The Bible talks about asking and receiving, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. However, it’s the manner in which we do it that matters. If you’re begging or praying in a way that disconnects you from God, our provider, it can be problematic. [His covenant name,] Jehovah-Jireh (The Lord our Provider), reflects His goodness, mercy, love and desire to bless us. When we embrace sonship, we recognise that we are blessed to be a blessing. This is integral to our identity as children of God, knowing who we are: blessed ones.
It is not something we strive to attain; it is who we are. God is within us, Heaven is within us, and we are connected to that realm at the core of our being. Rivers of living water flow from our innermost being, providing a source of life and energy. We drink from this inexhaustible supply, the spirit and River of Life within us, without needing to ask God for a drink.
Trust and Relationship
Cardiognosis with God involves a mutual knowing of hearts—His and ours—as one. Therefore, I know He is my Provider, and I trust Him. This trust manifests in the way I live, so I’m not constantly asking Him for things but living in a state of being blessed. I trust in His provision, protection and guidance. The more connected I am relationally to Him, the more everything flows from that relationship. I can access heaven’s resources, living in the conscious awareness of trusting my Father, who loves me. There is no doubt or unbelief in His provision as I seek first the relationship, and everything else is added to me.
Prayer and Covenant
Prayer, as Jesus spoke about it, was often in the context of the Old Covenant age, which is very different from the New Covenant—a covenant of grace, mercy and love. I would say prayer is less a skill to be learned and more a relationship to be had. The more time spent with God in relationship, without any agenda of asking for things, the more you will know His provision. He is a good God who wants you to be blessed. Therefore, sonship is a blessed state from which everything flows, because you know God is your Provider, and His provision shall be seen.
Rather than focusing on asking and waiting, consider your identity within your relationship with Him. Everything is provided to enable you to be who He made you to be. It is an outworking of being who you are, with everything you need already prepared. You simply walk it out and let it manifest in your life. There are things you can do, such as calling things that are not as though they are: if something has not yet manifested, you can call it into being. By brooding over [what is] the Father’s heart for you, you can incubate and then speak the manifestation into reality.
Acting in Faith
You are not passive in this process; you can rule and take action from a place of intimacy and heart-to-heart relationship with God. You will not act independently or with wrong motives but always align with His heart and desires for you. Your needs will be met according to His plans for your destiny. Acting independently, using your own strength and understanding, leads to depletion and striving. Flowing in your destiny with Him ensures that everything you need is manifested or can be called into being when necessary.
If you enjoy these blogs and videos, please take a moment to like, comment, share and subscribe, whether here or on YouTube. It really helps. Thank you very much.
Every time there’s any sort of sign in the heavens, people say, “Oh yeah, the rapture’s coming, blah blah blah blah blah.” I mean, half the Amazon rainforest has been cut down to produce books about the rapture, and none of them came true. I’ve got a whole shelf filled with those books that people have either sent me or I used to have, that I keep just as a reminder that it’s never going to happen.
It won’t. It’s all based in a wrong understanding of God’s purpose, based in a theology which was a rejection of the Holy Spirit back in the 1820s. The Brethren – dispensation, millennialism, rapture theology all came from the same source. Zionism also. It’s all the fruit of a poisonous tree, sadly, but people buy into it hook, line and sinker. Any time there’s any sort of thing that happens in the world, you get all the crazies coming out, sadly. They’re well-meaning, a lot of them. It’s deceiving. It’s just a huge deception.
Whenever you reject the Holy Spirit, you’re opening yourself up for demonic deception. The whole Brethren movement, which was inspired by God for the priesthood of all believers, saw many believers come out of the institutions to look for a simpler way of engaging house to house. The Holy Spirit fell on them with prophecy, tongues, and gifts in the 1820s.
Ultimately, they rejected that, some of them. Deception came upon them, and then they needed a theology that explained why the Holy Spirit wasn’t for today, which they came up with: dispensationalism and cessationism as part of that. Then, along with that, came the rapture, the whole deception of it. Scofield was paid by a Jewish source to promote that because it plays into the hands of those who are looking for a one-world governmental system on earth. All it does is rob us of our authority to bring the Kingdom now and promotes fear.
