We have seen that God is on the inside of us, and that we want to allow Him to flood our whole being with glory so that we overflow to transform the world around us.
Yesterday we looked at each of the gateways in our spirit through which He wants to flow. Tomorrow we will look at those in our soul, but today’s post is a little unusual…
One of the things we have found really useful here in Freedom Church is to make a rotating cardboard cutout of the ‘gateways’ diagram shared with us by Ian Clayton. Then we can line up different combinations of gates and ask Jesus to stand with us in them and show us how the river of life should flow through that particular combination.
To make one, you need to print off four copies of the gateways diagram – or click here for one with the cutting circles already drawn on – onto thin card (you can print it on paper and stick it to card if that is simpler). Then cut them out as in the diagram below, so that you have four different sized circles.
Make a small hole in the centre of all four circles. Finally, fasten them together in order, face up, with the smallest on top and the largest on the bottom, using a split-pin type paperclip pushed through from the top. You might want to put some sticky tape over the ends of the splayed pin because they can be quite sharp.
There is an image of the completed spinner in the header image of this post (and below). You will see that the first love, hope, mind, and ear gates are aligned from the centre. Spin each wheel separately to line up any combination of gates as a visual prompt as you work through them.
presenting ourselves in heaven as living sacrifices
seed-line and blood-line cleansing.
An entire module of our Engaging God programme (see below) is devoted to the subject of ‘Gateways’
Support Freedom ARC
Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits.
Or you can use the blue button to support our work with a one-time gift*. Thank you!*Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation. For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead.
Are you part of the Joshua Generation?
We developed this just for you:
Engaging God on the Heavenly Pathways of Relationship and Responsibility is our online school for equipping a Joshua Generation of supernatural sons of God to live according to the order of Melchizedek.
This diagram is based on one shared with us at Freedom by Ian Clayton (sonofthunder.org)
“He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water'” (John 7:38).
God has come to dwell in our innermost being. Now we want to allow Him to flow through us and out from us, transforming both ourselves and the world around us. As we open the gate of first love, we begin to allow Him to flood into our whole being.
And that is where some find the first blockage. As we have looked at our gate of first love, some of us have seen it blocked, closed, locked, even chained. But that is a projection of our soul. Even if our own experience of first love has caused us to put up barriers to intimacy (and I have written before about my own), we also have the ability to take them down again. We can clear it, unlock it, unchain it, open it. The enemy has no access here in our spirit. Jesus is knocking. Let’s let Him into our lives.
As we open that door of first love, the river flows out into our spirit. We surrender to the presence of God on the inside. In our spirit, there are different senses, or different actions of the spirit: we need to let the glory of God flow through these and activate them. It is the Holy Spirit coming through those gates, through those doorways in our spirit, coming out into our soul.
Fear of God, reverence, prayer, hope, faith, revelation, intuition, worship. And there is one more, our heavenly gate if you like, our access to heaven, which is back through that gate of first love into the heavenly realms, following the river of life back to its source.
The first few are to do with fellowship. The presence of God in us. Learning to identify and know God by experience of who He is, so we learn to fellowship and trust him in that place. And the others are to do with revelatory things, where God reveals Himself through us, where we see aspects of His kingdom, where we hear His voice, where we get to know what He is doing, and where He gives us visions and dreams and revelations of what He wants to do. Without the first, the second does not really function.
Fear of God
We need to understand that within us there is the all-seeing, all-knowing, omnipresent God. That is an awesome thing. God who has created the universe, and everything in it, has chosen to come and dwell within us. We become a habitation of God. We have to prepare that place for Him to dwell. The all-consuming fire of God is on the inside of us.
Fear of God is not the same as being afraid of Him. If I know God’s love, I will not be afraid of Him. But this is an awesome thing, to have Him dwell within us, and He wants us to know the awesomeness of His presence.
Reverence
Honouring and respecting God. We will do nothing that will bring His Name into disrepute or dishonour. We will seek to bring honour to Him.
Prayer
That is not getting on our knees, putting our hands together, and finishing it off with ‘Amen’. It is about two-way communication, where the Spirit of God, where the mind of Christ, where the heart of the Father, are flowing through us in relationship. That is why praying in tongues is so important: it is our spirit praying and communicating with God. And we can do that without ceasing, if we train it to continue even when our conscious mind is elsewhere.
Hope
That sense where visions and dreams and opportunities are flowing, where God shows us His will.
