Tag: revelation

173. Godly Trading Floors – Trading (3)

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

In the last two posts we have looked at the negative side of trading, at the deals we may have done with the enemy. Now, although this is not really part of the Transformation series, in this post I want to write about the positive side.

When Ian Clayton first began to talk about trading, some people were confused because they didn’t quite grasp what it meant. The fact is that we all trade, but we might have other terminology we use for it. Trading is about offering something in exchange for something else. It may be money, or goods, or other physical things, but it may also be love, a promise of God, your life, even the blood of Jesus. At its simplest, it is covenant exchange. When I enter into a covenant relationship with God, then what is mine belongs to Him and what is His belongs to me.

Just as there are different demonic trading floors, there are also different godly ones. For example, when I take a an offering and offer it to God, I actually go to the treasury room in heaven, where Melchizedek presides in his capacity as Chancellor.

Sowing and reaping

We have taught financial trading for many years as the principle of sowing and reaping. God promises increase on what we sow: we bring that promise with us and exchange it for its fulfilment, for what we will reap. It gives us access to the hundredfold return (or even the thousandfold of Deuteronomy 1.11, which I prefer).

Effectively, we can trade on God’s word. If we find a promise in the scriptures, or if He has given us a promise in person, we can go and ask that He actually complies with it. He doesn’t mind that: He likes to be reminded of what He has said. By faith we engage it and use His word to bring us into covenant exchange. Since God has spoken it, and we are in Christ in the new covenant, then it belongs to us.

For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us (2 Cor 1:20).

We can use a scripture like that to trade with. We can go, because we are in Christ, and receive those promises. That is an exchange, a trade.

The Blood and the Cross

I trade mostly using the body and blood of Jesus in communion, trading that for transformation in my own life and resonating with the frequency of God. It is really me giving everything to Him and Him giving everything back to me, multiplied, and for His purposes (not mine). As we have seen before, the cross is the most important place of exchange for us. At the cross we can exchange our sin for forgiveness, unrighteousness for righteousness, old for new, sickness for health, and more.

Trading on the sea of glass

We know the importance of the motives and desires of our heart. We need to ensure that whatever we are looking for when we come to God is rooted in a pure desire to bring glory, honour and blessing to Him. It is not about elevating or promoting us, about giving us a name: we are not trading to get something for ourselves: we are trading to see the kingdom of God advance and expand. It is all about Him.

So when someone compliments us, affirms us, or praises us, we can come and bring those things to God. Just as the elders cast their crowns before the throne on the sea of glass (which only looks like glass, by the way), we too can offer Him the plaudits and position that men have accorded us. It is not that other people’s opinion of us has no value, but that we choose to value our relationship and intimacy with the Father, and His affirmation of us, more highly still.

Some of the fire stones are trading floors, where we go and exchange our life and receive back the fruit of the Spirit, or the revelation of the precepts of God.

Living sacrifice

We give our life in exchange for a return. So whenever I surrender as a living sacrifice to God on the altar of incense, I am trading. I am exchanging my old for the new that comes from the revelation of being in relationship with Him and out of the intimacy that I have with Him.

‘It is no longer I that live but Christ lives in me’ (Gal 2:20): I exchange my old life for new life in Him; ‘the life I now live, I live by faith of the Son of God’ – I live in union and in connection with Him

I present myself to Him as an instrument of righteousness. I am dead, I deny myself, and His whole life opens up to me.

Planting in my garden

As I mentioned, we should not get religious about the terminology. One time I got some things out of a giant’s belly, and went and planted them in my garden. Someone asked me why I didn’t go and trade with them on the sea of glass. The answer is that I did what my spirit led me to do. I went and planted something in my garden and it grew, and then off the tree came two silver trumpets. When you plant something in the ground, it dies to you so that God can return things to you as a result – usually in multiplication. One seed is sown into the ground and dies, and yet it brings forth life out of that death, in a multiplied form.

There is one particular application of trading that you may have seen in a meeting. When a speaker has said something and people want to engage in it, they come and give a small amount of money to trade into the revelation: they are honouring that revelation and want to receive blessing from engaging with it. If it reflects the desire of someone’s heart then it can be helpful for them; but personally I have never really felt the need to do it, or to encourage it here.

Keep pursuing Him

We do need to make sure we are coming from purity of heart in these things, because it will cause a multiplication for which we have to be ready. God is so gracious. He does not give us everything we want all in one go, because He knows we do not always have the wisdom to handle it. Even revelation comes in progression, rather than all at once. That way, we will keep pursuing Him and recognizing our dependence on Him rather than thinking, ‘hey, I know everything’. Actually, I probably know less than a billionth of one percent of everything. I just want to know more of Him.

For myself, I only consciously trade when my spirit leads me to do it. It is not something I do all the time as a matter of course, because then it would risk becoming a formula (and I don’t want anything to become a formula, I want to be led by and directed by the Spirit). I want my spirit to engage in what I do, and whatever I do, I want it to be in life. If I do not have faith for it, then I am just doing it according to the letter rather than the spirit, and that is of no benefit at all.

There is an old adage that you can never outgive God. He always outgives us, and that is really where any trade comes.

God will restore

The revelation of heavenly trading has been stalled by events that have happened in human history. For example, God wrote the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone by His own hand: when Moses brought them out of heaven he was on a sapphire trading floor. He was bringing the engagement of the revelation of God into this realm out of heaven. But when he saw the golden calf and all that was going on in the camp, Moses broke the stones – and an understanding of trading on the sapphire trading floor was lost as a result. I believe God is going to restore that revelation knowledge in days to come. He will unveil much more revelation on how to use the trading floors in heaven, and the seven spirits of God will teach us to understand trading in a greater dimension than we yet know.

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Image attribution: The CrossEqualsLove image is Jeremy’s photo of a chalkboard by his daughter Beth Lane at Valley Church, Bamber Bridge, Lancs UK. http://bethwestcott.wix.com/bethanydesign

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172. Seven Trading Floors – Trading (2)

Mike and Deb Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

No Condemnation

We are going to be looking at some difficult subjects in this post. Please do not get drawn into feelings of guilt and condemnation because of anything we write here. Let’s be sure to remember that there is no condemnation for us. The Holy Spirit will certainly bring conviction of sin where sin exists; but we can repent (that is, stop thinking about ourselves [and how we act] according to our own understanding, change our minds and see ourselves the way God does instead), turn from it and renounce it, receive forgiveness and look for transformation.

