Tag: Holy Spirit

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.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

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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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.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

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

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86. Kingdom Realms

The story so far

[February 2013]

Back in the summer of 2010, Mike went on a 40-day fast. God revealed much to him during that time, and over the months that followed, he began to share some of it with Freedom Church here in Barnstaple. Meanwhile, Jeremy had been looking at social media and blogging in another context, and in September 2011 began to sense that God was inviting us to use those newly available means to make that revelation and teaching available to the wider church.

So we set up this Sons Of Issachar blog, the @FreedomARC Twitter account, and the Facebook Page. Later on we also began posting on Pinterest, and added a YouTube channel, a new, much improved website and our structured introduction to living in the dual realms of heaven and earth, the Engaging God programme.

Here on the blog, 15 months in, we finally wrapped up Mike’s teaching on the Prophetic Timetable. That series closed with the 40 Characteristics of the Joshua Generation, which seem to have been widely shared and appreciated around the world.

Towards the end of that, Mike began to open up some further revelation about how we can obtain access to the realms of heaven, and why we need to do so. In this next ‘Kingdom Realms’ series, we will explore some of that in more detail, and to encourage you as you read to step into the realms of heaven and experience this for yourself.

[Feb 2020: If you want to keep up to date, you can usually catch one of Mike’s latest published ‘Mystic Mentoring’ sessions each Monday. Just visit our main website home page, scroll down and you will see the Mystic Mentoring video. These sessions often deal with current events and hot topics. You can also subscribe to his YouTube channel so you don’t miss anythuing!

You can purchase recordings of many of Mike’s historic teaching series from our engaging God website too. The annual ‘Vision Destiny‘ sets (dated 2017 to 2022) are available free of charge.

Mike’s more recent teaching can be found as part of our Engaging God subscription programme – you get a two-week free trial period and we promise it is well worth a look!]
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Free Access to the Realms of Heaven

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott

When you first hear teaching about the heavenly realms you might find it rather challenging to begin with. You may never have heard anything quite like this in the church before. Don’t be surprised if your spirit starts to respond before your mind has caught up. It is easy to get confused, or bogged down by trying to make sense of it all from a logical point of view. Not to mention the fact that some of you are probably trying to work out if we have gone completely off the rails…

Please set your mind at rest, and let your spirit lead. We are not going to ask you to do anything that is not firmly rooted in Jesus. Jesus is the Logos Word, and you need an ever-deepening relationship with Him. The Bible is an introduction to Him, a springboard from which you can encounter Him. It is only by experience that you can truly know Him: an experience you can have for yourself in increasing measure.

“I will grant you free access…”

We saw a few posts ago a passage in Zechariah about Joshua the High Priest:

And the angel of the LORD admonished Joshua, saying, “Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘If you will walk in My ways and if you will perform My service, then you will also govern My house and also have charge of My courts, and I will grant you free access among these who are standing here” (Zechariah 3:6-7).

At that point Joshua is in the heavenly realms, not on the earth, and the others standing there are heavenly beings. This is where God promises Joshua that he can have ‘free access’.

But there are conditions. Since God does not show favouritism (Rom 2:11), we know that if we fulfil those conditions, the same offer is open to us. And in those conditions we can see a distinct progression. Walk in His ways; perform His service; govern His house; have charge of His courts: then we will be able to stand in His Presence in a different realm.

Moses knew the ways of God

He revealed His ways to Moses, his works (or His acts) to the children of Israel (Psalm 103:7).

Moses knew the ways of God. There was a reason for that: He was prepared to risk engaging with God, to meet with Him face to face, when the rest of Israel kept their distance from the fire and the smoke on the mountaintop. It is not an easy thing to get to know God’s ways. But He invites us to come as Moses did, into the heavenly realms, into His Presence, into His glory.

Remember how Moses asked God to show him His glory, how God passed by before him and he was not able to see God’s face, but only what the King James Bible calls His ‘back parts’? Now, when we read that with a Greek (western) mindset, we probably think it means he saw God’s physical back. Whatever would God’s back look like? But with a Hebrew worldview we understand that what Moses saw was history, the things God had done, everything that had happened up to that time. That is how Moses was able to write the first five books of the Bible, including the story of creation and all the other events which happened before his lifetime.

But the rest of the nation of Israel did not go up that mountain, and all they saw was what God did. They saw His works, they saw His miracles, but they didn’t really begin to understand who He is, what He is like. God is inviting us to do as Moses did, so that we can know His ways. And when we know His ways, we can do the works that He does.

