Tag: NaBloPoMo

138. Own it, Repent of it, Renounce it

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott

Each of us has a destiny, a plan and a purpose God always intended us to fulfil. In preparing for that destiny, we have a choice, whether we want to go through this process and allow God to change us. Today I want to look a little more at our soul gates.

Conscience

Our conscience gets dulled because of sin and rebellion, and therefore if we have operating in our lives any weaknesses, patterns of sin, ‘normal, acceptable behaviours’ (which are neither normal nor acceptable to God because He sees the damage they do to us), we have to be willing to own them.

We cannot argue with God in this process. If we do, we will lose the argument and it will be much harder to be transformed. I have learnt to confess it, own it, repent of it and renounce it. Repentance has nothing to do with feeling sorry, or with doing penance! The Greek word metanoia really means ‘having the same mind as God’, so to ‘repent’ is to change your mind and think about something the way God thinks about it.

If God shows me something, He is always right about it: I am not going to deny it. He knows what is there. I do have sin areas, weak areas in my life. And God showed me patterns of sin when I went through this process that I had to own and say ‘yes, I have acted like that’. And I did not realise it, until God showed me, until I opened up my heart and asked God to show me what goes on inside me.

In doing that, I was able to repent (in the true sense), renounce, and my conscience became really sharp. I applied the blood of Jesus to it. I received forgiveness and cleansing. I refused to feel guilt, shame and condemnation (which are things the enemy brings). Every one of us needs to know that we are righteous. That is part of ‘having the same mind as God’ – He has made me righteous, and He calls me righteous! Then reverence can flow through that conscience gate and guide me and direct me in everything I do every day. But if that conscience gate is damaged, or blocked, affected by sin, it will lead me astray. I need to have it transformed.

Reason

Rationalism, scepticism, cynicism, denial, projection: our mind will fool us into putting the blame on somebody else, and not dealing with what is on the inside of us. We might have words, ideas, philosophies and doctrines in us that need changing, familiar spirits or religious spirits operating in us, behaviour cycles that we recognise. Just own it. Do not argue, give up. Surrender. Stop fighting for the flesh, and surrender to the spirit. As we do, we apply the truth of the word which God speaks to us. The mind of Christ will start flowing through us: the thoughts of God flowing through us; revelation and faith flowing through us.

Imagination

Every one of us has seen a great many negative images in our lifetime. We have to deal with them. Otherwise the enemy will bring them back and use them to pollute our imagination. We want to be able to see revelation, images, and visitations, both in the heavenly realms and in this one; we may be hindered from doing so if our imagination is polluted.

TV, films, games, magazines, books, fantasies – even life itself:  we are going to need to get rid of whatever we have seen that is negative. Again, I owned everything I saw as sin. I repented and renounced it and I painted it out with the blood of Jesus.

I now no longer have any of those images in my memory. They are completely gone. It is like having a filing cabinet in my mind that has folders in it. Each one has an index tab with something written on it; but when you look inside the folder, there is nothing in it. I can remember the things that have happened in my life but I can no longer remember the details of them or recall the images of them because they have gone. They have been cleansed: all those images are completely wiped out of my memory.

So if you have images that you are plagued with, put them under the blood of Jesus and paint them out so that they are no longer there. We can have a purified memory and a cleansed screen, so that we are able to see visions and have dreams, and experience revelation from God flowing.

We will have the eyes of our heart opened and enlightened: a flow of hope, and a flow of revelation: visions, dreams, visitations in the heavenly realms, all because our imagination is now clean. We can be cleansed. But we need to actually allow God to do it.

Subconscious Mind

It is the same thing with our subconscious mind. All the memories, words, vows, curses: every trigger that I experienced in my life, every defence mechanism, every coping mechanism. I owned it, repented of it (changed my mind about it) and renounced it. As we apply the blood of Jesus, that soil of our heart will be dealt with. The hardness will be dealt with; the stones, and the weeds. We will just get a flow of revelation knowledge from God; it will flow through our subconscious and trigger the right things, and we will be moved by the things that move God.

Emotions

Our emotions are affected by all the trauma, all the hurts, all the betrayal, all the abuse: disappointment, pain, and rejection we have felt and experienced. And we have to admit we have hurt other people as well as being hurt by them. If you are feeling anger or withdrawal or depression, all those things arise from emotions that we have not dealt with. We either turn in or we turn out.

