154. Grow Your Own

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott  

In preparing for our destiny we need to build our spirit. Over a number of posts on this blog we have looked at:

We are going on now to consider a fourth means of building up our spirit:

  • Meditating on the words of God

My son, give attention to my words;
Incline your ear to my sayings.
Do not let them depart from your sight;
Keep them in the midst of your heart.
For they are life to those who find them
And health to all their body.
Watch over your heart with all diligence,
For from it flow the springs of life.
(Prov 4:20-23)

For the word of God is living and active (Heb 4:12).

When God speaks, His words are alive, and have power if we focus and meditate on what He says. When we allow that power  to transform us, we can live in the power of the word we have received. Ultimately, the fullest expression of the Word of God is Jesus Himself. God speaks through many means, but scripture is a familiar one and is a good place to start. As we meditate on scripture, it is like going from 2D to a 3D experience. It comes alive and jumps off the page. You become part of what is going on.

A picture paints a thousand words

There is a saying, ‘a picture paints a thousand words’. That is why Jesus spoke in parables. The Bible is full of stories and illustrations that enable us not just to hear words that are being said, but to imagine and participate in what is going on. So we can have experiences, visions and pictures. We can gain revelation. We can experience things practically for ourselves. We can see things sometimes in worship, pictures visions, trances, all sorts of experiential things in which we can know God’s presence. You cannot know something, in the biblical sense of the word, with intellectual understanding. The word ‘know’ in the bible means ‘to know intimately, by personal experience’. You cannot know what you have not experienced. God wants us to receive those revelations.

Store or shred

When we receive them, it is really important that we do not just pass over them. We do not just say, ‘I had this picture, I had this dream’, and then forget about them. We write them down, record them, journal them. Then we can go back and review what we have seen, what God has said, and we can revisit those experiences and obtain more revelation and more understanding from them.

In meditation, if you go back over something and keep looking at it, drawing life from it, it shows that you value it. What you value, your brain will store (instead of shredding it).

We do not want to be just spiritual consumers. You can sit and read this blog, or watch one of my YouTube clips, even enrol in Engaging God, and allow me to teach you something. But you can also be a producer, by taking what God reveals to you and applying it to your own life, and bringing forth your own fruit.

I can share my experiences of going to heaven, and having heavenly encounters with the Father, with Jesus, the angels, the men in white linen and so on. That is all very good, but God wants you to have your own experiences. They may not be the same as mine, but they will be yours. God shows no favouritism. If you do what I did, you will get what I got. But you will not get it just by reading these posts or hearing me speak. You have to pursue Him for yourself. You have to put into practice some basic techniques and principles; and meditating on what He says to you is one of the most important of them. And meditation is not just something ethereal: you have to apply what you receive to your own life.

Tomatoes

It is like tomatoes.

If you like to eat tomatoes, what most people do is go and buy some from the greengrocer or the supermarket. That is being a consumer. Someone else puts in a whole lot of effort to grow them, package them, transport them and offer them up for you to buy and eat. But you could learn how to grow tomatoes for yourself. You would have to have seed to plant, learn about types of soil and compost, transplant your seedlings, remember to water and care for them, make sure they get the right amount of sun and shelter, support the growing plants, prune them, and so on. Eventually, you get tomatoes.

When you eat a tomato you have grown, how much better does it taste than one you have bought from the shops? Even Tesco’s Finest? It tastes wonderful. There is nothing like picking fruit and vegetables straight from the garden and eating them. And besides all that, you have put so much into them that you get a real sense of achievement too. It is much more work, but so much more rewarding.

Seek it for yourself

In the same way, when you hear about my relationship with God and my encounters with the Holy Spirit, that can benefit you, and you can be blessed by hearing about them. But maybe hearing about my experiences will create a desire in you for something, so that you go away and seek that relationship and those experiences for yourself. And that, I can promise you, will bless you and benefit you on a whole other level.

Be willing to get hold of the truth of God’s words to you. Spend time in His presence. Learn how to meditate on scripture and on prophetic words or revelation you have received. Learn how to speak in tongues, inside and outside. Build up your spirit so that you can encounter God for yourself in that way. Then you will have first hand revelation knowledge of God as Father, of Jesus as a friend, of the Holy Spirit as a guide.

If you plant a seed and just leave it, it is true you may get some fruit from it. But it is likely to be a far healthier and more fruitful plant if you tend and water it. God’s desire is that we learn to live from the fruit of our relationship with Him, and when we eat, it transforms and enables us.

