Tag: relationship

287. Unconditional Love, Grace, and the truth about salvation

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott

In a world where what passes for ‘love’ often comes with strings attached, showing unconditional love can make a real impact. A while ago, someone sent me a link to a testimony that highlights the incredible result of demonstrating unconditional love in a real-world setting.

In a radio interview, Riaan Swiegelaar, the co-founder of the South African Satanic Church, said he did not believe that Jesus Christ existed. Afterwards, a lady from the radio station went up to him and just gave him a hug. He did not know it at the time, but she was a Christian. A week later, while he was doing a ritual with the SASC council, Jesus appeared before him. Riaan  challenged Him to prove He was Jesus, and was flooded with the most beautiful love and energy, which he recognised from the hug he had received the week before.

Now Riaan has a relationship with Jesus, converses with Him every day, and has resigned from his position in the Satanic Church. “I have for a long time believed that I am not worthy of God’s grace because I am gay. But the Kingdom of God is not a gated community, the kingdom of God is open to everybody,” he says.

Unconditional love has the power to break down barriers and transform even the most hardened hearts. Sadly, some reaction to this story has not been so accepting: Did he truly repent? Did he actually confess? Is he really a believer? Is he ‘saved’?

Grace and works

Most of us would agree that salvation is not dependent on our works, but on the unconditional love and limitless grace of God. Yet the evangelical view of salvation I was brought up with is not grace-based at all, however much it claims to be: it requires our works. You have to believe in your heart and confess with your mouth to be saved. I tried to believe and confess but I was never sure it was good enough to please God.

We have had it the wrong way around: in reality, believing is the consequence of our experiencing God’s love and grace. Evangelical theology makes forgiveness and salvation totally dependent on what man does. But all man’s religious works are dead: they can produce no life independently of God’s grace.

Reframing Confession

Another religious misconception is the idea that we must confess our sins in order to be forgiven. Jesus did not wait for those who were crucifying Him to be sorry or ‘confess’ their sin: He asked the Father to forgive them. He had taught His disciples the importance of forgiving from the heart and now He demonstrated it for them.

This understanding of ‘confession’ is heavily influenced by Catholic doctrine and can leave us feeling sin-conscious and burdened by guilt. However, the true meaning of ‘confession’ is not dwelling on our wrongdoings, but declaring and agreeing with what God says about us. We confess our righteousness, our forgiveness, and our new identity in Christ, rather than confessing our unrighteousness as perpetual sinners. Understanding this truth releases us from the cycle of guilt and allows us to fully embrace the forgiveness and grace which is lavished upon us.

Licence to sin?

Critics of limitless grace argue that it gives us the licence to sin, suggesting that if we are forgiven regardless of our actions, then we can just go ahead and do whatever we want. This is a misunderstanding of the purpose and power of grace. It is not a free pass to continue living according to our old nature: no, instead it is receiving God’s grace that enables us to walk in the freedom of our new nature. And sin, in its true definition, refers to lost identity, not wrong actions. Wrong actions do carry consequences, but they are not God’s punishment. Jesus has already defeated sin and its wages (which Paul says are death – not eternal torment), so His mercy always triumphs and His grace is always sufficient.

Metanoia, not repentance

We have seen before how ‘repentance’ (Greek metanoia) is often portrayed as remorse, with its accompanying guilt and shame, and doing penance. However, the true essence of metanoia is about returning to our true identity and restoring our relationship with the  Father. It is a transformative change of mind that aligns us with how God sees us and enables us to live in the fullness of who we were created to be. Rather than attempting to change our behaviour to earn acceptance, metanoia invites us to agree with God’s mind and embrace the truth of our identity as forgiven, righteous children of God. This shift in perspective empowers us to live a life that reflects our true nature in Christ.

Living loved is accepting the truth of being unconditionally forgiven,  celebrating it in joy and rejoicing in love. If we live in the truth that we are loved and forgiven unconditionally, we do not have to fear admitting we sometimes mess up, as we are still having our minds renewed. We can be real with the Father if we are struggling with something. We do not have to run away in fear and hide from our Father as Adam did, we can run to Him. We can come boldly to the throne of grace and receive limitless grace and triumphant mercy. We are only alienated in our own minds – that is why we need deep religious deprogramming.

Life-changing power

Riaan Swiegelaar’s transformation from a leader of the Satanic Church to a follower of Jesus serves as a powerful testament to the life-changing power of unconditional love. It is through God’s grace, not our works, that we are saved. Understanding the true meaning of confession, repentance, and grace liberates us from guilt and empowers us to live in the fullness of who we are in Christ.

Let’s embrace the truth of God’s unconditional love, extend it to others, and live in the freedom and joy of our salvation.

You can watch Riaan’s testimony and a sequel on YouTube.

Each of this series of blog posts is adapted from Mike’s latest FREE video series on ‘Unconditional Love’.
Why not become a patron and join us live for the next recording – they are normally on the second Sunday of each month at 6pm UK time.

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284. His Love Never Fails

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

We saw last time that love wins. If love does not win in the end then it cannot be love; but love can never be forced, just continually demonstrated again and again, until it eventually overcomes every obstacle, objection, excuse and reason.

That is why I believe in the restoration of all things. God’s love will never stop because He cannot stop being Him: He can never deny Himself and who He is, so He continues to love. And because He is an eternal being, that means He will never stop, so God and love will never fail.

His love never fails, never gives up and can never be escaped because it is filled with age-enduring grace and mercy. That grace and mercy will never cease to be a vehicle for love to be expressed and demonstrated abundantly, lavishly and with extreme desire and intent, without limits. God’s love has no limits: if you put a condition on it, then you have limited it. If love is limited, it is not love. Love must be extreme or it is not love. Love must seem wasteful and undeserved or it is not love.

His love cannot be thwarted by sin, rejection or death – it has experienced all there is and yet has conquered and overcome all things, so that all things can be restored to love’s face-to-face, relational innocence. That is really the nature of what God has done: He has made us innocent. That is how He sees us. Do we feel it? Or do we feel ‘less than’ because we struggle with the concept of unconditional love?

Nothing can separate

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35, 37-39).

