Tag: spirit

413. Before the Foundation of the World

Mike Parsons

The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world

All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. (Revelation 13:8 NKJV).

Before the foundation of the world, Jesus did not physically die; rather, he offered himself in identification with humanity, should we fall into a state of perceived separation from God. His self-offering was not about death itself but about fully embracing our condition so that we could ultimately live. The phrase “the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world” speaks to this identification. However, since God never desired sacrifices or offerings, he did not orchestrate Jesus’ death in a punitive sense. Instead, Jesus willingly gave himself so that we would always be restored.

Jesus came as a man to redefine our understanding of God. To accomplish this, he had to fully identify with us in the flesh, living as we do. By experiencing our humanity, he took on our death, not as a punishment from God but as an act of love. Humanity, not God, put Jesus to death. Yet, through his death, he overcame its power, bringing about the resurrection that includes us all. His coming was essential—not to appease divine wrath but to restore our lost identity and reunite us with the Father. While he did not die before the foundation of the world, he committed himself to our redemption from the very beginning, ensuring that no matter what, we would always be restored to relationship with God. Ephesians 1:4 (Mirror Bible) affirms this, stating that God’s plan has always been to restore us to face-to-face innocence.

So some are excluded?

However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. (Romans 8:9).

The passage in Romans 8:9 must be understood in context. It speaks of the mind and spirit and our choice to identify with either life in Christ or the law of sin and death. If our mindset remains focused on sin and death, we live as if we do not belong to Christ. When Jesus said, “Depart from me, I never knew you,” it was not about literal ignorance but covenantal relationship. If people continued living under the old covenant, refusing the relationship Jesus offered in the new, they remained unknown to him in that sense. The passage does not imply that some are excluded from Christ, but rather that those who think and live according to the old ways act as if they are outside of him. In reality, the Spirit is in all, breathed into humanity just as he was into the disciples, making all people part of the new creation. The issue is not whether we belong to him, but whether we recognise and live in that truth.

The issue is not whether we belong to him, but whether we recognise and live in that truth.

As Proverbs states, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” If our thinking remains rooted in the law of sin and death, we experience separation—not because Christ is absent, but because our mindset does not align with the truth of who we are in him. We are not cut off from God; rather, we live as if we are. The passage emphasises the importance of shifting our perspective, rejecting the old covenant mindset, and embracing the truth of life in the Spirit. When we do, we experience the reality that Christ is in us, and we are fully his.

Lost?

Being lost does not mean being disowned. The parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son illustrate this truth. The lost sheep still belonged to the shepherd; the lost coin was still owned by the woman, though it was temporarily out of reach; and the prodigal son remained a son, even though he had distanced himself from his father. The problem was never one of ownership but of connection. Likewise, all people belong to Christ, but those who do not recognise their identity in him live as if they are lost. The solution is simply to awaken to the truth and return to that place of belonging.

The key is to remain in a place of rest—resting in the knowledge that there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. We have been set free from the law of sin and death, and we are called to live in the fullness of that freedom. Rather than striving or struggling, we are invited to abide in this truth, resting in the life Christ has already secured for us.

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346. Ageing and Immortality

Mike Parsons – 

Death is a promotion?

The mindset around death needs to change. We have been conditioned to believe that death is a promotion to another realm and state of being, and that this is a good thing. This is how it has been presented to us. However, when it talks about Jesus bringing life and immortality to light through this good news, and Jesus saying in John 6 that you don’t need to die… Because most people have died, it’s so hard to believe that.

Societal Conditioning

From virtually the moment we can talk, we are conditioned to understand that we are going to die one day. This concept is ingrained into everybody, making it not just a religious concept but a societal one. Death is seen as inevitable. Some people try to cheat death through their own efforts, such as seeking ‘eternal’ life through various means like cryostasis, where their heads are preserved after they die, hoping their consciousness can be revived one day. There are also attempts to eliminate death through nanotechnology. All these efforts reflect our best attempts rather than realising that death has no part in us.