It is not instant, or automatic. But if we are willing to put the effort in, God is willing to reveal Himself to us in deeper and more intimate ways.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

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153. I Have Called You Friends

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott

There is a period of training we have to go through in order to sit in the seat of rest, the place of government, and to bring kingdom authority into our life. We have first to give up control of our lives, and learn to be servants and stewards. But beyond that, God wants us to come into friendship. In all this process we are gradually getting to know the ways of God (Zech 3:7).

Friends

Friends enjoy a measure of revelation that stewards and servants do not. Being a friend of God comes through relationship, but it also comes about through obedience, as we shall see.

Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you (John 15:13-14).

When we surrender He is able to bring us into a place of intimacy and fellowship and revelation where He reveals things to us.

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you (John 15:15).

He wants to entrust us with insider knowledge and revelation. This will give us an advantage in the world around us, and we will have the favour of God upon us. Because of our faithfulness as servants and stewards He will now trust us with those intimate secrets He wants to share with us.

Jesus is Lord. We learn how to be a servant and do the works of God. He then starts to entrust us as stewards with more resources and responsibility. He shares His heart with us as we become friends. We begin to learn the ways of God. We engage with the Holy Spirit and learn to recognise His voice and to learn the things of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is there to lead us to Jesus. He does not promote Himself, but He leads us to Jesus. Jesus becomes higher in our lives.

Lords

Jesus is Lord of lords, and we are the lords of whom He is Lord. He enables us to be lords who govern with authority and power, and we start to administer the principles of the kingdom.

Kings

Jesus is also King of kings, so we understand that when Jesus takes us to a yet higher revelation of authority, we become kings. A king has a greater and wider authority than a lord. Instead of simply administering the laws, kings can make them. That is when we can ‘rule the house’ (Zech 3).

Sons

But Jesus in turn does not want us to remain just in relationship with Him, so He always leads us to the Father. As we get into that relationship with the Father we can operate as sons. Sons operate in a whole different level of authority and power than do lords and kings.

This is a process and a journey of training which all starts with surrender. I can only become a son if I first become a servant. Am I willing?

God is looking for that surrender so that we can judge the courts of heaven and operate in the kind of authority that most of us have never even dreamed of. Because of the storms that are coming in the world, God wants a people who can live from the eye of the storm in authority and power as lords, kings and sons. He desires a people who can administer the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.

Equipping

When kingdom authority comes into our lives, we can command things around us to be subject to the realm of God’s kingdom. We have authority to change things so that they come into line with God’s purposes for our life.

We need to come into alignment with the desire of God, engage in the purposes of God, and set ourselves apart to yield to His Lordship. As we surrender to His government in our lives, we receive His equipping on the inside. This enables us to engage external things so that they change and take on the reflection of the internal authority of God’s kingdom within us. Then we can walk into chaos and transform it, bringing peace and order just as Jesus did.

Step in, step out

We will finish today by stepping in to God’s presence, and having engaged with Him, stepping back out, as we have learnt to do. We need to practise stepping in and out of the presence of God. This is not just for corporate prayers: in our own intimate time with Him, we can learn how to step in and pray like this about particular things in our own lives, and then to step out bringing answers from heaven.

If you want to come to that place of surrender from which this process begins, then I would encourage you to find somewhere you can stand, and will be able to take a step forward. Then as we speak these words out together, we will practise entering the seat of rest.

Father I thank you that You have made a way for me to come into your presence
By faith I step [take a step forward]
into the realm of Your presence

and ask you to forgive me for not fully surrendering
to the absolute government of Your kingdom in my life.
Today Jesus I wilfully and with desire
abdicate the throne of my heart
so that you would come and seat yourself as Lord and King;
as Lord of lords and King of kings over my life

I surrender my seat of rest,
that mountain throne

with its domain and government,
into Your hands.

I give You the keys of my heart.
I give You the keys to every doorway of my spirit, soul and body.

Today by faith I thank You
that You are seated on the throne of my life as Lord.

Train me, Jesus, 
to surrender to Your Lordship
and to come to that place of maturity
to assume responsibility for the seat of government in my life as a lord

Now Lord I step back [take a step back]
into this earthly dimension
bringing You to this realm
to teach me how to administer your kingdom government
to the world around me.

Amen.

As we surrender to His lordship, He will train us to be lords, kings and sons who will fully bring the manifestation of His kingdom as it is in heaven on earth through our lives.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

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If our free or paid resources are a blessing to you, please consider sowing into and supporting this ministry with a financial gift. Thank you!

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.

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147. Present A Living Sacrifice (3) – practice

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

Because of practice

For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant,.But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil (Hebews 5:13-14).

If we have received revelation, we must act on it. All that we are learning, we have to put into practice. Things do not just happen automatically for us because we have read about them, or even by doing them just once or twice. It takes practice. But even though we call it practice, of course we are doing it for real.