Cult-like Deception
There was a lady in the States who killed two of her children because she didn’t want them to go through the [tribulation]. That was last year [2021] because it was supposed to be February the 24th that the rapture was going to happen. She actually killed two children because she did not want them to go through the tribulation. That’s how deceptive it was, but it becomes very cult-like because it’s a very controlling thing. We need to see it exposed; more and more people need to be set free from that deception. People will throw out the rapture, but they’ll keep the millennium because they’ve not yet realised it came from the same source. Or they’ll keep Zionism, not realising it came from the same source. That’s part of the problem: people are not discerning, and they don’t find out. They just believe what they’re told, and if you hear it enough, you think it must be true. That’s true. People do believe it because they’ve been told, and they kept being told.
I was brought up with it. I was in the Brethren Church. I know the roots of it. I researched it. I found all the books of the early Brethren fathers and what they shared, and how good it was in the beginning. But you could see when it went off, and you could see when deception came in because the writings changed. The tone of them changed. They became judgmental. The love went out of them. You can see it in just what was written, how it was written. Everything changed from the inspiration that they had.
If they had continued, you would have had Azusa Street-type revival 80 years before it happened. But they rejected it, and it took 80 years for that to come round again. The most ironic thing, and this is a huge irony, the Brethren movement does not allow women to speak, and they don’t believe in prophecy. But when the Holy Spirit was moving on that group, a woman called Mary Margaret McDonald prophesied a vision, and they based the rapture teaching on that prophecy. But they don’t believe women can speak, and they don’t believe prophecy, but they based the teaching on it and mixed it with a Jesuit priest’s teaching, and came up with that whole system of belief which hijacked the seminaries around the world for the best part of a hundred years.
Impact on Mainstream Christianity
It is still taught in most seminaries around the world, unless you come from a Reformed background. Most of the other charismatic seminaries teach it because they were totally hoodwinked by it. The Scofield Bible, which was commissioned and paid for with an agenda that wasn’t from a Christian, promoted that. The Scofield was a King James Version that contained all the notes related to the rapture, the seven dispensations and cessationism, all in the notes. That infiltrated the seminaries around the world, and then most of the missionaries’ teaching, and the evangelical movement were actually taught from those seminaries.
That’s why it’s so infiltrated mainstream because it got in through the seminaries, and then that went out through and infiltrated most of the evangelical movement. It wasn’t really until the charismatic movement started to bring people back to a restored relationship where they could hear God for themselves, that people started to question some of those things.
When I got baptised in the Spirit in 1986, the first thing God said to me was, “You need to understand kingdom and covenant.” Well, I thought I knew what kingdom and covenant meant because I’d been brought up in the Brethren movement. That’s all they talked about: the kingdom coming a thousand years after all this stuff. It took me three years of going back with God through the Bible, because He just did it. I didn’t read another book: I just went through the Bible. He showed me the whole error of all of it, and I found a whole different view of what is going to happen, which has led me and helped me to come and embrace restoration and everything else. But that was a long time ago.
I already had a lot of deconstruction from futurist eschatology 40 years ago. Now, it’s so easy to see how all this works together with what God is doing to restore. I didn’t have all of that negative stuff. I had a lot of demons cast out of me. I had a lot of religious spirits specifically from that movement. It was a deceptive movement: it was birthed in God – and rejected God for an error. When you do that, you open yourself up to deception. It has had probably the biggest deceptive influence on mainstream Christianity in the last 200 years. A huge deception.
Mike goes into much more detail on these subjects in his book The Eschatology of the Restoration of All Things, available in paperback or as an ebook. Click here or on the image above for details.
Support Freedom ARC#
The ‘new’ Patreon page Mike spoke of in the video is now well-established. Find out more by clicking the image below.
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 support our work with a one-time gift*. Thank you!
Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation.
For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead.
Don’t live on the trickle flowing under the threshold of the gate. Open it to go ankle-deep, knee-deep, waist-deep until it floods and fills us with abundant life.
Series information: You can only get the full-length videos of Mike’s new monthly series “Restoring First Love” when you sign up at eg.freedomarc.org/first-love.
Video Summary
There was a long lead-up to these experiences, and God had been preparing me my whole life. Hindsight is wonderful, and looking back, I see many signposts on my journey. At the time, I didn’t understand the experiences, but they were all part of God’s plan.