Moses performed miracles. He brought water out of the rock: he used his staff, he exercised power. Israel just received. The whole nation saw the works, but none of them ever actually did the works like Moses did. Jesus said that He did what He saw the Father doing (John 5:19): and He expects us to do the works He did (and greater ones).

If we are to walk in His ways, we first have to know His ways. To do the works of God, we need to know the ways of God. Then we can be among those who bring the kingdom from heaven to earth.

Walk in the ways of God

The Logos Word of God will be a safeguard for us, to keep us in the truth. The Word of God will be an anchor for all we do: Jesus is the Logos Word of God, the living Word. He is the exact image and likeness of the Father. If we have seen Him, we have seen the Father. If we get to know Jesus in relationship we can get to know the ways of God.  The ways of God reveal His character, so it is really important for us to become familiar with His ways.

If we look at Psalm 119, the first 40 verses in particular speak of His word, ways, testimonies, judgments, law, precepts, statutes, ordinances, commandments, and wonders. If we will meditate on those facets of His revelation, we realise they are all different, and that they each express some different aspect of His character.

Meditate on scripture

Meditation on scripture is really key for unlocking this. We, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory (2 Cor 3:18). As we meditate on a Bible verse or passage, what is written becomes a doorway to experience, and we become what we behold. And the more we behold, the more we become like what – or whom – we behold. We are transformed. That word is ‘metamorphosed’, like a caterpillar changing into a butterfly. A change in its DNA takes place. Meditation like this can transform us that deeply.

Similarly, as we receive the DNA of God in breaking bread, the light comes into our DNA and we are changed.

We need to hear the rhema word, the word that God speaks right now, straight to our heart. When we meditate on scripture, we can receive a rhema word as the Holy Spirit teaches us and draws out for us a message which speaks to us in our situation. And we can also have face-to-face encounters with God where He speaks a word to us directly. When that happens, we will know it is God because that revelation will line up with the truth of His nature that we already know: God is love. While we learn to recognise His voice for ourselves, we can use love as our plumbline, our standard. If it is not love, it is not God.

If you go back to the first 40 verses of Psalm 119 again, you will see another set of words which express things we need to do in order to know and experience and press into His ways. Those are words such as: walk, observe, seek, look, treasure, tell, rejoice, meditate, establish, delight, live, long for, cling, run, incline, reverence, and give thanks.

Again, there are yet other words in those verses which describe how God will respond to our walking and seeking: He will bless (that is, He will empower us to prosper, to succeed to the highest level), ordain, teach, open eyes, rebuke, take away reproach, revive, answer, strengthen, grant, enlarge our heart, give understanding, and deal bountifully.

These are some of the pathways and the protocols, the processes we will need to follow if we want to fully experience and demonstrate the life of God.

We need to take the time to read and meditate on scriptures like these for ourselves. Why not use the ‘Leave a Reply’ section below to share the insights you receive when you do, and encourage others?

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71. Defeat? Or Victory?

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

In the past couple of posts we have briefly sketched some of the widely-held views about the Millennium. So what did the early church believe about the scriptures we have been considering? And what has the church believed through the centuries?

Persecution

Up to AD 70 most of the focus of teaching was preparing believers to live in that persecution leading up to Jesus’ coming in judgment upon Jerusalem. Initially, then, the prevailing conditions were persecution by Jews. After AD 70 persecution continued, but it was persecution by the Romans. The church took on a Jewish apocalyptical view of a literal kingdom on earth. Some thought that the kingdom might be before Jesus returned; some thought it might be after. It was still a very difficult time, and they were looking for Jesus to come and do something.

Political control

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA
“Rome-Capitole-StatueConstantin” by I, Jean-Christophe BENOIST. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons (see below)

A major change happened for the church with the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine in 310 AD – and not all of it good. The church was now accepted by the political authorities, and it was OK to be a Christian. But the church was also controlled by those political authorities, so that Greek thinking and Greek influence began to pervade it. At this time the prevailing view was amillennial: the old interpretation (which had made a lot of sense under persecution) seemed not to relate so well to the changed conditions, so people began to interpret things in a less literal way, and say it must all be spiritual. You can see the Greek mindset having its influence in that distinction.

Political control continued into the medieval period, 596-1517 AD, as church and state started to mix together. Politically motivated and powerful popes, the crusades, the Holy Roman Empire, the whole idea of Christendom: all these arose during this time. The church was used by those in power to exercise control. Hardly anybody could read the Bible for themselves because it was available only in a not-very-accurate Latin translation, and that meant the priests had control of the whole system. Postmillennial theology became the norm. Their expectation was that things would get better, that the church would increase to fill the world  – but to achieve that they expected to use the sword, and to compel people to become Christians by killing those who would not comply. The preaching of the gospel was certainly not done in a way we would recognise today.