For example, presenting ourselves as a living sacrifice. We have posted about this on a couple of occasions: now we are going to practice doing it (I do it myself every day). As part of that, we are also going to practice stepping in and stepping out of the presence of God.

I suggest that you stand, if you are able. When we step in, take a step forward; and when we step out, take a step back. It is just a practical cue here in this realm, a step of faith into His presence. It reminds us that the kingdom is always right there in front of us and that we can step into it at any time.

Let’s pray along these lines each day:

Father I thank you that You have made a way
for me to come into Your presence

By faith I step in… [step forward]
to the realm of Your presence
into the holy place in the heavenly tabernacle

I stand before the altar of incense
and present myself as a living sacrifice to You
Jesus, my High Priest.

Today, Jesus, I desire and choose,
as an act of my will,
to abdicate the throne of my heart.

I ask You to crucify and kill my flesh
I choose to deny myself all my rights
and to give You my life, to gain Your life.
I am dead to sin and alive to righteousness

I ask You to remove my head
as I surrender to Your lordship.
I choose not my will but Your will in my life.
I give up my right to free will
and choose to seek first Your kingdom and Your righteousness

I ask You to skin me
and remove every covering I have placed around my life.
Remove everything I use to make myself acceptable to You and others.
I renounce all dead works.
Remove all my masks, pretences, defence and coping mechanisms

I ask you split me open down to my bones and marrow.
Cleanse my heart and its motives.
Purify the thoughts and intentions of my heart.
Restore my heart
Give me Your desires.
Renew my mind
Heal my emotions
and strengthen my will.

I ask You to remove my legs
I surrender my walk to You
I choose to do only what I see the Father doing
I choose to walk by faith and not by sight

I step out of heaven… [step back]
back into this realm
I choose to let You do Your works through me
as I become a channel for Your kingdom to manifest
in this world around me.

Support Freedom ARC

If our free or paid resources are a blessing to you, please consider sowing into and supporting this ministry with a financial gift. Thank you!

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.

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142. Present A Living Sacrifice (2)

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

Therefore 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. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect
(Romans 12:1-2).

Transformation is complete, thorough, radical change. It enables us to prove (to find out and be sure of) what is the perfect will of God for us (that is, what is our destiny), and then to outwork it.

Present ourselves daily

But it involves sacrifice.

Worship is surrender. Worship is obedience. So we come to Jesus, our High Priest, and we present ourselves at the altar as a living sacrifice. This is something we are to do every day. We present ourselves to God so that He can use us, He can transform us, He can change us. It is not the sacrifice who is responsible for the changing. We do not have to transform ourselves: we merely have to present ourselves and God will do the changing.

So by faith we enter the Holy Place, in the heavenly tabernacle, in the heavenly realms. There is an altar there. Not the bronze altar where Israel used to offer sacrifices: Jesus was offered on that altar once and for all. We come instead to the altar of incense. When we give ourselves to God as a living sacrifice, the fragrance of our submitted lives goes up before Him, and He loves it.

Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus… (Heb 10:19).

Because of Jesus’ sacrifice and death, we can come right into the Holy Place. We do not come on our own merit, we come by the blood of Jesus. The blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:17).

Jesus is our High Priest, and He prepares the sacrifice that we give Him: our life. We have to present ourselves to Him and allow Him to deal with us. So we come by faith to surrender. We have looked before at the details of how the sacrificial lamb was prepared for sacrifice. It is really helpful for us to understand how those steps apply to us. If you are not familiar with this, please do take the time to read about it before moving on.

Click this link to read our earlier post (opens in a new window or tab): Present A Living Sacrifice (1).

Preparing the sacrifice

It is a picture of what we need to have done to us. The priest slit its throat, drained its blood, chopped off its head, skinned it, split it open, right down to the marrow of the backbone. Everything was opened up before God. All the inner organs were washed and  the legs cut off. Then the pieces were put on the altar.

We have to surrender our lives to Him, fully, for Him to do what He needs to do. Jesus said, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it” (Luke 9:23-24). We surrender our life to God, and exchange His life for ours. That is the meaning of sacrifice.

Dead, but alive

Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
(Rom 6:11-13).

If the flesh has to die, how is it a living sacrifice? It is because the flesh dies, but we carry on living in the spirit. Then our flesh does not get in the way, and the members of our body can be presented as instruments of righteousness, so that God can use us for His kingdom purposes. ‘Not my will, but Yours be done’, as Jesus said.

For the Word that God speaks is alive and full of power [making it active, operative, energizing, and effective]; it is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line of the breath of life (soul) and [the immortal] spirit, and of joints and marrow [of the deepest parts of our nature], exposing and sifting and analyzing and judging the very thoughts and purposes of the heart (Heb 4:12 AMP).