Questions
Questions worth asking include: Where is my first love gate? Where is the Garden of our heart? Are these literal places? They describe our soul and how God engages us. They are figurative, yet they are places of engagement within us that relate to spirit, soul and body. My experiences in revelation were progressive. The relationship deepened over time, and as I progressed, I understood more of who God is and who I am.
Jesus is knocking
Revelation 3:20, the first verse I ever spoke about publicly, says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and dine with him, and he with me.” Initially, I interpreted this as a salvation experience, but it’s more about an inside-out experience, where God, already within us, seeks to engage our soul and body. This is about God working inside us, filling us, and sharing life with us.
Paul’s experience of God revealing His Son within him illustrates this. Paul’s revelation was a shift from his religious path to a relationship with God. He preached about God ‘in’ the Gentiles, a message of inclusion and mystic union. Initially, I rejected this concept, but over the years, God showed me the finished work of Christ and the grace message, which I now fully embrace.
Open the gate
Opening the gate of first love daily is a choice. It’s about welcoming God into an intimate relationship, which for me was like a romance. To experience God’s first love, we need to open and accept the invitation. This is a mutual relationship, not one-sided.
How do we receive and experience His love? By choosing to open the gate for an intimate, interactive love relationship. Don’t live on the trickle, but open the gate to go deeper until it floods us with abundant life.
Expressing our love for God goes beyond praise and worship; it’s about making it a priority in our lives. God is always available and promises never to leave us. He’s speaking—are we listening?
Activation: Be Entwined In Love’s Embrace
Take a moment to close your eyes, breathe slowly and deeply, and meditate on opening the first love gate. Picture a door, whether your front door or another familiar one. By choice, open that door and welcome the presence of God. Embrace this intimate relationship, stay in that embrace, and listen to God’s words of love and calling.
God calls us to step out of independence and into His ocean of love, joy, and peace. He calls forth our true identity as His sons and co-heirs, to manifest His Kingdom on Earth. Rest in His unconditional love, joy, and peace. Let this place of rest be your abiding dwelling place. Stay there as long as you need, and let it be a constant in your life.
Laughter was a big thing in the 1990s, especially around 1994 in Toronto. But it was happening before that in places like Vineyard and with Rodney Howard-Browne in Pentecostal circles. Laughter seemed to be something God used to get our attention, bringing joy that made our joy complete. Sometimes, what God is doing in us is so overwhelming that it has to come out, bringing a sense of joy and helping us enjoy life.
Laughter is a joyful thing, especially when you don’t even know why you’re laughing. It feels freeing, especially for us Brits who tend to be quite reserved. I remember during the laughter movement, I was in a men’s worship setting where we were all a bit stiff. This guy said, “God wants to knock the British stuffing out of you,” and he started whacking us with a Union Jack cushion. All our inhibitions just disappeared, and we worshipped in a way we’d never done before. It was life-changing for me, making me feel free to express myself in worship and even dance, something I’d never done before.
Before that experience, I was always worried about what others thought and felt restricted. But once those inhibitions lifted, I felt free to express myself. I think God wants us all to be free, not restricted or inhibited, and laughter helps us let go of our dignity and just enjoy the moment. Laughter is a way to express the joy God has put in us. It can be healing and liberating.
This year, I built birdhouses and we started feeding birds in the garden. Watching the birds has been a lovely experience, seeing how they feed their chicks and care for them. It’s a beautiful picture of how God provides for us and cares for us. Birds sacrifice a lot for their chicks, constantly flying back and forth to feed them. It’s been delightful watching them grow and become independent. Similarly, God wants us to depend on Him as our source of life. Even as we mature, He remains our source, continually feeding and equipping us.
In this new series, as the world awakens to love, grace, joy, peace, and the truth of God’s nature, I will be sharing my journey of rediscovering my identity as God’s child and breaking free from self-imposed limitations. It is time to discover who we truly are and embrace the depth of unconditional love to find genuine connection with God. Are you defined by others or by your past? In the ocean of unconditional love, we discover our true identity and realise that as His beloved children, God is drawing us back into intimate communion with Him.
First love, whether with God or another person, is a captivating experience that consumes our thoughts, leaving us eagerly anticipating the next encounter. First love signifies a prioritisation, placing it above all else in our lives – before family, work, or possessions. If our relationship with God is our top priority, everything else falls into place. First love is our eternal identity, originating in Perichoresis.