We need to own all those mechanisms: we need to repent, forgive and release all the hurt, repent of everything we have done to hurt others, and renounce it all. Then we are going to start to get a flow of God’s heart, of intuition, of being moved by what moves God.

Will

If you are stubborn and if you have been rebellious, willful, or controlling you have to own it. Fear, doubt, unbelief, indecision: if they are operating in your life, own it, repent and renounce it, and in that process apply the truth of the blood of Jesus, and God will begin to work things in you, positive things: patience, boldness, courage, perseverance. You will begin to get into a flow of worship, a flow of obedience, in which we are outworking the truth of God’s word day by day.

I know this is a lot to take on board all at once. I am putting it all out there and I am just encouraging you to use the gateways diagram (or spinner) to begin to deal with whatever of this is in your life. Ask Jesus to come and stand in the gateways with you, and show you what he sees. It may not be a quick process, but with a bit of application you can do it.

Own it, repent of it, renounce it. All it takes is surrender, and allowing God to deal with it.

Related articles from Freedom ARC
Related resource from Freedom ARC

RELEASING TOXIC EMOTIONS

Seminar with Kari Browning

Get the recordings here!

We were delighted to host internationally renowned speaker Kari Browning, teaching on this topic for the first time in the UK.

Toxic emotions are often the source of emotional pain, relational difficulties, and physical illness. By releasing toxic emotions you will come into a place of rest for your soul and health for your body.

The technique Kari uses to release toxic emotions involves prayer, the laying on of hands, and the use of therapeutic-grade essential oils.

These recordings from Kari’s seminar here at the Freedom Centre in August 2018  include downloadable video and audio versions together with PDF files of her presentations. The cost is £36.17 GBP (inc VAT). Available at https://freedomarc.org/kari

This blog post was the last day of our participation in #NaBloPoMo – a post every day for the month of November 2013

Support Freedom ARC

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

Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits.

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

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Are you part of the Joshua Generation?

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Engaging God on the Heavenly Pathways of Relationship and Responsibility is our online school for equipping a Joshua Generation of supernatural sons of God to live according to the order of Melchizedek.

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Click here to find out more and get started today*

*Technology permitting: automated process on setup of payment arrangement and completion of online registration form. Terms and conditions apply.

paintedout

137. Our Need For God

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit (Galatians 5:24-25).

Sin

Sin, and all the ‘sins’ we commit, are an indicator of our need for God.

The original ‘sin’ came about through losing sight of our true identity (that is what Adam and Eve did in the garden); individual ‘sins’ are things we do to make us feel better about ourselves because we fail to see ourselves as He sees us. Those who struggle with lust, it is because they desperately desire intimacy: God is the best there is if we are looking for intimacy and love.

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me (Galatians 2:20-21).

Am I willing to love God in return, and give myself up for Him? For Him to change me, transform me and conform me to His image, so that I become more and more like Jesus here on the earth?

I did this as a crash course and worked through every year of my life, to deal with every blockage in every area of my soul, and I did it in three weeks. Now, I had three weeks I could set aside to do this, and I know not everyone can do that, but I am encouraging you to make a choice today to start working through the things that have accumulated in your life and to allow God to change you.

Emotional damage

The First Love gate is the key. All of us have emotional damage through relationships, spouse, parents, family, friends, or authority figures. That damage causes us to lack trust, and to put barriers up to protect ourselves. When we want to let God in, those barriers get in the way. We are often afraid to ‘let go and let God’ come and be in control. We have to deal with those things.

Unmet needs will affect my soul’s desires and motives. Unhealed hurt will affect my emotional desires and motives. Unresolved issues in our lives will affect our trust. We have to surrender and allow God to do what only He can do. And if we have problems, we need to work through them: forgive people who have let us down and disappointed us, repent of and renounce the things we have done to meet our own needs and protect ourselves.

God will meet our needs

All of us need acceptance, love, affection, value and worth; approval, significance, affirmation, identity and purpose; security and safety. They are all needs that God has built into us: they are all needs that He wants to meet in us Himself. He does not want us to try to meet those needs through the flesh,  but all of us have tried exactly that. As a result, all of us have been damaged, and all of us need to be transformed and find God’s love.

I worked through these areas: my conscience, my imagination, reason, subconscious mind, emotions, choice and will. I worked through each one, to deal with the things that were blockages and stopping God flowing through me and working through my life. Is that really complicated and difficult? No, it is a choice. Do I really want God’s presence and His power? Do I really want to be manifesting the kingdom of heaven on earth? Or am I content to carry on living the way I have always lived?