We are allowing God to open us up and reveal the deepest parts of our nature, to cleanse us, to purify us, and restore us; to expose, sift, analyse, and judge the very thoughts and purposes of our heart. And because he loves us, He will change us from the inside out, so that we are more like Him.

‘In like manner’

In our daily walk we are surrendered and obedient to what God wants to do in us. We walk by faith and not by sight; according to His will and not ours, only doing what we see the Father doing. And the Father in us is able to do all His works through us. That is how Jesus lived every day, and He wants us to live every day that way too.

We cannot do it in our own strength. We cannot do it by the flesh. We can only do it in the spirit. We have to surrender.

Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner” (John 5:19). If Jesus could do nothing of Himself, how much less can we?

Faith of the Son of God

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20 KJV).

When Jesus was on the cross, bearing our sin, we were crucified with Him. He is living in me, and that life is lived by faith of the Son of God (I have purposely quoted a translation that says ‘of’: it is not even my faith that I live by, but His). Jesus surrendered His life so that we could have full, abundant life. I want to encourage you, every day to present yourself as a living sacrifice before God. Surrender, and allow Him to prepare you, to change you, to transform you from the inside out, to deal with your soul so that your spirit can flow in the life of God.

We are going to pray, and I want to encourage you to be willing to daily deny yourself and allow the Spirit and the life of God to flow through you, out from you, and to change you.

Every day, present yourself. I do, every day; so that every day, God can use me.

Father, I thank You that You sent Jesus
to die on the cross for me
to take my sin, my sickness,
and everything about my flesh,
and to die in my place.

I choose to surrender myself as a living sacrifice to You,
and allow You to prepare my life
for the life of Jesus to flow from me.

Prepare my life as I surrender,
so that everything that has come through nature
can be transformed
everything that has come through nurture
can be transformed,
everything that has come through trauma

can be transformed,
so that I live a life flowing in the Spirit and in the power of God
bringing the kingdom of God from heaven to earth,
living as a manifestation of Your presence here on earth,
that Your light would shine through me.

I open up my life in surrender to You.
so that You can do Your work through me
and that I might bring glory to You.

Jesus, as You gave Your life for me,
I choose to give my life to You, daily,
as a living sacrifice,
in order to fulfil my destiny
and the purposes of God, here and now in this time,
so that in eternity I will be able to fulfil all You have for me to do there.

Father, I praise You,
Father, I bless You,
In Jesus’ Name

.Amen.

Support Freedom ARC

If our free or paid resources are a blessing to you, please consider sowing into and supporting this ministry with a financial gift. Thank you!

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.

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131. Thoughts and Intentions of the Heart

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

The Heart

The heart is deceitful above all things,
And desperately wicked;
Who can know it?
(Jer 17:9)

That is why our heart needs to be transformed.

For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.
(Prov 23:7).

The way our heart thinks will determine how we live and how we are. We cannot be content to allow our nature (the record of our past generations) to programme our heart, nor nurture (the events which have gone on around us and shaped our history), nor trauma (things which have happened to us and conditioned us to respond in particular ways). Our heart must be programmed by our spirit and by the Word of God.

For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart (Matt 12:34).

We are called to be speaking spirits, to have authority to call things into being, so it is really important that our hearts are pure and that what comes out of our heart is a flow of the life of God.

Watch over your heart with all diligence,
For from it flow the springs of life.
(Prov 4:23)

Life comes from within our heart, as it is fed from the river of Life with the Spirit. But not if it is fed instead from the world around us.

When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart (Matt 13:19).

We have to be really careful about the state and condition of our hearts. In the parable of the sower, Jesus is talking of the soil of our heart, its condition, and the things that are sown there. There were stones, weeds, all sorts, but it was the good soil which produced an abundance of fruit.

A tree of life

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But desire fulfilled is a tree of life (Prov 13:12).

Because we have not fulfilled our eternal destiny, there are disappointments in our lives which bring sickness to our heart. God wants to restore and heal it. Instead, let us draw from the tree of life, as it says in the second half of this verse. The tree of life is in the Garden of God as it always was, and we can access it today if our hearts are right.

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).

Our heart has thoughts and intentions. We need to be aware of what is motivating us. We can choose to be motivated only as Jesus was, by the things He saw the Father doing. We will learn how to do that.

12 laws

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 31:33).

The ‘law’ here is not the Ten Commandments. but the laws which are the principles of the kingdom. Someone asked the other day what they are, because I have mentioned them before. They are:

Law of the Spirit of Life
Law of Sin and Death
Law of Love
Law of Faith
Law of Sowing and Reaping
Law of First Mention
Law of First Born
Law of Abundance
Law of Justice
Law of Righteousness
Law of Judgment
Law of Grace

Delight and desire

Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He will give you the desires and secret petitions of your heart (Psalm 37:4).