We must deal with the physical body because our soul and spirit aren’t going to die anyway. It’s only the physical body that’s the issue. We often accept the idea that from dust to dust, we will return to dust one day as if that was God’s intention from the beginning. However, Jesus rebalanced that notion by saying that you don’t need to die if you eat His flesh and drink his blood. This has become ritualised into taking communion and spiritualised to mean that you won’t die spiritually. But Jesus meant it physically. Eating his flesh and drinking His blood meant fully embracing who He was, not literally eating His flesh and blood. Communion is an element of that, but it goes beyond just the ritual into living with His breath and life, as everything about Him is life and there is no death in Him.

Transformation and Renewal

Now, obviously, our physical body may have things attached to it and within our DNA which reflect our earthly inheritance rather than our heavenly one. So, that needs changing. It’s not just a mindset change; there’s also a physical transformation of any death within our cells. Our cells need to be renewed and not destroyed. The ability of our cells to renew themselves needs to be restored, and they need to learn how to communicate what brings about that change and restoration.

The things within ourselves that, within normal thinking, lead to death need to be dealt with physically as well. Breathing in His life constantly can put us in a state of continual renewal and restoration. But does that mean we will have the same physical body forever? No, because there’s a limitation to our physical body that Adam didn’t have. His spirit was around his body, not the other way around.

There needs to be a restoration of the balance of the relationship between spirit, soul and body that God intended, that our bodies, spirit and soul would come back into the correct balance, harmony and design that God had for them. Jesus, when He died, had a resurrection body. His physical body died, but He had a resurrection body with certain abilities different from His physical body while he was alive. This body allowed him to do things differently, which shows a transformation that we will also undergo to bring about a different relationship between spirit, soul and body than we have now.

He had a resurrection body. We died with Him and were raised with Him, and we are in the process of that being fully formed in us. Our thinking can stop this process because “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he”. If you think in your heart that death is the answer, then you will probably die. Our thinking needs to be in alignment for the outworking to take place. It’s not just about thinking it and it will be; there’s a process of our whole body being renewed and the relationship between spirit, soul and body being transformed into what it should have been. That may have different ways of outworking – I don’t know.

The Nature of Aging

Do I have a resurrection body now? Yes, in one sense, because I have died and was resurrected with Him. But in another sense, my mind is coming into agreement with what that means, and my thinking has an effect on that. Hence, the renewal of my mind to agree with God about my physical state needs to take place. There hasn’t been a lot of history of teaching or experience to draw on regarding this. Some people are said to be alive after hundreds of years because they have embraced this concept, but not many people have met them, making it difficult to provide concrete examples.

I believe it starts with belief, which then brings about the transformation of our physical nature. The cells of our being need to align with God’s intention. This poses the question of aging. Are we going to age? If aging has a consequence with death, then we should not be aging to bring death. Jesus aged from a baby to a full-grown adult. What would he have done if He had not moved into a resurrected body? We don’t know because He didn’t do it.

But nothing in our body should hinder us from fulfilling our destiny in God. There may be some people who, like Enoch and Elijah, might be translated into another state of being without going through physical death.

We don’t know yet. Some people might know that there’s a time when they’re not going to be here. But we don’t need to equate that time with death. It may be that I’ve fulfilled all that I need to fulfil, so this part of my destiny is complete, and I don’t need to be here any longer, therefore I will just move on.  But I think there will be a transformation in the nature of our physical being at some stage – or in process – whichever way it occurs.

Mike discusses immortality at length in his teaching series on Unconditional Love.
Click here or on the image above for more details

275. Separating and reintegrating soul and spirit (2)

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

As I have described before, in the autumn and winter of 2011-2012 God instructed me to spend a month in the garden of my heart, followed by a month on the dance floor, a month in the soaking room and finally a month in the bridal chamber. I was to make a marriage contract and take it into the canopy of darkness, into the presence of the person of God, for consummation. This is how I came to engage the dark cloud of His presence, where the separation of my soul and spirit took place. Since I was to be joined to the Lord in marriage, self could no longer be the controlling principle of my life. I had to yield and surrender the essence of self.