That really leaves nothing out. That is the nature of that love: there is nothing we can do – or anyone or anything else can do – that can separate us from the love of God. Religion, even though it will probably have you read that Bible verse, will tell you the opposite, that there is something that can separate you from the love of God: your choice. But your choice can only separate you in your own head, it cannot separate you from a God who loves you unconditionally. And that is really what we need to understand and engage.

If you still think you can separate yourselves, or feel separated because of your past life, or things you might do, or thoughts you might have, remember this: God takes no notice of what you – or others – think, He just takes notice of who He is. And He is unconditional love.

Discover who we are

So to know our true identity as sons of God, which is who we are, it is imperative that we know unconditional love by personal, intimate experience and not just in an intellectual way. I would have always said that I believed that God is love but my understanding of that love is very different now that I know it by experience. I have had so many experiences of the nature of that unconditional love, both towards myself and how God has expressed and shown His love to others, that I am absolutely convinced that this is the key, that everyone needs to know. All of us ‘know’ that God is love because the Bible tells us; but the question is, have we all experienced that love as unconditional or do we just know it as a concept or a theory? God wants it to be very practical.

As sons of God, we need to have our lives built on a solid foundation: that foundation is the nature, character and essence of who God is as I AM. I AM is a constant, never changing. He is unconditional love, He is limitless grace and He is triumphant mercy: put all those three together and they make a totally solid foundation on which to build our lives, to grow and mature. All these attributes have to be experienced: that is what God is working to do in our lives constantly, to enable us to experience the reality of who He is and so discover who we are.

Limitless grace, triumphant mercy

Never stop living in the reality of unconditional love, limitless grace and triumphant mercy. A few years ago there was a huge fuss over so-called ‘hyper-grace’. Well, His grace goes way beyond ‘hyper’: it is limitless! There is nothing that limitless grace cannot deal with or overcome.

And His mercy is triumphant, which means no matter what obstacle or hindrance might get in the way of us experiencing unconditional love, His mercy has already triumphed over it! So if we live in that reality, then we can abide, dwell, and remain at rest in that state of conscious awareness that we are loved. We do not have to do anything, it is completely free and unconditional. That may not be easy to accept, because of the way we have been conditioned to think about love and about God. That state of being, immersed in that unconditional love, limitless grace and triumphant mercy, is an expanded state of consciousness, an awareness that forms the foundation of everything we think, feel and do. Therefore we can just be.

Our true identity and our consciousness of that identity is about being, not doing. If we can really get hold of that reality then it will free us up so much to discover just how powerful we are and how amazing our sonship is. Yet it is so hard to just be when we are conditioned to do. All of us have been programmed by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, programmed into independence, so that we believe we have to do something.

Religious systems

Probably all of us have been involved in some religious system or other and those systems tend to require performance or adherence to a set of behavioural norms so that we will be accepted. When those norms are projected onto God, as they often are, it leads us to believe that God requires certain things of us, which contradicts the truth of His unconditional love. But Paul wrote:

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2).

Or, ‘do not be pressed into a religious or political mould, shaped or formed by the political and religious systems you live under, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.’ We cannot renew our own minds, however hard we try. I used to try to renew my mind by confessing Bible verses over and over again, making confessions and declarations and decrees so that I would believe what I was declaring. I learned a lot of Bible verses that way but it never renewed my mind: the only thing that renewed my mind was an experience of God that changed my mind because now I knew the truth (and that truth was different from what I thought before) and now I agree with Him, which is what metanoia (usually misleadingly translated as ‘repentance’) actually means.

Blameless innocence

God’s good, acceptable and perfect will is proven or known when we experience it – but we have taught people that you can only know it by faith. Faith is the evidence of things not yet seen, but I want to live in the reality of experiencing everything that God intends for me, not to die never having received it (as happened to all those heroes of faith listed  in Hebrews 11).

… just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will… (Ephesians 1:4-5).

That is His will: that we would be before Him in love. In the Mirror Bible it says:

He associated us in Christ before the fall of the world. Jesus is God’s mind made up about us. He always knew in his love that he would present us again face to face before him in blameless innocence… (Ephesians 1:4 Mirror).

That is such an amazing statement! Perhaps if we look at our life we would say we are far from blameless; but God is not looking at what we have done, He is looking at what He has done, at what Jesus has done. We are who He says we are, so His love enables us to be face to face with Him without fear (because perfect love casts out fear). His love, expressed as His will, chose us to be restored to face to face, blameless innocence. And when we have been face to face with Him, then we can begin to realise how blamelessly innocent we are.

In God’s heart we are already restored: we just need to catch up with what is already true rather than trying to make it true. He is much more patient than we are, and His patience means that His love will never fail. And His limitless grace and triumphant mercy ensure that we will all know his love unconditionally, one way or another, however long it takes.

Each of this series of blog posts is adapted from Mike’s latest FREE video series on ‘Unconditional Love’.
Click the image or link above for the whole series, or scroll down to watch the video of the talk this post comes from.
Better still, become a patron and join us live for the next recording – they are normally on the second Sunday of each month at 6pm UK time.

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The Restoration of All Things book

The Restoration of All Things, the new book from Mike Parsons, is out now.
Purchase your copy online from The Book Depository (free delivery worldwide), Barnes & Noble (USA) or Waterstones (UK) or order from your local bookstore.

In my previous book, My Journey Beyond Beyond, I shared my life story on the quest for true reality in my relationship with God as my Father. This book continues the journey to where beyond was taking me. The previous four threads were woven together to create a rich tapestry expressing the pure joy and delight of a child discovering true reality for the first time. This journey, full of surprising revelations and experiences, unveiled further dimensions and depths beyond beyond once again. My encounters took me deeper into the Father’s loving heart, unveiling and revealing His Oracles for creation’s restoration. There will probably need to be three volumes to cover the vastness and extent of my journey but let’s begin.

My beyond beyond experiences were an ongoing process of encounters that created such cognitive dissonance that the God that I thought I knew evaporated into nothingness. The true reality of who They (Father, Son and Spirit) truly are emerged from the rubble that was my deconstructed mind into the glorious light of revelation. My experiences and encounters with their true reality exploded my limited and restricted understanding that had been framed by my mind’s religious constructs. I am now an atheist to the god I previously worshipped as he never existed other than as a figment of my religious imagination. The glorious true loving God who is Love, Light, Spirit and Fire emerged from the destruction of my orthodox belief systems. The encounters, like explosions of truth, destroyed my religiously framed construct to reveal a God who is I AM that I AM: pure, unadulterated, unconditional love.