God’s pursuit of intimacy with us is like a marriage, symbolising the deep union He desires. This journey is personal, inspiring each of us to embark on our own. Our union with God is not just spiritual; it involves a profound connection of spirit, soul and body, becoming one flesh. Jesus’ promise of preparing a place for us speaks of dwelling with Him presently, not just in the future. This intimacy transcends physical union and gender, restoring our true identity as beloved sons and daughters of God. The process leading to this consummation is like a betrothal.
Intimacy with the Father
As individuals and humanity, we’ve strayed from God’s path, seeking independence, yet He relentlessly pursues us like a good shepherd. His love remains constant and unwavering, demonstrated in Christ. Through the Spirit, we’re adopted as God’s children, heirs with Christ, experiencing profound intimacy with the Father. First love isn’t merely an emotional state; it’s our eternal identity, essential for our destiny. Like the Ephesian church mentioned in Revelation, we may have prioritised duty over intimacy, but God invites us back into that deep, intimate relationship with Him.
Sacrificial love
In Greek, eros represents erotic love, absent in the New Testament; phileo denotes deep liking or friendship, affection and camaraderie; storge reflects natural affection within families and spouses in a healthy marriage; agape, God’s love, is characterised by deliberate action, choosing to love even our enemies, mirroring God’s selflessness. This sacrificial love, evident throughout Scripture, calls us to restore first love for God, ourselves, and others.
My friend Lindy shared that God had been asking her how much she loved herself. That is an important question for us all to ponder.
More than a fleeting emotion
Love is more than a fleeting emotion; it embodies the essence of God and is the most potent force in existence. As Jesus instructed us to love one another as he loved us, we see that true love originates from God and manifests in our actions. This agape love cannot be manufactured independently but springs from our connection to God. It is practical, selfless and unwavering, seeking others’ highest good without expecting anything in return. Love confronts challenges with truth and humility, inspiring kindness and reconciliation, even amidst opposition.
Resting in His love
Ultimately, God’s love encompasses every aspect of our being, forming the bedrock of His kingdom and leading us to experience His presence and purpose fully. Love is described in the Song of Songs as unquenchable flames of fire, stronger than death. It is the ultimate force for good, offering acceptance, affirmation, and worth. God has sung an eternal song of love to us since the dawn of time. To embrace this love, we must surrender completely, casting aside our fears and insecurities to trust in God’s unconditional love. Resting in His love is key.
There are certain frequencies and certain materials that have the ability to resonate and produce sounds, which in themselves carry something of God’s creational intention. We also have the ability to use sounds as a carrier wave for our intention. It’s like your intention is carried on a wave of sound to impart into something else.
You see this in all sorts of technological contexts. Sound waves and light waves, for example, can carry information. Fibre optics carry lots of information within light. They are now replacing and upgrading copper wire communication systems with fibre optics, which is essentially a different way of facilitating communication. I believe this is a picture of what happens spiritually in terms of communication and knowledge, which comes through relationships. It’s not just intellectual information; it is experience. You ‘know that you know’ what you’ve experienced.
Using sound waves as carrier waves, you don’t just have someone telling you about something; you experience it yourself. That experience brings about a resonance, an agreement, a vibrational energy. When something is brought close to the truth, it is entrained to vibrate at the same frequency, coming into agreement with the truth. The more time we spend close to the heart of God, the more we align with His heart, resonating with Him. When we speak, our voice resonates with His authority because we resonate His intention, not our own. Ultimately, our intention and His intention become one. As it says in Corinthians, “Whoever is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.” We just need to be close enough to be joined, become one, to be in union. This is crucial in terms of frequency, harmony, and vibration.
Technological metaphors for spiritual communication help us understand these concepts. God is light, spirit, love, and a consuming fire. Other descriptions of what God is like are figurative, helping us understand from a human perspective. God is light, and God is love; therefore light and love are synonymous terms. The light of love and love’s light are about the nature of light, which carries the ability to create. It is the foundational building block of all reality, forming reality when possibilities collapse into realities.
Right now, there are billions of possibilities for what we will do, say, or where we will go next. If we keep choosing realities from our past experiences, we replicate the same life. However, if we choose realities based on what we see in God’s heart for us, we start to produce a different life, one aligned with who we really are.
We need to learn how to resonate in harmony with God and His frequency. Then, we will be creative, and light will respond to us as it does to God. We need to make sure to be in tune with God’s heart so our choices align with His, and we don’t act independently, doing our own thing.
