religion – Sons of Issachar

406. Recognise the Finished Work of Jesus

Mike Parsons

The Bible was

At that time, the Bible was still the living Word of God for me—not Jesus. I saw the Bible as the Word that washed me, not Jesus. I relied on the Bible to separate my soul and spirit, rather than allowing Jesus to do it. I used the Bible as a mirror to see myself, rather than looking to Jesus or the Father.

Jesus, mediator of a New Covenant

During this process, I was presenting myself in the heavenly tabernacle as a living sahttps://freedomarc.blog/2014/01/21/present-a-living-sacrifice-3-practice/crifice, prepared by me, acting as my own high priest. Now, that might sound bizarre, but when I first received this revelation and began engaging in the heavenly tabernacle, this is what I thought I was doing.

I approached the laver—a basin used for washing—which I understood to have a bronze, mirror-like surface. I used it as a mirror to wash myself through the Bible, performing the role of my own high priest. I consumed the showbread as biblical food, again as my own high priest. I sought wisdom from the light of the menorah, the Bible, instead of Jesus. I engaged the altar, refining myself through the Bible, all the while acting as my own high priest.

In truth, all of this was a self-reliant, religious duty—a “do-it-yourself” form of faith. The reality, as I later came to understand, is that I am not my own high priest—Jesus is. Hebrews 6:20 makes it clear: “Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.” Jesus is the mediator of the New Covenant, not me. I made no covenant with God—Jesus did.

Deeply ingrained religious mindsets

My deconstruction was revealing God’s grace and the finished work of Jesus, and that was challenging my old covenant thinking. My “do-it-yourself” religious mindset had trapped me and severely limited my ability to truly know God and my original, authentic self.

Now, that might sound really odd to you, and you may never have approached things in this way. I would certainly encourage you not to. However, it shows how deeply ingrained these mindsets can be, distorting our view of God and His work. Only when those limitations and restrictions were removed could I begin to discover my true origin, identity and destiny as a son of God. It was then I began to see how powerful the finished work of Jesus truly is.

Jesus accomplished everything on our behalf so we don’t need to rely on our own efforts. He died for me, and as me, so I died. He was resurrected for me, so I was resurrected. He ascended for me and I ascended. Jesus established the New Covenant for me and included me in it. He is my high priest, he is my mediator—I don’t have to do it myself. Jesus did everything necessary to restore the whole cosmos, reconciling everyone, corporately. We are not required to achieve this individually in our own strength. He has accomplished it on behalf of all mankind; he took away the sin of the entire cosmos.

Renewing the mind

We may need to transition into a renewed mindset because most of us have likely been programmed by some form of works-based mentality. Even if it wasn’t specifically religious works, cultural influences can drive us to succeed and build our identity around what we achieve. Transitioning from an old to a new mindset requires a deep deconstruction—a process of renewing the mind. it is a process, that is the key.

It’s a process that God orchestrates and that he leads us through. It is relational, and through this relationship, our thinking about God—and everything else—begins to change. Old restrictive doctrines and theological mindsets need to be replaced by a relational lifestyle of face-to-face innocence with God. This is the amazing truth of the relationship He has invited us into.

No need to fear deception

Through this, we can learn to trust our Father to father us without fear of deception. Personally, I struggled with a deep fear of “getting it wrong.” This fear was instilled in me through the belief that everything had to be done strictly “by the Bible,” as the Bible was my sole source of security against error and deception.

The reality, however, is that every Christian sect or cult uses the Bible in some way, so relying on it alone for safety didn’t truly protect me from deception. I believed the Bible was God’s Word: all of it was infallible, inspired, and entirely inerrant, and I thought that following it would keep me safe. But whose version was I following? Whose interpretation of the Bible was I basing my life on?

These questions were hard to face because I had been conditioned to think otherwise. In truth, that belief system itself was the deception that was keeping me religiously bound in fear, unable to move beyond the Bible. I was afraid that if I went beyond its pages, I’d fall into some weird error or be led astray. This is a fear shared by many people I have spoken to: their families and friends often worry that they are going off into some error or cult-like movement, because they are no longer going to church or no longer reading their Bible in the same way they once did.