As my great friend and fellow traveller, Lindy Strong has said, “My past self of ten years ago would probably call my present self a heretic” and that was my own experience on this journey. If that is not all our experience then we have ceased the journey, content with our systematic theological understanding of a God who is infinite, creating a box for that God that is only a prison for our minds. I am a happy heretic, enjoying skiing down the slope of orthodoxy to discover and explore a whole new vista beyond the limits of my understanding.

The further and deeper this rabbit hole journey has gone, the more convinced I am of God’s desire and passion for the restoration of all things of creation. Creation itself will inevitably be set free from its bondage and slavery to the corruption of our sonship by the revealing of the true mystic sons of God who have arisen and are shining with love’s light.

For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him, all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead so that He will come to have first place in everything. For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven (Colossians 1:13-20).

Are all things actually all things? I discovered the answer to this is yes and no. Yes, all things that Jesus created out of the desire of the Father’s heart in the power of the Spirit; but no to everything we have created from the DIY independent path of the knowledge of good and evil that has been cursed.

All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being (John 1:3).

“The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand.” (John 3:35).

“For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will marvel.” (John 5:20).

“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10:27-30).

Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and as going back to God… (John 13:3).

“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” (John 14:26).

“All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.” (John 16:15).

“…and all things that are Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine; and I have been glorified in them.” (John 17:10).

After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished… (John 19:28)

(From the Introduction to The Restoration of All Things, by Mike Parsons).

Available wherever books are sold.
(except Kindle version, only available from the Amazon Kindle store).

Order your copy today!

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276. Living In Dual Realms

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

Establish and outwork

I had an encounter in 2013 in which God took me out into the solar system and I saw the earth spinning; it came to a stop and I could see arcs of blue light all over the globe. Now I had been sending out what God termed ‘a blue light call’, so that immediately got my attention. God was asking me to begin connecting with people around the world who are called to establish things in heaven and outwork them on earth.

It is very important that we do both. If what we are doing in heaven is not bringing about change in our communities and not really bringing restoration to all things, then we may be having fun but we will not be making much real difference in other people’s lives or advancing the Kingdom of God to any meaningful degree.

Sons Arise!

This series of posts is based on the teaching I brought at a set of events we held in 2018 called ‘Sons Arise!’ and that is what God is looking to do: to encourage his sons to arise, perhaps from spiritual sleep, perhaps to venture into the heavens – there are many different possible connotations to it – and to be released into their full, glorious identity and inheritance as mature sons of God, the Elohim, the godlike ones. We are not God, but we are supposed to be like Him, co-creators and co-heirs, co-workers with Him in this created order to re-establish His original intent and purpose. We all have a part to play in what God is doing and we are all supposed to be demonstrating what it is like to be a son of God.

I often mention the sound that is coming out of heaven. It has been drawing people; their spirits have been connecting to it and they have been following it, maybe not even knowing where it is leading them, but they have begun to perceive that God is revealing His intense desire for intimacy with His children; and beyond that, He is extending an invitation to access the heavenly realms through an open veil and be seated there in heavenly places as sons. I encourage you to tune into the call that is coming out of the Father’s heart. That call is going to draw you deeper into sonship; it will unveil things to you that you may not yet know and it is going to bring you into a different perspective of how sons are to operate – in dual realms of heaven and earth.

Free to live in dual realms

Actually, it is not only dual realms but multi-dimensional! We are not restricted just to being in heaven and on earth: we can also be in multiple places on earth, in heaven and in other dimensions of creation. We need to learn how to do those things. No one really teaches it because so few are even aware of the possibility, but we have an opportunity to learn – and the more we practise, the easier it will become for us, just like anything else.

Engaging the dark cloud of God’s presence was what set me free to live in dual realms because before that my soul and spirit were tethered to the earth. Once my soul and spirit were separated and reintegrated, which I have described in previous posts, I then went through a process of transformation or metamorphosis over the course of a year and eventually found I was able to live in two realms. I stepped into heaven and my spirit did not come out. I was aware of being there in heaven, even while I was also aware of being here on earth. Now my consciousness can switch between one and the other. Where before I was going into heaven to get something and bringing it back into this physical realm and trying to outwork it, now everything just flows. I am experiencing what it means to be a gateway of heaven into the earth.

Pursue it

So there is a process of transformation that needs to take place: separating soul and spirit, being reintegrated and quantum re-entangled (quantum entanglement is where connected particles can be separated over vast distances and still be instantly connected); so whatever happens to my spirit in the realms of heaven affects my soul and body here and whatever is going on here is also connected to what happens there. I was led into this over a period of time: I could not pursue it because I did not know where God was leading. I kept following Him, and as I kept being obedient in the little steps it led me where He wanted me to go. But you can accelerate it if you pursue it, now that you know about it. If you really desire it, then pursue it and practise and engage until it becomes part of your life.

No one can lay hands on you and suddenly give you the ability to do all these things. That was the illusion we were sold through the charismatic movement, “Come to my conference and get the transferable anointing.” I went to some of those conferences hoping to get that anointing without cost (other than the price of a ticket) but I soon learned that there is always a cost to developing the maturity and character that goes with anointing and unless you are willing to pay that cost, there is a limit to what you will be able to do.

A different journey

God wants to develop a relationship with us on our journey so that in relationship He can unveil and reveal truth as He engages us. I know that God will relate to you on your journey because He relates to me on mine, so that is why I share my testimony. But please do not compare yourself or your journey to mine or anyone else’s. There is no magic formula. You do not have to do anything the way I did (or the way someone else does). All of us are on a different journey: we all started in different places and if it looks like others are further ahead, remember that they may not have had to travel the route you need to walk on. We all have to follow our own path as He leads us and work it out in our own life the way He is calling each of us to do. We all get to grow and mature through our own life experiences; it is a unique journey, and most importantly, it is one we get to travel in company with Him.