Faith
Harmony, concord, understanding, knowing: where we come together in agreement with God. We start to operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the power of God as He flows through us.
Revelation
Inspiration, light, counsel, wisdom.
We need to activate these senses. They do not just automatically switch on.We need to be hungry and thirsty, desiring them.
Intuition
Gut feeling, instinct, knowing, as the Holy Spirit reveals the Father’s heart to us.
Heavenly
Back through our first love gate, our connection with the heavenly realms and a consciousness of what is going on in heaven.
Now all those are great, and you can have them all wonderfully working, but without one other thing, it doesn’t mean anything. And that is worship.
Worship
Worship is not singing. It is a state of complete obedience to God. It is complete surrender and total submission to the will of God for our lives, on a daily basis. Everything else that is flowing within us will lead to us saying, ‘God I choose to surrender myself to you’. That is what He wants us to do.
‘How to’
In the past, faced with this kind of exercise to work through, most of us would have thought and prayed about what might be blocking each gateway, and asked God for help in removing it. It might have been helpful for us too: peeling off outer layers of our issues, difficulties and blockages through traditional ministry.
But that is an outside-in approach. We want to allow the flow of God to work from the inside out.
I would encourage you to find Jesus on the inside of you, and take Him with you to stand in each gateway. Work through them one at a time, perhaps one a day. And not to assume that we know what any of the names of the gateways actually mean: ask Him to show you what that gateway means to you. Most of the blockages will have come from the outside in. Ask Him what they are. Ask Him to stand with you and work with you from the inside out to unblock them and allow the glory of God to flow through them.
It is all about feeling, sensing and engaging with Him: a very different way of working, but in our experience, very much more effective.
Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits.
Or you can use the blue button to support our work with a one-time gift*. Thank you!*Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation. For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead.
Are you part of the Joshua Generation?
We developed this just for you:
Engaging God on the Heavenly Pathways of Relationship and Responsibility is our online school for equipping a Joshua Generation of supernatural sons of God to live according to the order of Melchizedek.
I have written before about how God gave me four words: investiture, succession, enthronement and coronation. Those four events happen in that exact order. First you are invested with authority, but you do not immediately move on to taking up your throne. Before you can be enthroned, succession has to happen: that is, whoever or whatever is presently sitting on that throne needs to die, step aside or be removed.
If we are invested with the power of the kingdom, then we have to dethrone the things that are ruling in our lives: our self, our soul; me, myself, and I. If I want to see the kingdom of God flowing through my life there is no place on the throne for ‘me, myself and I’. ‘I’ will only get in the way of it. ‘I’ will spoil it, ‘I’ will block it. ‘I’ need to be dethroned.
Nature, which has programmed me, programmed my DNA from past generations, needs to be restored and renewed. Nurture, environmental programming in my life: my upbringing, what has gone on around me, needs to be restored and renewed. Trauma, which is experiential programming, things I have experienced that cause me to respond in particular ways, needs reprogramming. I need to be transformed, restored to my original eternal condition. That is what God wants to happen here, in this realm; not just in eternity, because what happens here will determine what I do in eternity once time is finished.
This is a picture which describes how we can start operating in the kingdom of God (Ian Clayton saw something similar to this on a scroll he received from heaven, though the origins of the diagram go back to at least the year 1919).
It starts with the glory of God, His presence on the inside of us. In our spirit, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have come to make their home as Jesus promised. They want to occupy the seat of government in our lives. As we open that inner door of first love, the glory of God first flows out into our spirit and develops our spiritual senses. Then it flows out through our soul and transforms our soul. God comes into our heart, where our scroll of destiny is seated, and begins to transform us. Eventually His glory flows out through our body, a manifestation of transfiguration, where the light of God’s glory will shine through us.
Notice how the flow is always from the inside. Everything in the kingdom happens from the inside out. It is no good us trying change ourselves from the outside in. We need to learn to surrender ourselves to the presence of God on the inside, so that the presence of God flows through our whole being, and transforms us.
We begin by opening the First Love gate. That is where Jesus is knocking in Revelation 3:20. He wants us to enjoy intimacy with Him, and He wants access to the whole of our lives, spirit, soul and body. The door handle is on our side.
Here is an animated version of that diagram, created by Adam Butterick for Son Of Thunder (click the ‘play’ button to start):
We will look some more at this diagram over the next few posts. There are gateways between each of these parts of our lives, and they have been blocked, often by things that have come in from the outside.