If none of my dreams were realised,
If none of the prophecies ever came to pass,
If my destiny was never fulfilled:
Would I still love God?
Would I still trust God?
Would I still have love, joy and peace and live in rest?
Would I still be able to rejoice and give thanks?
Would God still be a good God?

God loves us and wants to restore us to original condition.
He wants to give us the fullness of His blessing.
He wants us to find our heavenly identity and position as sons.
He wants to release us into the fullness of authority as sons.

In that cloud it may feel dark, but there is a heart-shaped hole in the darkness that leads us to Him.

Between soul and spirit

Between our soul and spirit there may be familiar spirits, religious spirits, fears, disappointment, lies, doubts – all sitting there, hindering or blocking the flow. Within our soul gates there could be guilt and shame, wrong belief systems and mindsets. He wants to remove all those negative influences so that there is nothing hindering the flow of life from the inside out. We looked at this process in the previous post and I suggest you work through it before attempting to go any further. It may not be a quick fix, but it is worth spending the time on.

And once all those issues are dealt with, there remain connections which our soul may have made to our spirit, maybe even as a consequence of our redemptive gift and how God created us to be, but connections which have arisen from trying to operate in our own strength independently of Him or without the pure motivation of love, from the outside in. These are a short tether, preventing us from operating in heaven and on earth at the same time.

We need those connections to be severed and new connections made from our spirit gates to our soul gates, so that everything flows from the inside out. These new connections are a quantum tether, allowing us to operate in dual realms, flowing from heaven through our gateways into the earth around us.

Invite Jesus

We are going to invite Jesus, the living Word of God, the Truth, into a place within us between soul and spirit.

We are going to ask Jesus, the Truth, to reveal any umbilical cords from soul to spirit.

We are going to ask Jesus, as the living Word, like a sword, to divide our soul and spirit.

We are going to invite Jesus, the living Word, to untether our spirit from the soul and from being earthbound so that we can fly like the butterfly, soar like the eagle and live beyond the veil continually.

Then we are going to invite Jesus, the Prince of Peace, to make us whole by reintegrating our soul and spirit, by reconnecting our spirit and soul gates correctly, and by quantum entangling us to live in dual realms.

Our soul has wanted to be recognised for what we do. The soul has looked to provide for its own needs; we then look for affirmation, affection, approval from people for what we do, instead of just being who we are. I encourage you to embrace the transformation process, so you can become whole. The more we become transformed into the image of God as His children, the more authority and power will be released because we will be recognised by creation itself as the sons of God.

Jesus, we invite you as the living word of God, like a sword, to walk through our spirit gate of worship where we surrender to you.
Jesus, we invite you as the living word of God to engage the illegitimate soul ties to our spirit.

I choose to surrender my soul’s rights to you.
I choose to surrender any path I have followed from the DIY tree.
I choose to surrender all works of the soul to validate itself.

I choose to surrender my redemptive gift to you and I declare I will not use it for self-validation.
I ask that you untether me from being earthbound.

Consciously surrender all ties, connections from your soul to your spirit, and ask Him to sever and separate and untether your spirit from your soul.

I ask that you, the living word of God, sever any umbilical cord or ties in my soul that have fed off my spirit, that gives my soul power to live independently.
I ask you to untether and separate me from any ungodly tie connected to my redemptive gift.

I ask you, as the Prince of Peace, to reintegrate my soul and spirit from the inside out.
I ask that you would reconnect and quantum entangle my soul and spirit so that my spirit will be continually connected, that heaven can flow through me.

I ask you to reintegrate me and make me whole and reconnect my spirit to my soul correctly.
Connect my Fear of God gate and Reverence gate to my conscience,
My Hope gate to my imagination,
My Prayer gate to my mind,
Revelation gate to my reason,
Intuition gate to my emotions,
Faith gate to my will 
And Worship gate to my choice.

Let heaven flow through me as rivers of living water.
I ask you to quantum entangle my soul and spirit.
Let heaven flow through my being.