Ungodly trading

Adam and Eve traded with the accuser and gave their DNA for position and power to be like God (humanism, rationalism). That inclination to ungodly trading was passed on to each one of us.

Whenever we do not seek first God’s kingdom we are trading for ourselves; seeking to be gods of our own lives (just what Adam and Eve were offered). Esau traded his birthright for a bowl of stew, and we trade today on things that are coming tomorrow.

We even need to consider for whose benefit we are doing ministry: the approval of man is temporal, not eternal. In Matthew 6 Jesus spoke about practising righteousness before men, drawing attention to our giving, fasting and praying: there is nothing wrong with these activities except the motive.

Anything we do should be for God, for His glory, not for us. Jesus introduced a new standard, based not on external adherence but on heart motive. Anger equals murder, lust equals adultery; love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you:

“For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5:20).

If our righteousness does not bring glory to God it is not righteousness at all.

Earthly, natural, demonic wisdom

This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing (James 3:15-16)

What source of wisdom influences, motivates and directs our decisions?

  • Whenever we seek to use our own knowledge as opposed to God’s we are falsely trading.
  • Whenever we use a substitute instead of God’s provision we are falsely trading.
  • Whenever the motives of our heart are selfish we are falsely trading

This gives access to the demonic world to influence and affect us, to restrict us and take away our inheritance.

Trading floors

When I first came to teach on this subject, I knew I could not do so without having gone through it in my own life, but I kept putting it off. Ian Clayton was a forerunner in this, and he took 8 months to work through it in his own life. In the end, I did it in three weeks, because I was part way through teaching this series already and I was running out of time. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. I had to recognise how I had been meeting my own needs in my own way, and deal with the reasons for this in my heart.

There are at least seven ungodly trading floors I have recognised. I went through every one of them, asking God on each one how and where I had traded on them. God showed me in detail, and emotionally it was really difficult to deal with it.

Then I needed to outwork my repentance. I asked God to sharpen my conscience so that I would stop if I found myself going down that route again. I have found that with perseverance, it is possible to take captive the thoughts, to recognize the whispers, before I even get on that pathway.

Seven floors

I will just say a few words about each of the trading floors here, but if you would like to work through them in your own life, you may find it helpful to download the full Trading Floors document which you can find here: Negative Trading Floors – Mike Parsons

1.Tyre – money, materialism.

The King of Tyre ransacked and robbed God’s temple, using the gold to build a trading city for his own glory and gain.

This is often about money taken from God and used for our own purposes. This includes areas such as offerings, gambling, financial cheating and debt.

2. Jezebel – manipulation, control, domination, witchcraft

Jezebel was the daughter of Ichbaal (the King of Tyre), who married the King of Israel to gain control of the religious system.

This covers issues such as the use of emotions, politics, sexual wiles, bribery or blackmail, and using substances to alter how we feel.

3. Athaliah – kingly seed

Athaliah was Jezebel’s daughter (or by some accounts, sister-in-law). She married the king of Judah and tried to control the future seed by killing all the possible heirs. She used the political system to usurp authority, and became the only queen Judah ever had.

Poor self-image, believing lies and familiar spirits, and masonic involvement all belong to this trading floor.

The King of Tyre, Jezebel and Athalia were all Baal worshippers – involved in idolatry, the cult of fertility, sensuality and child sacrifice.

4. Cain – murder

Cain was the son of satan, serpent seed, who murdered Abel his half-brother because of jealousy and the nature he inherited from satan.

This is not only physical attacks, but any kind of anger, character assassination, accusations, and selfishness.

5. Delilah – seduction

She offered pleasure and gratification, seducing Samson in order to rob him of his destiny.

This trading floor is where we find people living in a fantasy (especially romantic or sexual), finding ways to gain (or hang on to) acceptance, approval, or affirmation; and a lust for money, power or influence.

6. Leviathan – gossip, lies, deception

A demonic sea creature, a twister.

This is about lying or cheating to make others think better of you; half-truths; self-promotion, looking to impress, gossip… and what are you sharing on Facebook?

7. Apollyon – opposes the gospel

A fallen angel who opposes preaching of the gospel.

Whenever we have watered down the gospel of the kingdom, offered a cheap salvation gospel, been involved with false cults, been ruled by fear or embarrassment, or failed to share the full truth of the gospel for any reason, we have traded on this floor.

But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet and the people are not warned, and a sword comes and takes a person from them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood I will require from the watchman’s hand (Ezek 33:6).

What should we do?

None of this is easy to admit to when we discover it in our lives. But the truth is, we all have it, and plenty of it. It is keeping us from what God has for us. He wants us to come into His glory, but that is impossible with all this in place. We need to get rid of it!

We must be ruthlessly honest about our past, not covering up or pretending. It is really hard to face the horrible things we have done, but the reality is that unless we do we will not be free of them.

Remember that God loves us. His love is a canopy over us, which gives us a safe place to deal with these things. Remember all the things I wrote in the first paragraph of this post. There is no condemnation for us.

This is not easy, but because forerunners have already gone there, they have made it a little less difficult for us (and our doing it will make it a little less difficult for those who follow us). We must:

  • own our past trading and motives
  • confess our trading as sin
  • seek revelation about any family trading that may influence us (we will look at this more fully in a future post on iniquity).

We may find it useful to use this diagram that we have seen before:

Event reactions2

We can use the court system in heaven. The mobile court is a very effective place to deal with all this:

  • Accept the accusation and receive God’s judgment for our own and our family’s trading
  • Repent and renounce false trading (be very specific)
  • Be separated from false trading
  • Invite God to activate our ‘reverence’ and ‘fear of God’ spiritual gates, so that our ‘conscience’ gate will be sensitive and activated.

Armed with this revelation and experience, in future we may recognise when we are going down the route towards negative trading. The earlier we can catch ourselves (or hear the Holy Spirit’s warning) and turn around, the better. We really want to get to the point where our conscience kicks in right away, so that negative trading is no longer even an option for us.

This is all part of the process of renewing our mind so that we can be transformed into the image of Jesus.

Courtroom Prayer

Before using this prayer, I recommend you work through a section (or even just a few lines) of the full Trading Floors document for yourself, so that you can be very specific about each trading floor, and how you have traded on it.

Father, I thank you that you love me
And that your kingdom is based on righteousness and justice.

By faith I step into the court of accusation.
I face my accusers and I accept and agree that I have wrongly traded.