Related posts
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Mike’s new book, ‘Engaging the Father’ is 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

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. 

273. Sons Invested and Enthroned

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

A sound from heaven

For several years now, the Father has been releasing a sound from heaven designed to connect to the deep desire within us all for both relationship and responsibility. It is represented within much of the music being performed by Christian musicians in recent times but it is not itself necessarily a sound audible to the natural ear. Some have heard it in the spirit and responded already, but that sound frequency continues to intensify, encouraging all His children to be spiritually open and sensitive and to resonate with it. Let it penetrate as deep calls to deep to awaken your sonship. As you become aware of it, learn to rest and relax in it, to be immersed in His presence in it and to resonate with His intention for your life as that is conveyed to you in the sound.

Revealed sons

The Father has been calling us as His children to come and take our places in heaven; to find and fulfil our heavenly roles so that we can bring heaven to earth through our lives. All His children have a destiny that involves our inheritance and birthright so that we can all be mature sons of God, revealed out of heaven into the earth. He is always giving us opportunity to come to Him to obtain a deeper revelation of our identity, position and authority.

All of us are seated in heavenly places in Christ (Eph 2:6), but few are actively functioning from that position. We are called to a new level of sonship, to access the assemblies and councils of heaven and take up our governmental roles. We can be involved in the decision-making of heavenly government. No-one ever told me that! I thought that God did all the heavenly part and that He would tell me what He wanted me to do on earth. But then He invited me into heaven and I discovered that I had a part to play in establishing things there as well as in outworking them on the earth. We get to be involved in the ‘as it is in heaven’; the more we get involved, the more authority we receive and the more responsibility we carry. The mantles are prepared and the scrolls are ready: all that is needed is for us to accept responsibility as sons and be willing to pursue maturity.

Sometimes we need the old ways to stop working before we will even begin considering the new ones. At that point it can seem like nothing is working while we learn how to operate in the new. If that is you, you are not alone. Right now, we are all learning that. We are all in a transition period between what we have been used to, an old way of doing things, and the new way God is revealing.

Creation is groaning

Investiture, succession, enthronement, coronation: God gave me those four words many years ago. They describe the process of a king coming into the fullness of his power and authority. We are invested with authority as sons of God but for there to be succession the old king has to either die or abdicate. The old king in this context is our soul, in the sense that it has been controlling our lives (which was never its intended purpose). Then we can take up our throne(s) in heaven (enthronement) and be recognised by creation as the sons we truly are (coronation).

Creation is groaning in its bondage to corruption and decay (Rom 8:22). That groan demands an answer and we, the sons of God, are the only ones who can supply it. We are called to administrate and oversee the fruitfulness and increase which come from the face-to-face restored innocence of relationship, not the decay and death which are the consequences of independence.

Living in dual realms

Living in dual realms is the key. At a certain point in my process, I became aware that although my soul and spirit were engaging heaven together daily in a visionary cognitive experience, I was still stepping in through the veil and stepping back out again each time; I was visiting but not inhabiting and living in dual realms. I spent two years going in and out of heaven every day, learning about thrones, mountains and courts and at the end of that God took me through a four month period which led to my surrender. I surrendered my soul’s right to rule in my life; my soul and spirit were separated and reintegrated; and from that experience in 2012 until now, my spirit has been in the realm of heaven and I have learned to connect with that realm and flow from it all the time.

That separation and reintegration of my soul and spirit took place when I entered into the dark cloud of His Presence. You can read what I have written before on this blog about my dark cloud experience but we will look at it again in coming posts. It was a difficult process for me, because a forerunner goes through extremes to establish a way which makes it easier for others who follow. Easier, not easy: it is never going to be easy because the soul has been ruling for most of our lives. Our surrender has to be genuine, and in order to count the cost and enter into it freely, we need to understand what the consequences are. He will be in the process with us and will walk us through it but He cannot do it for us, nor make us surrender against our will. We have to choose.

Pursue and choose

We can be proactive. God had to manoeuvre me into a position where I was faced with making the choice (one way or the other), but once you know the choice is there to be made, then you can choose when to make it. That is why I share about it and teach about it. You can pursue it if you want to. You can ask God to take you into the place where you can surrender and then learn to operate in dual realms. The process for you may be different than it was for me, but the principle will be the same: your soul needs to surrender. Whatever that looks like for you, your soul and spirit will be separated from the control the soul has on the spirit so that they can then be reconnected to flow from the inside out, the spirit to the soul, and not the outside in.

Will you accept God’s call and actively take your place of heavenly government? Your new covenant inheritance gives you access to an open heaven through the torn veil: do not let the veils of the old religious restrictions limit the full scope of your sonship. The call is not just to keep ascending but to dwell in dual realms, consistently functioning in heaven and on earth as responsible, mature sons. Until that happens, and new order ekklesias and embassies of heaven multiply on the earth, the true mountain of the house of the Lord will remain in the shadow of the religious systems of men.

Note: this post and the two which will follow it are drawn from Mike’s teaching in the Sons Arise! Into the Dark Cloud intensive, the Sons Arise! Invested and Enthroned conference and our Engaging God subscription programme.

Related posts
More recent posts
Other resources from FreedomARC

Mike’s new book, ‘Engaging the Father’ is 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

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

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272. One Conclusion: God Is Love

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

So much better

What is the Father really like? Because if we are going to enter into a relationship with Him, we need to know that. And you can only get to know what He is really like by meeting Him and engaging with Him yourself.

As I began to meet Him, I discovered that He was not at all like I thought He was. And the more I get to know Him, the more I realise He is less and less like I thought. He is so much better!

Who He is not

In fact, the Father is not at all who religion or culture makes Him out to be.

The Father is not an old man with a long white beard, some Santa Claus type figure, generous with presents if you have been good – but if not, ‘You’d better watch out’, as the popular Christmas song says. He is not watching, waiting for us to get something wrong so that He can punish us.

The Father is not a wrathful, distant deity who needs appeasing with animal sacrifices, as you might think from a superficial reading of the Old Testament (see Heb 10:1-10). He is not the angry face of a two-faced God (with Jesus as the good-natured side). They are both exactly the same. Jesus said, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). So the Father is not a cosmic child abuser who killed His Son to satisfy His anger and wrath. He is not a parent who turned His back on His Son on the cross but one who went through it all with Him.