Reformation and revivals

After that came the Reformation (1517-1648). The truth began to be restored to the church and people began to question both the spiritual and the political authority of the Roman establishment. They continued to hold a postmillennial view, still expected things to get better, and saw the restoration of truth as part of that process.

Charles_g_finneyThen we come to a period where the Holy Spirit was poured out in revivals in both England and America: Wesley and Whitfield and so on in the UK; the First and Second Great Awakenings in the USA with Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney (photo) and others. Those revivalists were predominantly postmillennialists: they believed that Jesus would be coming back after the church had succeeded in its mission. Maybe that was because they saw the church actually succeeding; they saw revivals in which many thousands were saved and the work of the Holy Spirit was very obvious.

Tares sown in

But from 1826-50, so much that was negative began to be sown in, as we have seen. The tares were sown into the world, with the rise of cults and so on; and in the church the leaven of dispensational teaching and false doctrine began to spread and permeate everything.

From 1909, when the Scofield Bible was published and so many people read it and adopted the dispensational premillennialist views it reflected, the predominant mindset became very pessimistic. There was a great deal of scientific and philosophical attack on Christian belief, Darwinism began to become generally accepted, and two World Wars seemed to indicate that far from getting better, things were getting much worse.

A whole generation which had been impacted by the Welsh revival saw its young men wiped out in the First World War. And even after the Second World War, the pessimism continued into Cold War, a period of intense uncertainty in which nuclear destruction looked to be a distinct possibility. So much went into print at that time identifying Russia as the Beast or the Antichrist or whatever – and now those books are completely obsolete.

It didn’t stop the same thing happening with the Common Market in Europe, which was supposed to be the twelve heads of the Beast coming out of the sea in Revelation – and how many nations are there in the EU now? Then it was going to be Saddam Hussein. Well, he is no longer around either. North Korea next…?

All this material was written by authors looking at the prevailing conditions and trying to interpret them using biblical prophecy; looking at events in the world and imposing that onto Scripture, instead of the other way around. When we read biblical prophecy, we want to allow it to tell us what is (or was) going to happen. We do not want to interpret it from looking at the newspapers or the television news.

Renewal

Around 1960 there was a turning point, the charismatic renewal movement, when the Holy Spirit was poured out across the churches. That has led on to the whole prophetic movement, and the restoration of prophetic and apostolic ministry. With that has come fresh revelation – and a fresh challenge. It has caused warfare within the church, because when you challenge a status quo which is dominated by the enemy you get Jezebel spirits and all kinds of demonic activity being stirred up. They do not like the truth being preached when they have had things their own way for so long.

We need to preach the truth. The truth is that the kingdom of God is going to fill the earth. The truth is that Jesus is going to come back for a victorious church. The devil would just love us to believe that we are going to be defeated, because then our faith would be in that defeat.

But our faith is in victory, in overcoming, in seeing God’s kingdom fill the earth.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

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Image of the Emperor Constantine
Attribution: “Rome-Capitole-StatueConstantin” by I, Jean-Christophe BENOIST.
Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rome-Capitole-StatueConstantin.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Rome-Capitole-StatueConstantin.jpg

53. Breaking off the Greek Mindset

Mike Parsons –

Last time I shared with you a couple of tables relating to the Greek (Western) and Hebrew (Eastern) mindsets. In this post I want to look just a little more closely at the contrast between them, and then I would like to pray for God to reveal where we are being robbed by our Western way of looking at things, and break it off us.

Separation vs unity

Here is the first of those tables again:

Greek Mentality

Hebrew Mentality
The goal of salvation is to escape this world and go to God’s dwelling place in heaven The goal of salvation is to prepare a place fit for God’s dwelling here, among His people
The kingdom of God exists in heaven, not upon the earth The kingdom of God is God’s reign among people here on earth
Jesus is coming to take us away from this world Jesus is coming to reign over us and through us in this world
Message: “Get your ticket now, or you might miss the train!” Message: “The kingdom of God is coming! Get ready to serve the King and manifest the kingdom.”

Let’s take these one line at a time.

In our Greek understanding, the goal of salvation is to escape this world and go to God’s dwelling place in heaven. So everything is focussed on what will be: very little about what is now. In Hebrew thought, the goal of salvation is to prepare a place fit for God’s dwelling here, among His people. He wants His kingdom to come on earth.

