Tag: surrender

118. Intimacy With The Father

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

God is calling us to intimacy. And that call to intimacy continues even as He brings in the subsequent phases of the Prophetic Timetable that He showed me. It has to be our first priority.

I know people struggle with intimacy with God, because I struggled with it myself. When I became a Christian I was about 12 years old and I had no concept of God being Father, because I didn’t have a very good relationship with my earthly father. When I prayed it was to Jesus or to ‘the Lord’. I never prayed to the Father, because I was wounded by my own father. And therefore I protected my heart.

We all need love and acceptance, and I sought that in relationships with other people (particularly girls, as most teenage boys would). And I found someone who I thought I loved – my ‘first love’ if you like. Then one afternoon I got really seriously hurt by her. On the bus on the way home I vowed that I would never be hurt like that again. I put a barrier around my heart which protected me from hurt and damage and kept everyone at arm’s distance. It kept me safe but also kept me locked up and in a prison. I became a very mental person, using my intellect to package things up so I didn’t have to deal with the emotions. I never really knew an intimate relationship with God or anybody else. So if Jesus was saying ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock’ (Rev 3:20), I really struggled to open it.

Over the years, God met with me over various encounters and He began to heal my heart. The first time, I was in a small group of people worshipping when God spoke to me and said ‘I am your Father’. I struggled with the concept, as so many of us do because of our own fathers, but He broke through that and put His arms around me. I felt them, and I felt His presence, and it enabled me to begin to talk to Him and to communicate with him as ‘Father’.

Then I can remember when Hannah, our eldest daughter, was about one and a half years old. One day she toddled up to me as I was sitting on the settee, looked into my eyes and said ‘Daddy, I love you’. It broke me apart. I didn’t know how to receive it or respond to her. I was in tears.

But it challenged me to deal with the things in my heart. Those things that had protected and guarded me had also locked me up so that I couldn’t feel God’s love. We have to overcome the obstacles in our life that will stop us from experiencing intimacy.

If previous hurts and past experience cause us to protect ourselves, that will prevent us from fully entering into what God has for us. So when we find we are singing songs in our worship times about meeting God face to face, and dancing with Him, being in intimate relationship with Him, that will be a struggle for us if we are feeling wounded.

Now I thought I had dealt with all my wounds, but one time I was in heaven talking to Jesus and He said to me, ‘You have not met the Father’ and I knew inside that it was true. ‘It is because you have a father wound’, He explained. I was going to argue with Him – but there’s not much point in arguing with God. Still I said, ‘But I’ve forgiven everybody! I have forgiven my Dad, I have had ministry. And I have met with the Father before’ (I had, just not in heaven). And Jesus said, ‘You have a father wound’. He showed me a picture of my heart and it had a big scar all over it. He asked, ‘Will you let me heal it?’ and I said ‘OK’.

So for about 40 minutes the Father came to me and spoke to me and He just said the same words over and over again:’ I love you… I love you… I love you… I love you…’. Each word He spoke healed my heart. I looked down and the scar was gone. I had such wonderful times of intimacy with my Father.

It’s what He wants with every one of His children.

Soundtrack: Jonathan David Helser – Abba (via YouTube)

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Note: We were taking part in #NaBloPoMo, posting on this blog every day for 30 days during November 2013.

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117. The Proof Of Desire

Mike Parsons
and Jeremy Westcott – 

‘Pursuit is the proof of desire’, as our friend Graham Jones says. If we truly want to fulfil our destiny, let us set our heart towards it, set our desire upon it and go after it.

These are some thoughts on pursuing our destiny: I am just going to put them out there for now, without really developing them, but I would encourage you to read them with your spirit, and see what they spark in you…

  • There are two pathways into the heavenly realms: the pathway of relationship and the pathway of responsibility. Both offer opportunities for transformation. At times my focus and attention will be on one, at times on the other, but I will always be following both pathways.
  • I will not get anywhere without first enjoying intimacy with God. That involves seeing, hearing, feeling and experiencing both who He is and who I am.
  • We are not all the same, we each have our own song and destiny. I need to learn to resonate and come into agreement, come into harmony, with the whole symphony of heaven. There is a wonderful sound in the heavenly realms and it is beginning to be heard even in this realm: I can resonate with it, come into harmony with it and contribute to it my own unique sound and melody.
  • I will believe, and be in faith. ‘Without faith it is impossible to please God’. I have to trust Him, and go for it.
  • I will engage that desire for my destiny, step into alignment, and submit my life daily to the government of God and the lordship of Jesus.
  • I will purposely live for the unravelling of my scroll. I will not be content until I see it and am living according to it. No settling for second best; nothing half-hearted; totally committed to my destiny.
  • There are things I need to know (by experience, rather than know about). I need to know the testimony that is written in heaven for me. I need to know the blood of Jesus as my overcoming power, I need to know the revelation of my sonship. I need to know the courts in the heavenly realms, the gardens, the treasury room, the wine room, the record room, the mantle room and all the other places in the heavenly realms: places I have been, or other people have been. I need to know.
  • I need to know what is in heaven is in order to manifest it here; I need to know the authority I have there, in order to bring that rule here.

Then I will live in the dual realms of heaven and earth, and manifest heaven on earth through me.

SoundTrack:

Jonathan David Helser – Intimacy (via YouTube)

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*Note Sadly, because of abuse by scammers we can no longer offer a ‘click to donate’ option. However, if you contact us, we will get back to you with a simple means of giving. 