God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them (2 Cor 5:19).

The Father is not a disinterested creator who, having made everything, then just sits back and allows it to work out however it will. Nor is He a script writer who sovereignly and fatalistically decided how everything should be.

The Father is not a parent who has favourites amongst His children, so that He has chosen some to be with Him forever and others to be separated from Him and punished forever. He is not a torturer who will be endlessly tormenting most of His children because they did not do things His way. He is not the kind of parent who abandons, disinherits and disowns His children when they turn away from Him and ignore His advice because they think they know better.

The Father is not a cosmic heavenly sugar daddy that we can manipulate to give us anything we want by trying to please or appease Him with our good behaviour. Nor is He impressed by our tantrums.

Do you see how the Father has been misunderstood and misrepresented by religion to be someone He is not?

A loving Dad

Jesus is His express image and likeness and we can come to the Father for ourselves through Him. He is fully represented in and by His Son and is a loving, caring, compassionate Dad who deeply desires for all His children to enjoy an intimate love relationship with Him. He does not look at us the way we look at ourselves, or the way anyone else sees us. We are all the apple of His eye and the treasure of His heart, and He wants only good things for us. He desires to constantly bless us.

He is a loving parent, who will never force His children to do anything but is patient, tolerant and kind. He has a love for all His children that will never end, will never fail and will never give up on any of us. He is passionate about all His children and is patiently working and waiting for all of them to return to an intimate loving relationship with Him. His discipline is not punishment but loving correction, to help us make better decisions in future.

We are His passion. He does not hold Himself aloof from us because ‘He cannot look upon sin’. That is religious dogma built on half a verse in the Old Testament. Read the other half: the prophet is complaining that, somehow, He still does (Hab 1:13).

The Father allows us to make our choices. He so loves all His children that He is constantly working with all our choices and decisions, even the worst and most stupid of them, to produce something good that can even be woven into the fulfilment of His heart’s desire.

Conversation

One time, the Father said to me, “I want to show you My mind”. I thought “Wow! I’m going to be in the firing neurons of the creativity of God” but it was not like that at all. I found myself in the midst of a conversation between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And I kept hearing my name, which got my attention. He was constantly connecting and reconnecting with me, making corrections to ensure that I could still follow the path, even if I have gone off into some side track. He will even use the side track that I walked on as part of the story. He engages with us in the ‘eternal now’ – it is not past, not present, not future for Him, it is just ‘now’.

He is my Dad and is always available, never too busy for me, never leaves me, always wants the best for me, is always interested in me, always welcomes me into His open arms of love. My loving Dad is the most wonderful, faithful, trustworthy, patient, kind, good, joyful, peaceful, fun-loving, awesome Father who is always sharing His heart and thoughts with me. I love spending time with Him. He is fathering me.

And He is your Dad too.

Circle of the dance

So you do not need to be concerned with the arguments of those who do not know Him face to face or with the opinions of those who are conditioned to think they know Him because of what they have been taught by religion. Some people will always believe what they have always believed because they interpret everything in a way which backs up what they already believe. But if you are open to new revelation, God will show you who He really is.

You can see the Father if you can see Jesus, the Son. Get to know Him. Allow Him to deconstruct the false images you have of Him. This will inevitably stretch your understanding. But once you have been in the circle of the dance of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you know there is only one conclusion: God is love.

He asked me, “And what does 1 Cor 13 say about love? That it torments and punishes? No! Love is kind and bears all things”. Those ‘all things’ are the ‘all things’ He is looking to see restored, by the way.

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails… (1 Cor 13:4-7a).

This post was extracted and edited from Mike’s teaching during the Sons Arise! Engaging The Father conference held at the Freedom Centre, Barnstaple, UK in 2018. Material from this event also features 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

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270. Walk on the Ancient Path

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

In this series so far we have looked briefly at three of the four dimensions in which I am encouraging you to engage with the Father:

The fourth dimension in which we can engage is in God’s heart in eternity, outside of time and space.

God is eternal

God is eternal. It may seem really obvious to say it, but it is important to grasp this. He has always been, He is, and He will always be (Rev 1:8). He is almighty, that is ‘all-mighty’. He is light (1 John 1:5). He is love (1 John 4:16). He is spirit (John 4:24).

If we meditate on these scriptures, and others like them, they will open up a doorway that enable us to engage with who God is. If we engage Him and know Him, beholding Him face to face, that intimate relationship with Him will help us know who we are.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (Jer 1:5).

Just as God is speaking here to Jeremiah, He has also spoken to each of us. He knew me, and He knew you, before He formed you in the womb. This was not some vague thought that God had: ‘knowing’ is a really intimate encounter. Since intimacy is two-way, actually, we knew Him too.

He set you apart for relationship and purpose. He had a purpose for your life that He knew, and that you knew, before you were actually formed. It is part of your very being.  What name has He given you? Who has He called you to be? What has He appointed you to? What has He called you to do? The good news is: you can know.

As sons of God we have access to I AM. Everything to Him is present, always in the eternal now. Since we are in Him and He in us, we can engage the eternal aspects of our identity and destiny within the heart of God. He wants to restore our connection to who we really are, who we were always created to be, giving us inspiration at a spiritual level that informs and empowers what we do here.

God’s very essence is love. In His heart your relationship with the very essence of love is restored: that is not just feeling loved, which is wonderful in itself, but also beginning to be an expression of love yourself. When you first go there, it is unlikely you will be able to process it with your mind. It is more that you know things instinctively because you are part of the thoughts of God, His heart and His desire; you absorb it, and it then begins to transform your life.

Soul and spirit

In order for your spiritual memory to be restored, you may need some deconstruction of your entrenched mindsets and framework, as I did. You will certainly need to have your soul and spirit separated and reintegrated so that your soul is free to cooperate with your spirit rather than pursuing its own agenda and affirming an identity independent from God. That changed everything for me. Everyone needs to go through their own process – pray it won’t be like mine, because mine was really hard!

