revival – Sons of Issachar

539. The Misunderstood Image of God | Relationship versus Religion

Mike Parsons

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Can you know God? Can you know Allah?

We think of Islam and other religions, some of them being polytheistic, some monotheistic, but actually when you look back into the history of Islam, they chose a moon god out of other gods and then developed that into a monotheistic belief in Allah. But if you go back into the very roots of it, they were polytheistic when they started. They just chose the moon god. Hence we have the crescent moon associated with those kinds of beliefs. Most Muslims don’t know that, because they don’t know their own history and they don’t know where it came from. They tend to live from the Quran and from the teaching of the imams and all that sort of thing, but they don’t really know God, because their God does not allow for relationship. It is a blind trust of Allah who is sovereign, and therefore everything that happens must be the will of Allah. It leaves out the relational, the interactive, and the communicative dimension of that.

So I would not really try and argue with any Muslim about anything. I would talk to them about their experience. Can you know God? Can you know Allah? And they would probably say no, we can’t do that. Allah is holy. And so actually, I can say, well, I do know God. I have a personal relationship with him in which there is communication and sharing and life and joy and peace and love, using words which are evocative of good experiences rather than fear, which is what a lot of them associate with their god. They are afraid to get it wrong. Their knowing of God is by intellectual understanding of a concept rather than a relationship with a person who is loving and kind and good and gentle and all of the fruit of the Spirit. Where do you get angry, harsh and judgmental in the fruit of the Spirit? You don’t, because it isn’t there, and it isn’t in God.

523. How We Can All Connect with God

Why Jesus came

God does make judgments based on verdicts and evidence, but those verdicts are always going to come out of his love. And that is the problem with intellectual knowledge, with theology, with the understanding or study of God through an external medium, the “word”, the Bible. That is how many know God: through what the Bible says about God. But the Bible says very different things about God in the Old Testament and the New Testament, because in the Old Testament they didn’t know God. They thought they knew God and had their own understanding, their own religious construction of him. But he wasn’t the God that Jesus came to reveal. Which is why Jesus came.

Jesus came to reveal the true nature of God as love, and to help them have a relationship with the Father, because they didn’t have God as Father. In one sense they had a wider concept of God as Creator, but the relationship of Father and Son, when Jesus said “Abba”, was scandalous to them. When he said I and the Father are one, it was deeply challenging, because they had a view of God which was coming entirely out of religious knowledge and not experience.

443. Unconditional Love – NO RECORD OF WRONGS

Transactional knowledge of God

Let’s face it, only one of them could go in and meet with God once a year, and that was very much on the basis of, we’re terrible sinners, we need to atone for our sin, will you forgive us? It wasn’t a relationship; it was a transaction from their perspective. So they had a transactional sort of knowledge of God which you could say was covenantal, but they didn’t understand the nature of covenant as God fulfilling himself within the covenant. He tried, but they wouldn’t have it.

He wanted them to come up on the mountain when they came out of Egypt. He invited them into his presence, into that spiritual dynamic of his presence. They were afraid. Why were they afraid? Because they had 430 years of fear living under Pharaoh, and they had very little sense of what they had started with, with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and their sons and all of that. And even then, their relationship with God was somewhat distant. Abraham, in a dream, was put to sleep to come into the presence of God. It never really started off in what Jesus came to reveal.

So they had their own version of God, carrying around idols all the way through the wilderness and into the Promised Land from Egypt, which is what Stephen said, and which is revealed in other places as well. They made a golden calf because they wanted something like other people’s gods, whereas God had invited them to come up into the fire of his presence, which is love, but they saw it as something to be feared. And therefore they sent a mediator, Moses, to go on their behalf. The seventy elders also went with him on their behalf, and then they set up a religious system so that they could have some connection with God at a distance, which was what they wanted. You don’t really get any sense of intimacy with God in much of it. Gideon meets an angel; there are various encounters.

Then the prophets begin to have more of a sense of hearing God speak to them, and I’m sure they were quite shocked by some of the things they said, because that’s when it started to turn around. Sacrifices and offerings you never required, they began to declare, and all of a sudden they were saying things that were leading up to the new covenant, beginning to reveal what God was truly like, and fulfilling all of those promises that they had viewed through their own understanding, revealing them in the truth of Jesus being the Way, the Truth and the Life, the express image of God; being one with the Father and having a relationship of I AM.