God will do it: the choice is mine.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

Note: This post has been around for a while. More recently Mike has had even more startling revelation about sin…
https://www.facebook.com/freedomarc.uk/videos/1612916992092902

Image attribution: Background image of a hand reaching up through the clouds by ds9hselee from Pixabay

Support Freedom ARC

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.

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

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. 

Are you part of the Joshua Generation?

We developed this just for you:

Engaging God on the Heavenly Pathways of Relationship and Responsibility is our online school for equipping a Joshua Generation of supernatural sons of God to live according to the order of Melchizedek.

Your first two weeks free!
Click here to find out more and get started today*

*Technology permitting: automated process on setup of payment arrangement and completion of online registration form. Terms and conditions apply.

136. Gateways of the Soul

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

We have looked at the gates of our spirit, through which we want God to flow from the inside out. Now we are turning to our soul gates.

Soul gates

Our soul gates are: conscience, reason, imagination, mind, emotions, choice and will.

Conscience

Our conscience is the ears of our heart. It is our protector and our director, our guard, and our guide. Our conscience will keep us from wrong and direct us to good. Sadly, our conscience can be dulled or seared by repeated exposure to sin (Titus 1:15). We need  our conscience cleansed, clear and sharp.

Reason

It is not that we reason and try to work it out with intellect: this is about being able to translate and interpret what God says to us, whether in scripture or other ways God uses to communicate with us.

Imagination

The eyes of our heart. It is absolutely key that we develop our imagination.

Our western culture and education system have trained us to neither use nor value our imagination. But our imagination was given to us by God so that we could see what He is doing; so that we could see visions, see dreams, see the heavenly realms, on the screen of our imagination. We need to learn how to use it again and train it so that it grows and develops.

Mind

Our mind, conscious and subconscious, is where the storage programs are. Here we find our memories, the things God has said to us, and belief systems. It is like the hard drive of a computer. Everything is stored there. The subconscious mind, our heart, sits somewhere between our spirit and our conscious mind. Memories, beliefs, values, lies, truths, mindsets. Jesus called this ‘soil’ and it can have all kinds of seeds sown into it.

Our subconscious mind is affected by our DNA nature, from our parents, that sets up defence mechanisms and coping mechanisms. Our patterns of behaviour come from what we believe. Nurture has an effect too: we have had a whole lot of experiences of life during our upbringing and education which train us to operate in certain ways. Trauma too, the things that happen to us and cause us to make vows and decisions based on our experience. All those things also get connected with familiar spirits assigned to our life. They know us, and they lie to us, in order to get us to operate from a false belief system.

All those things on the inside of us manifest on the outside in the way we think. So things like our reactions, our attitudes, our responses, fear, worry: all come from the inside and manifest in our mind.

When revelation comes, from scripture, from heavenly or earthly experiences, from the Holy Spirit, things can start to change. Then we have an opportunity of surrendering to Him, and He can deal with familiar spirits who lie to us. Our behaviour patterns start to come from the revelation of the truthof what God says (or from Jesus, who is Himself the Truth), especially about who we are. Our mindsets are based on the truth of who God says we are. Our attitudes, suggestions, the ideas that flow from our spirit into our minds are flowing from the inside out.

But if we do not deal with all those things on the inside we will continually have triggers which set us off thinking in a particular way, and that is where the conflict takes place. We have to be willing to allow God to transform us from the inside out.

Emotions

Our soul has emotions, where our responses and our feelings are, where we are moved, where we get those gut feelings. Emotions affect our esteem, our worth, whether we feel love, security, acceptance and value.

We have all had unmet needs. Maybe as a child, or in relationships, we did not receive all we should have received in the way of love, security, acceptance, encouragement and so on. Then we end up with low self-esteem, or disappointment in our life. Those can result in our feeling insecure, rejected, being dependent on other people, or in co-dependent relationships.

We try to get our needs met in these ways because we have not been in right relationship with God, and He is the only one who can properly meet those needs. We have looked to the world, and been hurt. We experience guilt and shame, and carry lots of unhealed hurts where people have let us down, and caused pain in our life. Since we have not learned to forgive and release them, this has set up anger, resentment, and bitterness, which are all emotional things.