When you’re in the process of transitioning from being a doer to ‘be-er’, it can be quite disorientating because the previous ways you learned were mostly about being directed or feeling that you needed to do what God said—the dos and the shoulds. When you come to a more intimate place, there’s a transition into knowing, sensing, and being connected to the Father’s heart.
You start feeling His heart, and He gives you more space just to be, often removing a lot of the ‘doing’. It’s not that doing things is the issue, but they can be driving you if you’re so used to living that way. Until you get some space to find this other way and become more comfortable with it, sometimes God removes some of the doings. You find you’re losing some of your anchor points, which were likely based on the familiarity of the shoulds and dos, and your mindset towards God probably came from a more works-based way of thinking.
Hearing His voice does become more instinctive, more about knowing and being at one with Him. Instead of external directions to go this way or do that, He’s giving you more freedom to be you, to mature, and to grow in sonship. That is a great thing, although I understand it can be disorientating, and I’ve gone through it myself. However, the closer you are to Him, the more your heart’s desires will align with His heart’s desires and with your destiny and the way He made you to be. You’ll find you operate more in a way of rest. You won’t need the absolute confirmation of everything; you will just know and be at peace and at rest. That stems from dwelling in His presence, where your spirit is continually engaged in and living from that realm, even if your soul comes in and out.
Living from that realm might feel scary and different at first, but that’s what it feels like when the old goes and the new is not fully come. It feels like a vacuum. But that vacuum will be filled with what is coming out of heaven and out of your relationship with God. You’ll begin to feel whole and one as you pursue it. When people talk to you, you’ll resonate with it or you won’t, so you won’t need direct confirmation in the way you used to. You won’t need the Father to tell you everything; you will know His heart, feel His heart, and engage His heart in a more intimate and knowing way.
As you grow into this, things will begin to open up because you’ll see more possibilities and realities. You’ll begin to choose and find more creativity released in those choices. You’ll start seeing things from the multiple perspectives of all the possibilities that exist, rather than feeling restricted to one thing God says. He is giving you a lot more opportunity to choose from a wider spectrum of choices, rather than the one path that may keep you safe but may restrict you if you only see the one thing He says rather than the multiple possibilities that do exist and that you can enter into.
Summary
God is offering you more freedom, based on your heart-to-heart intimacy with Him, rather than just one safe path. This might feel risky, but it allows you to see and choose from multiple possibilities as a son, expanding your understanding and experience of living in relationship with Him.
Support us
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 support our work with a one-time gift*.
Thank you!
Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation.
For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead.
Mike’s YouTube Channel
These blog posts are based on videos posted on Mike’s YouTube channel. Want to see the latest ones as soon as they are published?
Subscribe at youtube.com
[In this online conversation Mike was talking to a particular individual, but it has relevance for all of us.]
Stop Listening to Others’ Opinions
You need to stop listening to other people – that would be where I would start! People have different views based on where they are in their journey, so some of the things they are saying are from their own perspective. They may say “the Father said this,” when actually He didn’t. Not every time someone says “the Father showed me this” is it the truth. Jesus is The Truth, not everything people say.
I would not look for people to affirm what you are hearing from the Father yourself. That is what you need to focus on. Maybe you had a wonderful experience, and then it feels like you let that be robbed from you because other people were telling you different things about certain important matters. But there is nothing more important than having time with God and enjoying His presence.
Measuring Truth by God’s Love
How do I measure whether something has the frequency of God on it or not? I use love. Is this loving? Is this a reflection of a loving God? If not, I am not going to believe it. There’s an American prophet who recently said horrible things towards the US President. He is not a prophet that spoke from God (that time). Has he spoken from God before? I’m sure he probably has, but that was not from God – it was coming from his own political agenda on the inside. That doesn’t faze me – because I don’t accept it as God since it’s not love. You can’t be cursing someone and it be from God. Sometimes you have to use love as the measure and say “okay, is this aligned with love?” If not, just reject it. But I would stop looking to a lot of different people to talk to you about different things.