I accept that I have followed the pathway of the knowledge of good and evil
I accept that I have been influenced and motivated
By earthly, natural and demonic wisdom.
I stand here representing myself and my forefathers, identifying with them.

I repent of and renounce all false trading for myself and my forefathers
(be very specific here about what trading you have recognised).
…
I receive the judgment of God
And I am justified and made righteous through my advocate, Jesus.
I release the judgment of God against my adversaries and accusers.
I receive a mandate to be separated from all false trading.

I step back into this realm
With the authority to identify and reject
All demonic, natural and earthly influences and motives.

I choose to be identified as your son
Walking in the light
Following heavenly wisdom on the earth.

Next Post: Godly Trading Floors
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171. Information for Elevation – Trading (1)

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

The deception we are living in. 

We find it hard to judge ourselves. We are used to thinking the way we do, used to meeting our own needs in our own ways. But God will go deeper, revealing and judging the thoughts and intentions of our hearts. By revelation of His word and His Spirit He will show us the reality of our motives.

Search me thoroughly, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way (Psalm 139:23-24).

The difference between how we see ourselves and how God sees us is the deception we are living in.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil

Picture10

Our motives are formed by past experience and decisions, in our own lives and in those of our ancestors. Our hearts bear the record of previous generational blood line decisions, and we may have been programmed through generational patterns of iniquity. These in turn form patterns within our hearts.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the pathway and source of all self. Its roots are sourced from satan’s trading, ‘I will ascend, I will be like God’. Trading is a pathway we follow when we seek to meet our own need. The fruit of this tree is always shiny on the outside, but it is death to us. If we could see beneath the attractive skin, see the rottenness and poison within, we would never fall for satan’s seductive lies.

Trading is exchange. It is based on the desires of our hearts, which are corrupted by sin in our nature, from Adam onwards. All sinful trading is rooted in the heart’s desire to be like God. Satan’s was the first negative trade, before time began. The first negative trade on earth was between satan and Adam and Eve: he offered them something and they gave him something in return.

The covering cherub

Over the ark of the covenant were two cherubim with wings outstretched, covering the revelation that came from the Presence of God. When they released their wings, the light of that revelation shone onto the stones that covered their body, and was reflected out into the created order.

Lucifer (one of the covering cherubs, who would become satan) gained revelation of God’s plan and purposes, and saw that the future destiny of the universe was not to be subject to him and the angels, but was assigned to mankind. He traded on that information to lead a third of the angels in rebellion, seeking to stop the outworking of God’s plan (see Ezekiel 28). He traded for future position.

Adam and Eve

Now that he is cast out of heaven, he can no longer see into God’s plans. But because he knew God’s plan for Man, Adam and Eve became his target as soon as they were created.

He came to them in the garden (Gen 3:1-7), and began by twisting God’s words, creating doubt about God in their hearts (Adam was standing right there with Eve throughout this whole scene). Eve responded by adding something of her own – ‘or touch it’ – to what God had actually said, and he moved on to an outright lie – ‘You will not surely die’. He offered them a pathway to fulfil their own destiny apart from God: ungodly, corrupted wisdom, ‘You will be like God, knowing good and evil’.

As soon as they accepted the offer, they began to follow their own source of supply and provision, sewing fig leaves together to make a covering. And Man has been covering himself with religious self-effort ever since.

Humanism

The trade of information for elevation, that you can know and be like God, is the root of all humanism (elevated human capacity) and rationalism (elevated human reasoning).

Meeting our needs

God has put in us a need for acceptance and love; a need for affection, value and worth; for approval and significance; affirmation, for identity and purpose; security, safety and provision. All these needs He intends to meet Himself, through our relationship with Him. Any attempt on our part to use another source or method is trading on demonic trading floors: offering something in exchange for the meeting of a need.

Nothing good can come from this pathway. All pathways of the knowledge of good and evil produce death, even the ‘good’ ones. They substitute happiness for joy, satisfaction for fulfilment, leisure for peace, good causes for destiny; things which may appear really attractive, may make us feel good, but on this pathway they all lead to death.

Trading floors are demonic substitutes for God’s provision. They offer a perverted altar on which to sacrifice. There may be generational patterns drawing us into these trades, and familiar spirits which activate and operate them. They come with strings attached, putting us into bondage to sin and death.

When we take the pathway of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; when we opt for a shortcut to gratification, success, money, position, influence or power; when we derive our identity from performance, work or ministry, we are trading.

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world (1 John 2:16).

The temptation of Jesus

Satan’s temptation of Jesus was an example of how he tries to lure us into this (Matt 4:3-10). He cast doubt on what God had said, twisting God’s word and taking it out of context; and tried to get Jesus to meet His own needs apart from God’s provision. Jesus’ answer was ‘it is written’. Unlike Eve, He added nothing to what God said.

When he took Jesus to a high mountain (it was not in this earthly realm – there is no physical mountain from which you can see all the kingdoms of the world), he showed Him His own inheritance, and offered Him a shortcut, bypassing the cross. Jesus’ reply?, ‘Go, satan’ (we need to say the same to the whispers in our head), ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.’ To serve ourselves is to follow satan’s pathway.

It is quite challenging when we start to consider the thoughts and motives of our hearts.

Jesus passed this test and went out in the power of the Spirit, working miracles and destroying the works of the evil one. Had He succumbed to any of these temptations, He would never have been able to do the works of the kingdom, and would never have been able to go to the cross. Satan will make us similar offers, often through the familiar spirits assigned to our lives.

Ruthlessly honest

Let’s present ourselves to God for examination, and examine ourselves regularly. Let’s be ruthlessly honest about our past, remembering that He loves each one of us. Let’s own our past trading and motives, confess our trading as sin, and seek revelation about family trading so that we can confess and deal with that too.