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108. Destiny and the Age To Come

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

There is a song by U2 that I really used to love: “Still haven’t found what I’m looking for”. I would sing that and really mean it from my heart, because I knew in my spirit that there was more, and I had not found it. I can’t sing it and mean it like that anymore, because actually I have begun to find and walk in my destiny. My destiny was out in the realms of the heavens. It is not ‘written in the stars’, but it is to be in the stars.

Three Scrolls

Here are three scrolls (or books) that we find referred to in scripture:

1. Scroll of destiny

First of all, there is the record of your eternal destiny.

Your eyes have seen my unformed substance;
And in Your book (scroll) were all written
The days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was not one of them
(Psa 139:16).

2. Book of Life

Then there is the Book of Life.

Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it… and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds… And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire (Rev 20:11-15).

Richard Murray explains:

All our false names/natures are NOT written in the book of life, while all our authentic God-crafted names/natures ARE written in the book of life… What gets excluded from the book of life gets cast into the lake of fire. These elements are not our whole beings, but rather are toxic aspects of our non-being – false identities, sin masks which have deformed, debilitated, and impoverished us from manifesting our original created purpose. These forged identity masks have grafted themselves, with our consent, onto our souls and must be carefully irradiated and excised by the curative and corrective knife of divine love.

…to say that the personification of all the dark dynamics within us will be destroyed (i.e. NOT written in the book of life) is ultimately a wonderful thing, all our false sin-identities cast into the lake of fire nevermore to trouble us again1.

3. Scroll of your life

But there is also a scroll of your life, the record of the life you have lived. We know that Jesus took away the power of sin and death and there is no further judgment for sin, but we will be judged according to whether we have come into our destiny or not, whether we fulfilled God’s purpose for our lives. What is written on the scroll of your life? Does it match up exactly with what is written on your scroll of destiny?

My personal experience is that it does not. But we can change that too. We can come into agreement with our destiny, and God can change what is written on the scroll of our life.

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad (2 Cor 5:10).

Where it mentions ‘good or bad’. it is not speaking about sin, but about the motives of our hearts.

You do not have to wait until you die, or until Jesus comes, to go to the judgment seat of Christ. I have been there, the scariest place I have ever been in the heavenly realms. It is a place of living, consuming fire, with eyes coming out of that fire. I was shaking – in fact, everything was shaking. The scroll, which was written on front and back, was opened, and I saw my life. God showed me all the good things, where I had lined my life up according to my destiny. But I also saw all the rest too, the missed opportunities to be obedient. The fire of God came and purged it, and I was given a fresh opportunity.

Every one of us can go to that place and see, does our life match up with our scroll of destiny? That is God’s intention, and He wants us all to make sure it does. Whether we are to be in the outer courts, the inner courts, the Holy Place, or the Holy of Holies: that will be decided by what is on those scrolls and how they match up. I know where I want to be.

The Age to Come

We will also have responsibilities in the age to come, which are determined by whether we are faithful here.

Our destiny is not just something which is to be accomplished in the here and now, in this physical realm. When Jesus returns, He will put the earth back into its central place in the Kingdom of God. It was removed from that place and put into time, in order to restrict the effect of sin. As we move into the age to come, the whole world will be cleansed with fire and brought back into the place where the physical and spiritual realms overlap and interact. And we will have new physical bodies, which are immortal, in order to operate in that realm.

When Satan fell, the light-bearer, light was removed from galaxies. In the age to come, those black holes which are at the centre of many galaxies will once again be filled with light. Who will get the opportunity of doing that? We will: the sons of light.

At present there is a river of dark matter flowing through the universe which needs to be transformed. Who gets to transform it? We do.

If Jesus created galaxies, who else gets to create galaxies? We do.

We need to take the blinkers off our understanding, and grasp what God actually says about these things. Our destiny goes way beyond this physical realm. It is awesome. When we first begin to go into the heavenly realms, our mind often gets in the way until we learn to see and operate there. He wants us to be free of the restraints which hold us back because of our mind and the way we think.

Choices

There is a preparation we need to go through so that we will be ready for Jesus’ return and for our destiny in the age to come. We need a transformation in order to be manifested as the sons of God – on earth as it is in heaven, and then beyond.

We all have a choice about whether we will be transformed; a choice about how we will spend eternity; a choice about whether we will fulfil our destiny. God gives us that choice, and the opportunity to outwork it day by day. There is always, has always been, a choice. There have always been two pathways: the Tree of Life, or the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil; the kingdom of God or the kingdom that is in darkness (which is just as close).

Kingdom in darkness, by the way, not kingdom of darkness. Satan has no kingdom. He only occupies the kingdom we were meant to be ruling over. He has brought darkness to that kingdom, and it is up to us to bring light into it. God wants us to transform the atmosphere of the earth and to bring light to that place of darkness, and to the places under the earth too. It is our right to rule there.

We need to rule and manifest the kingdom around us. We also need to preside over the heavenly courts for our own lives to bring the mandates that are ours into physical manifestation. This is something we can all learn. It is not magic, it is not mysticism, it is just our birthright to have access to the heavenly realms because we are spirit. We were all made a spirit, but now we need to be transformed into a son from glory to glory (that is the process we are in right now), and to be manifested as sons on the earth

God’s Prophetic Timetable all leads up to the time of Jesus’ return. After Jesus returns, we will go into our eternal destiny in the age to come. And that age to come is beyond most people’s capacity to imagine. Every one of us has been appointed to a purpose in the whole eternal destiny of God. Will we fulfil it? The choice is ours.