Focus on Your Own Relationship with God
Personally, I don’t listen to anybody. I’m not saying that arrogantly – I spend time listening to God. Yes, I hang out with some people sometimes and talk, but I don’t listen to other people’s sermons, messages, or read their books generally. I have too much invested in my time with God and enjoying life to spend all that time looking at what God said to somebody else. Now if God asked me to listen to something, I would. I did listen to something recently from Brad Jersak on understanding why God seems so different in the Old Testament versus the New, and it was very helpful – it affirmed what I already knew. But generally, I am not looking for other people to give me that. You can become double-minded because you’re trying to understand what others are thinking and come into agreement with it, but you have to accept that some people are not talking from God, although they say they are.
The less you hear from people, the less you have that problem. It is not a problem to question what someone is saying and measure it against love. I am not going to publicly criticise those people, but inside I’m not going to accept what they’re saying because I’m questioning it and measuring against love. I would absolutely doubt what those people are saying. That’s not a problem… but doubting what God is saying to you because others are saying something contradictory or trying to sway you – or tell you what god ‘must’ be saying – now that is a problem. Don’t be swayed by the fear of man. Don’t think you need someone to affirm what God is telling you, because maybe He’s not saying it to anybody else. You need the courage of your convictions to say “I’m going to trust You, that when I come to You, what You’re saying to me is true.”
Think on the pure, lovely and good
So don’t allow things to make you crazy by letting other people affect you, whereas I won’t allow other people to affect me. Maybe the cloud of witnesses speaking to someone has a different message for that person at that point on their journey than for somebody else. Or maybe that person is just interpreting what they thought they heard through their own filters, coming to their own conclusion – it may not be what was intended at all. I don’t believe it is for us to judge somebody else, so don’t let it make you crazy. Just say “Okay, I don’t know, it doesn’t sound loving to me so I’m not going to listen to it.” Leave it there – you don’t have to go through it, it’s not your responsibility.
If it’s making you crazy, it is because you are allowing it to. Don’t focus on it. As Paul said, think on things that are pure, lovely and good. Where there is conflict, confrontation and differences of opinion – those are not good things to think about. Just let it go. Focus on the good. Focus on being that bride, that person who Jesus just wanted to make feel special, because you are special and He wants you to feel that way. Other people may not want you to feel so special – some will always be negative. Don’t doubt your own experiences and thoughts with God just because someone else contradicts it. Don’t allow them to make you sad, or struggle thinking “this isn’t right.” You had that experience, you know it was right, you know how good it was. Don’t be robbed!
Conclusion
So I feel that for a time or season, it might be good to have a period where you shut off listening to other people, including me! You don’t need to listen to anybody – give all that time to just listening to the Lord, just listening to the Father, engaging Him. Set aside a day, week, month – whatever time you want – and just focus on that, excluding all the other voices from your head. Listen to the one voice – the Voice of Love, the Voice of Truth. Then I think a lot of these things will fall into place, and you’ll realise “Hey, I don’t need this. I don’t need other people’s opinions in my life. I’m just looking at God’s opinion – that’s all that counts.”
Support us
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 support our work with a one-time gift*.
Thank you!
Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation.
For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead.
Mike’s YouTube Channel
These blog posts are based on videos posted on Mike’s YouTube channel. Want to see the latest ones as soon as they are published?
Click the image below to subscribe at https://freedomarc.org/youtube
In the last post, I talked about evangelising Christians. Now I turn to those who do not consider themselves Christians at all.
Challenging Preconceptions for Non-Christians
When it comes to talking to people who are not yet Christians or not yet believing, or have not yet realised what Jesus has done for them, I would start at a different place. I would probably begin by challenging what they think they know about Jesus and God, because it is probably not the truth. I would likely challenge some of the preconceptions they think they know from whatever religious upbringing they have had. I would say, “You may have thought you needed to do this or this or this, but actually God has done it all – you just have to receive it.” I would use illustrations like: “When someone buys a gift for you, they wrap it nicely, present it well, put your name on it, and then hand it to you. You didn’t buy it, you didn’t deserve it – it was a gift they gave you. But it wasn’t yours until you received it, even though your name was on it. Only when you reached out, took it, opened it, and received it as a gift could you say ‘this is now mine.’ Until then, you haven’t received anything, even though the gift is there.”