But the fear of deception is itself a powerful form of deception that keeps us locked up. We don’t need to live in fear of deception, because we have the Holy Spirit of Truth within us, guiding us. Jesus, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, is also in us and with us, discipling us. Our loving Father is within us, fathering us into our true identity as sons and daughters. And if we measure everything against agape love, we won’t stray far. Love is the ultimate standard, and if we root everything in love, we can trust the process.

This video blog is an excerpt from Mike's current teaching series, Restoring First Love. Get the full length videos every month, only at eg.freedomarc.org/first-love

Close your eyes,
Slow down your thinking,
Rest—rest in love.
As you are breathing in,
And breathing out,
The very breath of God.

And as you rest in love,
Let the unconditional love of God
Rest on you.

Open your heart,
Open your mind,
Ask the Father to reveal:
“Are there any Old Covenant mindsets,
Any Old Covenant belief systems,
Still operating?
Is there any mixture of covenants
In your heart?

Open up your heart to listen
That the Father could show you.

And if there is anything
That’s a mixture of covenants
In your experience
Just hand it over to him.

Take off those old covenant mindsets
And clothes, if you like,
And hand them over to the Father.

And let Him clothe you
In robes of righteousness,
Let Him clothe you
In new covenant grace,
In mercy,
In unconditional love.

343. The Power of Intention

Mike Parsons

It comes down a lot to intention and how you focus your intention to bring about the outcome that you desire. Most people struggle with this because they’re trying to overcome a negative way of thinking, a negative mindset, a belief system, or even the facts.

Encounter truth

For instance, if you’re looking for a change in health, and the doctors say you have a particular condition, but you choose to believe in a reality where you don’t have it, you often feel doubt or unbelief. You might wonder how to get rid of this diagnosis or how to renew your mind. To be honest, you can’t really renew your own mind. Your mind gets renewed by encountering truth, which changes the lies you’ve believed. The more you encounter truth, the less hold the lies have on you because you realise they aren’t true.

In my relationship with God, the things I believed about myself, the world, and God were programmed into me by religion, culture, and upbringing. It wasn’t enough for me to just read the Bible or to try and think differently. The more I tried to think differently against something I previously believed, the more I focused on trying not to believe it.

When considering how to change your thinking to believe something different and operate out of that belief system, it requires encounters to change. It isn’t enough to have facts or information. I found that when I’ve encountered God, these encounters radically challenged what I previously believed, and the encounters changed my beliefs. If God had just told me something, it might not have been enough because I wouldn’t have experienced it. He has said many things to me that took a long time for me to realise because it’s only through experience that I could come into that reality.

An infinite number of choices

When it comes to choosing a reality, quantum physics indicates that if you choose something, the universe responds to you, or creation responds to you, and begins to manifest that. The problem is, you have an infinite number of choices every second of every day. Which ones do you make? Usually, you make the ones aligned with what you already expect to happen. So most people keep getting what they’ve always got because they align their choices with what they’ve always expected to happen. If you want something different, you have to learn to focus on that one thing and exclude all other possibilities so they no longer exist in your expectation.

Manifesting the desired reality

This is what hope is about—manifesting something. You’re essentially saying, “Here are all these possibilities, and I’m going to narrow them down and choose one to the exclusion of all the others.” In a quantum physics sense, what happens is that choice, out of all the others, collapses the wave function into that reality. All other possibilities cease to exist at that moment until the next moment. If you continually choose each moment to focus your intention on that, eventually, you won’t believe anything else, and that’s when it begins to manifest.

There is usually a period between choosing that reality and it becoming what you truly believe rather than just what you want. There’s a huge difference between wanting something to happen and totally believing it is going to happen. That’s where intention needs to be focused, and you need to be able to focus that intention consistently.

By continually focusing your intention, eventually nothing else will hold your belief, and you will find that the desired reality begins to manifest.

281. Scroll of Destiny: Just Being

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

What He saw the Father doing

Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in the same way.” (John 5:19).

We used to think of our Scroll of Destiny as having everything we are supposed to do written on it, and that we needed to see it to know what to do. I do not believe that anymore. I probably would have thought that way initially, and even taught it, but as I have discovered my relationship with God and discovered who I am, I am now just learning to rest, and be, and go with the flow.