Father I thank you that You have made a way
For me to access your heavenly presence
By faith I step in through the veil of Jesus, through the way of the cross
Jesus, my high priest, I present myself to you in surrender as a living sacrifice

I submit to the authority of the living word in my life
I step through the veil of truth into the Holy Place
I stand in the light of your truth

I ask you to search me
Reveal my blind self to me
Show me the hidden motives of my heart
Show me where I have followed the pathway
Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil

Show me where I have accepted satan’s deceptions
Reveal where I have followed earthly, natural or demonic wisdom
To meet my own needs

Show me where I have traded
By taking the shortcut to gratification
Through success, money, position, influence or power

Show me where I received my identity
From performance, work or ministry

Show me where I have formed relationships
To meet my own needs
For love, acceptance, affirmation and approval

Show me where I have sought to meet my own needs
Through humanism and rationalism
Following the forbidden pathway of self

I submit and surrender my life
To following the pathway of the tree of life as my source
I commit myself to a lifestyle of repentance for all negative trading
I repent of the patterns of sin in my heart

I commit myself to a lifestyle of renunciation of all negative trading
I renounce my sin where I have followed the pathway
Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
As my way of life
I renounce all my defence, coping and survival mechanisms

Give me revelation of my true identity as a son of God
Give me a heart secure in its identity
Renew my mind to the mind of Christ
Meet all my unmet needs in yourself
Heal all my unhealed hurts
Restore my soul to original condition

I receive your unconditional love,
Acceptance, affirmation, and approval
From the source of the tree of life
I stand transparent naked and unafraid before you
I hear you say ‘I see you and I love you’
I receive your value, esteem and worth

I choose to follow the pathway
That leads to my source, the tree of life, Jesus

I step back into this realm to walk in the ways of your kingdom
Manifest your glory through me on earth as it is in heaven
So I will fulfil my eternal destiny

Next Post: Seven Trading Floors – Trading (2)

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167. Pursue and Embrace

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott

Fire Season

Prophetic Timetable 2019 FIRE SeasonThe fire of God’s Presence is coming to the church, to remove and gather stumbling blocks, to raise up a Joshua Generation.

We must be strong and ready if we are to withstand the coming storms: and we will find God in the midst of some of them, hidden in the fire and the clouds and the smoke.

At the dedication of the temple, the priests could not stand and minister when the glory of God’s presence came. But we have to learn to stand and minister in the storm of glory, in the storm of judgment that is coming to the church, where God is drawing a line, saying ‘This is Me, and this is not’.

Open spiritual warfare is coming: we must be able to withstand it. When everything starts to fall apart, God’s people will be raised up. When the time comes for the storm of judgment to come upon the world, we are not only to have the answer, we are to be the answer.

In being transformed (2 Cor 3:18) we are being changed into the image of Jesus, the image we had before the foundation of the world, from one degree of glory to another. That process of change enables us to display the glory of God, the manifest presence of God, on earth as it is in heaven. We do not call heaven down, we bring heaven down. To bring heaven to earth, we have to be able to access heaven: God is opening up heaven so that we can engage there.

We can choose to pursue and embrace this process of change, or not. Only by so doing can we be prepared and able to do all that God has called and destined us to do. Otherwise we risk being unprepared and unable. Do we want to stay babies and infants for ever? One day we will have to give account for what we have done about the call of God and our scroll of destiny. I have chosen to respond to His call, and go after my destiny: how about you?

Wall of Fire

‘For I,’ declares the Lord, ‘will be a wall of fire around her, and I will be the glory in her midst’ (Zech 2:5).

To come into the glory, we have to go through the wall of fire. That wall of fire is God’s Presence. The glory in the midst is His Person. God wants to take us from having wonderful experiences of His Presence to being able to look Him in the face, a completely different level of relationship.

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy (Jude v24).

He will keep us from stumbling (the removal of stumbling blocks is part of our transformation), so that we can stand in His glory and not be completely destroyed by it.

Wilderness

A voice is calling, “Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness; Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. Let every valley be lifted up, And every mountain and hill be made low; And let the rough ground become a plain, And the rugged terrain a broad valley; Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed, And all flesh will see it together; For the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (Isa 40:3-5).

The environment in which transformation takes place can seem like a wilderness. God has a purpose in bringing us there. Let us be willing to face and embrace it, unlike the children of Israel:

Then they said to Moses, “Is it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you dealt with us in this way, bringing us out of Egypt? Is this not the word that we spoke to you in Egypt, saying, ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness” (Ex 14:11-12).

But Moses said to the people, “Do not fear! Stand by and see the salvation of the Lord which He will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you have seen today, you will never see them again forever. The Lord will fight for you while you keep silent” (Ex 14:13-14).

They were afraid of the uncertainty of change, preferring the slavery of their previous life. They were like baby Christians, saved out of Egypt but not willing to be transformed. How many of us responded to a gospel of salvation rather than to the true gospel of the kingdom, and have been surprised at the cost of becoming a disciple of Jesus? We have seen salvation as a one-off event, whereas the Greek word ‘sozo’ implies a process of transformation.

If we want our old life to ‘never be seen again for ever’, we cannot keep looking back towards it. Instead, we focus on what is to come, on the change that God desires. The wilderness is a place of separation in which we can deal with our souls and allow that transformation to take place. It is a place of calling, as Moses was called at the burning bush. It is a place of testing and overcoming, as Jesus was tested and emerged victorious.

Forerunners will go into the wilderness to prepare the way for others. It may be inconvenient, uncomfortable, inhospitable, but here we can learn to fight, to overcome, to be obedient, to trust in God’s provision. Here we can be prepared to possess our inheritance. Here God can deliver a message that will transform our lives.

Here He can make straight the crooked ways of our behaviour. He can fill the valleys, the low places of our lack of confidence, our inadequacies, insecurities and weaknesses. The mountains of pride, personal agendas and ambitions, self-promotion, self-reliance and competitiveness He can make low.

Our crooked, uneven ways of thinking and understanding, our carefully concealed secrets and moral compromise He can straighten out. The rough ground of our defects of personality and character He can make a plain. He will bring about changes in our attitudes, beliefs and actions to bring us into alignment with the kingdom, so that the Glory of the Lord can be revealed in us.

The Highway of Holiness

A highway will be there, a roadway, And it will be called the Highway of Holiness. The unclean will not travel on it, But it will be for him who walks that way (Isa 35:8).

Righteousness is gifted to us, so that we can choose to be holy. The highway of holiness is built in our souls, in our hearts. In this process let us seek to be ruthless, honest, and open to the light. We will identify by revelation the patterns of sin, weakness, hurts, mind-sets, character  issues, behavioural fruit and so on which are operating in our lives. We will deal with them by owning them, confessing, repenting, renouncing and forgiving. Blockages will be removed from our conscience, imagination, mind, emotions, and will.

I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent (Rev 3:18-19).

How do we buy? We present ourselves for transformation, as living sacrifices. We step into the presence of God through the pathway or veil of Jesus, through the cross. He will do the work in us, but beware: it will be at a deeper level than we have ever experienced before.