The Gift of God’s Grace
That is essentially what God has done. Jesus has reconciled everybody. He has taken away ‘the sin’ – the lost identity, their amnesia from who they really are. He has revealed the Father (as Jesus is the express image of the Father). He has shown people that it is all about love: He has called people to love one another, forgive one another. I would challenge them to see what Jesus said in light of our religious thinking – an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, vengeance, God being angry and needing appeasing. To say, “It’s already been done! God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. He’s already made a relationship, already given you the Spirit and made you alive so you can know Him. He’s already done all these amazing things – why don’t you just let Him give you that experience?”
Receiving the Gift
So give them the opportunity of having that experience as well. Probably having knocked down some religious ideas like “you have to go to church, pray, read the Bible” and so on. You can say, “Who said you have to do any of those things?” and open up a whole different vista of who God really is. It’s like the book “The Jesus I Never Knew” by Philip Yancey – he was probably brought up in the Bible Belt but never knew Jesus for who He really was. I would try to present Jesus as someone they may have thought they knew, but there’s more – a truth that probably challenges what they thought they knew.
Then I would stress the need for experience – that it is a relationship, God with us. God is in them already, wanting to reveal Himself to them. Ask them to give Him a chance. Then you can use something like “Behold I stand at the door and knock,” and say, “God is in you, within your spirit. He wants you to let Him into the rest of your life – to bless you, heal you, make you whole, remove all guilt, shame, condemnation, give you your true identity as His son, empower you to succeed and prosper.” Then get them to close their eyes, picture a door, open it, and see what happens.
Conclusion
So ultimately it all comes down to the same point – encouraging both Christians and non-Christians to experience things. But in both groups you may need to remove some preconceived ideas about what they think it is all about and what they think might be the truth. Then help them find The Truth as a person – Jesus – through that experiential encounter with the reality of who God is and what He has already done.
Support us
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 support our work with a one-time gift*.
Thank you!
Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation.
For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead.
Mike’s YouTube Channel
These blog posts are based on videos posted on Mike’s YouTube channel. Want to see the latest ones as soon as they are published?
Click the image below to subscribe at https://freedomarc.org/youtube
If you are starting with people who are already professing to be Christians, you will begin in a different place than if you are engaging those who don’t.
I will get on to evangelising non-Christians in my next post. Ultimately though, both need to know the love of God and experience that love themselves, through a revelation of who He is, to fully come into the knowledge of who they are.
Beyond Religious Conditioning
I would always start in an experiential way. If they are Christians, I will quote scriptures that point to the fact that Jesus and the Father very clearly desire an intimacy that is not religious and not based on works, performance or the old covenant. I would definitely look at the New Covenant wineskin for believers who may be conditioned or programmed by various religious beliefs. What did Jesus say we should expect? We should expect to be where He was, in the “I AM” relationship with the Father. He came and breathed on them to receive the Holy Spirit on the day of resurrection, affirming them as the new representatives of humanity: just as Adam was the first representative through whom all died, now they were the new representatives where all are made alive.
Experiential Encounters
I would emphasise that Jesus wanted them to experience His presence. Even when He told the disciples to wait in Jerusalem, it was so they would be clothed with power from on high – an experiential encounter affirming what they had already experienced in being indwelt by the Holy Spirit and received new life when He breathed on them, just as the Father breathed life into Adam. This challenges the idea of a certain number of people being “born again” at some future point, when the reality is that all were born again at that resurrection moment, affirmed when He breathed on them. As He said in John 14, “On that [resurrection] day you will know I am in you and you are in me, and we are in the Father.”
Challenge the conventional
I think always stressing the experiential side is key – that we have been called to hear His voice, come boldly to the throne of grace, and enter the realms of heaven experientially because they are open. Expressing this in a practical way removes the spiritualisation of the concept and sets the expectation for what our relationship with God should be. We can challenge the conventional vaguely hopeful expectations of ‘going to heaven when we die’ with affirmations of what Jesus said we should expect in this life – being in union with each other, our love relationship allowing the world to see what it means to be in relationship with God.
Summary
In conclusion, I would definitely give people an opportunity to have their own experience of God. Make it simple, easy and accessible – don’t complicate it. Give them the opportunity of encountering God through experience, and from that point, you can open the door for them to understand so much more.
Support us
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 support our work with a one-time gift*.
Thank you!
Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation.
For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead.
Mike’s YouTube Channel
These blog posts are based on videos posted on Mike’s YouTube channel. Want to see the latest ones as soon as they are published?
Click the image below to subscribe at https://freedomarc.org/youtube
Sons of Issachar 