NaBloPoMo – Page 2 – Sons of Issachar

128. Building A Strong Spirit

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

God wants us to come into that place of relationship and responsibility into which Adam would have matured if he had not chosen to follow the DIY pathway of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

For that to happen, we have to build our spirit. If we are not strong in spirit, we will not be able to overcome and dethrone the soul.

We were created to be spirit, soul and body, with the spirit taking the lead. But because our spirit was dead to God, our soul has become accustomed to having its own way. When we are born again and our spirit comes alive, that has to change. The soul must submit to the spirit, but it will not do so willingly.

How to build our spirit

There are a number of things we can do to build our spirit. We will look at them in more detail later on in this series, but I will just list some of them for now:

1. Make sure we give God first place, first love, first priority.
2. Pray and sing in tongues.
3. Wait on the Lord and be still.
4. Meditate on Bible verses and passages.
5. Praise and adoration, soaking in the presence of God.
6. Come to God and ask Him to build our spirit. Often we do not have because we do not ask (James 4:2).
7. Confess and call things into being. Call forth our spirit. Speak it out.
8. Persevere. You don’t build your spirit in a day.

If you want to get fit and have rippling muscles in the natural, you have to go to the gym and train, session by session, week after week, until you build muscles. It is the same with your spirit. Your spirit grows stronger through exercise; spiritual exercises train and equip your spirit to connect with God, to flow in revelation, and to rule in your life. You have to persevere.

Desire, discipline, delight

If we give up on exercise, it is usually because we don’t enjoy the discipline. Discipline itself is not very pleasant. I would love to have a real six-pack, and the body of Mr Universe, but I have not got the discipline to go in and train myself to do it. It would take a lot of training, and I do not want it enough to submit to the discipline.

But what I do want enough is a strong spirit, and therefore I am willing to do whatever it takes to train it. I spend a lot of time training my spirit. Hours, every day, training my spirit to discern the words of God, to flow, and to build up my spiritual senses. You can do the same. We will look at each of them in more detail in coming posts, but there is nothing in the list of 8 things above that you cannot do. It just takes practice and perseverance.

It starts with a desire, it takes discipline, and then it becomes a delight.

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126. A Shadow of Heaven

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

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

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

Infinity

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

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

Resonate

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

It is calling us back to our heavenly destiny.

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

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

The shadow of heaven

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

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

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

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

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

More info: eg.freedomarc.org/books

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

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.

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.

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).

125. Preparing For Destiny

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

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

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

Everything about that destiny is about bringing heaven to earth:
Your kingdom come,
Your will be done
On earth, as it is in heaven
(Matthew 6:10)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. Or you can use the blue button to contact us about making a one-time gift.
Thank you!
*Note Sadly, because of abuse by scammers we can no longer offer a ‘click to donate’ option. However, if you contact us, we will get back to you with a simple means of giving.

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).

123. Cultivate a Garden Relationship

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

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

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

Practice

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

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

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

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

The screen of our imagination

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

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

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

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

Let’s pray.

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

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

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117. The Proof Of Desire

Mike Parsons
and Jeremy Westcott –

‘Pursuit is the proof of desire’, as our friend Graham Jones says. If we truly want to fulfil our destiny, let us set our heart towards it, set our desire upon it and go after it.

These are some thoughts on pursuing our destiny: I am just going to put them out there for now, without really developing them, but I would encourage you to read them with your spirit, and see what they spark in you…

There are two pathways into the heavenly realms: the pathway of relationship and the pathway of responsibility. Both offer opportunities for transformation. At times my focus and attention will be on one, at times on the other, but I will always be following both pathways.
I will not get anywhere without first enjoying intimacy with God. That involves seeing, hearing, feeling and experiencing both who He is and who I am.
We are not all the same, we each have our own song and destiny. I need to learn to resonate and come into agreement, come into harmony, with the whole symphony of heaven. There is a wonderful sound in the heavenly realms and it is beginning to be heard even in this realm: I can resonate with it, come into harmony with it and contribute to it my own unique sound and melody.
I will believe, and be in faith. ‘Without faith it is impossible to please God’. I have to trust Him, and go for it.
I will engage that desire for my destiny, step into alignment, and submit my life daily to the government of God and the lordship of Jesus.
I will purposely live for the unravelling of my scroll. I will not be content until I see it and am living according to it. No settling for second best; nothing half-hearted; totally committed to my destiny.
There are things I need to know (by experience, rather than know about). I need to know the testimony that is written in heaven for me. I need to know the blood of Jesus as my overcoming power, I need to know the revelation of my sonship. I need to know the courts in the heavenly realms, the gardens, the treasury room, the wine room, the record room, the mantle room and all the other places in the heavenly realms: places I have been, or other people have been. I need to know.
I need to know what is in heaven is in order to manifest it here; I need to know the authority I have there, in order to bring that rule here.