379. Created in His Image | The Purpose of Our Existence

John 14

My favourite chapter in the Bible has always been John 14, in which Jesus describes the relationship, describes going to the cross, coming back in resurrection, enabling them to have relationship in which they would know, “Where I am, you may be also.” And of course that’s been totally trashed in the meaning, to mean heaven in the future, where it actually means is where I am in relationship. Jesus says, I am in the Father and the Father is in me, and that is the relationship he was describing that they would have.

And then later on it says, “on that day (resurrection day), you will know this relationship: you will know that I am in you and you are in me and we are in this relationship with the Father together,” which is what he came to unveil. There was no veil. Hence the veil of the temple was torn, showing that there had never been any separation. And then they gradually began to work out that the Gentiles could come into this, that it was for everyone. Even after three and a half years with Jesus, they still didn’t grasp the fact that this was for everybody. He came to take away the sin of the world, not the sin of the Jews.

339. Universal Inclusion in Christ

Tabernacle of David

So the concern was, we can’t associate with Gentile people because they’re unclean. And then the revelation comes from heaven in the vision: don’t call anything unclean that I call clean; take, taste and eat, as a symbol of, you’re all one now, there is no separation or division. And of course they then described this as the tabernacle of David, which was God in their midst, no temple or holy of holies or structure, which is what they had celebrated for quite a while, dancing and celebrating in the presence of the Ark, not hidden away in a box somewhere.

And I guess the sad question I’ve asked a lot is: why did David then want to go and build a temple for the God they had just experienced and enjoyed in their midst? Maybe because the timing of Jesus’ coming was not yet. Things had not yet reached the point where Jesus was going to come, and therefore another system was set up through David and Solomon building the temple, and eventually the next temple with Herod and everything else.

You can know God for yourself

But when I look at what Jesus came to help us come into, he was the door so we could come into a relationship with the Father. Jesus made us to be a dwelling place, a habitation of God, which was what it was all about and what John 14 was describing: you will be like me in this relationship with the Father. They never had that before. None of them. Even John the Baptist, who was the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, the least in the kingdom is greater than he. We look at all the miracles and the amazing things that happened, but they did not know him. He was not in them the way he is in us. There is a huge difference.

And that’s what we come back to: you can know God for yourself. God already dwells in you. He lives in you and he wants you to know him in that inner relationship. That’s what I would encourage people to experience, and if anything, that’s what I would share with others who have not had that experience, to help them think, “I would like that.” So I wouldn’t argue theology with a Muslim over the Quran or the Bible or Abraham or all the other things people try and use to find some sort of common ground. I would simply ask: do you know God by experience? Do you have a relationship with him through experience? And then share the testimony of your experience with God, which would hopefully open their eyes to something they had not considered.

God is awakening the Muslim world

Let’s face it, God is awakening the Muslim world. There is huge revival going on in Muslim countries. People are having visitations of Jesus in dreams. There is great transformation. The gospel is spreading in places like Iran under persecution far more greatly than in our sort of western, “Christmas and Easter” sort of culture where not much else happens, and where we have got inoculated from it all because it has become another religion rather than the relationship God wants all his children to experience and know.

496. When Love Rewired My Mind, Goodbye Religion!

So definitely, stick with the relationship. Present God as a good God, a loving God, a kind God, rather than the angry, judgmental God who is so distant that we can’t really know him. Muslims have very little certainty, because their relationship is based on performance. If they don’t perform to a particular standard, they won’t make it. It’s the works-based mindset: you have to be good enough, keep a standard, perform, live according to the manual, rather than follow Jesus. Jesus made it very simple: come and follow me. He didn’t make it hard. He didn’t say do this and this and this and this and this. He just said, come and follow me, because he invited them into relationship, and then he opened the door for them to have a relationship with the Father and the Spirit through following him.

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237. New Things Have Come

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

Comparing the old and the new

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come (2 Cor 5:17).

Two thousand years ago, Jesus came with a completely new perspective and radically reinterpreted everything the religious people thought they knew. In my experience, He still does the same today. Here are a few things He has shown us in a totally new light:

Prayer – we used to pray from earth asking for God’s help from heaven, hoping that God would hear us from a distance. The new way is to come to meet Him face to face, to come boldly to the throne of grace, sit on His lap and talk to Him.