When our soul and spirit are in agreement, we can live in dual realms of heaven and earth at the same time. We can become reconnected to who we were as pre-existing spirit beings, reconnected to creation as it was before it came into the bondage of corruption, which stimulates us to participate in the restoration of all things. Having a memory of what it was like when creation was in perfect harmony and there was no darkness really motivates me to want to see it like that again. The revelation of the sons of God will bring creation into the freedom of the glory of those sons – into our glory!

Walk on the ancient path

You may be familiar with this symbol, which I see as the eternal circle:

We can stand in what is, every day in heaven, in the arc of the Name of God, in His Name, in the four faces of God; then we have access to walk on that ancient path back into the heart of God (I no longer need to walk back into it because I now reside there; but if you are not yet able to live in dual realms, you can still choose to walk back there).

When you are in that place, allow His thoughts to envelop you. It’s like being in the womb of His heart: you were birthed there. If He were to tell you all those amazing thoughts He has about you in one go, it would overwhelm you. So He allows you to grasp them a little at a time. As you are in this place of intimacy, He will reveal how special you are to Him. You will begin to feel your value and worth to Him, not because of what you can do but because of who you are. You can feel love; you can feel His frequency vibrating in your spirit; that can be communicated by your spirit to your heart, your soul.

We gradually become more fully aware of our sonship, and not only in relation to this realm. We begin to see who we were as sons and who we will be as sons; if we connect to the beginning and outwork it in the middle, eventually the end will be in agreement.

Walk back into eternity

I want to give you an opportunity to walk back into eternity and to re-engage with the eternal aspect of the heart of God there for you. I cannot guarantee that you are ready, but you can ask Him to take you there and if so, He will. If not, He will take you somewhere that is a part of your journey into that realm and is right for you at this time.

Close your eyes if you can. Again, you can use the audio version of this activation if you wish.

Heaven is open.
Let the image form in your imagination.
Hear the invitation to ‘come up here’.
Walk up the steps into the heavenly realms.

Ask Jesus to help you engage with the arc in the heavenly tabernacle.
Let Him lead you into the arc of the Presence of God,
to stand before the four faces
and step into the Yod-Hei-Vav-Hei of His Name.
That is a step of choice, to step into the manifestation of His Presence there.

As you step into His Presence,
ask Jesus to allow you to walk on the ancient path,
to engage in His heart.
He may walk with you into that place
or you may find yourself transported there.

There, within the heart of God’s Presence,
you may feel cocooned in love,
you may see yourself as light,
you may sense the conversation all around you,
hear His thoughts about you:
sense your eternal identity.

Whatever happens, just relax and allow it to take place.
Stay as long as it takes, don’t rush away.
The eternal aspect of who you are will begin to be unveiled to you
at a deeper and deeper level.

…

Don’t let these engagements in four dimensions be one-time exercises. Make them part of your daily lifestyle. God will never run out of new revelation He wants to release to you; and increasing revelation of who you are will come out of the increasing revelation of who He is.

This post was extracted and edited from Mike’s teaching during the Sons Arise! Engaging The Father conference held at the Freedom Centre in 2018. 

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267. Engaging the Father

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

The cry from the Father’s heart

“Sons Arise!” is the cry from the Father’s heart to unveil, reveal and release His children into their full, glorious identity and inheritance as mature sons of God: the Elohim, god-like ones.

It is also the groan of all creation which is longing to be set free when we are revealed. Through the intimacy of a deeper relationship with the Father, let’s embrace our destinies as sons: let’s answer the groan of creation by revealing the true nature of God and the true essence of love expressed in our glorious freedom.

‘Sons’ is not gender-specific. We are all children of God who have an inheritance and are training in the family business. As sons, we are included in the circle of relationship that is Father, Son and Spirit, reconnected to the true reality of God’s original intention for our identity and destiny. Yet we cannot be recognised as sons until we recognise that we have a Father.

Engaging the Father

God is calling His children, His sons, to come out of the wilderness. He is calling His sons to cross over into their supernatural inheritance beyond the veil. He is calling His sons into deeper levels of intimacy, calling us to know Him.

As you begin to respond, you may find that He uncovers areas of brokenness and fragmentation within your soul which require healing and restoration. Don’t resist that; go with it. I recommend you journal everything the Father speaks to you as He reveals His truth and heals your wounds.

There are four dimensions in which I encourage you to engage with the Father:

  1. Engage in the Earth, the physical realm, but in the spiritual atmosphere of an open heaven.
  2. Engage in our spirit and heart, the spiritual dimension.
  3. Engage in the Heavenly realms – in the Father’s garden and other places He may take you.
  4. Engage God’s heart in eternity, outside of time and space.

When we engage the Father in four different dimensions we create a window where eternity (what was before there was) can manifest here and now to create what will be; so the end and beginning will be in agreement and history will unfold in alignment with the heart of the Father.

Let’s practice the first of those now with an activation based on a story Jesus told. We can all encounter the loving Father just as the prodigal son did, be accepted and given a ring of sonship.

I call these practice exercises ‘activations’ because they activate our imagination, which is the ‘screen’ on which we ‘see’ what is happening in the spirit. In all activations, relax, breathe deeply, loose your body from tension and loose your mind from over-analysing. Focus your conscious thoughts on whatever you are seeking to engage, but don’t strive to see visually; just go with what forms in your imagination when it is focused on the Father (or at other times it might be on Jesus or on the Holy Spirit).

You may be aware of having thoughts, of seeing, hearing, feeling, sensing or knowing cognitively – or not – but your spirit will always receive more than you are consciously aware of. Our spirits process different revelation at different rates, but at some future time you will eventually discover that you know something without being aware of when you acquired that knowledge: your spirit has digested what it received by revelation and has communicated it to your consciousness.

Prodigal son and loving Father

So he got up and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him (Luke 15:20).

Relax. Focus on the Father, who has been waiting for you to come to Him. Close your eyes if you can (read through the following paragraphs first, or listen to the audio version – at least the first 5 minutes, the full 10 if possible!).

Now think of Your loving heavenly Father running towards you, welcoming you with open arms to embrace and kiss you. That is what God longs to do with you! Let that image form in your imagination.