Jesus only did what He saw the Father doing. It was not that He had a huge scroll with the detail of every miracle He was going to do written on it: what was on His scroll was “Here is My Son: I am in His heart and He is in My heart”. When we have that relationship then that state of being releases a flow of everything we do.

Mandate for the day

I used to go to God every day and ask what my mandate was for the day. After a while He simply would not give me any information about that: He stopped me from doing, in order to teach me to be. He just hugged me, for months. In the end, I stopped asking “what are we going to do?” because I started to enjoy being, and being in His presence, without the agenda. We tend to think God has an agenda that He is wanting us to accomplish. Rather, He wants relationship; and from that relationship, everything flows.

Now I am not looking anymore for my mandate for the day or how I am going to fulfil it. That was just putting myself under pressure, which removes the joy. Life is to be enjoyed and that enjoyment comes from relaxing and knowing the Father’s heart, and just being. Just being is so much more important than focusing on what I can do, what I need to do next and how to do it.

It became almost formulaic, and that is not how God intends our lives to be. If all we have is a formula, we will end up doing things in our own strength. Now I would say that it is far more important to have that union with the Father in which He reveals His heart for us. If we know who we are, then we do not need to do something written on a scroll. He wants to reveal His heart to us so that we can express His heart in a much more relational way. If we have a relational perspective rather than a performance perspective, we will not end up feeling like we are a slave to our destiny: “I have to fulfil it, or else…”

We do not have to get into guilt and shame over whether or not we have done certain things today. It is not about what we did or didn’t do, or what we did wrong. If we are constantly thinking that we have somehow ‘missed it’, that will draw us back into works rather than grace. It is not as if He cannot rewrite the script to enable His purposes to be fulfilled, in ways which are beyond our ability to understand. God is going to bring good out of everything, even the things where we may not have heard clearly (or even at all). He has it all in hand.

I used to think I would one day have to give account for all those things I haven’t fulfilled. I don’t buy into that anymore. God gives us a continual purification of that scroll of our life, and when we choose poorly or with wrong motive He does not hold it against us. We have come to understand that, contrary to what we may have been told, ‘carrot and stick’, punishment and reward, are not His way of doing things. He shares His heart and inspires and encourages us. He continually enables us to walk in our destiny: and it is more about who we are than what we do.

Predetermined, predestined

So I don’t believe that our scroll of destiny is a list of achievements that we need to accomplish. I think it is much more about our alignment with the heart of God in who we are as creative beings. That allows us to outwork our destiny in multiple different ways, rather than there being the one way which is the right way, predetermined and predestined.

What was predestined was relationship. We are predestined to a restored face-to-face relationship, not for a whole series of things that we should be trying to do. All the Father is looking for is relationship, in which we’re sharing heart together. He is unveiling His heart and intentions to us: we cooperate and outwork that through who He has made us to be. Every day, Jesus saw what the Father was doing and cooperated with it. And, like Him, we can do so in a very creative way. That is one reason why Jesus healed people in so many different ways. I think He was trying to get over the point that there is no formula: you have the Father’s heart, now express it through who you are.

I am only responsible to be who I am created to be. Everything else will flow out of that. So I fix my eyes on Jesus and on the Father and then I find that I just walk out every day and enjoy it. Life is so much more enjoyable when I am not pressured to perform some duty or obligation that religion has put on me: “You should be praying every day, reading the Bible every day, witnessing every day. You should be doing this, you shouldn’t be doing that…” The Father is the one who is going to direct me every day, and He does not give me specific directions very often, other than “Hey, let’s walk together” or “Let me show you something.”

Freely we receive

We tend to put a higher value on religious activities than God does. He would rather we learn to be an expression of love in every situation than get caught up in performance of any sort. Let’s not underestimate the value of love. Someone may appear to have done nothing in their life but love their family, yet He places such a high value on that. Let’s focus on being an expression of love ourselves.

This means we do not judge anyone else or where they are on their journey. When we rest in love, we can be an expression of love ourselves. Freely we receive, freely we give (see Matthew 10:8); so let’s make sure we freely receive, otherwise we have nothing to give. For a lot of people, they are wanting to give because the Bible says so or they are conditioned to believe they should, when they have never really focused on receiving, and being, and experiencing, and knowing the unconditional love the Father has for them. It is hard to love unconditionally if you have never really experienced unconditional love yourself.