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1 Richard Murray, Saul’s “name” was NOT written in “the book of life.” https://www.facebook.com/richard.murray.1840/posts/1500495100010535

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97. Image-Bearers of the Heavenly

Mike Parsons
and Jeremy Westcott –

Purifying, refining fire

For some time now, the church has been at that point in God’s Prophetic Timetable which is characterised by the coming of fire, refining and purifying; the gathering and removing of stumbling blocks from the church and from our lives. It is not an easy time. Those stumbling blocks can be idols, they can be other things – and even people – that are hindering the flow of God’s kingdom. The gathering angels are here, to see if we are willing to open up our hearts and allow them to be removed from our lives. We can co-operate, or not: but it will be less painful if we do.

Raising up of a Joshua Generation

This time is also characterised by the raising up of a Joshua Generation, a people of a different spirit, a generation of people who will inherit the land and bring another generation in with them. Joshua and Caleb brought a whole new generation into a physical, geographical land, and also into a new spiritual land. We have spent some time looking at 40 Characteristics of the Joshua Generation on this blog, and it is important for us to know if we are called to be part of that generation.

That is where we are now. But we know that what God is calling us to do is to move forward. Refining, purifying, coming into the furnace of God’s Presence: that is all preparation for moving on with God.

Refiner’s fire

“And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant .. behold, He is coming,” says the LORD of hosts. But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the LORD offerings in righteousness (Mal 3:1-3).

God wants to prepare us, that we may be the offering of the Lord. A refiner’s fire gets pretty hot: the melting point of gold is around 1064°C (1945°F). As the heat is maintained, the impurities come to the surface and can be scooped off. If you are experiencing this, you will know exactly what we are talking about – when something comes to the surface in your life, you have a choice: you can allow God to remove it, or you can just push it all back under again. The trouble is, until you allow God to remove it, it will just keep on coming back to the surface. And the very worst thing you can do, if you want to fulfil your destiny in God, is get out of the fire.

When gold is really pure, the surface is like a mirror. It gives an absolutely perfect reflection. And God wants us to reflect Him, so that others see Him in us. But during that process we need to know that God is with us in it.

We open our door to Him, He opens His door to us

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me” (Rev 3:20).

In other words, He is offering us an intimate relationship with Him in which He will reveal Himself to us and we will be close to Him. And a few verses later:

After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven, He said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after these things.”  Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne was standing in heaven, and One sitting on the throne (Rev 4:1).

As we surrender our lives to God; as we open up our lives to the lordship of Jesus (and submit to the process of refining), He opens up the door into the heavenly realms for us to engage and ‘Come up here’. Some people have been translated physically, I know, but for most of us it will be a spiritual experience, and that is what we have been looking at on this blog in recent posts.

With practice we can learn to turn into that realm of heaven, because it is ‘at hand’ – or as close to us as if we put our hand in front of our face. We step in, and we step out of the heavenly realms. When we step back out, we bring with us what is there and manifest it here. That is what we understand by Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt 6:10). Jesus Himself brought the kingdom, and the will of God, as it is in heaven, to the earth – and He intends his disciples to do the same. If we are to bring heaven to earth, we have to access heaven – and the door is open.

Bear the image of the heavenly

As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly (1 Cor 15:48-49).

Just as we were born in an earthly body, now we have been born again and our spirit is now active and alive to God. So we will now bear the image of the heavenly. We need to be bearing the image of the things that are going on in the heavenlies, and outworking them here on the earth. God is opening up the door for us to engage with the heavenly realms, so that we can both see and reflect what is going on.

Through the church… in the heavenly places

…and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things; so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord (Eph 3:9-11).

There is so much more to God than we can even imagine. He is infinite and eternal. And there is so much that He is revealing today which has not been revealed before. He is opening the realms of heaven so that His people can see. That manifold, multi-faceted, wisdom of God is to be made known through the church – through us – to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.

That kingdom which is in darkness – it, too, is that close to us. We are not to draw from it, but we are to manifest the manifold wisdom and authority of God to its rulers and authorities in heavenly places. This was always His intention:

This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord (v11).

Adam was to have enjoyed free access to the heavenly realms, but he chose a different path. In Christ, that access is now restored to us.

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Related articles from others

refining purifying fire twinstapin

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96. Surrender and Rule

 

Mike Parsons 
and Jeremy Westcott –

Surrender

When we open the door of our heart, when we open that First Love gate and let Jesus come in, He comes in and He rules. We can rule here in this realm on our own mountain, in our own house, but we rule through surrender. We give Him rulership of our life. Now as we are renewed in our mind, and as He begins to transform us, as our emotions and our soul get restored, He gives back more and more rulership to us, so that our spirit starts to rule in us as a joint heir with Him.

Initially he comes and rules: we hand our lives over to Him. But as He starts to equip us, He gives us more and more authority to rule with Him as a son of our Father. In the early days He can’t trust us with it all because we wouldn’t know how to handle it. It would be like giving a child a machine gun. But as time goes on, the more we allow God to transform us into His image, the more authority we start to come into. The more we allow God to deal with what is in our hearts and see that worked out in our lives, the more He begins to bring us into the delegated authority associated with our destiny, so that we rule with Him in that place.

What is our destiny?