Now those emotions can completely rule our lives – if we let them. We have to deal with them. They affect what goes on in our conscious mind and then they trigger responses all the time. Our behaviour does not just happen. Our behaviour derives from the things which are on the inside of us and God wants us to operate in forgiveness, and to be  restored, changed and renewed so that the strongholds and all the hurt and pain in there get dealt with.

Will

We also have a will. If we sin, through stubbornness or rebellion, our will is damaged and effectively becomes a barrier to what God wants to do. That sets up such things as unbelief, indecision, control, doubt and fear. As we deal with them, God wants to replace them with humility, confidence, boldness, courage, persistence, determination, perseverance, self-control (which is a fruit of the Spirit). All those things can happen if we allow God from the inside out to transform our life.

It is really important for us to understand what is going on inside us and how we operate. Some of us have been taught to peel back the layers to expose what is going on deeper down; that is OK as long as we don’t try to change ourselves from the outside in, because  if we approach it from that direction it is a battle we will ultimately lose.

If we focus on the problem, the problem gets bigger. If we focus on the solution, the problem gets smaller. In Jesus, nothing is impossible. Nothing will prevent God from doing what He needs to do, if we surrender to Him.

Choice

The final gate is choice. In the end, it all comes down to one question. Once we have cleared out everything which would lead us away from surrendering to God and allowing our spirit to rule, we still have to make a conscious, daily choice. What will we choose to do?

Let us press in, and get to the place where all these gates are flowing with the life of God and transformed. At the moment most of them are not like that. We cannot change ourselves. We have to invite God to come into those gates and transform us.

It would be really dangerous if the glory of God started manifesting through us, through an unholy life; dangerous both for us and for the people around us. He will not allow His presence to be manifested out of us until there is a holy life for it to flow through.

But He does want to manifest His presence through us.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

Support Freedom ARC

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.

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

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. 

Are you part of the Joshua Generation?

We developed this just for you:

Engaging God on the Heavenly Pathways of Relationship and Responsibility is our online school for equipping a Joshua Generation of supernatural sons of God to live according to the order of Melchizedek.

Your first two weeks free!
Click here to find out more and get started today*

*Technology permitting: automated process on setup of payment arrangement and completion of online registration form. Terms and conditions apply.

135. Aligning Gates

Mike Parsons
and Jeremy Westcott

We have seen that God is on the inside of us, and that we want to allow Him to flood our whole being with glory so that we overflow to transform the world around us.

Yesterday we looked at each of the gateways in our spirit through which He wants to flow. Tomorrow we will look at those in our soul, but today’s post is a little unusual…

One of the things we have found really useful here in Freedom Church is to make a rotating cardboard cutout of the ‘gateways’ diagram shared with us by Ian Clayton. Then we can line up different combinations of gates and ask Jesus to stand with us in them and show us how the river of life should flow through that particular combination.

To make one, you need to print off four copies of the gateways diagram – or click here for one with the cutting circles already drawn on – onto thin card (you can print it on paper and stick it to card if that is simpler). Then cut them out as in the diagram below, so that you have four different sized circles.

Make a small hole in the centre of all four circles. Finally, fasten them together in order, face up, with the smallest on top and the largest on the bottom, using a split-pin type paperclip pushed through from the top. You might want to put some sticky tape over the ends of the splayed pin because they can be quite sharp.

There is an image of the completed spinner in the header image of this post (and below). You will see that the first love, hope, mind, and ear gates are aligned from the centre. Spin each wheel separately to line up any combination of gates as a visual prompt as you work through them.

gates wheel perspective

Related articles from Freedom ARC

Support Freedom ARC

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.

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

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. 

Are you part of the Joshua Generation?

We developed this just for you:

Engaging God on the Heavenly Pathways of Relationship and Responsibility is our online school for equipping a Joshua Generation of supernatural sons of God to live according to the order of Melchizedek.

Your first two weeks free!
Click here to find out more and get started today*

*Technology permitting: automated process on setup of payment arrangement and completion of online registration form. Terms and conditions apply.

134. Gateways of the Spirit

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott

This diagram is based on one shared with us at Freedom by Ian Clayton (sonofthunder.org)

“He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water'” (John 7:38).

God has come to dwell in our innermost being. Now we want to allow Him to flow through us and out from us, transforming both ourselves and the world around us. As we open the gate of first love, we begin to allow Him to flood into our whole being.