If we understand that, and are willing to submit to Him, then let’s pray:

Father by faith I choose to step into Your heavenly presence.
I receive Your acceptance, love, mercy and grace.
I stand in the victory of the cross forgiven, justified and cleansed.

I thank You that You clothe me in white robes of righteousness.
I am the righteousness of God in Christ.

Father I choose to give You full permission 
To do whatever it takes to change me 
And transform me into the image of Jesus.
I give You full permission to remove all stumbling blocks from me.

I give You full permission to use whatever means you see fit
To purify, refine and restore me to my original eternal condition.

Father I choose to deny myself
And surrender control of my life to You.

I give You my conscience.
I repent of and renounce everything that has damaged it.
I ask you to purify and restore my conscience,
Direct and protect me through my conscience
By a flow of reverence and fear of the Lord.

I give You my reason centre.
I repent of and renounce doubt, unbelief,
Rationalism, scepticism, cynicism and denial.
I ask You cleanse me of all false doctrine, philosophies and ideas.

I ask You to renew and restore my reason.
Use my reason to interpret your thoughts
And understand your ways

I give You my imagination.
I repent of and renounce viewing any image that has polluted me.
I ask you to blot out every negative image with the blood of Jesus.

Purify and restore my imagination.
Restore my screen, vision and revelation

I give You my heart, my sub-conscious mind.
I repent of and renounce all strongholds,
Negative belief and value systems,
Vows, words, curses, doctrines, triggers,
Coping and defence mechanisms.

I ask You to cleanse every negative memory.
Purify, restore and reprogram my heart
With Your truth, Your values and my destiny.

I give You my emotions.
I repent of and renounce all unforgiveness, bitterness and anger.
I ask You to purify and restore my emotions
Use my emotions to feel Your heart and guide me through intuition.

I give You my will.
I repent of and renounce all sin,
Rebellion, stubbornness, wilfulness, control, fear,
Doubt, unbelief and indecision

I ask You to purify and restore my will.
Restore courage, perseverance and boldness.
Use my will to enable me to do Your will
Through obedience and true worship.

Father I surrender my spirit, soul and body to You
I declare that Jesus is Lord of the gates of my life.

I step back into this realm
Readily available to do Your will and purposes.
Manifest Your glory and presence in and through my life.
Manifest Your kingdom authority and power through me and around me.

Amen

If you prayed that prayer, please do not be surprised what God brings to the surface in your life as a result… and please, don’t blame me! Be willing to deal with those things when they come up, so that God can have His way.

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159. Your Word, Treasured in My Heart

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott

In meditation, we position ourselves to hear God’s voice and experience His presence. When we meditate on the word God has spoken and revealed to us, so that we have that word firmly established in us and can live from it, it will enable us to prosper and have success in all we do.

This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success (Joshua 1:8).

Give attention

The process of meditation is as simple as giving attention to what God says:

My son, give attention to my words;
Incline your ear to my sayings.
Do not let them depart from your sight;
Keep them in the midst of your heart.
For they are life to those who find them
And health to all their body.
Watch over your heart with all diligence,
For from it flow the springs of life.
(Prov 4:20-23).

He wants our attention. Yes, we can relate to God in the busyness of life, but it is important for us to give Him quality time too. When we meditate, we repeatedly bring the things God has said into the forefront of our thinking. What we repeat gets stored in our heart, in our subconscious mind; and what is in our subconscious triggers our conscious mind: Out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth speaks (Luke 6:45).

Meditating on what God has said also ministers life and health to us. Certainly healing can come through the anointing and laying on of hands, but if we get the truth of health and healing in our hearts, we will not normally need anyone else to pray for us.

God’s life in us comes from our spirit, out through our heart and through our body to impact the world around us. So let’s keep watch over and guard our hearts. Worry and anxiety come from focusing on the wrong things, driven by fear. The word He has spoken to us and over us can protect us by guiding and directing us, but only if it becomes part of us, through meditation.

Your word I have treasured in my heart,
That I may not sin against You
(Psalm 119:11)

Remember

When I remember You on my bed,
I meditate on You in the night watches
(Psalm 63:6)

I shall remember the deeds of the LORD;
Surely I will remember Your wonders of old
(Psalm 77:11).

I remember the days of old;
I meditate on all Your doings;
I muse on the work of Your hands
(Psalm 143:5).

The Logos Word of God reveals God’s nature and His character. That Word is Jesus: He is Truth, and becomes our standard, our plumb-line. When we remember God, call Him to mind again and again, meditate on His character and nature, on the way He does things, we recognise Him in the world around us and He can flow through us out into that world to transform it.

We must be not only prepared to listen, but also to respond. God speaks truth into our spirits, into our hearts. We respond to that rhema word in obedience, we act on it and live it out. And God then always responds Himself to our living faith in His word.

In Psalm 119, verses 1-40, we read of meditating on God’s word, ways, testimonies, judgments, law, precepts, statutes, ordinances, commandments, and wonders. Then those verses speak of what we do with that word: how we walk, observe, seek, look, treasure, tell, rejoice, meditate, establish, delight, live, long for, cling, run, incline, reverence, give thanks. Finally we see the ways in which God responds to us: blesses, ordains, teaches, opens our eyes, rebukes our enemies, takes away reproach, revives us, answers us, strengthens us, grants us, enlarges our hearts, gives us understanding, and deals bountifully with us.

Beholding and becoming

[We,] beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory (2 Cor 3:18).

What we consistently look at, we become like. If we look at, focus on and meditate on the Lord, if we have an intimate relationship with Him, we will become more like Him. It does not happen overnight, but little by little, step by step, from glory to glory, until people can see God in us and in what we do.

Preparing to meditate

Here is a prayer we can use as we prepare to meditate:

Lord, cleanse and prepare my heart.
Give me a teachable attitude.
I surrender my senses to You
Open the eyes of my heart.

Lord, I present to you
My abilities to reason and imagine
For You to fill and flow through.

Lord, I focus my attention
On what You show me
And I thank You
For what you are revealing to me

Garden of our heart

In closing, here is another way of looking at meditation: every testimony we have, every encounter, every vision, every victory won, every revelation from God; every word God has spoken to us, we can take as a seed and plant it in the garden of our heart. The River of Life flows through our garden and waters it. We have the authority to speak life to what we plant, and command it to grow. So we can expect to receive fruit from it again and again – and not only fruit to eat, but more seeds to sow. These in turn will grow into more plants, producing fruit and seeds of their own.