We really need to find out what is on our scroll of destiny. We can get a sense of what is on it by looking at what we are consistently drawn towards. But as we get to know God intimately, we can talk to Him about it and ask Him to show it to us. I have mentioned this before, and I will go into it some more on another occasion.

For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren (Rom 8:29).

This is ordained for us, our destiny has been put in place: we are called to be conformed to the image of Jesus. To be like Him. There are not supposed to be just one or two people ruling in the heavenly places: Jesus is to be the firstborn among many brethren. We are all supposed to rule as joint heirs with Christ. We need to take up our authority.

Rule as a lord…

So we become a lord when we dispossess the giants and rule on the mountain thrones in the ‘kingdom of God’ heavenly realm. That is where we are ruling the house. That is our house, our level of authority; our mountain, our throne. That is all to do with our destiny and our mandate. We can even become a lord of lords as we disciple and raise up other lords. We give away what we have received. We raise up others and bring them into their destinies as well.

…a king…

Then we become a king, when we dispossess the dragon and we rule on that mountain throne in the ‘kingdom of heaven’ heavenly realm. We start to administer righteousness and justice from the heavenly courts.

When we start operating in the courts, we will find them to be awesome places of authority. There is a whole court system, with higher and lower courts, and I have been to many of them myself. There are divorce courts where we are able to legally separate ourselves from things in our past. There are courts of accusation where Satan accuses the brethren, and we have to go and deal with those accusations over ourselves (how we deal with accusations against us, by the way, is to agree with them, accept the judgment of God, and go free because Jesus has already paid for us). Some of those reading this are called to be intercessors: they are called to go to the courts and deal with accusations on behalf of other places, people or regions.

We can become a king of kings as we disciple and raise up other kings. Everything is about reproducing in others what God produces in us. Everything God is and has in heaven, He wants to be reproduced on earth. That is why Jesus had disciples around Him.

…a son

As we are diligent to rule as lords and kings, God will bring us into our place as sons. Then we rule on a mountain on a throne in the heavenly realm of ‘Heaven’. And God manifests us as sons of light on the earth (as it is in heaven). As in heaven, so on earth: the application of that here is that only as we rule in the heavens first can we then outwork that rule on the earth. We cannot expect to do it the other way round.

We will live as manifest sons of God, restoring the earth to its original purpose – the original purpose even in the first creation – to bring us into fullness of sonship.

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Image: Imperial Crown of Austria Globus cruciger Sceptre.jpg
By Yelkrokoyade (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

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92. Step into the Realm of Heaven

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

We have been seeing over several posts now how God intends us to enter into the realms of heaven, here and now while living on the earth.

If you are ready, it is time today to actually do that.

Step in, step out

If you are able, please stand up and pray in tongues for a minute – out loud if possible, just to activate your spirit. Please don’t skip over this. If right now you are not in a position to pray aloud, you are welcome to continue reading, but do come back to this post later and actually work through it, because it is very practical.

When you have been praying for a minute or so (don’t stop, carry on praying in tongues),

See that there is a door open.
God is standing in the door,
And He’s welcoming you to step into the realm of heaven

There is a ladder, with angels going up and down.
But you don’t have to climb the ladder to get up to the door,
Because God is asking you in, welcoming you, inviting you to come.

So as you continue to pray in tongues,
Take a step forward, a physical step,
And go into that realm, where your throne is, in the heavens.

You are now standing in the presence of God.
The glory of God is surrounding you,
The presence of God’s kingdom is surrounding you.

You step in and receive your lordship.
You step in as a lord,
And you are going to receive the authority to rule
On the mountain that is operating within your spirit.

You are in the heavenly realms.
You have stepped in to the presence of God
And He is investing in you
The right and the power to rule in your life

So step out of the heavenly realms
(Take a step backwards).

And now you have authority,
And you can exercise that rule and authority on your mountain
To see things change in this realm, on the earth.

I want to encourage you, you can step in and out of the realms of heaven as many times in the day as you choose to. Step into the realm of heaven; step back out of the realm of heaven: bring heavenly authority back with you and apply it to your life.

If there is something negative or difficult going on during the day, just step into the realms of heaven. Receive the robes of righteousness and then step out of the realm of heaven and exercise authority in the righteousness of God, here on earth.

Practise stepping in and stepping out.
Pray in tongues vigorously.
That will build your spirit so that you are able to step in and step out.

Engaging with God in our garden

We have a garden in our soul. Our garden is part of our heart (there are four chambers of the heart). Let’s begin to learn to fellowship with God there, as we open the door, that ‘everlasting door’ that is in each of us, to let God in.

So we pray in tongues for a minute or two, continue to pray …

[2 minutes]

And now we are going to open that door.

We open the door in our heart.
We welcome the King of Glory to come in
and be enthroned on the throne of our life.

We receive His lordship, His authority in our spirit,
For our spirit to rule our body, rule our soul, and have authority.

We operate in the authority of the kingdom: in heaven, in our lives, in our spirit.
So we develop that spiritual connection with God where the River of Life is flowing,
Where the garden of God becomes the garden in our heart.
As it is in heaven, so it is outworked on earth, in and through us.

You can learn to step in every day, open up your door, let the King of glory come in. And He will rule on the throne of your life as you surrender the rule of your life to Him.

When we first start exercising in this way, He rules. We surrender our life to Him. Then as we go on, He starts to give us back more authority. He trusts us to do the things on earth as in heaven. Once we have learnt to surrender our spirit, soul and body, He will give us the throne in our own life to rule with Him.