And that is where some find the first blockage. As we have looked at our gate of first love, some of us have seen it blocked, closed, locked, even chained. But that is a projection of our soul. Even if our own experience of first love has caused us to put up barriers to intimacy (and I have written before about my own), we also have the ability to take them down again. We can clear it, unlock it, unchain it, open it. The enemy has no access here in our spirit. Jesus is knocking. Let’s let Him into our lives.

As we open that door of first love, the river flows out into our spirit. We surrender to the presence of God on the inside. In our spirit, there are different senses, or different actions of the spirit: we need to let the glory of God flow through these and activate them. It is the Holy Spirit coming through those gates, through those doorways in our spirit, coming out into our soul.

Fear of God, reverence, prayer, hope, faith, revelation, intuition, worship. And there is one more, our heavenly gate if you like, our access to heaven, which is back through that gate of first love into the heavenly realms, following the river of life back to its source.

The first few are to do with fellowship. The presence of God in us. Learning to identify and know God by experience of who He is, so we learn to fellowship and trust him in that place. And the others are to do with revelatory things, where God reveals Himself through us, where we see aspects of His kingdom, where we hear His voice, where we get to know what He is doing, and where He gives us visions and dreams and revelations of what He wants to do. Without the first, the second does not really function.

Fear of God

We need to understand that within us there is the all-seeing, all-knowing, omnipresent God. That is an awesome thing. God who has created the universe, and everything in it, has chosen to come and dwell within us. We become a habitation of God. We have to prepare that place for Him to dwell. The all-consuming fire of God is on the inside of us.

Fear of God is not the same as being afraid of Him. If I know God’s love, I will not be afraid of Him. But this is an awesome thing, to have Him dwell within us, and He wants us to know the awesomeness of His presence.

Reverence

Honouring and respecting God. We will do nothing that will bring His Name into disrepute or dishonour. We will seek to bring honour to Him.

Prayer

That is not getting on our knees, putting our hands together, and finishing it off with ‘Amen’. It is about two-way communication, where the Spirit of God, where the mind of Christ, where the heart of the Father, are flowing through us in relationship. That is why praying in tongues is so important: it is our spirit praying and communicating with God. And we can do that without ceasing, if we train it to continue even when our conscious mind is elsewhere.

Hope

That sense where visions and dreams and opportunities are flowing, where God shows us His will.

Faith

Harmony, concord, understanding, knowing: where we come together in agreement with God. We start to operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the power of God as He flows through us.

Revelation

Inspiration, light, counsel, wisdom.

We need to activate these senses. They do not just automatically switch on.We need to be hungry and thirsty, desiring them.

Intuition

Gut feeling, instinct, knowing, as the Holy Spirit reveals the Father’s heart to us.

Heavenly

Back through our first love gate, our connection with the heavenly realms and a consciousness of what is going on in heaven.

Now all those are great, and you can have them all wonderfully working, but without one other thing, it doesn’t mean anything. And that is worship.

Worship

Worship is not singing. It is a state of complete obedience to God. It is complete surrender and total submission to the will of God for our lives, on a daily basis. Everything else that is flowing within us will lead to us saying, ‘God I choose to surrender myself to you’. That is what He wants us to do.

‘How to’

In the past, faced with this kind of exercise to work through, most of us would have thought and prayed about what might be blocking each gateway, and asked God for help in removing it. It might have been helpful for us too: peeling off outer layers of our issues, difficulties and blockages through traditional ministry.

But that is an outside-in approach. We want to allow the flow of God to work from the inside out.

I would encourage you to find Jesus on the inside of you, and take Him with you to stand in each gateway. Work through them one at a time, perhaps one a day. And not to assume that we know what any of the names of the gateways actually mean: ask Him to show you what that gateway means to you. Most of the blockages will have come from the outside in. Ask Him what they are. Ask Him to stand with you and work with you from the inside out to unblock them and allow the glory of God to flow through them.

It is all about feeling, sensing and engaging with Him: a very different way of working, but in our experience, very much more effective.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

Check out our website!

Support Freedom ARC

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.

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

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. 

Are you part of the Joshua Generation?

We developed this just for you:

Engaging God on the Heavenly Pathways of Relationship and Responsibility is our online school for equipping a Joshua Generation of supernatural sons of God to live according to the order of Melchizedek.

Your first two weeks free!
Click here to find out more and get started today*

*Technology permitting: automated process on setup of payment arrangement and completion of online registration form. Terms and conditions apply.