Linked with that, where does the kingdom of God exist? The Greek view says it is in heaven, not on the earth, whereas the Hebrew view is that the kingdom of God is God’s reign among people here upon the earth.

So is Jesus coming in order to take us away from this world? No, Jesus is coming to reign over and through us in this world. We need to focus on God’s kingdom being ‘now’, not separating it out. “Get your ticket now or you might miss the train”: that may have been what we were told, but do we really want to carry on presenting the gospel that way?

And then: “Now you have your ticket, just hold on tight. In the end Jesus will come and rescue you”, rather than what Jesus preached: “The Kingdom of God is coming! It’s right here, right now! Get ready to serve the King and manifest the kingdom”.

Do you see how each misunderstanding arises from the previous one? Once you begin to go down the route prescribed by Western thought, you find there is more and more separation becoming entrenched in your thinking, and less and less of an understanding of the unity of God’s purpose.

Form vs purpose

If we look at the second table, we can see how this works out in practice:

Greek mindset

Hebrew mindset
Form Function
What I do How I do it
Secular/Religious Unified
Heavenly/Earthly Dual
Knowledge Experience
What I know Who I know
Works Grace
Creed Deed
Analyse Live – Be and Do

The Greek mindset looks at the form of something. For example, let’s take a tree. It has roots, a trunk, branches, leaves – that is what I mean by looking at its form. In the Hebrew way of thinking, it is more about what it is for. What is the purpose of a tree? To bear fruit. They are really not interested in the fact that it might have roots, a trunk, branches and leaves. Does it bear fruit? If not, it is of no value at all. Remember how Jesus cursed the fig tree that was not producing any fruit? It is the difference between an actual, practical outworking and just a mental, theoretical understanding.

So: Greek: what I do; Hebrew: how I do it. We can do lots of things from the wrong motive – but we know that God looks on the heart.

Greek thinking separates out our religious life from our secular life. Family, work, school, friendships on the one hand; and church on the other. But God wants His kingdom to be flowing through all of our lives, with no separation. There is no secular for us. Our lives are a whole, they are unified, and we bring the kingdom of God into everything.

In Greek thinking, the heavenly was separated from the earthly. There was no overlap. Bill Johnson wrote a book called ‘When Heaven Invades Earth’. Bottom line is, that is impossible in Greek thinking. But for us, we can live in both places: we live in the realms of heaven, and we bring that spiritual realm into our lives on earth, at the same time: not in the future but now.

‘Knowledge’ to the Greek mind is information. But to the Hebrew, you cannot know anything without experiencing it. It is all about knowledge through spiritual encounter. If all I am doing in this blog is imparting information to you, we are missing the mark. That is why from time to time I also include praying for you, which gives you the opportunity to encounter Him through the Holy Spirit and experience the reality of His truth for yourself (of course you can always pray these things through even when I don’t specifically include a prayer).

It’s not what you know, but who you know! We know God, but it is perfectly possible to read the Bible from cover to cover and have all the information, but never actually know Him. We need to encounter everything in the Word of God for ourselves.

Works, or grace. A creed or the deed. Stating what you believe, or actually living that way? Faith without works is absolutely dead. Jesus said, “If I do not do the works that my Father does, don’t believe me” (John 10:37). You don’t hear too many sermons on that verse.

We don’t analyse: we live. It is about who we are and what we do. God Himself says He is the I AM.

I want to pray now. If you think you may have any mindsets, any of the Greek way of thinking, we want to break that off right now.

[If you would like to hear an audio version of this prayer, click here.]

Father, I pray that the power of Your Holy Spirit will come.
Break any deception off our mindsets
Any way in which we have come under false doctrines,
False teachings, mindsets of the enemy,
Greek thinking that would cause us to separate our lives out.

I come, Lord, with the sword of Your Spirit,
To break that off our mindsets right now
In Jesus’ Name.
To be loosed from any control that the enemy has had over us
Through traditions of men and demonic doctrines
That put things into the future instead of the present;
That put things into heaven instead of on earth;
That have separated us out;
That have caused us to believe and not do.

I break those mindsets right now.

I break any doctrines over us that would hinder Your church
From pursuing and seeing the kingdom of God fill the earth
As it is in heaven.
Holy Spirit, come and reveal to anyone reading this
Anything which is a hindrance, an obstacle, a stumbling block
To our being able to fulfil our destiny as God’s people.
I pray that You would send gathering angels into our lives
To gather any stumbling blocks from us.
Gather them from our mind, gather them from our heart,
So that we believe and stand on the truth of Your Word
That through kingdom and covenant,
You are going to fill the earth with Your kingdom.
You are going to come back for a victorious, overcoming church
That has risen above every other thing.
Because ‘of the increase of Your kingdom there is no end’.