Step in every day. Open up the doors. Let the King of glory come in. Enthrone Him over your life. Then start to exercise that lordship on your spirit-gates, your body-gates, your soul-gates. Work on getting your gates open and flowing freely (you can use the diagram below to help you with this). The Spirit of God will start manifesting through you in everyday life.

You can continually step into and out of the realms of the heavens, as God intends.

Gates

gates-with-no-hole
Diagram of the gates of our spirit, soul and body. The origins of the diagram go back to at least the year 1919. Ian Clayton saw something similar to this on a scroll he received from heaven and offers extensive teaching on it.

In this diagram of the gates of our spirit, soul and body, you will see that the Glory of God is in the centre of our being, and the gates are the means of seeing Him manifest in our lives. They are not for ‘letting Him in’, but for ‘letting Him out’. Starting with the gate of First Love, we can work through them, asking God to show us if anything is blocking them, and then exercising heavenly authority to see them opened and freely flowing. The more of our gates are wide open, the more of God can be manifested in our daily lives.

Garden (song)

Here is a Misty Edwards song we often use to help us engage with God in our garden.

Or click here to play: Garden (Misty Edwards – via YouTube – opens in new tab/window)
[If the above version does not appear, please search for ‘Misty Edwards Garden’ on YouTube]

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1048

84. Characteristics of the Joshua Generation (#31-35)

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

We are approaching the end of this series looking at the generation who will possess all that God has promised, and be forerunners who inspire others to do the same.

31. The Joshua generation will be ruthless in the pursuit and eradication of the enemy.

Again, we are not talking about fighting against flesh and blood, but that we must not compromise in dealing with the spiritual forces of wickedness. We have to be ruthless. No compromise. We can’t live alongside them; we can’t share thrones with them; we have to destroy them.

Joshua captured all the cities of these kings, and all their kings, and he struck them with the edge of the sword, and utterly destroyed them; just as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded… For it was of the LORD to harden their hearts, to meet Israel in battle in order that he might utterly destroy them, that they might receive no mercy, but that he might destroy them, just as the LORD had commanded Moses (Joshua 11:12, 20).

This is a picture of something they did in the natural realm and we must do in the spiritual realm. When we do, it gives us authority in this realm: authority to rule.

32. The Joshua generation will ensure that nothing God commands will be unfinished.

We need to be faithful in carrying out God’s commands, and carrying them out fully. We need to persevere.

Just as the LORD had commanded Moses his servant, so Moses commanded Joshua, and so Joshua did; he left nothing undone of all that the LORD had commanded Moses (Joshua 11:15).

We need to fulfil the word of God. If we are to take the commands of God, the counsels of God, and fulfil them, then we must know them. And knowing them involves much more than head knowledge. We need to hear the word God speaks to us, go into heaven with it, get revelation on it, and bring it back down here.

33. The Joshua generation will bring the next generation into their full inheritance and rest.

So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the LORD had spoken to Moses, and Joshua gave it for an inheritance to Israel according to their divisions by their tribes. Thus the land had rest from war (Joshua 11:23).

He took everything that was promised: the whole of the land. Now that should have been the starting point for them to go into the rest of the world, and bless the whole world. Remember, Abraham was given the whole world as his inheritance, not just a tiny piece of land in the Middle East. They were supposed to go from that place to fill the earth: they never did it. So the kingdom was taken away from them and given to a people who will. Jesus said He had been given all authority in heaven and on earth, and that his followers were to go and disciple the nations. That is the same authority in heaven and on earth: it is authority granted in heaven to be outworked on earth.

This scripture says they had rest. In one of my face-to-face encounters with Jesus, he took me and showed me the seat of rest: what it is to come from a position of rest. He taught me from Matthew 11 and from Hebrews 4. Everything we do must come from rest. From peace, from wholeness, not striving or struggling; not being weary and heavy-laden in our own strength. Everything needs to come out of rest; then we are doing things in the strength of God.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls (Matt 11:29).

The word translated ‘gentle’ here is the word for a stallion under complete control, a wild stallion which has been broken and has a bit in its mouth, so that whoever rides it is able to control it. That is like us, knowing that we are a wild stallion, empowered with authority, but totally submitted like Jesus was to the Father: ‘I only do the will of Him who sent Me’ (see John 4:34 and 6:38).

False humility is pride in disguise, saying that I’m no good, that I have nothing to offer. True humility lies in saying, ‘I am a son of God, seated in heavenly places. I have authority and power. And I choose to surrender that authority and power only to do what I see the Father doing.’

In complete surrender you can come from a place of rest.

34. The Joshua generation will have supernatural strength for war.

They will be like Caleb, who at 85 years of age was still going in and out to fight.

So, let’s understand, none of all this is about age: it is about who we are and what we are in the spirit. No matter what our physical age is, in the spirit we can have rulership and strength to overcome.

I am still as strong today as I was in the day Moses sent me; as my strength was then, so my strength is now, for war and for going out and coming in. Now then, give me this hill country about which the LORD spoke on that day, for you heard on that day that Anakim were there, with great fortified cities; perhaps the LORD will be with me, and I will drive them out as the LORD has spoken (Joshua 14:11-12).

Caleb and Joshua, as we saw in characteristic #7, had a different spirit on them. They had an attitude. They were going to rule. They came with authority and power.

Let me ask you this: when Caleb talked about going out and coming in, where do you think he was going out and coming in from? It was the heavenly realms, because that is where his strength for war came from. If you go up and down, you will be able to go to and fro, as we have seen before.