133. From The Inside Out

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

I have written before about how God gave me four words: investiture, succession, enthronement and coronation. Those four events happen in that exact order. First you are invested with authority, but you do not immediately move on to taking up your throne. Before you can be enthroned, succession has to happen: that is, whoever or whatever is presently sitting on that throne needs to die, step aside or be removed.

If we are invested with the power of the kingdom, then we have to dethrone the things that are ruling in our lives: our self, our soul; me, myself, and I. If I want to see the kingdom of God flowing through my life there is no place on the throne for ‘me, myself and I’. ‘I’ will only get in the way of it. ‘I’ will spoil it, ‘I’ will block it. ‘I’ need to be dethroned.

Nature, which has programmed me, programmed my DNA from past generations, needs to be restored and renewed. Nurture, environmental programming in my life: my upbringing, what has gone on around me, needs to be restored and renewed. Trauma, which is experiential programming, things I have experienced that cause me to respond in particular ways, needs reprogramming. I need to be transformed, restored to my original eternal condition. That is what God wants to happen here, in this realm; not just in eternity, because what happens here will determine what I do in eternity once time is finished.

This is a picture which describes how we can start operating in the kingdom of God (Ian Clayton saw something similar to this on a scroll he received from heaven, though the origins of the diagram go back to at least the year 1919).

It starts with the glory of God, His presence on the inside of us. In our spirit, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have come to make their home as Jesus promised. They want to occupy the seat of government in our lives. As we open that inner door of first love, the glory of God first flows out into our spirit and develops our spiritual senses. Then it flows out through our soul and transforms our soul. God comes into our heart, where our scroll of destiny is seated, and begins to transform us. Eventually His glory flows out through our body, a manifestation of transfiguration, where the light of God’s glory will shine through us.

Notice how the flow is always from the inside. Everything in the kingdom happens from the inside out. It is no good us trying change ourselves from the outside in. We need to learn to surrender ourselves to the presence of God on the inside, so that the presence of God flows through our whole being, and transforms us.

We begin by opening the First Love gate. That is where Jesus is knocking in Revelation 3:20.  He wants us to enjoy intimacy with Him, and He wants access to the whole of our lives, spirit, soul and body. The door handle is on our side.

Here is an animated version of that diagram, created by Adam Butterick for Son Of Thunder (click the ‘play’ button to start):

We will look some more at this diagram over the next few posts. There are gateways between each of these parts of our lives, and they have been blocked, often by things that have come in from the outside.

The things we have seen, smelt, heard, tasted and touched will have affected our soul. If we try to change them by the things we can see, smell, hear, taste and touch on the outside, it will not be effective because all we do is reinforce the operations of the self.

But if we allow the Spirit of God to flow through us, we allow His presence to change and transform us – from the inside.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

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132. Broken Cisterns Hold No Water

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

Everything we are writing about in this series on Preparing For Destiny comes down to (or builds up to) one thing: what will we choose to do? Will we choose to do what Jesus would do? Or will we choose to do what our own flesh tells us to do?

Holy Spirit flow

If we are to choose right, we need to be flowing in the Holy Spirit.

We need a connection with the Holy Spirit. We need to be baptised in the Holy Spirit. We need to be speaking in tongues. Praying in tongues is a major flow of the life of God which is within us. It builds up an environment around us which draws the presence of God, so that God comes and fills that space.

Dead to God

This is what we were like before we came into the realisation of being born again:

We had a soul. Our heart had natural needs, we had a body of flesh through which it did its best to meet its natural needs, and we had a spirit that was dead to God, separated from Him in our own understanding. That is why we read in Jeremiah:

For My people have committed two evils:
They have forsaken Me
The fountain of living waters,
To hew for themselves cisterns,
Broken cisterns
That can hold no water.
(Jer 2:13).

diagram: Dead to God

Believing itself separated from God, our soul had no alternative but to try to get its needs met however it could. So it tried to meet those needs by drawing on the world. We all have a built-in need for love, acceptance, security, significance and purpose. But the world cannot fully meet those needs (it was never intended to) and as a result, our soul is damaged and we experience hurt, pain, rejection, insecurity, fear, disappointment, guilt, and shame.

Alive to God

Then we hear and respond to the gospel. Our spirit now comes alive to God, and suddenly we realise it is possible for us to have our needs met by Him. But we are used to getting them met by the world. So we have to transfer our source of acceptance and love; we need to transfer it from the world around us, to God, who is on the inside of us.

