Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –
Comparing the old and the new
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come (2 Cor 5:17).
Two thousand years ago, Jesus came with a completely new perspective and radically reinterpreted everything the religious people thought they knew. In my experience, He still does the same today. Here are a few things He has shown us in a totally new light:
Prayer – we used to pray from earth asking for God’s help from heaven, hoping that God would hear us from a distance. The new way is to come to meet Him face to face, to come boldly to the throne of grace, sit on His lap and talk to Him.
Revival – this is such a huge desire and expectation among the Christian community, but we have been praying in the way of the old: “Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down” (Isaiah 64:1). In the new, we see that God has already come down, He has already rent the heavens. What is more, He has gone back up into the heavens and opened up the veil for us to come. We have been asking Him to come and do what He is asking us to come and do!
In the old, access to holy places and the holy things of God is limited to only some special people – mediatorial priests. In the new, access is open to all of us. Now we can all enjoy the intimacy and rest of relationship and out of that flows our ability to fulfil positions of government as sons in responsibility.
After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven, and the first voice which I had heard, like the sound of a trumpet speaking with me, said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after these things” (Rev 4:1).
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God… let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Heb 4:14, 16).
There are going to be times of need, but we don’t need to be cowering, pleading with God to come and rescue us. His help is about empowering us to overcome the obstacles we face in restoring all things to His original design and purpose.
…that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God (Rom 8:21).
Operating as lords, kings and sons
The old is like being in the wilderness and expecting God to do it for us from heaven. In the new God has given us responsibility to be co-heirs, partners in heaven operating as lords, kings and sons. As transfigured sons we are going to radiate glory to bring the whole of creation into its freedom, to restore it so that heaven and earth are in complete harmony.
Spiritual warfare as we have previously known it was never very effective because it was attempting to pull down something from below. There was a lot of shouting into the heavens or into the atmosphere of the earth, binding this and that, but no-one ever went into heaven first to bind things there. In the new, all that is now replaced with judicial verdicts from above in the courts, which have heavenly authority to bind and to loose (to bind things to what they should be and to loose them from what they should not be). We have gone from houses of prayer and prayer closets on the earth to having charge of the courts of heaven, a completely different mindset, and we have learnt that everything must now first be done beyond the veil to be effective.
“Your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven”: in the old way of thinking, God sovereignly administers from His throne whilst we just obey here on earth. In the new, God has chosen to operate His sovereignty through us, having given us authority over this whole created order:
…and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:6).
If we are seated with Christ, we are seated on thrones from which we administer in heaven.
Mature sons
The old way is like being children whose parent does everything for them and on their behalf. It is time for us to mature and become responsible adults. Like a parent encouraging His adolescent children to take responsibility for more and more of their own lives, God is withdrawing His support for the old, which will slowly but surely (or perhaps sometimes suddenly) stop being effective. What once worked for us will no longer do so, even if it is still seems to be working for others. At that point we will have no choice but to embrace the new. If we are really forerunners, we will not wait until that happens.
God wants to manifest us as His sons to fulfil our destiny and restore creation. Each of us has a destiny, and those destinies interact with one another to bring about God’s purpose. We have been called at the end of the ages. Each of us has a role specifically chosen and designed for us by God. Like Esther, He has chosen us for such a time as this.
Why can’t I keep the old ways?
When Israel crossed over into the Promised Land, 2½ tribes chose to go back across the Jordan. From that time on there is no record of them in scripture and no evidence that the old ways continued to work for them. We might all long for the simplicity of childhood with few responsibilities but we are called to grow up. We can’t just keep drinking milk like babies if we want to be mature sons.
If you decide to stay in the old you risk dying in the wilderness with those who do not want you to cross over into your inheritance. The old order has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. They don’t want you to hear God yourself, because then you would not keep coming to the prophetic conferences they are putting on (the ones where they will hear God for you rather than equipping you to hear Him for yourself). The lure of the familiar and comfortable is powerful, but it is an illusion: once God begins to challenge you, you may never be comfortable with the old and familiar again.
The old order
The old Moses order has failed to prepare for the harvest. The 5-fold ministries have failed to equip the church but instead built empires. They have failed to lead people into their destinies or help them access their scrolls and their true calling, making a generation of dependent slaves rather than manifest sons. They have failed to honour people, instead making them spectators or servants of their visions. They have not released people into their highest calling or recognised their spheres of authority. They have created religious systems from the pathway of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, establishing businesses out of worship and making celebrity idols out of servants.
Prophets, apostles, pastors, teachers and evangelists have become professionals. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, they have made people dependent on them as mediators who hear God for them, fuelling a dependency and co-dependency mentality. There are no rabbis in the new day but Jesus. Please stop trying to follow earthly rabbis – and whatever you do, don’t treat me as one.
We cannot keep trying to use wilderness methodologies expecting Promised Land results. We have to change, to align ourselves with what God is saying and doing now. He is changing the way we do things. We are no longer to expect others to tell us what to think but to be taught how to engage God for ourselves. We evaluate everything we do on the basis of whether it is ‘as it is in heaven’: have we established it in heaven first before we try to work it out on earth?
We are called to be forerunners and, like Joshua and Caleb alone among the Promised Land spies, we need to give a good report. In the next post, we will look at how we do that – in the new.
This blog post is adapted from Mike’s teaching in the ‘Engaging God‘ subscription programme. Find out more…
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