Empower us with the power of Your Holy Spirit
To take Your kingdom
And manifest Your kingdom through our lives,
Every day of our lives:
In work, in home, in our neighbourhood.
That we would manifest Your kingdom in power and authority
Doing the works that Jesus did.

I loose us from everything that would hinder us
From that fulfilment of Your purposes for our lives
In Jesus’ Name.

Amen.

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48. A Thousand-fold Increase?

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

Kingdom and covenant

Our prophetic understanding must come in the context of God’s Kingdom and of covenant. Kingdom and covenant are two sides of the same coin. In order to get understanding of the purposes of God, we need understanding of both. Right from the very beginning it was God’s purpose to have a people who would demonstrate His Kingdom ‘on earth as it is in heaven’; and covenants were the agreements He initiated with men to enable that to take place.

In 2011, when I first spoke about this subject, quite a bit was said and written about it being ‘year 11’. In particular, some people felt God was highlighting Deuteronomy 1:11 which says, “May the LORD, the God of your fathers, increase you a thousand-fold more than you are and bless you, just as He has promised you”. Some began to see ‘111’ everywhere as they began to focus on what God was saying. They got hold of that scripture and encouraged us to believe God not for a hundredfold increase, but actually for a thousandfold.

Does it mean that?

Firstly, of course, it is possible for the Holy Spirit to take that scripture and speak it to us personally and say ‘This is for you’. But if we don’t hear it that way, how do we approach the questions which will come up: ‘Is that right? Does it say that? And if it does, is it intended for us?’

Notice that it speaks of ‘the God of your fathers’. That is covenant language. ‘The God of your fathers’ refers back to Abraham, and how God made a covenant with him through which all families on the earth were to be blessed. Deuteronomy 8:18 tells us that it is to confirm that covenant that God gives us the power to make wealth. In light of that, I would say that yes, we can claim Deuteronomy 1:11 as a promise that God will increase us a thousandfold.

But is that exactly 1000, or does it just mean ‘a lot’? Let’s consider the scripture which says that God ‘owns the cattle on a thousand hills’ (Psalm 50:10). Does He not own the cattle on the 1001st? I think we know the answer to that. So a thousand is not necessarily exact, it is a large number – and in this case it really stands for ‘everything’.

Limiting God

My point is that if we are going to understand prophecy correctly, we cannot simply take everything literally and so limit God. People raised the objection that when Deuteronomy 1:11 was written, there weren’t actually any chapter or verse numbers: they were added later. That doesn’t stop God using them to illustrate something to us.

This is part of approaching scripture and prophecy with a Hebrew (eastern) rather than a Greek (western) mindset. Literal, deeper, personal, and hidden meanings – all can be true, and all found within the understanding of one verse of scripture.

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46. Revelation and Interpretation

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –


Arise, shine; for your light has come
And the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.
For behold, darkness will cover the earth
And deep darkness the peoples:
But the LORD will rise upon you
And His glory will appear upon you.
Nations will come to your light,
And kings to the brightness of your rising’
(Is 60:1-3).

I said last time that we need to look at how we understand prophecy. This is a very familiar scripture, but how can we be sure we are interpreting it correctly?

When is darkness covering the earth? How is this to be understood? Surely this is about the birth of Jesus? He came as the light into the darkness of the world. This is certainly how people who recognised Jesus as the Messiah when He came would have interpreted this scripture.

But what about in our day? Or what about the return of Jesus? We know there is coming (and perhaps we are already entering) a time of increasing shaking, of increasing darkness, and that only the Kingdom will remain.

It is vital that we know how to read scriptures in the correct light.

Religious doctrines and traditions are about to be exposed for what they are and religious spirits hate exposure. After all, Nephilim spirits are looking to rule and to exercise control of the world’s systems without anyone getting wise to them. If we allow that, then the promises of God are always going to be represented as being for another place, another time, or another people.

Looking forwards, looking back

I was brought up in a religious atmosphere like that. In the Cornish town where I lived, there was not a single church practising baptism by full immersion. When I read in the Word that that was how God intended it, I had to travel 12 miles to find somewhere they did it that way. No one had even heard of baptism in the Holy Spirit – I had to go even further to find people who were experiencing that.