If I delight in Him, the desires of my heart will then be the desires that God has for me, which are written on my scroll. I do not want my heart’s desires to be those that have shaped me or come from my past generations or from the experiences of life, I want them to come from the scroll of destiny that is in my heart. I need my heart transformed and changed, so that His desires become my desires.

In the intimacy of relationship that I can have and enjoy with God, He restores my soul. He restores my heart, and brings it back into its original intended purpose. He guides me in the things that He has written about me that I am to outwork; He leads me according to those paths. I have to stay close to God, engage with Him, and allow Him to restore my soul.

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside quiet waters.
He restores my soul;
He guides me in the paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake

(Psalm 23:1-3).

  • The Seat of Government
  • Flesh vs Spirit
  • The Heart, the Blood and the Brain
  • The Proof Of Desire

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126. A Shadow of Heaven

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott

God is releasing a sound from heaven. It is a sound that musicians – and others – are picking up. It has four notes to it, which seem to relate to the four faces of God and the four letters of His Name. You have probably heard it: echoes of it appear in the songs people are writing around the world. It is quite a long sound, maybe written as something like ‘whoa’ or ‘wo-oh’. I am hearing it all the time.

Do you remember the film ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind‘? In it, Richard Dreyfuss’ character was getting impressions of a particular mountain, even sculpting it out of mashed potato, and hearing a sequence of notes which eventually drew him to encounter alien life. That is similar to what God is doing, but what He wants us to encounter is Him, and He wants us to line up with our destiny.

Infinity

The lemniscate, ∞, in several typefaces.
The infinity symbol (or lemniscate), ∞, in several typefaces. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There is a mathematical symbol that goes with the sound. It is the infinity symbol, and I have found myself sketching it in the air as I am worshipping. It represents eternity, and its shape reflects something coming out of and returning to eternity.

Both the sound and the symbol are drawing us back to our destiny. Our destiny came from eternity and will return to eternity, but there is a whole journey and a pathway for us to follow along the way (and God is calling us to the intersection, where our past and our future come together).

Resonate

We need to come into resonance with the frequency of this sound. Our whole body can resonate with it. All our organs are connected to our auditory centre, so our whole body can act as a sounding board. When it vibrates at that frequency we can hear it, and feel it, and experience it.

It is calling us back to our heavenly destiny.

When the Spirit of the Lord God was moving over the surface of the waters (Genesis 1:2) – the NIV and some other versions say ‘hovering’ – He was vibrating, bringing the waters into harmony with that frequency of vibration. It was then that God said, ‘Let there be light’. And as we respond and come back into the frequency of God, He starts to speak and call forth His purpose in our lives.

Our bodies are as much as 70% water, and water conducts sound four times better than air does. As the Spirit of God starts to overshadow us, we need to come back into resonating frequency. That is what happened with Mary when the Holy Spirit overshadowed her and Jesus was conceived in her womb. When He overshadows us, and draws us into resonance with Him, He will call forth who we are, He will call forth our destiny, and bring us back to the original purpose He had for us before the foundation of the world.

The shadow of heaven

God speaks into the shadow of heaven. Whenever He sees something on earth which is a shadow of what is in heaven, He starts to speak into it. It happened when Solomon built the temple and they came to dedicate it. The glory cloud filled it, and the priests could not continue with the sacrifices. That temple was built patterned upon what was in heaven, and therefore God filled it

When our lives come into that heavenly pattern, and when the church comes into that heavenly pattern, God begins to fill us, to increase us. We need to experience that overshadowing of the Spirit, so that it draws us into cooperation (alignment, agreement, harmony, resonance) with God and with the pattern for our lives that is in heaven.

That pattern is written on our scroll of destiny, which has come out of eternity. We can ask God to show it to us, and we can come into agreement with it. The more our lives become a shadow of that pattern, the more He will come and fill us to overflowing.

The topic of this post is taken up again in Mike’s new book, ‘Engaging the Father’, the first volume in the Sons Arise! series, due to be published on 7th June 2023. 

You can (pre-)order the paperback from your favourite local or online bookshop or get the ebook NOW from our website.

More info: eg.freedomarc.org/books

Soundtrack: Earth Like Heaven (Jonathan David Helser) via YouTube

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125. Preparing For Destiny

Mike Parsons
with
Jeremy Westcott  

Our destiny, our scroll, the book of the life God has prepared for us, was written for us before the foundation of the world. It comes out of eternity; it is a decree, and a commission, and it carries both purpose and provision within it.

We can access it in the heavenly realms, and within our hearts. We have the choice whether to pursue it or not, but that choice has consequences, both for us personally and for the whole world. In fact it has eternal consequences.

