Tag: Spiritual gift

129. Flesh vs Spirit

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

In seeking to restore the right relationship between the spirit and the soul, we saw yesterday that first of all we need to build a strong spirit. But we also need to deal with the soul. We need to understand what the soul is: other Bible words for it include flesh, mind, and heart. It is our self-awareness, it is what enables us to be aware of who we are as a person and as an individual.

This is what Paul wrote to the Galatian church:

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.
(Galatians 5:16-25).

From the inside out

We cannot change our soul from the outside in. If we want to ‘not carry out the desire of the flesh‘, we can only do that by walking by the Spirit. So we need our spirit, with the Holy Spirit, to flow out to change and transform us from the inside out.

We cannot fulfil our destiny if our soul is in charge of our life: it does not want to do the things the Spirit wants. When it submits to our spirit, it can then carry the life of the spirit, which then flows through our body, bringing the glory of God, and the kingdom, around us.

Fruit grows

‘But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control‘. Fruit grows, gifts are given. We can have the gifts of the Holy Spirit given in an instant, tongues, prophecy, miracles, healing and so on; fruit has to develop and grow. You have to nurture it, look after the soil, fertilise it, protect it, and it grows.

‘The deeds of the flesh are evident‘. They are evident because they are seen on the outside of us, in our behaviour. The kind of behaviour we have to eliminate from our lives is very obvious. And we have to replace that with the fruit of the Spirit which grows from the inside out. But we cannot change those things by our own self-effort. We have to surrender them to God and allow God’s Spirit to transform us from the inside.

The flesh profits nothing

That is why Paul goes on, ‘those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh’. Past tense. We have already been crucified with Christ. When he died, we died. But we have to live in the good of that by coming through the cross, and living by the Spirit. Live by the Spirit, walk by the Spirit, because the flesh profits nothing. It has no eternal value, and only negative value here in this realm. It is the spirit, flowing with the life of the Holy Spirit, that has value.

As Paul had previously written (and I would encourage you to meditate on this scripture, for it to become so much a part of your spirit that you are living it out all the time),

I have been crucified with Christ;
and it is no longer I who live,
but Christ lives in me;
and the life which I now live in the flesh
I live by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
(Galatians 2:20).

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16. Prophetic Timetable Overview (part 1)

Mike Parsons  – 

This is the full version of the diagram we began to look at last time. In this post and the next one, I am just going to give you a brief overview of what God has shown me He is looking to do in each of these periods, and then we will begin to look at each stage in much more detail in coming days and weeks.

Firstly there is a call to intimacy: God started doing this a while ago, and it will continue. I know a lot of people struggle with intimacy. Even when we come together, when we are praising the whole place is heaving and full up at the front; as soon as we begin moving into intimacy you can see people start to drift off. There is something totally different about us giving God praise (which comes from our spirit) and real intimacy (which comes from His Spirit and our spirit joined together). God wants us to know intimacy. I am going to be going into that a lot more as we go on.

Second, there is going to be a gathering and removing of stumbling blocks. Angels have begun gathering here in our meetings. I have seen them, as have others. They are not just the trumpet angels, the healing angels, or the breakthrough angels: they are the gathering angels. They have been watching, waiting for an opportunity to gather and remove stumbling blocks from us, from the church. There is going to be a whole move where God does that.

There is judgment coming to the household of God: it is going to divide what is of God and what isn’t. However, judgment is not condemnation: with God, judgment is always an opportunity to change. Again, I will go into this more fully in future posts.

There are challenging times coming.

There is going to be a harvest of labourers. We are going to see thousands and thousands of people turning to Jesus, and that is not an end-time harvest, it is to prepare to send out labourers into the harvest fields to bring in the end-time harvest. Ask Jesus for them (Luke 10:2). There are going to be prodigals returning by their hundreds, streaming back to God. God is going to be drawing them.

Awesome times, but we need to be very careful to prepare and equip those people to do the things that God is calling them to do. There is going to be a raising up of the Joshua generation at this time – Caleb and Joshua were people of a different spirit who were able to take the people into their inheritance, the promised land. God is calling for a generation to be raised up, who will bring and equip those harvesters to bring in the final harvest. There are going to be apostolic centres to train those harvesters, and we are going to be one of those centres. There will be an increasing manifestation of the five-fold ministries and gifts of the Spirit to train people. There is going to be an increasing manifestation of people who seek first the Kingdom of God, people who live it, not just say it or know what it says, but who actually live it day by day and hour by hour.

There is going to be a shaking of the world’s systems, a storm of judgment coming on the earth, and we have to be ready, because we must have the answers in the judgment that is coming. When the world’s systems have fallen apart, the church is going to be raised up in authority, with answers. When the medical experts have no cure for some of the diseases that are going to be released, we will have healing in our hands. We have already seen a minor shaking of the financial system, a little tremor, causing a crisis the experts could hardly manage, which turned into a worldwide recession: when it all collapses, we will be people who can say, ‘Oh, over there in that fish’s mouth there is a roll of £50 notes!’ Or, ‘You need food this week? Oh, OK, there you go, I’ll just multiply what you have.’

Do you remember Elisha and that story about the widow and her son, and the oil that didn’t stop flowing until they ran out of pots to fill? Oil was a precious substance, you could use it for cooking but you could also sell it. As soon as they ran out of pots, the oil stopped flowing. That is a picture of what God is doing here. If you don’t want the oil to stop flowing, you have to keep coming for more, and bring more people who come as empty pots to be filled. People from the churches round here come to be filled, people find us on social media and YouTube and catch God’s heart in what we are saying, and they go on to fill others who are hungry and thirsty for more.

Returning to what I was saying, these world systems are all going to be shaken. Increasingly, we are going to see more ‘little’ examples of shaking which build up to a great shaking.

Next time we will look at the remaining periods in this diagram: the final harvest, the last day, the return of Jesus and the age to come.

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