And yet, in my town, the churches were all very keen on looking forward to the Second Coming, on what God would do in the future (their understanding was that He would rescue them so they would not have to go through the tribulation). They were also very hot on what God had done in the past, by sending Jesus to save us. But in the period in between, they were just hanging on, expecting (and experiencing) constant defeat and setbacks. It was all about the past or the future, never now. People did get saved, I saw them setting out enthusiastic and optimistic, but over time their enthusiasm was squashed, or just drained away. Religious spirits thrive on and seek to perpetuate this kind of situation.

Information or revelation

Revelation does not come through study. I know, because I studied the Bible a great deal. When it came to information about the Bible I could answer pretty much any question you could throw at me. But the Kingdom of God did not fit into my belief system. When God began to speak to me about it, my brain starting flashing ‘Does not compute’.

???????????

Those who know me will tell you that I am very strong on what I believe. But I am also willing to change if God shows me I have it wrong. I had to get to the stage where I was prepared to jettison everything, if God showed me to. This is hard, and it may well be hard for you if you are willing to go there. You are not alone. I have had to let go of doctrines and understanding that I really thought were right. And that process continues – I know what it is to be challenged.

So if it is not through study, then how does revelation come? It comes through meditation and in conversation and relationship with the Living Word Himself. We cannot expect to just figure it out from what we see in the world around us today, to make it fit. The truth is, we don’t have to fit with the world, we need to align with God’s purposes. Therefore we must spend time meditating on what the written word says, and allow the Living Word to teach us what He has to say about it.

An important principle of Bible interpretation, and one that is widely accepted, is to go back to the first use of a word or phrase. Another is to allow the Bible to interpret itself. As we see how words or phrases are used consistently throughout the Bible, that will help stop us from falling into error.

Greek and Hebrew mindsets

To really get to grips with all this, we will need to consider the Hebrew context of scripture. In the West we are at a disadvantage because it is not really possible to grasp the true meaning of scripture from a typical western mindset: we have been taught to think in a totally different way. So in coming posts I will begin to explain how to see things from a Hebrew point of view.

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44. The Supernatural Kingdom of God

daniel

Mike Parsons–

We are continuing to look at the kingdom of God as prophesied in the book of Daniel.

How great are His signs
And how mighty are His wonders!
His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom
And His dominion is from generation to generation

(Daniel 4:3).

Supernatural

The kingdom of God is a kingdom of power and supernatural manifestations. Jesus said that His kingdom is not of this world. That is because it is heaven being manifested on the earth:

… For He is the living God and enduring forever, 
And His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed, 
And His dominion will be forever.
He delivers and rescues and performs signs and wonders
In heaven and on earth…
(Dan 6:26-27).

What He does in heaven, he also does on earth, including signs and wonders.

We encourage people to get hold of Bill Johnson’s books, because he talks about how heaven invades earth through God’s people. People are only going to be convinced of the truth of the gospel, as Paul tells us, not by wise and persuasive words but by demonstration of the Spirit and of power – in other words, with signs, wonders and miracles.

Greater works

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father (John 14:12).

I spent a whole year teaching on this verse not so long ago. It is Jesus’ mandate to us, to His disciples, to His church. It is the same mandate of kingdom authority which was originally given to Adam and Eve in the Garden, but which they lost.

That is why I am not just looking for us to get back to the level of power and authority which the disciples displayed in the book of Acts. The level of the supernatural power of God that Adam and Eve possessed was vastly superior to that. They would have been capable of supernatural manifestations way beyond anything we see in the early church. And if Jesus will remain in heaven until the restoration of all things (Acts 3:21), then we are going to see that level of power and authority restored.

Freely give

Freely you have received: freely give (Matt 10:8).

As we go out with the message of this kingdom, we are to give away what we have received. This encourages us to seek God for more manifestations of the supernatural in our own lives, because the more signs and wonders and supernatural manifestations of God’s power we have received, the more we can give away. Signs and wonders should overflow from our lives as we engage with God in the heavenly realms and live out that reality in our daily lives. One of the phrases God spoke to me while I was on the fast was about ‘living in and living out the manifest presence of God’.

The glory of God is no good to people if it is locked up inside us. It is time for us to shine. And I do believe we will literally shine, that our faces will glow with the radiance of God’s glory. It happened to Moses – it can happen again. And that will cause people to sit up and take notice.

We will find that when the shaking comes, as it will, then words will not be enough. We will need to be able to live demonstrating the truth by the manifestation of God’s kingdom. So we must get ready for that time, we must throw off all the idols, all the hurt and disappointment with which the enemy seeks to weigh us down. He is just trying to intimidate us, just trying to cause us to back off. We cannot allow that to happen.