Everything about that destiny is about bringing heaven to earth:
Your kingdom come,
Your will be done
On earth, as it is in heaven

(Matthew 6:10)

It is not about healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out demons – that is just the ordinary basic stuff we should all be doing anyway as disciples of Jesus. Those things are not what our destiny is about (unless having a healing ministry or a deliverance ministry is actually written on your particular scroll).

Jesus warned us that people would say to Him, ‘We prophesied in your Name, We did miracles’ but that He would reply, ‘Depart from me, I never knew you’. Not that He did not know them in the sense of salvation, but He didn’t recognise them compared to how they should have been, according to their destiny.

All of us are called to rule, that was God’s mandate to man from the beginning, to demonstrate dominion and authority. We need to do that in heaven and bring it to earth.

Your destiny, everyone’s destiny, is to administer heaven to earth. Each of us has a different part to play, but we each have a sphere of authority we are supposed to operate in. And God wants us to bring that to earth from heaven.

That destiny is in time and eternity (Jeremiah 1:5). He has appointed each of us for a purpose. What we do in time, in this earthly life, will determine what we do in eternity. It is vital for us that we fulfil what God has called us to do in this realm.

And your destiny is not something you can just do, it is not something that you can step into without any preparation. Over the next series of posts we will be looking at what it takes to prepare for our destiny.

We cannot do this half-heartedly. It will take time, and it will take commitment. But it will be worth it.

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*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. 

Subscribe to Engaging God

Get 2 weeks free – then pay just £12 GBP per month (around $14 USD – but dollar amount varies slightly each month as the exchange rate changes).

Engage God through Jesus (the Way, Truth and Life) in the realms of heaven and within your own spirit and heart; and take up your responsibility as a mature son [daughter] in God’s kingdom.
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124. Transforming The Atmosphere

Mike Parsons
and Jeremy Westcott – 

I closed yesterday’s post by calling forth people’s destinies, to fulfil that purpose of God for their lives. That calling forth of destinies is something written on my own scroll. Fulfilling their destiny is important not only for the individuals themselves, but also for the church and the purposes of God going forward.

Everlasting Doors

heavenly-realms-concentric1

Here is a diagram showing the sphere in which we live, the sphere of the earth, and the atmosphere of the earth that is around us. Within that atmosphere there are principalities, rulers and powers. Then there are the heavenly realms.

Think of these as dimensions that are around us. Not linear, 1, 2, 3, going up, but dimensions that we can access by simply stepping into them. And between the atmosphere of the earth and the heavenly realms, there are everlasting doors. We read about them here:

Lift up your heads, O you gates!
And be lifted up, you everlasting doors!
And the King of glory shall come in.
(Psalm 24:7 NKJV)

These doors were open in the time of Adam, but they were closed when God set the cherubim and the fiery sword to prevent him having access to the Tree of Life. When they are closed, they block the way between the two realms.

Mountains and thrones

Within the heavenly realms there are mountains and thrones of authority. Every church has its own mountains and thrones of authority, seven of them, but so too do each of us in our own lives, in the Kingdom of God heavenly realm.

We are supposed to rule there, and to bring heaven to earth. We have access to the Kingdom of God because it is within us, as well as being in the heavenly realms. When we are ruling there, it enables us to bring the glory of God through from that realm into this one.

We must see people raised up to occupy those dimensions of rulership in the heavenly realms. When that happens, the principalities and powers and rulers get forced out. When we just bring the light that is in us and the light of the presence and the glory of God into that realm, then they cannot stay there. Darkness cannot remain in the presence of light.

If you put a candle into a dark room, it is no longer dark. You cannot add more darkness to smother that candle, but you can bring more light in to dispel more of the darkness. The brighter the light, the more the darkness has to go.

Let’s bring the light of God’s glory from the heavens into the earth.

Arise, shine, for your light has come
And the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
(Isaiah 60:1).

The atmosphere of the earth

The devil is called the ‘prince of the power of the air’ (Ephesians 2:2), but only because we have not yet taken back that realm. So as we start to fill and occupy that space in the atmosphere of the earth, bringing the authority and rulership of God there, the everlasting doors are opened. When they are, we start to see the manifest presence of God in our midst. Maybe we call it ‘revival’.

There are everlasting doors associated with each of our mountains of authority. We have seen that we have seven mountains of authority, seven spheres in which God has called us to have influence. Within each mountain is a mandate from God, and there are thrones upon those mountains, from which we are to rule.

A measure of God’s glory?

As we have begun to see people raised up to rule on the mountains in their own lives and on mountains associated with the local ekklesia, we have begun to see a measure of the glory of God coming down through those everlasting doors. We see salvation, healing, deliverance; we see the angelic operating, and the presence of God’s kingdom manifesting among us.