Revival – this is such a huge desire and expectation among the Christian community, but we have been praying in the way of the old: “Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down” (Isaiah 64:1). In the new, we see that God has already come down, He has already rent the heavens. What is more, He has gone back up into the heavens and opened up the veil for us to come. We have been asking Him to come and do what He is asking us to come and do!

In the old, access to holy places and the holy things of God is limited to only some special people – mediatorial priests. In the new, access is open to all of us. Now we can all enjoy the intimacy and rest of relationship and out of that flows our ability to fulfil positions of government as sons in responsibility.

After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven, and the first voice which I had heard, like the sound of a trumpet speaking with me, said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after these things” (Rev 4:1).

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God… let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Heb 4:14, 16).

There are going to be times of need, but we don’t need to be cowering, pleading with God to come and rescue us. His help is about empowering us to overcome the obstacles we face in restoring all things to His original design and purpose.

…that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God (Rom 8:21).

Operating as lords, kings and sons

The old is like being in the wilderness and expecting God to do it for us from heaven. In the new God has given us responsibility to be co-heirs, partners in heaven operating as lords, kings and sons. As transfigured sons we are going to radiate glory to bring the whole of creation into its freedom, to restore it so that heaven and earth are in complete harmony.

Spiritual warfare as we have previously known it was never very effective because it was attempting to pull down something from below. There was a lot of shouting into the heavens or into the atmosphere of the earth, binding this and that, but no-one ever went into heaven first to bind things there. In the new, all that is now replaced with judicial verdicts from above in the courts, which have heavenly authority to bind and to loose (to bind things to what they should be and to loose them from what they should not be). We have gone from houses of prayer and prayer closets on the earth to having charge of the courts of heaven, a completely different mindset, and we have learnt that everything must now first be done beyond the veil to be effective.

“Your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven”: in the old way of thinking, God sovereignly administers from His throne whilst we just obey here on earth. In the new, God has chosen to operate His sovereignty through us, having given us authority over this whole created order:

…and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:6).

If we are seated with Christ, we are seated on thrones from which we administer in heaven.

Mature sons

The old way is like being children whose parent does everything for them and on their behalf. It is time for us to mature and become responsible adults. Like a parent encouraging His adolescent children to take responsibility for more and more of their own lives, God is withdrawing His support for the old, which will slowly but surely (or perhaps sometimes suddenly) stop being effective. What once worked for us will no longer do so, even if it is still seems to be working for others. At that point we will have no choice but to embrace the new. If we are really forerunners, we will not wait until that happens.

God wants to manifest us as His sons to fulfil our destiny and restore creation. Each of us has a destiny, and those destinies interact with one another to bring about God’s purpose. We have been called at the end of the ages. Each of us has a role specifically chosen and designed for us by God. Like Esther, He has chosen us for such a time as this.

Why can’t I keep the old ways?

When Israel crossed over into the Promised Land, 2½ tribes chose to go back across the Jordan. From that time on there is no record of them in scripture and no evidence that the old ways continued to work for them. We might all long for the simplicity of childhood with few responsibilities but we are called to grow up. We can’t just keep drinking milk like babies if we want to be mature sons.

If you decide to stay in the old you risk dying in the wilderness with those who do not want you to cross over into your inheritance. The old order has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. They don’t want you to hear God yourself, because then you would not keep coming to the prophetic conferences they are putting on (the ones where they will hear God for you rather than equipping you to hear Him for yourself). The lure of the familiar and comfortable is powerful, but it is an illusion: once God begins to challenge you, you may never be comfortable with the old and familiar again.

The old order

The old Moses order has failed to prepare for the harvest. The 5-fold ministries have failed to equip the church but instead built empires. They have failed to lead people into their destinies or help them access their scrolls and their true calling, making a generation of dependent slaves rather than manifest sons. They have failed to honour people, instead making them spectators or servants of their visions. They have not released people into their highest calling or recognised their spheres of authority. They have created religious systems from the pathway of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, establishing businesses out of worship and making celebrity idols out of servants.