Engage heaven and stay there, dwell there with your spirit.
Shift only your consciousness back to the earthly realm;
Choose to dwell seated in the heavenly realms.

Note: this is the third post on this topic drawn from Mike’s teaching in the Sons Arise! Into the Dark Cloud intensive, the Sons Arise! Invested and Enthroned conference and our Engaging God subscription programme.

Related posts
Other recent posts

Mike’s new book, ‘Engaging the Father’ is the first volume in the Sons Arise! series, due to be published on 7th June 2023.  You can (pre-)order the paperback from your favourite local or online bookshop or get the ebook NOW from our website.

More info: eg.freedomarc.org/books

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274. Separating and reintegrating soul and spirit (1)

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

Live in dual realms

If we are to mature into our heavenly roles as sons of God, we cannot continually be stepping in through the veil and then out again: we will need the ability to live in dual realms of heaven and earth at the same time. For that to happen, our soul and spirit must be separated and then properly reintegrated so that our spirit is able to take the lead, as it was always intended to do.

Cleansing our soul gates

Opening and cleansing our soul gates creates that opportunity for our spirit to overshadow our soul and body and reclaim its role as our interface with the world around us, as it was in the beginning. Although I had worked through them all before, I revisited all my soul gateways with Jesus, who is Love, Truth and Peace. Love casts out fear from each gateway in turn; Truth challenges all the lies which have programmed us; Peace brings wholeness to cleanse our gates and enable the flow.

Motives and intentions

But there is deeper level of preparation needed to deal with the thoughts, motives and intentions of our heart because we must only rule, govern and legislate from the motivation of love (we covered this at some length in the Transformation series). Our existing motives may come from programming, through personal experiences and environmental lacks; from past decisions that have formed behavioural patterns within our hearts; or from generational epigenetic memories attached to our DNA. Ultimately, they have come from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the pathway and source of all independence. The roots of that tree are sourced from Satan’s trading – “I will ascend, I will be like God”.

Search me

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 (Psa 139:23-24).

Transformation is a process of change which we choose to engage with so that we can display the glory of our sonship: the manifest presence of God on earth as it is in heaven through us. We can choose to embrace and pursue this process of change into maturity or stay babies, toddlers or infants. Those are our options! I decided to ask God to examine, try, reveal and transform. These are my words: you can borrow them, or use your own; but take your time and don’t rush through this – it may take days, or weeks, or longer, depending on what He highlights to you.

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
I present myself to you, Jesus my high priest, in surrender as a living sacrifice

I submit to your authority as 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

I stand in the light of your truth
Show me the pathways of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that I have followed
Show me where I have accepted deceptions as truth
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 relationships, success, money, position, influence or power
Show me where I received my identity from performance, work and 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 pathway of self-identity.

I submit and surrender my life to follow the pathway of the tree of life as my source
I commit myself to a lifestyle of truth and intimacy
I renounce all negative trading to meet my own needs.

I renounce where I have followed the pathway of good and evil as my way of life
I renounce the patterns of lost identity in my heart
I renounce all my defence, coping and survival mechanisms

Father, give me revelation of my true identity as a son of God, that my heart can be secure
Renew my mind to the mind of Christ
Meet my unmet needs in yourself
Heal my unhealed hurts
Restore my soul to original condition.

Father 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 that affirms my sonship.

I choose to follow the pathway that leads to my source, the tree of life – Jesus
I choose 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.

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

Related posts
Other recent posts

Mike’s new book, ‘Engaging the Father’ is the first volume in the Sons Arise! series, due to be published on 7th June 2023.  You can (pre-)order the paperback from your favourite local or online bookshop or get the ebook NOW from our website.

More info: eg.freedomarc.org/books

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222. Complementary Gifts – Redemptive Gifts (6)

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

When we first began looking at the different redemptive gifts that Paul lists in Romans 12:6-8, we saw that each had a colour associated with it. The colours have frequency and vibration that we resonate with in the spiritual realm. And we recognise that when the different coloured flags and banners are waving in our meetings, they open up particular spiritual connections.