What are we growing in our garden?

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

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158. A Flow of Spontaneous Revelation

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

God speaks to us in a flow of spontaneous revelation. He communicates through thoughts, pictures, feelings, and impressions which we need to pick up. We need to be able to tune in to them; to see, feel, hear, and touch them. Reading scripture may a good place to start, but the Bible is the beginning of experience, not the end of it.

The scripture becomes a doorway to encounters with Jesus, with the Holy Spirit, with our Father. It also becomes an anchor for experiences we have now and a platform for further experiences still to come. We can go to the Bible, and find out if there is a scripture which talks about aspects of our experience. That is what I mean by finding an anchor in it.

We sing that we want to meet Him ‘face to face’. That is a reality we can all enjoy, here and now.

Journal everything

The Hebrew word for ‘know’ means ‘to experience by personal encounter’, and it is possible for us to have experiences, encounters, visions, dreams, and revelation. Scripture is full of examples of such things.

I want to encourage you, if you want to benefit from encounters with God, write them down. Journal everything so that you can go back to it, review it, meditate upon it, and draw further revelation. You can also revisit the experience. The more we repeat experiences, the more our brain learns to value and store those experiences, rather than forgetting and shredding the memories.

There are three stages of experience with God that we might identify:

1. Visions

These are snapshot pictures or moving pictures, as seen from the outside, a kind of 3rd person experience of seeing ourselves or someone else.

2. Visitations

In these we experience something in the 1st person, and are involved ourselves in the ‘action’. This may involve being in a trance, such as the one Peter had on the rooftop when God showed him a sheet coming down from heaven full of animals; or even being translated.

If you think all this sounds very much like the New Age, that is because devotees of the New Age have experienced something of what the Bible talks about, but have experienced it in a way that does not connect it with God (to be fair, that is hardly surprising when we have done such a good job of telling them that they are themselves separated from Him. They are not). And now religion tells us that we cannot touch it. Huge sections of the church have swallowed – and proliferated – that particular lie. And if you are worried it is too much like eastern religion, ask yourself where the Bible comes from. Not America. Not the UK. It comes from the Middle East, and that is the cultural setting which must inform our grasp of what it says.

Paul wrote that he didn’t know whether he was in or out of his body when he went into the heavens. The western mindset has a hard time with statements like that. Ezekiel was taken out of his body, and his spirit was transported into Jerusalem so that he could see what was happening there. These experiences are for us, too. The Holy Spirit can come and take us to different places on the earth, and to different places in heaven, and we may not know whether we were there in body, or in spirit, or both.

The reason for all this is to enable us to bring heaven to earth.

3. Habitations

This is when we live in the dual realms of heaven and earth simultaneously, as Jesus did:

No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven (John 3:13, my emphasis). Jesus was on earth, speaking to Nicodemus, but said He was in heaven at the same time.

That is how Jesus was able to see the things the Father was doing, because He was in constant spiritual connection with the Father in the heavenly realms. Whatever Jesus did, He has made available for us. He said “You will do the works that I do, and greater works than these, because I go to the Father” (John 14:12).  He went to open up this door for us, this avenue into the heavenly realms.

Open the eyes of our heart

We can see with our natural eyes, but at the same time we can also see with our spiritual eyes, and flow in revelation which comes from God’s presence. This is where meditation becomes so important. Meditation is a process we can use to open the eyes of our heart to see; to encounter the truth of who God is  in practical, experiential ways.

Definitions

Here are some dictionary definitions of meditation: the act of focusing one’s thoughts: to ponder, think on, muse, reflect, contemplate, babble, mutter, imagine; to murmur; to converse with oneself; to ruminate (chew the cud and extract all the goodness from it).

It is not madness to speak to yourself. I speak to myself all the time. As we speak aloud, we are communicating the things of God to our spirit, which will grow and engage with them. And using our imagination is very much part of the process of meditation. If we are ‘just imagining it’, what is wrong with that? It is how God speaks to us.

Music is very useful in meditation. It provides a platform which engages our imagination. The right side of our brain is where creativity and imagination reside. When we speak in tongues, scientists have found that it is the right side of our brain which is engaged in that activity. And the right side of the brain activates better, and more blood physically flows there, when we are at rest. So it is best to meditate when we are in a state of relaxation, which we can achieve by calming ourselves, taking deep breaths, and so on. Again, this is not wrong: it is simple and sensible preparation of our body.

Logos to rhema

Meditation turns the logos (written, fixed word) into the rhema word (spoken, to us, now), stirring faith from which we can live. It turns head knowledge into personal experience, and enables us to hear the voice of God. In meditation, God can use a scripture to speak to us (sometimes completely out of context – He wrote it and He can use it however He wishes), to get across to us something He wants us to hear and understand.

This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success (Joshua 1:8).

Meditating will enable me to prosper. In my destiny, in what God has called me to do in my life, I want to prosper; I want to succeed and excel to the highest level.

Don’t you want the same?

Related articles from Freedom ARC

Check out this piece of music intended for use in meditation, composed and performed by Samuel Lane (SML Music) via Mike’s YouTube channel.
And check out SML Music’s own YouTube channel at https://youtube.com/@SMLMusicHeavenlySoundscapes

Samuel’s music is also featured in Mike’s ‘Meditation For Rest’ (see below).

MEDITATION FOR REST

In this single-session teaching, Mike talks us through his foundational daily meditative practice. Get it here: Meditation For Rest

“I did not set out to create a 7-step meditative exercise, I just discovered that I was doing this myself. You can use this as a way of bringing yourself to a place of rest and to live from a place of rest; but I would encourage you more to use it as a basis for developing your own process.”

Cost: £5 GBP (typically around $7 USD depending on exchange rate).

Support Freedom ARC

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

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

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155. A Plumbline, a Doorway and an Anchor

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott

Not in the Bible

This may seem really obvious, but it is a fact that not everything is actually specifically mentioned in the Bible. For example, Jesus said we should do greater works than He did, without being specific about what they might be. We have experiences in daily life which are not mentioned in the Bible – there are no computers or glasses or cars or mobile phones – but it is OK for us to use them.  In just the same way, we may have some experiences of heaven which are not in the Bible.