Hungry

We need to be increasingly hungry and thirsty to pursue God. We need to get everything going, everything God has for us. When prayer and impartation are being offered, I always encourage people to come forward for everything. In a sense it doesn’t matter what it is! For myself, I always try to find a way I can fit into the category of people who are being called forward. I want more; I want everything there is which will empower me, prepare me and equip me to be manifested as a son of God, as a joint heir with Christ.

We need to grasp the reality of this: sons of God, joint heirs with Christ:that is what  we are (Rom 8:14-17).

Superheroes

Let’s be willing to be superheroes. Some of you know how much I love science fiction. Some of the super-powers that those characters have on films and in TV series, I believe we will literally be like that. People will see the power coming from our fingers. We will be able to move instantly from one place to another. In the Spirit. And yes, we will shine. People will either run from us or fall on their faces asking, ‘what must we do to be saved?‘

Honestly, I believe that is what it will be like when we are truly ‘living in and living out’ the supernatural kingdom of God.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAsu689yRrg

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41. The Kingdom of God is Filling the Earth

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

The Kingdom of God is filling the earth.

You continued looking until a stone was cut out without hands, and it struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and crushed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were crushed all at the same time and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them was found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth Daniel 2:34-35 .

Daniel is interpreting the dream the king has had, in which he has seen a statue representing four empires: Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome. In the time of the Roman Empire, a stone was to be cut out. That stone is Jesus and the mountain is His kingdom, which will fill the whole earth:

In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever (Daniel 2:44).

So God is setting up a kingdom which will not fail. It explicitly tells us that it is not going to be left for another people. It is going to overcome all the other kingdoms. These are truths that the enemy has fought hard to keep from us, because if we really get hold of them we will no longer be sitting around saying, ‘Jesus, come and rescue us’. Instead we will be saying, ‘Come, Lord Jesus, empower us to play our part in seeing this victory, the kingdom of God filling the earth’.

Here is another passage about the same kingdom:

I kept looking in the night visions,
And behold, with the clouds of heaven
One like a Son of Man was coming,
And He came up to the Ancient of Days
And was presented before Him.

And to Him was given dominion,
Glory and a kingdom,
That all the peoples, nations and men of every language
Might serve Him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion
Which will not pass away;
And His kingdom is one
Which will not be destroyed’
(Daniel 7:13-14).

Now, is this all just pie in the sky? Let me give you some facts and figures about how the kingdom is advancing. Let’s look at what God has done since 120 people in an upper room were empowered by the Holy Spirit and fire, spilled out onto the street and eventually into the whole world.

  • In AD100, there were 360 non-Christians for every true believer, a ratio of 360:1. Today, the ratio is less than 7:1. That means that the kingdom of God is filling the earth. It really is.
  • No Christian was officially allowed to live in Nepal until 1960. Now there is a church in every one of the 75 districts of Nepal with estimates of over half a million believers in that nation.
  • Every day, 20,000 Africans come to Christ. Africa was 3% Christian in 1900 but today it is over 50% Christian.That is a whole continent where more than half the people are Christians.
  • In 1900 Korea had no Protestant church and the country was deemed impossible to penetrate. Today Korea is 30% Christian with 7000 churches in Seoul alone (and several of those churches have over 1,000,000 members each).
  • Every day 50,000 people in countries served by Asia Access come to Christ.
  • There are currently 60-80 million Christians in China with up to 25,000 converts a day. That is thought to be a very conservative estimate indeed. The church there is growing fast, under persecution.
  • 35,000 conversions occur in Latin America  daily

If only 1 out of every 6 believers reproduced themselves one time each year, that is if just one in six of us made a single disciple each year (and one in six of those did the same), the entire world would be reached for Christ in 8 years! That is even without a massive outpouring, even without the River of Life being released into the earth as we believe it will be.

Jesus said the kingdom was going to be like leaven spreading through the dough. He also said it would be like a little seed that grows into a massive tree.

Make no mistake about it. We are winning. The kingdom of God is filling the earth. We belong to that kingdom, and that kingdom belongs to us.

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29. Surrender Your Whole Life

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

abandon

I believe that God is challenging us to surrender. And especially if you have been hardening your heart when you have seen God at work in revival, resisting what He is doing because things are not as you expected, this is an opportunity for you to surrender totally to Him, and allow Him to do what He needs to do.

All of us, everything

Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord (Acts 3:19).