But there may be some obstacles in the way, some issues that come between you and prevent you engaging the Father in that way. Allow any obstacles, any negative thoughts or negative emotions, to come to your mind. Take sin, guilt, shame, condemnation, disappointment, inadequacy, worry, anxiety, fear, disapproval, whatever; put them in a bag and hand them all over to Him.

Let Him embrace you in His arms of love.
Let Him speak words of life over you; words of forgiveness and blessing.
Feel His love penetrate deeply into your heart.

Let Him clothe you with His love.
Let Him put a ring of sonship on your finger.
Feel the joy and pleasure of His heart for you.
Let Him release His love, joy and peace to you.

Let Him draw you deeper into His heart.
Let Him reveal more of His love for you.

Stay there as long as you want. If you fall asleep in any of these engagements, don’t worry! The best place to be is in a place of rest, and sometimes when you drift into that edge-of-sleep condition your spirit becomes more open.

Affirmed as sons

When we engage with the Father in this earthly realm under an open heaven, we can also be affirmed as sons:

“Receive my acceptance, affirmation, approval, recognition;
My recommendation, commendation, blessing, endorsement, validation.”

You can hear the Father speak to you as He spoke to Jesus at His baptism: “You are my son; in you I am well pleased. My soul delights in you.” When you hear Him speak words like that to you, don’t fight against them or argue with Him. Receive them. What He speaks over you is the truth.

Jesus went on to have further experiences of engaging with His Father in this realm. It got to the point where He began to shine. He demonstrated what sonship looks like by being transfigured, radiating the light of God. As sons, we will do the same (it is already happening for some). Don’t limit the possibilities. As you engage with the Father, He is transforming you (transform and transfigure are translations of exactly the same Greek word). You are being changed from one degree of glory to another: from human beings to living beings, to spirit beings, to godlike beings.

And the child grew and was strengthened in spirit, being filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him… And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men. (Lk 2:40, 52).

The more we engage with the Father, the more we will grow and mature in wisdom and grace.

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This post is condensed and edited from the first teaching session of the Sons Arise! Engaging The Father conference held at the Freedom Centre in 2018. When leading the Prodigal Son activation at that event, Mike played Restoration Through Harmony by SML music, as heard in the audio clip above.

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265. Love’s Good News

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott

If we are to fulfil our sonship mandate and bring restoration to the earth, we need to mature as sons and take our places enthroned in the heavenly realms. As we mature, we will grow in confidence in our relationship with Father, Son and Spirit so that we come to know each of them intimately and spontaneously recognise their voices and their shared heart. This will be key as we explore and journey beyond our present knowledge and experience.

A journey of discovery

And there is so much more for us to discover. We are walking with God on a relational journey to discover Him and ourselves, and He will guide us through our experiential encounters with Him. The more I have engaged Him, the more He has exploded out of the box that I was unknowingly trying to put Him in. There are many things He has shown me that I do not yet fully understand cognitively but I park them and move on, trusting that the revelation will be uncovered when the time is right. There have been many things that I was convinced were true that I now realise were merely someone else’s opinions masquerading as objective truth.

We do not need to fear being deceived as long as we are not blindly following man’s DIY doctrines but are checking everything out with God ourselves. Please do not believe something just because I say it, or someone else says it. All of us have the Spirit of Truth Himself in us and with us as our guide. We have Jesus the way, truth and life in us and with us to disciple us. We have our loving Father in us and with us to father us into our sonship. If there is a plumb line we measure and test everything against, then that plumb line is not the Bible (as many of us were taught) but Agape Love, the very nature of God.

The Bible narrative

This does not mean that we reject the Bible. Far from it! It is just that we need to go beyond the limitations of sola scriptura. We need the Truth, the living Word of God, Jesus, as our only mediator.

“We came up with the idea of inerrancy because we needed another mediator between God and man other than Jesus.” – T.F. Torrance.

The Bible’s narrative covers God, Creation, Man, the Fall, redemption and restoration. Various writers contribute to the story, using their own perspectives of their encounters with God and with other people. The love story of God’s relationship with mankind is its overarching theme, the big-picture metanarrative which unites all the micronarratives of smaller themes and individual stories. We are all involved, woven into the story like a big tapestry.

Our own micronarratives derive from those things we believe about ourselves and the world, influenced by the metanarratives we adopt. Everything we believe about ourselves is framed by the bigger picture, paradigm or worldview. The gospel reframes all history in a light that directly affects our own stories.

Choices

No one really has free will. We are all influenced by something. What we do all have is choice. Religion of all types is a type of metanarrative that frames people’s lives from the particular viewpoint that they have been exposed to. If we have been around Christians for any length of time, that applies to us, too.

So what is it that influences our choices and frames our lives? A set of values, ideals or principles revealed in a book (that may be called the Bible, Torah, Koran or Veda etc.) or a personal, experiential, love relationship with God? God desires all of us to have a face to face relationship with Him.

Religion hates that idea. It fears subjective, experiential relationship and seeks to impose external checks and balances upon us. Without an objective reference point, it expects that we will fall into skewed DIY behaviour and selfish, man-centred micronarratives. Religion thrives on law and on the identity derived from a set of shared behaviours which line up with that law.

But there is nothing to fear when a love relationship with God gives us a healthy understanding of our true identity.

Just like our Dad

It is our responsibility to discover who we really are, and who God made us to be. We will find our identity, position and authority by beholding God in the mirror of a face to face relationship that fully reveals our sonship. We are called to be restored into that image and to participate in the restoration of all things. Creation is waiting to be set free from its bondage to decay into the freedom of our glory as sons.

“Jesus is God’s mind made up about us” (Francois du Toit, Ephesians 1:4 Mirror Bible). If our thinking does not line up with His, then our thinking needs to be renewed. This is what metanoia (repentance) really means.

When we know our true identity we will express God’s love through our lives in ministering to others. To be a follower of Jesus is to be part of the story by being the good news, not just in our behaviour, in our outward actions, but also in how our story reveals our value and worth as a son of God; in how it reveals just how much we are loved.

Then, much of our story will be that of our restoration from brokenness. The truth of love’s good news will be embedded into the fabric of our being; we will sum up our love stories, not in a superficial “Jesus loves me” kind of way, but in a way that emphasises accepting and embracing our brokenness and fragmentation, retelling our story of receiving ever greater levels of healing and peace in a way that releases hope to others.