A plumbline

plumb line

The scriptures can be a plumbline for us though. A plumbline is a string with a lead weight (or plumb-bob) hanging from it, which builders use to check that vertical surfaces are true. So does our experience line up with God’s principles, His character and His nature? That is a safeguard for us, so that we do not go off into flights of fancy which have no basis in God. The enemy will do all he can to cause us to go astray, but we do not have to be frightened of that if we keep true to a clear revelation of who God is. Jesus Himself is that perfect revelation of His Father.

Using our imagination

The scriptures can become our starting point for future experience. When we meditate on a passage, we can picture what it talks about and use our imagination. We ought not to be scared to use our imagination: God has given it to us so that we can see things, picture them, and visualise them. Now some Christians are wary of concepts like ‘visualisation’ because they have been adopted by New Age and occult people. Even meditation is viewed with suspicion in some circles. But these things are not wrong in themselves. It is simply that we have to approach them afresh and learn how to use them in a godly way.

A doorway

If we read Revelation chapters 4 and 5, they tell us about God’s throne, thunder and lightning, the seven spirits of God, four living creatures, angels, 24 elders and so on. Ezekiel chapters 1 and 10 speak of a similar scene. There are pictures in these passages which we can visualise, and this then becomes something we can engage with. It can open a door to encounter and experience.

An anchor

As well as a doorway, the scriptures can be an anchor for further heavenly experiences. I have had many encounters with God in the heavenly realms, following which I went back to the Bible to find a foundation and an anchor for those experiences. That meant I could return to those experiences again, while ensuring that I was standing on a good biblical foundation.

So sometimes our experience comes directly out of meditating on Bible passages. At other times, our experience comes in a different way, but we can still go back to the scripture and make sure that what we have experienced is in line with what it reveals of God. In either case, if it is firmly rooted in scripture we can use that as a prompt when we want to pick up our experience again another time and go further with it.

For example, I had encounters where God took me and opened up scrolls relating to my life, and showed me what was written there. I was not expecting that. I did not know if it was biblical. But then I read in Revelation that there was a scroll written on the front and the back which Jesus would open, and that anchored those experiences solidly for me. As a result I am able to go back there and make sure my life lines up with what is written on my scroll.

Left brain, right brain

To meditate you have to learn to use the right side of the brain, the creative/intuitive area. I used to be a very left-brained person, a scientist, who naturally tended towards the cognitive, logical, and mathematical. But speaking in tongues or meditating, because they come from a flow of the spirit, use the right side of the brain. So we need to learn to activate that part of the brain in order to see, and visualise, and experience spiritual realities, and especially the heavenly realms.

That flow of the spirit is revelation from the inside which comes as spontaneous thoughts and pictures and feelings. If we are not used to tuning in to them, they can slip past and we can miss them. It works like this. The air around us is full of radio and television signals of which we are not normally aware. But if we were to have a radio, turned on and tuned in, we would be able to hear whatever was playing on that particular station. If we had a TV set tuned in we would be able to see what was on that channel. And it is just the same with tuning in to God.

Meditation, imagination

God is sending out signals all the time. They flow through our spirit and are projected into the right side of our brain, so that we can hear His voice, see visions and pictures, and receive revelation from Him. We tune in to that through meditation.

Our imagination is the screen on which God projects things. But it can also receive images from our soul, from our subconscious, and we need to know the difference. Our imagination can play back experiences we have had in life. There may be a song, or a smell or a taste which can transport us instantly back to an experience we had many years previously. We can imagine it, recall it even feel the same feelings we had at the time (whether positive or negative).

We do not want to be led from our soul, and especially not from our past negative experience, but we want to be led by the Spirit of God. We need to learn to let those spirit projections rule over the soulish ones, so that we are tuned in to a flow of revelation which enables us to follow God and do what He has called us to do. We have to learn how to open ourselves up to these things, just as most of us actually learned to shut them out.

Retuning

Every child, up to the age of about three or four, is creative and intuitive. Children of that age can see the angelic much more readily than adults, and have the ability to function in that intuitive way.

By the age of 7, only 10% of children retain that spiritual and creative ability. Our western educational system is very effective at training us to use the left side of our brain. It does not value the right side at all. Because the spiritual is not reinforced and encouraged, but rather dismissed and ignored (or at best, humoured) by our elders and teachers, we learn to focus almost exclusively on the natural realm instead.

But now, empowered by the Spirit of God, we have an opportunity to re-learn how to engage our spirit; how to retune and see things from God’s perspective.

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

It only comes by practice.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

Support Freedom ARC

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

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

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

Or you can use the blue button to support our work with a one-time gift*.
Thank you!
*Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation. For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead. 

Are you part of the Joshua Generation?

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Engaging God on the Heavenly Pathways of Relationship and Responsibility
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154. Grow Your Own

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

In preparing for our destiny we need to build our spirit. Over a number of posts on this blog we have looked at:

We are going on now to consider a fourth means of building up our spirit:

  • Meditating on the words of God

My son, give attention to my words;
Incline your ear to my sayings.
Do not let them depart from your sight;
Keep them in the midst of your heart.
For they are life to those who find them
And health to all their body.
Watch over your heart with all diligence,
For from it flow the springs of life.
(Prov 4:20-23)

For the word of God is living and active (Heb 4:12).

When God speaks, His words are alive, and have power if we focus and meditate on what He says. When we allow that power  to transform us, we can live in the power of the word we have received. Ultimately, the fullest expression of the Word of God is Jesus Himself. God speaks through many means, but scripture is a familiar one and is a good place to start. As we meditate on scripture, it is like going from 2D to a 3D experience. It comes alive and jumps off the page. You become part of what is going on.

A picture paints a thousand words

There is a saying, ‘a picture paints a thousand words’. That is why Jesus spoke in parables. The Bible is full of stories and illustrations that enable us not just to hear words that are being said, but to imagine and participate in what is going on. So we can have experiences, visions and pictures. We can gain revelation. We can experience things practically for ourselves. We can see things sometimes in worship, pictures visions, trances, all sorts of experiential things in which we can know God’s presence. You cannot know something, in the biblical sense of the word, with intellectual understanding. The word ‘know’ in the bible means ‘to know intimately, by personal experience’. You cannot know what you have not experienced. God wants us to receive those revelations.

Store or shred

When we receive them, it is really important that we do not just pass over them. We do not just say, ‘I had this picture, I had this dream’, and then forget about them. We write them down, record them, journal them. Then we can go back and review what we have seen, what God has said, and we can revisit those experiences and obtain more revelation and more understanding from them.