Then I will live in the dual realms of heaven and earth, and manifest heaven on earth through me.

SoundTrack:

Jonathan David Helser – Intimacy (via YouTube)

Support Freedom ARC

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111. Spirit Being, Living Being, Human Being

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

Adam was created a spiritual being. We all were. Adam became a ‘living being’ when God breathed His breath into him. That is something different from a spirit being. But when Adam sinned, he became a human being. He lost his status as a living being, and his status as a spiritual being, because his spirit was dead, separated from God.

We are all born human beings, though with a destiny. Every single person born since Adam, other than Jesus, has been born a human being. Jesus did not come from an egg from his mother and a sperm from God. He came, in a human body, entirely from God.

Jesus, the second Adam, won victory on the cross. He defeated all the principalities, all the powers and all the other demonic forces. His victory gives us the capacity to be born again, to come into a relationship with God, and to reclaim our destiny.

It means we can become a spirit being once again.

But we need to go beyond that and become a living being. We need to have God come and breathe His breath into us. God comes to dwell in our spirit. As a spirit being, we have access to our destiny, and our scroll of destiny sits in our heart and starts to vibrate. It produces a sound. We begin to resonate with it, and that sound starts to transform our physical and spiritual DNA.

There is far more to breaking bread, or taking communion, than we had realised. In the breaking of bread and sharing the wine we are transformed as we take on the DNA of God (you can read the startling things Jesus says about eating His flesh and drinking His blood in John chapter 6).

It is only intimacy with God which can start to change and transform us into that living being that He intends us to be.

Other resources from Freedom ARC

Communion 2015 (mp3 audio teaching series by Mike Parsons with PDF slides, text-style PDFs and streaming YouTube videos)

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109. Developing Our Spiritual Senses

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

First the natural…

Our natural senses take time to develop. Hearing is one of the first to function, and we know that babies can hear sound even in the womb. The hearing nerve is connected to every organ in the body except the spleen, and it even continues reverberating for a short while after death. But we only learn to begin to make sense of what we are hearing through constant repetition and practice.

Our natural sight improves gradually too. If I look at you, what actually happens is that light is being reflected from you and enters my eye. That projects an upside-down image onto the back of my retina, and my brain learns to interpret that as ‘you’.

But when we are first born, we can only see a few inches: just far enough to recognise our mother’s face, in fact. Over the next six months or so, our vision gradually improves until we see fully. That gives us time to process ever larger amounts of information, and gradually make sense of what is around us, the natural realm in which we live.

…then the spiritual

For most of us, that has not been our experience with our spiritual senses. Maybe we have become aware of spiritual things, but almost no-one in the church has been teaching about how to experience them, so we have not really given our spiritual senses chance to develop.

When we first started out following Jesus, we probably continued to live mostly in the natural world, with a little of the spiritual thrown in occasionally. Those occasions were perhaps when we experienced amazing times of worship or when a preached word really impacted us. But spiritual awareness is not reserved for special occasions, and it need not be subject to what goes on around us.

We can learn how to engage in the spiritual realm just as we learnt to engage in the natural. Let us allow our spiritual senses, like our natural senses, to develop through repetition and practice. Step into, and step out of, the realm of heaven. Then we will gradually begin to make sense of what is around us, the spiritual realm in which we also live.

We can do this. God intends us is to live in dual realms of heaven and earth at the same time, just as Jesus did. He intends us to manifest power and authority as the spirit beings we really are. He intends us to manifest our destiny in this world.

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Your first two weeks free!
Click here to get started today*

To find out more about the Engaging God programme, click here…

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[This article was originally posted on 1st November 2013, as part of a blogging challenge to post every day for 30 days: NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). Spoiler alert – we did it! Some of these posts were a little shorter than normal though…
– Jeremy]

Tag: NaBloPoMo

128. Building A Strong Spirit

How to build our spirit

Desire, discipline, delight

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126. A Shadow of Heaven

Infinity

Resonate

The shadow of heaven

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125. Preparing For Destiny

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123. Cultivate a Garden Relationship

Practice

The screen of our imagination

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117. The Proof Of Desire

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111. Spirit Being, Living Being, Human Being

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109. Developing Our Spiritual Senses

First the natural…

…then the spiritual

Support Freedom ARC

JOIN US IN ENGAGING GOD!

How to build our spirit

Desire, discipline, delight

Related articles

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Infinity

Resonate

The shadow of heaven

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Practice

The screen of our imagination

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First the natural…

…then the spiritual

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