We start to look inwards, to God in us; not outwards, to the world.

As we do that, as we are transformed, as we are restored in our soul, then God deals with that damage. We do not need to look to the world to meet our needs. We look to Him. And we can then start to manifest through our body the life that flows from the spirit. You have seen Christians who positively glow with the life of God within them. More than that, we can be literally transfigured.

Spirit senses, soul senses

Diagram: Alive to God

Here is another way of looking at this: we are born again, in our spirit we have the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the glory of God in us, and we have nine spiritual senses that begin to develop through practice (we will look more at those another time). We know God’s love, we have access to the heavenly realms, and can enjoy real intimacy with Him, which enables that love to be outworked in our lives. Then our soul senses develop too, and eventually we start to manifest around us the glory of God: deliverance, the works of Jesus, miracles, supernatural works, healing, greater works (John 14:12), signs and wonders: all start to flow out through our lives. Or that is what should happen.

Blockages

But there are blockages. There is a blockage between our spirit and the heavenly realms, because probably no-one ever taught us we could go there (in fact mostly they taught us that we could not, at least until we die). There is a blockage between our soul and our spirit, because our soul is used to being in control. There is a blockage between our soul and our body, preventing the flow of life streaming out from us to the world.

But as we are transformed, these blockages are removed. Our spirit and soul start to work together. We begin to feel God’s love, as well as to just know God’s love for us. We learn to access the heavenly realms, so we can express God’s love and manifest God’s kingdom in and through our lives to the world around us. We are changed, transformed, transfigured.

And this last diagram sums it all up.

Diagram; Connected

With the new birth, the DNA of God is in our spirit: we have access to the fountain of life; we have access to our destiny; we are a dwelling-place of God, through relationship. Our spirit now needs to produce the fruit and the gifts. The river of life flows through the garden of our soul, so that our whole life is manifesting God’s glory. We have access to the kingdom of God within us, and the kingdom of God in the heavenly realms, and as we learn to operate there our life is transformed.

Practice

As we have said before, the key to this is practice. You have to practise to train your senses. You have to practise how you transform your soul.

But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. (Heb 5:14)

We have to train our spiritual senses; we have to train our soul senses, to be connected up with the kingdom of God in heaven to outwork on earth.

So we are going to do that, over the coming weeks on this blog. We are going to help you train your spirit senses, train your soul senses, and we are going to see transformation taking place.

You have been invested with authority, but you have to come into that place of succession so that you can be enthroned. To bring God’s kingdom from heaven to earth, you have to dethrone the soul. Now that is not an easy process, but you can do it.

With God and our spirit working together, we can all do it.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

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Featured image attribution: “Nabatean Well Negev 031812” by Mark A. Wilson (Wilson44691) – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons – https://goo.gl/ycuom2

Are you part of the Joshua Generation?

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131. Thoughts and Intentions of the Heart

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

The Heart

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

That is why our heart needs to be transformed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A tree of life

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

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

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Heb 4:12).

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

12 laws

I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people (Jer 31:33).

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

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

Delight and desire

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

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

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

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside quiet waters.
He restores my soul;
He guides me in the paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake
(Psalm 23:1-3).

Related articles from Freedom ARC
  • The Seat of Government
  • Flesh vs Spirit
  • The Heart, the Blood and the Brain
  • The Proof Of Desire

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    Are you part of the Joshua Generation?

    JOIN US IN ENGAGING GOD!

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    Your first two weeks free!
    Click here to find out more and get started today*

    *Technology permitting: automated process on setup of payment arrangement and completion of online registration form. Terms and conditions apply.

130. The Seat of Government

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

Within us

The kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17:21).

If the kingdom is within us, what else is?

Our own spirit.
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The kingdom of God – the seat of God’s government of heaven
Our heart – our subconscious mind
The garden in our heart, in which we can engage God.
Rivers that flow from heaven, flowing through our spirit, our garden, and out to the world.
Our scroll of destiny, in our heart.

That is quite a list of what is in us, things we have to learn to engage with, and we have to understand how they all function in us, so that we can work with them.

Here is an outline image of a body, showing all those things within us.

Within Us (diagram)

You can see our heart, and within our heart there is a scroll. Our heart is our subconscious mind.

There is a throne, the seat of God’s government within us.