A place of rest

Now all this is not to say that God doesn’t have things for us to accomplish in relationship with Him; but it is the way we do it rather than a series of things that we have to fulfil. I have engaged with the heart of God, discovering who I am and discovering that state of being at rest, that state of consciousness which is an awareness of the heart of God.

If we are trying to get our identity from the things we do, that will always result in feelings of condemnation because we will never do enough to satisfy ourselves. God just wants us to be, and the more we can just be, the more everything flows out of being. That is a wonderful state, such a place of rest: all the striving, all the performance, everything goes.

That place of rest is filled with joy. I just don’t find a lot of religion that is filled with joy: there is such pressure to perform and to avoid failure. We are never going to meet some magical mark of perfect performance. So let’s receive grace and mercy every day and know there is no mark to attain. We do have a destiny, but it is to be who we are. Bring it back to that simple thought: my destiny is to be the ‘me’ that God created me to be.

If I focus on how much transformation is still needed, that can put pressure on me, because I am not there yet. If I just enjoy being where I am and continue the journey, it will take me to where I will be. The journey itself is important, not a series of destinations, because it is a journey of relationship and that journey will inevitably bring me to a completely fully restored perspective.

The ‘me’ I am at the moment, I know, is not the ‘me’ that I will eventually be. But from God’s perspective I already am, because that is how He sees me. He does not see me the way I see myself or the way others see me. And when I agree with how He sees me, it enables me to become like that.

But He already sees me that way now, which is why He smiles. When I look into His face I see no condemnation of where I am, just the love and pleasure of His heart because He wants relationship. That is His highest agenda.

This post is based on Mike’s answers to questions in two YouTube Mystic Mentoring sessions:
Monday 26th July 2021 UK and Thursday 19th August 2021 US EST.

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280. Are We There Yet?

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. (2 Peter 3:8).

Someone on a Mystic Mentoring session recently asked about this scripture, and about the seventh millennium (seventh day) therefore being a season of rest.

Personally, I don’t really hold too much to the ‘thousand years as seasons’ theory, that now we’re in the 7^th millennium, we are in the season of rest. That is just adding up the years in the biblical genealogies and has little to do with reality.

But I do think rest is something which is built into creation, and it was previously revealed as one day in seven but now as all seven days. We have entered into Jesus: He is the rest and He is the fulfilment of all the promises. So we live in every day being a new day (so for me, we live in the eighth day, not the seventh). Every day is a new day, a new beginning. Every day has fresh mercies. Every day we live in rest and that is perpetual replenishment or restoration.

Light is slowing down

It does not say that a day is a thousand years, just that a day is like a thousand years. Everything in terms of time is related to the speed of light; and the speed of light has been slowing down as it has moved away from the speed of creative light. This was discovered by a couple of Christian astrophysicists, Trevor Norman and Barry Setterfield, who put together a scientific paper on the slowing down of the speed of light. It is really difficult to get a paper like that published when it has to be peer reviewed, because if it doesn’t agree with what scientists already believe then they won’t publish it. To start with, it wasn’t accepted and they were called cranks, but eventually some more mainstream scientists also discovered that light was slowing down.

They extrapolated that, at the speed of light in the beginning, seven days then would equate to something over 13 billion years now. But since it is relative to the observer, we would never know. That explains why the earth appears to be older than adding up the years in the Bible account would suggest: because it is! For man that has only appeared to be 7000 years because of the relativity of the speed of light.

So science actually indicates that the earth is not just 7000 years old, and in any case, no-one knows how long Adam and Eve lived before they fell and time really kicked in – time did not function in the same way as it does today until they stepped outside of God’s eternal now. Things changed significantly at that point on the earth.

This is not about there being a long period of evolution: I do not believe in evolution. Man was created and the animals were created, but the earth is not just 7000 years old either. Both can be true. People come up with all sorts of theories to account for any discrepancies, but I would prefer to focus on the fact that we can live in rest as a state of being (rather than just a period of rest associated with the 7^th millennium).

