reality of our relationship with God has to be balanced. There are extremes on both ends of the spectrum. On one side, there’s the belief that it’s all done, that we just have to believe, and that’s it. But most people who try to embrace that find that it doesn’t quite work that way. They struggle and feel guilty for not having enough faith to just believe that everything is done. On the other end, there’s the idea that it’s all about us, and we have to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, doing it all ourselves. There are extremes on both ends, but the balance is in the middle: God has done it all, and we must come into the reality of that.

Romans speaks of creation longing and waiting for the sons of God to be revealed, not talking about us waiting to be revealed, but creation waiting for us to mature enough that they can recognise our sonship, instead of seeing our childish immaturity. When we fully embrace who we are, creation will be set free into the glorious freedom of the children of God. That freedom is tied to our glory, the fullness of who we are in God’s eyes. If we don’t embrace who we truly are, creation won’t be set free in its entirety, because it’s ultimately down to us, with God, to express the oneness we have with Him. This is what allows creation to recognise our sonship in the union with our Father, not independently of Him.

When people allegorise too much, it’s easy to miss the literal realities, and this can be problematic. There are spiritual stories in the Old Testament, and while they can carry spiritual truth, the people who wrote them often did so from their own understanding, without a full knowledge of God. The Holy Spirit can certainly bring truth out of those stories, but you don’t need to make every story an allegory to understand it. If you have a relationship with the Holy Spirit, Jesus, and the Father, they can reveal truth directly to you. There’s no need to go through a mediator like a book to understand God.

Jesus is the truth, the living Word of God, and I think there’s been too much focus on finding God in the Bible through allegory or stories. Why spend time trying to understand God through these stories when you can meet Him, follow Him, hear His voice, and encounter Him every day? I don’t see the point of spending so much time trying to understand Him through a book when the relationship itself is where the truth is revealed. It’s about understanding God through relationship, not through a book.

Now, if people are used to the Bible and need it as a frame of reference, I understand that. But many teachers don’t have a personal experience of Heaven. They don’t engage with God on the inside in a deep, personal way, and they’re trying to explain the relationship using the allegories and truths found in the Bible. While the finished work of God and His grace are important, the relationship itself is the key. People who miss the mystical dimension of the relationship might use the Bible to explain things, but they’re not sharing their personal experiences of face-to-face encounters with God. They’re still making it about a belief system, not about a lived experience.

Believing what Jesus says is important, but it’s so much more meaningful when you experience Him face to face. It’s vastly different from just believing what the Bible says He said. You can resonate with the love and grace of God, but if you’re not encouraging people to have those real encounters with Him, you’re missing the point. It’s not just about believing a set of doctrines or ideas; it’s about living the experience of truth.

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