In meditation, if you go back over something and keep looking at it, drawing life from it, it shows that you value it. What you value, your brain will store (instead of shredding it).

We do not want to be just spiritual consumers. You can sit and read this blog, or watch one of my YouTube clips, even enrol in Engaging God, and allow me to teach you something. But you can also be a producer, by taking what God reveals to you and applying it to your own life, and bringing forth your own fruit.

I can share my experiences of going to heaven, and having heavenly encounters with the Father, with Jesus, the angels, the men in white linen and so on. That is all very good, but God wants you to have your own experiences. They may not be the same as mine, but they will be yours. God shows no favouritism. If you do what I did, you will get what I got. But you will not get it just by reading these posts or hearing me speak. You have to pursue Him for yourself. You have to put into practice some basic techniques and principles; and meditating on what He says to you is one of the most important of them. And meditation is not just something ethereal: you have to apply what you receive to your own life.

Tomatoes

It is like tomatoes.

If you like to eat tomatoes, what most people do is go and buy some from the greengrocer or the supermarket. That is being a consumer. Someone else puts in a whole lot of effort to grow them, package them, transport them and offer them up for you to buy and eat. But you could learn how to grow tomatoes for yourself. You would have to have seed to plant, learn about types of soil and compost, transplant your seedlings, remember to water and care for them, make sure they get the right amount of sun and shelter, support the growing plants, prune them, and so on. Eventually, you get tomatoes.

When you eat a tomato you have grown, how much better does it taste than one you have bought from the shops? Even Tesco’s Finest? It tastes wonderful. There is nothing like picking fruit and vegetables straight from the garden and eating them. And besides all that, you have put so much into them that you get a real sense of achievement too. It is much more work, but so much more rewarding.

Seek it for yourself

In the same way, when you hear about my relationship with God and my encounters with the Holy Spirit, that can benefit you, and you can be blessed by hearing about them. But maybe hearing about my experiences will create a desire in you for something, so that you go away and seek that relationship and those experiences for yourself. And that, I can promise you, will bless you and benefit you on a whole other level.

Be willing to get hold of the truth of God’s words to you. Spend time in His presence. Learn how to meditate on scripture and on prophetic words or revelation you have received. Learn how to speak in tongues, inside and outside. Build up your spirit so that you can encounter God for yourself in that way. Then you will have first hand revelation knowledge of God as Father, of Jesus as a friend, of the Holy Spirit as a guide.

If you plant a seed and just leave it, it is true you may get some fruit from it. But it is likely to be a far healthier and more fruitful plant if you tend and water it. God’s desire is that we learn to live from the fruit of our relationship with Him, and when we eat, it transforms and enables us.

It is not instant, or automatic. But if we are willing to put the effort in, God is willing to reveal Himself to us in deeper and more intimate ways.

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147. Present A Living Sacrifice (3) – practice

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

Because of practice

For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant,.But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil (Hebews 5:13-14).

If we have received revelation, we must act on it. All that we are learning, we have to put into practice. Things do not just happen automatically for us because we have read about them, or even by doing them just once or twice. It takes practice. But even though we call it practice, of course we are doing it for real.

For example, presenting ourselves as a living sacrifice. We have posted about this on a couple of occasions: now we are going to practice doing it (I do it myself every day). As part of that, we are also going to practice stepping in and stepping out of the presence of God.

I suggest that you stand, if you are able. When we step in, take a step forward; and when we step out, take a step back. It is just a practical cue here in this realm, a step of faith into His presence. It reminds us that the kingdom is always right there in front of us and that we can step into it at any time.

Let’s pray along these lines each day:

Father I thank you that You have made a way
for me to come into Your presence

By faith I step in… [step forward]
to the realm of Your presence
into the holy place in the heavenly tabernacle

I stand before the altar of incense
and present myself as a living sacrifice to You
Jesus, my High Priest.

Today, Jesus, I desire and choose,
as an act of my will,
to abdicate the throne of my heart.

I ask You to crucify and kill my flesh
I choose to deny myself all my rights
and to give You my life, to gain Your life.
I am dead to sin and alive to righteousness

I ask You to remove my head
as I surrender to Your lordship.
I choose not my will but Your will in my life.
I give up my right to free will
and choose to seek first Your kingdom and Your righteousness

I ask You to skin me
and remove every covering I have placed around my life.
Remove everything I use to make myself acceptable to You and others.
I renounce all dead works.
Remove all my masks, pretences, defence and coping mechanisms

I ask you split me open down to my bones and marrow.
Cleanse my heart and its motives.
Purify the thoughts and intentions of my heart.
Restore my heart
Give me Your desires.
Renew my mind
Heal my emotions
and strengthen my will.

I ask You to remove my legs
I surrender my walk to You
I choose to do only what I see the Father doing
I choose to walk by faith and not by sight

I step out of heaven… [step back]
back into this realm
I choose to let You do Your works through me
as I become a channel for Your kingdom to manifest
in this world around me.

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115. A Channel of God

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

Jesus was transfigured here on earth and shone with glory.

That is God’s intention for all of us, to be shining with the glory of God. We can begin to manifest the glory of God through our lives as we become a channel of God living in us.

Now again, you may be suspicious of this because channelling is something New Age people do. But, as we saw last time, people can grasp a concept which is true, but go on to apply it in a way which is not always how God intends.

God is on the inside of us, in our spirit, and if He wants to manifest on the outside of us then He needs to come through our soul and body. So we become a channel, an interface between God and the world around us, a means through which He can manifest. When Jesus did all the miracles and the things that He did, it was the Father in Him manifesting His works.

God is calling us into that same relationship, to do the things that we see the Father doing. It all springs from the revelation that comes as we are transformed from one degree of glory to another.

When we speak about ‘transformation’, it is not simply that our behaviour will change. That is what I was highlighting in the previous post about our DNA. If we submit to the process of transformation, we will not just enjoy closer, more intimate times with God, or overcome life-damaging behaviours (important though those things are). No, we will be radically changed, transformed into ‘sons of light’.

Even the phrase ‘sons of light’ speaks of something far beyond what most people probably imagine it to mean. At the very least, we will recover some of the abilities latent within our DNA. They will be switched back on, restoring what Adam had before he sinned, and even beyond that.

We may not have grasped all the details – yet. Indeed, however much of this we have understood, God is able to do far more than we could ask or even imagine.

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