One of the things I really like about Caleb is where he went when he did go out to war: to the mountains! ‘Give me this hill country’. Because in the hills, in the mountains, (in the place of authority, as we now understand) was where the giants were. He wasn’t going to settle for the easy places, where there was no-one much to conquer.

35. The Joshua generation will be giant killers, forerunners for the next generation.

Osmar_Schindler_David_und_Goliath

I have a sword, which enables me to destroy and cut the heads off giants. All of us need to be giant-slayers. You all have giants who are occupying your thrones in the heavenly realms – that is, unless you have already been there and dispossessed them. You have to dispossess the enemy in order to possess your inheritance. In the heavenly realms is where you do it, and then you outwork your inheritance here.

We have to do that in our role as forerunners. We have to take our place of authority. We can’t pass this on as theory: it has to come out of our experience if we are to lead others into it.

I can only talk about giant-killing like this now because I have been and killed one. I couldn’t talk about it before. I am not going to talk to you about theory, I am only going to talk to you about things I have done, and about places I have been, so that you can go there too. And if you go to places I haven’t been, and do things I haven’t done, then you can testify to those so that I can get to go there and do them too. That is how testimony works: it opens up my experiences for you, and yours for me; ours for others, and theirs for us. And so we overcome by the word of our testimony.

Caleb drove out from there the three sons of Anak: Sheshai and Ahiman and Talmai, the children of Anak (Joshua 15:14).

There are 9 races of giants, which arose from the activity of fallen angels who did not keep their proper place, as we read in Jude. Nephilim did not have human spirits, so when they died they went into the heavenly realms, where they occupied mountains and thrones.

If we are to take our place of authority, we need to kill the giants. And if we are to fully receive our inheritance we will need to kill dragons as well, because if you go into the heavenly realms you are going to come across them too. I know maybe all this is a bit ‘out there’ for you, but I have seen it, and so I can tell you about it. It really is up to you what you do with it – I would suggest you go to God yourself and ask Him to show you.

Dragons are another result of Satan’s attempts to manipulate DNA.

In the garden, Satan overshadowed Eve. That was what the fruit was all about: it wasn’t like eating an apple off a tree; it was an overshadowing where he mixed DNA. Cain and Abel were twins, but one of them had Satan as his father. That is why Cain killed Abel, to stop the line of Adam going forward, so that the reptilian line could fill the earth.

DNA is important, because only DNA could occupy the realms of heaven. Only DNA could inherit. So Satan needed DNA – he had tried to manipulate it in the first creation, where his pollution of reptilian seed outworked in the dinosaurs. When those dinosaurs died, their spirits became dragons, in the heavenly realms.

Dragons occupy our inheritance. When we cut off their head, let’s make sure we cut off their tail, split them open and get out everything that is in their belly: our scrolls, and all that God intended for us to have. That is what they do: they stop the provision and the inheritance of God coming through to us.

We need to kill the giants to take our place of authority; and we need to kill the dragons to receive our inheritance.

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68. As He Is, So Are We

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

When Jesus comes back, He is coming for His bride, the church. So this scripture is talking about us:

That He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless (Eph 5:27).

And since each of us are part of that bride, we have to be ready. That is why we are experiencing a season of purification and refining in our lives. For some of us, we may well have been here before. But we have a sense that God is doing something at a deeper level this time. God is removing stumbling blocks, He is removing all the idols we have in our lives. We are praying Psalm 139, ‘Search me O God, and know my heart’. And it is so that He can make us into that holy church that Jesus can inhabit in fullness, releasing His power onto the earth.

Confidence

Now, what does it take to be ready? There are some scriptures in the first letter of John that I want to look at:

By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world (1 John 4:17).

So we can have confidence, because ‘as He is, so also are we in this world’. As Jesus is: not as He was, but as He is now. He is enthroned in heaven: and we are outworking that kingdom, that enthronement, here on the earth. Our confidence comes from knowing that He is on the throne. His position as King is what gives us the confidence to outwork that kingdom, here in our lives, on earth.

‘Now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming’ (1 John 2:28).

There is a relationship here: we abide in Him and He in us. It is an intimate relationship. And when He appears, as long as we are remaining in that relationship of intimacy, hearing and obeying His voice daily, doing the things we see the Father doing, then of course we will greet Him with confidence. It would be terrible to flinch away from Him when He comes in glory, not to be able to look at Him because we are ashamed of the way we have been living. If we stay close to Him now, we can have confidence when He comes.

Like Him

‘Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure’ (1 John 3:2-3).

So when Jesus actually appears, we will be like Him. We will be transformed. We will have a new resurrection body, and be transformed into an eternal being. In His resurrection body Jesus was able to appear to His disciples, walk through walls, eat a fish supper. We will be just like that: ‘we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.’ But because we have this hope, we also need to purify ourselves, just as He is pure. So we do have some work to do.

Baggage

When we see Him, we do not want to be carrying all the baggage that we might presently be going around with. We have an opportunity, right now, to be purified. We can allow Jesus to refine us, to prepare us to meet Him. All that holds us back and weighs us down, we have an opportunity to get it sorted out ahead of time.

I want to be properly prepared to meet Him face to face. I have my life here and now to work on that. And how do I make myself ready? I just surrender to Him. I allow Him to do whatever he wants to do in me. It is not something I have to somehow try to rack my brains and get all figured out. I just have to give Him my life on a daily basis. I need to present myself as a living sacrifice. I need to reckon myself dead to sin and alive to Him. I need to be crucified with Christ so that I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. My flesh no longer determines what I do.