But we want to see God’s glory filling our area, transforming our community, the fullness of God’s kingdom being manifested, and at the moment that is not happening so much. We are seeing a little here and there, now and again. Some of the time, when someone operates in that realm of authority, we have a manifestation of the glory of God, but it is not there continually. Sometimes we see miracles, sometimes we see healing. It is increasing, but not enough. And I know that it is the same elsewhere too.

If we want to see these things happen consistently, we need people raised up as lords to operate in authority on those mountains. We need them ruling and bringing the keys of the kingdom, and using the declarations of authority that they have been given. Then we are going to see the kingdom of God manifested in people’s lives, opening their eyes to the goodness and kindness of God towards them and revealing that He has been at work in them all along.

So there is a task to be completed, and it is what this blog and the other resources we have available are all aimed at bringing about: to see people raised up as sons to occupy those places of authority. There may be much that you need to learn, and understand, and operate in, whether you are ruling on your personal mountain, on a church mountain or on an embassy of heaven mountain: but with practice, every one who is called to that realm can learn these things.

Change the atmosphere

That will change the atmosphere of the earth from darkness to light. The enemy will do all he can to prevent it, but the only authority he has is what we give him. Our attitudes form an atmosphere around us which operates in the spiritual realm to draw things towards us, whether good or bad.

Fear is always the number one weapon he uses. But there are also specific things he will use to block each everlasting door, attitudes and strongholds which specifically oppose the area of authority concerned. Our strengths in those areas that God has called us to can also be our weaknesses, because the enemy will attack them.

Refinement and purification

Ultimately, this is about us all surrendering our lives. It is about allowing God to purify us and refine us and bring us into a place of holiness, so that the authority that our sin gives to the enemy is removed. And God is challenging us to do that now, bringing us to a place of refinement and purification.

We will see open heavens, blessing, and a harvest. We will see transformation. We will see the glory of God streaming in through those everlasting doors. We will see people raised up to occupy their place in the heavenly realms. You can be among them. That is our mandate: to encourage you and teach you how to come into that place.

The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Everything we need to fulfil our destiny is within His presence and within our relationship with Him.

Together, let’s pursue it.

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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. 

Subscribe to Engaging God

Get 2 weeks free – then pay just £12 GBP per month (around $14 USD – but dollar amount varies slightly each month as the exchange rate changes).

Engage God through Jesus (the Way, Truth and Life) in the realms of heaven and within your own spirit and heart; and take up your responsibility as a mature son [daughter] in God’s kingdom.
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123. Cultivate a Garden Relationship

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott  

We have seen how we need to take the testimony of what God has shown us, given us, and done for us, and plant it in the garden in our hearts. But planting alone is not enough: if we want to produce fruit, we are to tend and keep what is growing there. And that means we have to cultivate a relationship with God on the inside.

If you do not yet know how to do that, you can learn. It is all about practice, and really no different from relating with God anywhere else. If you can sense God’s presence in a meeting, you can sense His presence on the inside when you are in worship in your own life.

Practice

There is no ‘quick fix’: we train our senses by practice. When I first started sharing this teaching here with Freedom Church in Barnstaple some folk began by saying, “I can’t see anything. I don’t get any of this stuff” but within a couple of years were seeing angels and having the most amazing heavenly encounters. They trained their spiritual senses to perceive the spiritual realm.

In the natural realm we have all learned to interpret what enters our eyes. It is no different with seeing in the spiritual realm. Actually, we all had this ability to see spiritual things when we were very young (how many stories are there of children seeing angels?), but most of us lost it. We need to recover that ability and start to see spiritual things again.

I am using the word ‘see’, but please do not get too hung up on that word. Really I mean ‘perceive’. Some people are very visual, and they will describe it as ‘seeing’, but others will become aware of what is going on in the spirit in different ways.

Angels, atmospheres, the four faces of God we are encountering when we get together – you can train your spirit through practice.

The screen of our imagination

All of us have an imagination. Try it now. Close your eyes for a few seconds and imagine your front door, where you live…

I am pretty sure you will have been able to do that. That means you have an imagination. “But I’m just imagining it”. Good. Your imagination is the screen on which God projects things, like vision, and heavenly experiences. And our imagination can convey sounds, sensations, fragrances, tastes, and textures, as well as visual things. That is how we can know what our garden is like, and that is how we can experience the heavenly realms.

We can also use the screen of our imagination to open up what we read in the Bible. That is an experiential way in which we can use it as another means of access into the realms of heaven.

I want to encourage you to open up your heart, and be willing to get into training. We will help you, on this blog, through the YouTube channel and with our other resources, so that your senses can learn to discern the things of the Spirit.