God does not expect us to be perfect (and so condemn us to the bondage of continual, repeated failure because we feel obligated to an external standard of perfection). He wants us to mature through an internal desire to be sons who are just like our loving Dad.

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264. Relationship Replaced

Mike Parsons
and Jeremy Westcott –

A book they didn’t have

If you have spent any time at all in evangelical Christianity, you have probably been taught something like this:

“The Bible is ‘God-breathed’ (2 Timothy 3:16). The human authors wrote exactly what God wanted them to write, and the result was the perfect and holy Word of God (Psalm 12:6; 2 Peter 1:21).” [1]

As we saw last time, the Bible makes no such claims for itself. The verses quoted are not talking about ‘the Bible’ at all. Jesus is the Word of God, so to describe the Bible as the ‘Word of God’ (especially with a capital ‘W’) is little short of idolatry. We can all have an intimate face to face relationship with the Living Word of God – Jesus – today. Sadly, for many believers, knowledge of the Bible has replaced that intimate relationship with God Himself.

“It’s difficult to expect the same fruit of the early church when we value a book they didn’t have more than the Holy Spirit they did have.” – Bill Johnson[2]

The Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit will lead us to Jesus (the Truth and Living Word of God) who leads us to the Father in relationship:

“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you” (John 14:26).

“I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come” (John 16:12-13).

Jesus promised that more revelation would come through the Holy Spirit. There is no end to that revelation, no caveat that says ‘until the Bible is complete’. Is it possible that God never intended to limit revelation of who He is to the books of what we call the Old and New Testaments? Should the Bible ever ‘be complete’? Was that God’s intention? Did He even intend for us to have a Bible? Is it possible that insights today can be progressively added by the Holy Spirit?

Questions

I began to ask some questions of myself. I encourage you to do the same.

  • How much of what I believe came through direct face to face encounter with God Himself?
  • How much of what I currently believe has come through other people’s teaching and preaching?
  • How much of what I currently believe has come through my own study, leaning on my own understanding, and therefore comes through the confirmation-biased filter of my pre-existing knowledge?
  • How many things that I currently believe are different from the understanding that I have previously held? What are those things?
  • What do I now believe that contradicts something I strongly believed in the past?
  • How much of what I currently believe may change in the future if God continues to renew my mind?

Replacements

In my own conversations with the Father, He made some statements to me about some of the replacements we have made. His intention was to challenge any religious mindset in me. I offer them here so that if any of these statements resonate with you, or if they arouse anger, indignation or some other strong emotional response, you can take them back to the Father, ask Him why and ask Him to reveal the truth of His heart.

Relationship has been replaced by religion
The Spirit has been replaced by a book
The Living Word has been replaced by the written word
The Truth as a person has been replaced by theological and doctrinal belief systems
Hearing My voice has been replaced by studying a book

The truth of the cross that has reconciled creation has been distorted into a lie that has excluded creation
The perfect picture of love has been twisted to express penal, retributive punishment and torment
The love so perfectly displayed for My children and My creation in the self-sacrifice and offering of My Son has been distorted into a disgusting image of cosmic child abuse
Love that brings life has been perverted into hateful punishment that brings death

The correction and refining that purifies in fire has been replaced by eternal conscious torment
The Perichoresis of a relational loving God has been replaced by Augustinian theology of an angry God
Loving, substitutionary atonement has been replaced by penal, retributive atonement

Restoration has been replaced by punishment
Testing has been replaced by torment
Repentance has become re-penance instead of the renewal of the mind.
The wages of sin have become eternal punishment instead of death
The cross has become penal instead of restorative

Love has been replaced by anger
The grave has been replaced by Hell
The Spirit has been replaced by the letter
The torn veil of the temple has been replaced by the mediatorial coverings of men

Heaven and earth have been separated
An open heaven has been deceptively made a closed heaven
The literal truth of an open heaven has been replaced by analogy and metaphor
Access to heaven through the Way, Truth and Life of Jesus, the Door, has been replaced by access through death
The new covenant of life has been replaced by the old covenant of death

Grace has been replaced by the law
The faith of Jesus has been replaced by faith in Jesus
Salvation by grace has been replaced by the salvation of works
The heavenly priesthood of Melchizedek has been replaced by the earthly Aaronic priesthood

Future fulfilment has replaced past fulfilment
The end of the old covenant has been replaced by the end of the world
The celebration and joy of love have been replaced by the tribulation of fear
Victory has been replaced by rescue
The restoration of all things has been replaced by the destruction of all things

The new heavens and new earth, representing a new temple wineskin, has been replaced by the literal destruction of the world
Parousia of presence has been replaced by parousia of coming
Inclusion has been replaced by exclusion
Reconciliation has been replaced by separation

Preaching the good news of Jesus in people has been replaced by preaching the bad news of exclusion among people
The priesthood of all believers has been replaced by the priesthood of one believer

The bride has replaced the wife: the marriage has been made future not past
The present New Jerusalem on earth has been replaced by a future New Jerusalem coming out of heaven
The past resurrection has been replaced with a future resurrection
The past judgment of the cross declaring that all are innocent has been replaced with a future judgment of only the guilty

‘All are made alive in Christ’ [inclusive] has been replaced by ‘only those in Christ are made alive’ [exclusive]
‘All will confess Jesus as Lord’ has been replaced by ‘some will confess Jesus as Lord’
Being ‘born from above’ has been replaced with being ‘born again’
Being ‘born from above’ through the resurrection has been replaced by being ‘born again’ by praying a prayer of salvation

Salvation of all by grace through the gift of Jesus’ faith has been replaced by the salvation of some by their own faith

Take it back to Him

I am not asking you whether you agree or disagree. Whatever your response as you read through that list, I encourage you to take it back to the Father.

Ask the Living Word of God, Jesus, to give you a true revelation of Himself as the Truth and to deconstruct any pillar of sola scriptura from your mind.

Invite the Truth, Jesus, to deconstruct any lies you believe about the Bible, God, others and yourself.

[1] source: www . gotquestions.org
[2]When Heaven Invades Earth by Bill Johnson, Destiny Image Publishers 2013.

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