Anointed One

‘Christ’ is not Jesus’ surname, remember. Whenever the word ‘Christ’ is used in scripture it refers to the anointing he carries. When it says ‘Jesus’, it is referring to the person of Jesus; when it says ‘the Lord Jesus Christ’, it is giving Him His full title and emphasising His lordship. So each time we read about Jesus in scripture, the name(s) used to describe Him emphasise what aspect we particularly need to understand about Him.

So it is Christ, the Anointed One and His anointing, who lives in me. I have been crucified – past tense – but I need to outwork that in a daily relationship, by presenting myself as a living sacrifice before God. I have written about how we do that in an earlier post. This may be stating the obvious, but the thing about a living sacrifice is that it is actually alive. I present myself on a daily basis, so that my life can be used for His kingdom purposes, so that I can be pure as He is pure.

That is how He would like me to be; how He would like all of us to be. How we need to be, because He is coming.

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29. Surrender Your Whole Life

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

abandon

I believe that God is challenging us to surrender. And especially if you have been hardening your heart when you have seen God at work in revival, resisting what He is doing because things are not as you expected, this is an opportunity for you to surrender totally to Him, and allow Him to do what He needs to do.

All of us, everything

Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord (Acts 3:19).

If we are willing to turn away from ourselves and surrender to Him, He will refresh us with His very Presence. That is a promise: the question is, are we willing, or do we still want to do it our own way? Do we still want to do it according to our own thinking or are we willing to surrender that and allow God to do it however He chooses? Are we willing to give Him everything? He wants our heart; He wants our mind; He wants it all. He is not satisfied with what we are giving Him: all of us need to surrender everything.

Let us abandon ourselves to Him: be that living sacrifice we looked at last time, and let it all go. Let go of our past and let Him heal it and restore it. He will restore our soul if we are willing to sit in green pastures by quiet waters and look at His face. See His eyes, looking at us, loving us. Seeing our pain and our hurt, and bringing healing because He loves us. He went to the cross and took every sickness, every pain, every disease, every sorrow; He took every sin we have committed or ever will, every sin that has been committed against us, and He died for us. And He was resurrected and is alive to enforce the victory of the cross in our lives – if we will allow Him to do it.

The question is, will we let it go? We need to receive our true identity as sons of God. The only way we receive it is letting go of our old identity, letting go of our old way of doing it, our old strongholds and mindsets, to embrace our destiny. Every one of us has a destiny in God, God wants us to embrace it.

Today

And today, I really believe, is the time when we need to make a decision in our hearts. Some of us have been lukewarm, resistant, doing as little as we have thought we could get away with. If we have been thinking that would be OK, we need to recognise that is not enough anymore. It never was. It is not enough to play around with this: God wants our whole life: everything. And when we give Him our whole life, we receive His abundant life in return; we get everything we ever desired or wanted, but has been blocked by our stubbornness, because of the flesh and the strongholds that get in the way.  Today is the time when we can surrender.

Can we take a minute to be quiet, close our eyes, and be honest before God about where we are with Him right now? If we are struggling, to surrender that struggle. If we know there are things we have not handed over to Him, to hand them over now. Just count the cost of what doing things our own way might be for us, if we miss what God is doing right now. Consider where it will lead us and where it will take us, compared to what will happen if we surrender our life to God, compared to our destiny in God,  in the Holy Spirit, in the future Kingdom of God.

Selah

Please, pause for a minute to do that, and only continue reading this post when you are done.

Prayer of surrender

Now I am inviting you to pray with me if you are willing to surrender the whole of your life. Whether you have prayed a prayer of surrender like this before, or whether this is the first time, He wants to give you so much more than you can imagine or think, but He cannot if you are not surrendering everything to Him. Surrender to Him right now. Forget what anyone else is doing around you, just get in the presence of God.

Father,
I pray that You will receive the living sacrifice
That I am presenting before You right now.
That You will receive it into Your hand,
Receive my life, receive my soul,
My mind, my heart, my will, my emotions, my choice.
Receive me as a living sacrifice,
Heal, restore, make whole,
Empower, envision, equip;
Draw me into an intimate relationship with You, Father.

As I surrender to You,
Come, meet with me at that point of surrender.
As I surrender my life, give me Your abundant life;
As I surrender my hurts and pains, bring healing and restoration;
As I surrender my past, give me revelation of my future.
Open up the eyes of my heart to see, to hear, to feel and to know
Who I am as Your son.
Release my true identity as Your son,
Called to the kingdom for such a time as this.
Prepare my body with fragrant oils and fragrant perfume
To come into the presence of the King.

I come into the presence of the King right now
As a living sacrifice,
To present it before You in the heavenly realms
So that I can take my seat,
Seated with Christ in authority and power in the heavenly realms;
To manifest Your kingdom
On earth, as it is in heaven, through my life,
Manifesting the light of Your glory.
Take me, Lord God,
Take my heart, melt it with Your love.

With Your eyes of love
You are looking into people’s hearts, saying,
“Give Me your heart,
Stop being stubborn,
Stop resisting;
Surrender,
Be a living sacrifice.
I have so much to give you,
So much more than you can imagine or think.
Today, just surrender to me
And allow me to do what I want to do in your life.
Allow me to direct your life
In the way it should go,
To empower you and envision you;
Embrace your destiny.”