Let’s pray.

Father, I release the revelation
that the garden in our hearts will be open;

that all of us will be able to open the door in our hearts
and allow You to fill us,
to become Lord,
and that You will change us
and transform us from the inside out;

that we will be able to see in the realm of the spirit
from the inside out
as well as see naturally from the outside in.

And I release that prophetic word as a testimony
of what has happened in my life
and in the lives of people here in Barnstaple,
to declare that everyone reading this
will be able to see and perceive in the realm of the spirit,
engage in the heavenly realms,
enjoy an intimate relationship with the Father, with Jesus, with the Holy Spirit
on the inside
to fulfil their destiny
and to see what is on that scroll that has been written before the foundation of the world.

And I call forth people’s destinies
to fulfil that purpose of God for their lives.
In Jesus’ name,

Amen.

SoundTrack: Journey Into Eden – Instrumental Soaking Track by Creative Sound
“This music is inspired by encountering God in His Garden.”

Support Freedom ARC

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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. 

Subscribe to Engaging God

Get 2 weeks free – then pay just £12 GBP per month (around $14 USD – but dollar amount varies slightly each month as the exchange rate changes).

Engage God through Jesus (the Way, Truth and Life) in the realms of heaven and within your own spirit and heart; and take up your responsibility as a mature son [daughter] in God’s kingdom.
Terms and conditions apply.

120. God on the Inside

Mike Parsons 
with Jeremy Westcott – 

We’re looking to cultivate a relationship of intimacy with God so that we become one spirit with Him.

The Kingdom of Heaven is within us (Luke 17:20-21), and God has come to make His home in us (1 John 3:24). So we can meet with God anytime we want – He is right here inside us. In our hearts, as we saw yesterday, we each have a garden.  Our garden is a secret place we can go to on the inside of us, a place of relationship where we can meet and fellowship with God. We need to cultivate it. And in that garden, in our life, there is a wellspring: a fountain and a river. 

We saw this scripture yesterday too:

And her wilderness He will make like Eden,
And her desert like the garden of the Lord;
Joy and gladness will be found in her,
Thanksgiving and sound of a melody.
(Isaiah 51:3).

Perhaps we might feel that inside of us is like a desert. Nothing growing there, no water there, no life. Have you ever seen one of those nature programmes with time-lapse images of how a desert is transformed by just a little rain? Within a few days the whole barren wasteland can be teeming with life, ablaze with colour. How does that happen? There were seeds waiting for water to cause them to germinate and spring into life.

(Click here to watch this clip on YouTube – opens in a new tab/window, or copy and paste this link into your browser: http://goo.gl/SdBbNN)

If it feels like a desert, our garden may be just waiting for us to water it. Then ‘joy and gladness will be found in [us], thanksgiving and the sound of a melody’. That is a lovely description of what our lives should be like: the sound of a melody. joining in with the symphony and the harmony of heaven.

Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed… Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers. (Gen 2:7-8, 10).

The Bible says of Lucifer, “You were in Eden, the garden of God” (Ezek 28:13). Eden is the garden of God. At this time, heaven and earth were overlapping, and earth was in connection and relationship with the heavenly realms, not separated as it is now. So the garden of God was in Eden and it was the same as the Garden of God in the heavenly realms. Then, it says, He planted another garden, and the water flowed out of Eden (the Garden of God) and watered that garden (which we call the Garden of Eden, the garden that God made for man). The garden God made for man on earth was connected to the Garden of God in heaven, by the River of Life.

They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day… (Gen 3:8).

Adam walked with God: they enjoyed relationship in His garden, where the Tree of Life was. As a result of Adam and Eve’s sin, that garden and that Tree are now in heaven. Adam and Eve were driven out, and at the east of the garden God stationed cherubim with a flaming sword (they did not have flaming swords in their hands: the flaming sword is a living angelic creature). They were to guard the way to the Tree of Life (Gen 3:24) and stop Adam accessing that realm.

Jesus said, “… whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life” (John 4:14).

Now our lives have become the garden, connected to the Garden of God by the River of Life that is flowing into our lives, watering what was a desert. Our connection to the heavenly realms has been restored.

And rivers are also to flow out of our garden to water the earth, bringing the rule and dominion of God to the rest of the world, to the universe, and beyond.

Support Freedom ARC

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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. 

Subscribe to Engaging God

Get 2 weeks free – then pay just £12 GBP per month (around $14 USD – but dollar amount varies slightly each month as the exchange rate changes).

Engage God through Jesus (the Way, Truth and Life) in the realms of heaven and within your own spirit and heart; and take up your responsibility as a mature son [daughter] in God’s kingdom.
Terms and conditions apply.