Prophets, apostles, pastors, teachers and evangelists have become professionals. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, they have made people dependent on them as mediators who hear God for them, fuelling a dependency and co-dependency mentality. There are no rabbis in the new day but Jesus. Please stop trying to follow earthly rabbis – and whatever you do, don’t treat me as one.

We cannot keep trying to use wilderness methodologies expecting Promised Land results. We have to change, to align ourselves with what God is saying and doing now. He is changing the way we do things. We are no longer to expect others to tell us what to think but to be taught how to engage God for ourselves. We evaluate everything we do on the basis of whether it is ‘as it is in heaven’: have we established it in heaven first before we try to work it out on earth?

We are called to be forerunners and, like Joshua and Caleb alone among the Promised Land spies, we need to give a good report. In the next post, we will look at how we do that – in the new.

This blog post is adapted from Mike’s teaching in the ‘Engaging God‘ subscription programme. Find out more…

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26. The Spirit and the Word in Unity

cross Mike Parsons –

Now is the time

God is looking for hearts that are truly His. Every one of us has a destiny prepared by God, and we must make sure we don’t miss it for the sake of our own stubbornness, our strongholds, or our own way of thinking. It is time to give it all to God: He wants it all. This is a time of preparation, a time when He is inviting us to abandon ourselves fully to Him. So let’s give Him everything, let’s hold nothing back. Let’s not allow our pride or our past to get in the way of what God wants to do in our lives. Let’s not miss this opportunity: because for some, if you miss it now, you will have missed it completely – that is how serious it could be. Now is the time.

God is pouring out fresh revelation in these days because He is preparing for Jesus to return, preparing for the harvest that is coming. It is time for the church to rise up: He is calling us to ever deeper levels of commitment, and He is releasing ever deeper levels of power and authority. We have entitled this blog ‘Sons of Issachar’ (see 1 Chron 12:32), because God is calling us to be like them in recognising the signs of the times and knowing what to do. God wants us to know what to do, that is why He always reveals to His prophets what He is about to do.

The coming revival

There have been revivals in the past, but they are nothing in comparison to what is going to happen as we approach the return of Jesus. It is good to read about what God has done (and I would encourage everyone to read Roberts Liardon’s books, ‘God’s Generals’) so that we do not lose sight of our heritage and so that we don’t repeat the mistakes people have made before. As you read, you can’t help but get excited about what God is going to do, because all those things He has done in the past are going to come together in the end times. Every mantle of authority that has ever been given is going to be released again over us. It will be an outpouring of the Spirit such as has never been seen before. Smith Wigglesworth prophesied that the Spirit and the Word would come together, that churches of the Spirit and churches of the Word would come together in unity, and that the result would be to release a revival that would impact the whole world. We are in the beginning of those days, and we need to grasp hold of that right now.

We are starting to see the manifold wisdom of God being released. The light that is in us is starting to come through: the fruit of the Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit, releasing ministries, increasing revelation of the Spirit of God, offices being raised up. The kingdom is coming in more and more fullness.

Anointing

It is we who are the gifts, all of us: we are the ministries, we are the ones who are going to get revelation. This is not just for one or two people. Some are going to have ministries that are going to go around the world. Some will stay right where they are and build the foundations of the Kingdom of God. But everyone can have a part in this and it needs to be manifested through us. God wants to reveal Himself in the fruit and the gifts of the Spirit and in ministries being raised up because they are expressions of what He is like. The fruit of the Spirit: that is His character. The gifts of the Spirit: that is the anointing of the Sovereign Lord which was upon Him, and it is also upon us (Isaiah 61). Those ministries are the ministries that He raises up to administer the church.

Freedom Apostolic Resource Centre

God is wanting to move. He is establishing us here at Freedom as a revival centre, an apostolic resource centre for this region and beyond. He is calling us to be a habitation of God to equip others, to bless others, to give away everything that God has given us. I know people can take this the wrong way, thinking we are saying that we have it all. That is not what is in our hearts: yes, we want to give to others what we have, but also we would like to receive from them what they have.

I had a picture, a vision, of waterfalls being poured out over churches across Barnstaple and across the south-west of England. As I watched, all the rivers and all the colours came together as one river, releasing an explosion of life. That will happen (and not only here) if we are willing to give to each other, to receive from each other, and to live in unity with one another; honouring and respecting one another’s churches and traditions and so on, but all bringing what we have received and pressing in together into what God is doing.

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