I pray, Holy Spirit, touch our lives today.
As we have turned away from our own way
And we have repented and turned to You,
Let times of refreshing come from Your very Presence.
Let Your Presence rest on us;
Open up the realms of heaven
As you invite us into the throne room
To meet the King.

God wants to give you new things: He wants you to be invested with new clothes, new robes of righteousness and kingly authority. He wants to put a ring of authority on your finger. He wants to release power and anointing upon you. You are called to the kingdom for such a time as this.

But first of all, He wants you to surrender.

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27. Surrender, Crucifixion and Sacrifice

Mike Parsons –

I surrender

We are continuing to look at the Prophetic Timetable that God showed me, the plan of what He intends  to do in our days, until Jesus returns. As I have said, there are no specific dates here, but periods of time in which God will be working in particular ways.

In the coming days, God is going to equip people in supernatural ministry. There will be cities of refuge (we read about cities of refuge in the Old Testament: they were places where people could go and be safe). God is speaking to us here at Freedom about being one of those cities of refuge. And there will be others because in the times that are going to come, people will need places of safety that only the kingdom of God can provide.

Surrender

All the creative gifts are going to be released, whether in music or the arts or media – all sorts of areas. God is going to release that, but He has first to remove the stumbling blocks: and the gathering angels are waiting. We do not have to wait for that time, do not have to wait till He comes and pins us to the ground. We can be proactive: we can surrender and allow God to do it right now; we can get on our face before Him and allow Him to do anything He chooses in our lives: get rid of the flesh, pride, rebellion, impurity, unbelief – anything. And if we surrender, He will do it.

He wants us to surrender, He wants us to say ‘Yes’ to Him, so that we can shine like the sun, shine with His glory: the light has come, and that light needs to be released, manifested through us as true sons of God, manifested in power. The whole of creation is groaning, waiting for the manifestation of God’s sons (Rom 8), those who are actually reflecting the glory of Jesus, who are truly living as Christians – ‘little Christs’. You know, ‘Christ’ is not Jesus’ surname: it means ‘Anointed One’ and it puts the focus on His anointing. So when we are Christians, we are anointed ones; and we carry His anointing and His power. All those ancient anointings, together with new ones, are going to be released in these days. So please, let’s not miss out, any of us.

Crucifixion

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 of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me (Galatians 2:20).

That is a key scripture in surrendering to God. This is what Jesus has already done for us on the cross: are we going to embrace it? Are we going to count ourselves crucified with Him? We are going to have to surrender ourselves to that crucifixion of the flesh. Everything that could hinder, and cause us to be a stumbling block, or cause us to miss out; everything that has happened to us; all the pain and the hurt, the disappointment, the people who have let us down, and the abuse that we have suffered – are we going to allow any of that to stop us? Or are we going to use it as a springboard to surrender to God, to be healed, restored, and made whole?

Let me make it personal: will you ask yourself, “Am I going to allow God to change my life, so that I can get on and do the things that He has called me to do?”

He wants to live through us. The New Age movement has robbed us of so much, because they have counterfeited what is real. When you talk about being a channel of the Holy Spirit or being a channel of God’s power, there is a sharp intake of breath as people say, ‘Oooh, you can’t do that”. And that is because the New Age people talk about channelling spirits. But we are actually supposed to be a channel of the Holy Spirit; rivers of living water are supposed to flow through us; we are supposed to be those who God breathes through, who God lives in, so that people see Him in our lives.

Sacrifice

This is how we do it:

I urge you, brethren (and ‘urge’ is a very strong word), by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.  And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect (Rom 12:1-2).

That is what worship is. Worship is not singing songs, though singing songs may be a way we express our worship. Worship is bowing down in obedience and saying, “You are God, and I submit and surrender to You. I present my life as a living sacrifice: You use it how You want to use it. I am not going to get in the way, I am not going to determine what I am going to do in my life, I am going to surrender it to You. I will allow You to lead me”.

Those who are children of God are led by the Spirit. We are not conformed to this world, we don’t have to come under the rules and regulations of the world. I am not talking about the laws of the land, we need to respect and honour those in authority over us; but I am talking about the things of the world that seek to keep us down, things that say to us, “You’re not good enough, you’ll never be anything”.

God uses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. He is not looking for people of great intellect, He is looking for people who are available, people who are willing. It is not about how much head-knowledge we have of the Bible: what counts is knowing Jesus. It is actually having a personal relationship with Him. No-one reading this is excluded from that, no-one at all. You might have university degrees, that is great. I had an education like that, but did it help me in knowing God? Not a bit. Most of the time it got in the way, because I rationalised, analysed and thought about Him rather than feeling Him, experiencing Him and knowing Him.

And now that I am feeling, experiencing and knowing Him, it is a total revelation! To meet with God and know Him, to meet with the Holy Spirit and know what God is saying; to receive visions and direction and dreams from God: that is what He wants for us, and that is how He wants to speak to us. We cannot know God except by experience. It is not about gaining knowledge, it is about being transformed by the renewing of our mind. Then we will know what God’s will is for our lives, and we will be able to outwork it.

That is why God wants us to sacrifice ourselves to Him, to surrender and to submit to Him as Lord of our lives: to allow Him to determine what our lives are like – who we are, where we go, what we do, what we say.

How do we surrender and submit to Him? We come as a living sacrifice, a prepared sacrifice; and in the next post we will see exactly what that involves.

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