But also associated with each gift are different primary areas of the soul:

  • Prophet – Red – Mind
  • Servant – Orange – Will
  • Teacher – Yellow – Mind
  • Exhorter – Green – Emotions
  • Giver – Blue – Mind
  • Ruler – Indigo – Will
  • Mercy – Violet – Emotions

The spirit/soul wheel

In this diagram the colours represent the gifts and are linked to the soul areas associated with them.

spirit-soul-wheel

If we are looking to overcome the stronghold areas in our gift, we can use the complementary areas of the soul to do that. These are the areas next to our own gift, both clockwise and counter-clockwise on the wheel. So, for example, red is the prophet gift which operates primarily in the mind. To overcome the weaknesses in the prophet gift you need the servant gift’s soul area, the will, and the mercy gift’s soul area, the emotions.

The most effective way of achieving this in community is to get alongside people with complementary gifting/soul areas, because you will be able to provide a perspective that each of them needs as well as drawing on them yourself. You may even find yourselves naturally drawn together in relationship because you instinctively know that you need one another’s support and help. This is why it is so important for us to overcome any mutual suspicion or distrust of our differences and to honour God’s gifts in one another.

Follow the wheel around and you will see that each gifts needs the strengths of two other gifts.

How does this work? There are connections between the human spirit and the human soul. Each portion of the human spirit is connected to a portion of the human soul. So we need our spirit to engage with our soul to enable it to be led and directed into the things that God wants. A culture of honour and a dependence on each other (in a right sense) will enable each of us to be a fully functioning individual – and together to become a fully functioning body.

Calling forth

God wants to call forth our spirit, and to call forth those gifts in us, so that we will be able to function in the things He has called us to. Just as the Father spoke over Jesus He wants to speak over us as His children today. He wants to speak truth, to call forth His desires for us.

So now, I encourage you to be open to the Holy Spirit. Let’s open up our spirit to hear what He says over us. The gathering angels come as He speaks, to help us remove some of the things He does not want in us. Seraphim angels come with fiery coals from the altar to bring healing and wholeness as they touch areas of our lives. He does not want to just speak to our minds, He wants to engage our emotions, our will, our imagination, our conscience, our choice. He wants to engage through our spirit: through reverence, fear of the Lord, faith, hope, prayer, intuition, revelation, worship – He wants to engage us fully as a person.

Let’s take a few moments to sense His presence: Father, Son and Holy Spirit speaking to our hearts, speaking to our spirits, calling forth those redemptive gifts of sonship which He has placed within us. Hear what God is speaking over us:

I call forth your identity as My child.
I call forth your redemptive gifts.
I call forth your identity as an overcomer and a conqueror.
I call forth your ability to subdue and to rule your soul.
I call you to be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
I release the gathering angels to expose and remove stumbling blocks and lawlessness from your life, to expose and remove demonic strongholds, to expose and remove iniquitous roots, to expose and remove birthright curses.
I call you to surrender and trust Me.
I call you to know your true identity, gift and destiny as My child.

God intends us to be part of bringing all creation back into His original intention and purpose, that of redeeming not only this planet but the whole cosmos. True, we are imperfect people, but if we are willing to surrender to Him then He can do that through us.

He is looking for the response of our hearts: for us to say ‘yes’, to draw closer to Him, to allow Him deeper into our hearts, to let the barriers down so that He can bring healing to some of those deep areas of hurt and pain which we have been carefully protecting. Let’s allow our spirits to worship Him in freedom, and to open up our hearts and allow the Holy Spirit, the angels and the presence of God to bring healing, wholeness and restoration.

Let’s come into agreement with Him, let’s realign ourselves back into who we really are, so that we can come into wholeness, into peace, into that place of rest. Not striving or struggling but enjoying the relationship with God that He designed us to have, walking with Him in the cool of the day in the garden of our hearts and in the garden of heaven, we can bring heaven to earth and see His kingdom come, manifested here on earth as it is in heaven.

Related articles from Freedom ARC
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Recommended resources from Arthur Burk

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