Rest

What does it mean to be in rest? For me it is about not functioning under the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and therefore not functioning in works. Rest is the opposite of works, so when we live in the rest of what Jesus has done we don’t have to work for our own redemption and reconciliation. That has been done, so we rest in it: we can just be, we don’t have to do.

Everything in religion is about doing: you have to ‘do’ to earn rest. You work for six days so you can earn your rest for the seventh day. No, we are living in perpetual Sabbath. Essentially, we are continually in rest because now, Jesus is our rest.

“Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28).

That is the key for us, living in a state of being which is not functioning in an old system of works and therefore not being deceived into having to work for God’s favour and blessing; receiving it as His children through grace and mercy, not by works.

Every religious system will get you to try to do something to earn what you already have. So you just go round and round, because you already have it and doing something won’t actually make that true, it just stops you from realising that it is already true.

Are we there yet?

It’s like when you are travelling with your children and they keep asking, ‘Are we there yet?’ In religion, it’s always ‘not yet’. For some, it will be in this period or that period a thousand years in the future – it is coming, it’s just ‘not yet’. And to get there, you’ve got to do this and you’ve got to do that, otherwise it won’t happen. This just messes people up, gets them into a performance-orientated way of living, and so they don’t enjoy life. They are continually striving for something that already belongs to them; and if they would just stop, they would discover what it is to receive and be at rest.

We are already unconditionally loved and forgiven and everything has been accomplished, so we can live in rest and discover our true identity as sons from that place of rest, rather than doing all the things we are doing to prove we are sons.

The restoration of all things

With religion, you get a lot of ‘shoulds’. You should do this, you should do that. There are no ‘shoulds’. There is no ‘should do’ anything, it is just being. And then everything flows from being.

If we are in the seventh millennium, then why isn’t there rest? The world doesn’t exactly seem to be in the throes of rest. For most people, things are just as bad as they were in the sixth millennium. It is not as if we have crossed over into this millennium and now everything is at rest. That really doesn’t seem to be the experience of most people.

So it is better to just focus on each individual living in rest, which will in turn bring rest to the planet. If we live in freedom, then the planet will become free (and not just the planet, but the whole of creation). So it’s about us as sons living in rest; being rather than doing. That will dial everything down so that all (all people, all beings, all things throughout creation) can begin to discover God’s original intention and purpose for them, which is what will be restored in the restoration of all things.

This post is based on Mike’s answer to a question on his YouTube channel: Mystic Mentoring Monday 9^th August 2021 US Pacific.

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266. A Happy Eschatology

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

The restoration of all things is not a one-off event but a continual process that God does with us, in us and through us as His sons. I believe that as co-heirs we are involved in, and carry responsibility for, the restoration of all things; in particular for the restoration of creation.

What I thought I knew

How the Bible frames our understanding of the future will greatly influence what we believe about our sonship and what is possible in restoration. Our expectations of the future will also determine what we believe about the part we can play in it.

If we believe that God is going to destroy the heavens and the earth with fire, as many do, that will inevitably affect how we see our responsibility to steward the planet and its resources. If we believe in a defeatist, rapture ‘rescue of the church’ into heaven, then there will be little point in looking for the kingdom to fill the earth in victory.

We often have confirmation bias: we already know what the Bible says, so when we read it, it just confirms what we already know. More study will not fix this. Only face-to-face encounters with God Himself can get us free from that biased view. Some of my encounters with God have been traumatic: for about 5 years it seemed like every time I thought I knew something, I would have an encounter with God which totally challenged what I thought I knew.

Religion continues to misrepresent God; but He is looking to undo the damage that religion has done to our perception of Him so that we will see Him as He really is, as Jesus revealed Him to be. Only the lens of love will enable us to see the true nature of God and how that underlies the restoration of all things. God desires restoration, and all His desires are birthed in love. Love causes restoration.

Happy endings?

When we use love as our plumb line it is easier to decide which doctrinal truths and theological positions are aligned with God being love and which are the man-made deceptions of a religious mindset. If we are to participate fully in the restoration of all things and the expansion of God’s kingdom as sons, we will want to embrace an eschatology which allows for creation being set free from corruption within that restoration: this is variously called a happy, realised, fulfilled or covenant eschatology.