If we are willing to turn away from ourselves and surrender to Him, He will refresh us with His very Presence. That is a promise: the question is, are we willing, or do we still want to do it our own way? Do we still want to do it according to our own thinking or are we willing to surrender that and allow God to do it however He chooses? Are we willing to give Him everything? He wants our heart; He wants our mind; He wants it all. He is not satisfied with what we are giving Him: all of us need to surrender everything.

Let us abandon ourselves to Him: be that living sacrifice we looked at last time, and let it all go. Let go of our past and let Him heal it and restore it. He will restore our soul if we are willing to sit in green pastures by quiet waters and look at His face. See His eyes, looking at us, loving us. Seeing our pain and our hurt, and bringing healing because He loves us. He went to the cross and took every sickness, every pain, every disease, every sorrow; He took every sin we have committed or ever will, every sin that has been committed against us, and He died for us. And He was resurrected and is alive to enforce the victory of the cross in our lives – if we will allow Him to do it.

The question is, will we let it go? We need to receive our true identity as sons of God. The only way we receive it is letting go of our old identity, letting go of our old way of doing it, our old strongholds and mindsets, to embrace our destiny. Every one of us has a destiny in God, God wants us to embrace it.

Today

And today, I really believe, is the time when we need to make a decision in our hearts. Some of us have been lukewarm, resistant, doing as little as we have thought we could get away with. If we have been thinking that would be OK, we need to recognise that is not enough anymore. It never was. It is not enough to play around with this: God wants our whole life: everything. And when we give Him our whole life, we receive His abundant life in return; we get everything we ever desired or wanted, but has been blocked by our stubbornness, because of the flesh and the strongholds that get in the way.  Today is the time when we can surrender.

Can we take a minute to be quiet, close our eyes, and be honest before God about where we are with Him right now? If we are struggling, to surrender that struggle. If we know there are things we have not handed over to Him, to hand them over now. Just count the cost of what doing things our own way might be for us, if we miss what God is doing right now. Consider where it will lead us and where it will take us, compared to what will happen if we surrender our life to God, compared to our destiny in God,  in the Holy Spirit, in the future Kingdom of God.

Selah

Please, pause for a minute to do that, and only continue reading this post when you are done.

Prayer of surrender

Now I am inviting you to pray with me if you are willing to surrender the whole of your life. Whether you have prayed a prayer of surrender like this before, or whether this is the first time, He wants to give you so much more than you can imagine or think, but He cannot if you are not surrendering everything to Him. Surrender to Him right now. Forget what anyone else is doing around you, just get in the presence of God.

Father,
I pray that You will receive the living sacrifice
That I am presenting before You right now.
That You will receive it into Your hand,
Receive my life, receive my soul,
My mind, my heart, my will, my emotions, my choice.
Receive me as a living sacrifice,
Heal, restore, make whole,
Empower, envision, equip;
Draw me into an intimate relationship with You, Father.

As I surrender to You,
Come, meet with me at that point of surrender.
As I surrender my life, give me Your abundant life;
As I surrender my hurts and pains, bring healing and restoration;
As I surrender my past, give me revelation of my future.
Open up the eyes of my heart to see, to hear, to feel and to know
Who I am as Your son.
Release my true identity as Your son,
Called to the kingdom for such a time as this.
Prepare my body with fragrant oils and fragrant perfume
To come into the presence of the King.

I come into the presence of the King right now
As a living sacrifice,
To present it before You in the heavenly realms
So that I can take my seat,
Seated with Christ in authority and power in the heavenly realms;
To manifest Your kingdom
On earth, as it is in heaven, through my life,
Manifesting the light of Your glory.
Take me, Lord God,
Take my heart, melt it with Your love.

With Your eyes of love
You are looking into people’s hearts, saying,
“Give Me your heart,
Stop being stubborn,
Stop resisting;
Surrender,
Be a living sacrifice.
I have so much to give you,
So much more than you can imagine or think.
Today, just surrender to me
And allow me to do what I want to do in your life.
Allow me to direct your life
In the way it should go,
To empower you and envision you;
Embrace your destiny.”

I pray, Holy Spirit, touch our lives today.
As we have turned away from our own way
And we have repented and turned to You,
Let times of refreshing come from Your very Presence.
Let Your Presence rest on us;
Open up the realms of heaven
As you invite us into the throne room
To meet the King.

God wants to give you new things: He wants you to be invested with new clothes, new robes of righteousness and kingly authority. He wants to put a ring of authority on your finger. He wants to release power and anointing upon you. You are called to the kingdom for such a time as this.

But first of all, He wants you to surrender.

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Soundtrack: Holding Nothing Back (Sans Rien Retenir)- Jesus Culture (via YouTube)

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