Where is our spirit? I was talking to Ian Clayton, and God started to speak to me about it. Our spirit man lives in a membrane which goes over the brain and down our spinal column. That membrane is not connected to the blood. That is important because our blood supply carries the record of our DNA and past generations, and it needs to be purified, cleansed and changed. So our spirit is not connected directly to our blood supply. It is connected through our heart.

There is a door in our spirit, that Jesus spoke about in Revelation 3:20. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are dwelling within our spirit, and we have to let them out. God will not force Himself upon us. We have to open that door and let Him out, every day, into our spirit. Our spirit is within us and is connected to the seat of government in our lives.

The seat of government

When we are first developing in our relationship with God and we invite Him to come in and fill us, He occupies the seat of government in our lives. Then as we grow and mature, He gives us more and more access to that seat of government. The kingdom of heaven is both within us and in the heavenly realms, so we are also seated there in authority: we are seated with Him in the heavenly places.

He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.
(1 Cor 6:17)

The more we are surrendered, and the more we become transformed into His image, the more we experience the reality of becoming one spirit with Him. We start to rule together. That is what the kingdom is all about: ruling together.

That seat is within us and as we open up the door, God comes and sits on that seat.
Then we can invite Him to come into our heart. That is a phrase people often use when praying a prayer of salvation, but what does it mean? If He comes into our heart, He comes to change us and transform us.

The DNA of God

He comes into our heart, and starts to reprogramme our heart, and the blood that is in our heart, with the DNA of God. That is why we take communion, to be reprogrammed with the DNA of God, to be transformed by the life of God in us. Then that transformation spreads out from our heart, carried by our blood to our brain, where it transforms our thinking, and renews our mind.

Blood circulates. It goes around our body, and back again to our heart. In our natural bodies it goes to our lungs and picks up breath, oxygen. So in the spiritual sense our heart needs to draw life from our spirit, send it around the body to transform our life then go back to the spirit for more. That is what the heart does.

As we sit in the seat of government and rule together with God, the kingdom of heaven comes to manifest around us. Rivers of living water and anointing and power start to flow out through us. We learn to walk in His ways, keep His laws, and rule.

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Or you can use this blue button to support our work with a one-time gift*.
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129. Flesh vs Spirit

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

In seeking to restore the right relationship between the spirit and the soul, we saw yesterday that first of all we need to build a strong spirit. But we also need to deal with the soul. We need to understand what the soul is: other Bible words for it include flesh, mind, and heart. It is our self-awareness, it is what enables us to be aware of who we are as a person and as an individual.

This is what Paul wrote to the Galatian church:

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.
(Galatians 5:16-25).

From the inside out

We cannot change our soul from the outside in. If we want to ‘not carry out the desire of the flesh‘, we can only do that by walking by the Spirit. So we need our spirit, with the Holy Spirit, to flow out to change and transform us from the inside out.

We cannot fulfil our destiny if our soul is in charge of our life: it does not want to do the things the Spirit wants. When it submits to our spirit, it can then carry the life of the spirit, which then flows through our body, bringing the glory of God, and the kingdom, around us.

Fruit grows

‘But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control‘. Fruit grows, gifts are given. We can have the gifts of the Holy Spirit given in an instant, tongues, prophecy, miracles, healing and so on; fruit has to develop and grow. You have to nurture it, look after the soil, fertilise it, protect it, and it grows.

‘The deeds of the flesh are evident‘. They are evident because they are seen on the outside of us, in our behaviour. The kind of behaviour we have to eliminate from our lives is very obvious. And we have to replace that with the fruit of the Spirit which grows from the inside out. But we cannot change those things by our own self-effort. We have to surrender them to God and allow God’s Spirit to transform us from the inside.

The flesh profits nothing

That is why Paul goes on, ‘those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh’. Past tense. We have already been crucified with Christ. When he died, we died. But we have to live in the good of that by coming through the cross, and living by the Spirit. Live by the Spirit, walk by the Spirit, because the flesh profits nothing. It has no eternal value, and only negative value here in this realm. It is the spirit, flowing with the life of the Holy Spirit, that has value.

As Paul had previously written (and I would encourage you to meditate on this scripture, for it to become so much a part of your spirit that you are living it out all the time),

I have been crucified with Christ;
and it is no longer I who live,
but Christ lives in me;
and the life which I now live in the flesh
I live by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
(Galatians 2:20).

Related articles by Freedom ARC
Related articles by others

Support Freedom ARC


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.

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button
Or you can use this 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.

Subscribe to Engaging God

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

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

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