Many of the positions people take are paradoxical or even contradictory, but they all use the Bible to prove that they are right. So did I! Now I have to own up and say ‘Sorry, I got it wrong’. Revelation is progressive, and I was only going on the revelation that I had (and of course, others are only going on the revelation they have too). God does not mind that along our journey we may have believed a whole variety of delusions, illusions, lies and deceptions. Still, He wants us to know Him; and in knowing Him He wants us to have the revelation of unveiled truth, so that truth can set us free.

Three streams

In conversation with God, He told me that there are three streams coming together. At present, there are a handful of people who flow with two of those streams, and even fewer who embrace all three. For now, each is mostly blind to the direction that the others are coming from but they will merge in the flow of the restoration of all things.

The Christian Universalists are travelling towards both a realised eschatology and an open heaven mystical flow.
The mystics are travelling towards a realised eschatology and universal restoration.
The realised eschatologists are travelling towards the mystical and the restoration of all things position.

Most eschatological systems have far from happy endings, involving expectations of fearful judgment, doom, gloom, destruction and failure for mankind and the rest of creation. In ‘happy eschatology’, prophecies of doom and gloom, judgment and destruction are seen as already fulfilled, leading to a restorative period in which all things can be restored. The future is positive and filled with possibilities of increase and blessing.

No fear for the future

When looking to our Bibles to see what the future holds, there are a number of factors we need to bear in mind:

all the events of the New Testament were future to the Old Testament writers
everything Jesus prophesied was future to those He was speaking to at the time, but
what was future to Old Testament writers, to Jesus’ first century listeners and to New Testament writers may not be future to us today – it may have already occurred.

There is no fear for the future based on Biblical prophecy when the prophesied events are already in the past for us. All biblical references to the end, the last days, the end times, the last hour and soon to take place refer not to the destruction of the world, but to the end of the old covenant age. This was the ‘end’ that Jesus prophesied would occur in the generation to which He was speaking.

To us, in the 21st century:

The prophesied end is past, not future.
The end of the old heavens and earth (i.e. the old covenant system of laws, temple and sacrifice) is past, not future.
The new heavens and the new earth (the new covenant) is present, not future.
The great tribulation is past, not future (this does not mean that there will never be any tribulation again throughout history, merely that any tribulation experienced will not be a fulfilment of this specific Bible prophecy).
The end of the age is past, not future.
Judgment and resurrection are past, not future.
The lake of fire is past, not future.

Revelation and Daniel

Most of the difficulties people encounter today with the book of Revelation and Daniel’s 70 weeks prophecy come from trying to make them fit current (or future) events.

In reality, Revelation is John’s first-hand account of a heavenly encounter. He was shown the events Jesus spoke about, recorded in Luke 21 and Matthew 24, which happened in that generation just as He said they would.

The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bond-servants, the things which must soon take place (Rev 1:1, my emphasis).

Revelation is full of such time references which should clue us in to the immediacy of the time frame:

tachus means quickly, all at once, with all speed, without delay.
engys means “at hand, near”
mello means “about to, on the point or verge of”

Daniel’s 70 weeks prophecy also happened in that generation (including the 70th week). Daniel connected the eschatological time of the “end” with events such as the desolation of the temple, the resurrection, the tribulation, the coming of the Son of Man and the arrival of the kingdom. All those events would take place when the city and temple were destroyed or “when the power of the holy people would be completely shattered”; “all these things” (not just some of them) would be fulfilled together (see the consummation scenes in Dan. 12:1-7; Dan. 7:13-14, 18, 27; 9:24-27).

The period of restoration of all things

‘As in the days of Noah’ happened in that generation
Believers fled from Jerusalem to the mountains in that generation
The judgment and resurrection happened in that generation
The kingdom was established in that generation

“Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (Matt 24:34).

That generation ended in 70 AD with the destruction of the temple and the very end of the old covenant. The period of the restoration of all things began in that generation… and continues in the new covenant age in which we live.

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This post is based in part on Mike’s introduction to ‘Happy Eschatology’ from our intensive ‘The Restoration of All Things‘ held in June 2019. A lively discussion session ensued!

Also check out Mike’s book ‘The Eschatology of the Restoration of All Things‘

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.