The things we have seen, smelt, heard, tasted and touched will have affected our soul. If we try to change them by the things we can see, smell, hear, taste and touch on the outside, it will not be effective because all we do is reinforce the operations of the self.
But if we allow the Spirit of God to flow through us, we allow His presence to change and transform us – from the inside.
Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits.
Or you can use the blue button to support our work with a one-time gift*. Thank you!*Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation. For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead.
Are you part of the Joshua Generation?
We developed this just for you:
Engaging God on the Heavenly Pathways of Relationship and Responsibility is our online school for equipping a Joshua Generation of supernatural sons of God to live according to the order of Melchizedek.
Everything we are writing about in this series on Preparing For Destiny comes down to (or builds up to) one thing: what will we choose to do? Will we choose to do what Jesus would do? Or will we choose to do what our own flesh tells us to do?
Holy Spirit flow
If we are to choose right, we need to be flowing in the Holy Spirit.
We need a connection with the Holy Spirit. We need to be baptised in the Holy Spirit. We need to be speaking in tongues. Praying in tongues is a major flow of the life of God which is within us. It builds up an environment around us which draws the presence of God, so that God comes and fills that space.
Dead to God
This is what we were like before we came into the realisation of being born again:
We had a soul. Our heart had natural needs, we had a body of flesh through which it did its best to meet its natural needs, and we had a spirit that was dead to God, separated from Him in our own understanding. That is why we read in Jeremiah:
For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me The fountain of living waters, To hew for themselves cisterns, Broken cisterns That can hold no water.
(Jer 2:13).
Believing itself separated from God, our soul had no alternative but to try to get its needs met however it could. So it tried to meet those needs by drawing on the world. We all have a built-in need for love, acceptance, security, significance and purpose. But the world cannot fully meet those needs (it was never intended to) and as a result, our soul is damaged and we experience hurt, pain, rejection, insecurity, fear, disappointment, guilt, and shame.
Alive to God
Then we hear and respond to the gospel. Our spirit now comes alive to God, and suddenly we realise it is possible for us to have our needs met by Him. But we are used to getting them met by the world. So we have to transfer our source of acceptance and love; we need to transfer it from the world around us, to God, who is on the inside of us.
We start to look inwards, to God in us; not outwards, to the world.
As we do that, as we are transformed, as we are restored in our soul, then God deals with that damage. We do not need to look to the world to meet our needs. We look to Him. And we can then start to manifest through our body the life that flows from the spirit. You have seen Christians who positively glow with the life of God within them. More than that, we can be literally transfigured.
Spirit senses, soul senses
Here is another way of looking at this: we are born again, in our spirit we have the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the glory of God in us, and we have nine spiritual senses that begin to develop through practice (we will look more at those another time). We know God’s love, we have access to the heavenly realms, and can enjoy real intimacy with Him, which enables that love to be outworked in our lives. Then our soul senses develop too, and eventually we start to manifest around us the glory of God: deliverance, the works of Jesus, miracles, supernatural works, healing, greater works (John 14:12), signs and wonders: all start to flow out through our lives. Or that is what should happen.
Blockages
But there are blockages. There is a blockage between our spirit and the heavenly realms, because probably no-one ever taught us we could go there (in fact mostly they taught us that we could not, at least until we die). There is a blockage between our soul and our spirit, because our soul is used to being in control. There is a blockage between our soul and our body, preventing the flow of life streaming out from us to the world.
But as we are transformed, these blockages are removed. Our spirit and soul start to work together. We begin to feel God’s love, as well as to just know God’s love for us. We learn to access the heavenly realms, so we can express God’s love and manifest God’s kingdom in and through our lives to the world around us. We are changed, transformed, transfigured.
And this last diagram sums it all up.
With the new birth, the DNA of God is in our spirit: we have access to the fountain of life; we have access to our destiny; we are a dwelling-place of God, through relationship. Our spirit now needs to produce the fruit and the gifts. The river of life flows through the garden of our soul, so that our whole life is manifesting God’s glory. We have access to the kingdom of God within us, and the kingdom of God in the heavenly realms, and as we learn to operate there our life is transformed.
Practice
As we have said before, the key to this is practice. You have to practise to train your senses. You have to practise how you transform your soul.
But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. (Heb 5:14)
We have to train our spiritual senses; we have to train our soul senses, to be connected up with the kingdom of God in heaven to outwork on earth.
So we are going to do that, over the coming weeks on this blog. We are going to help you train your spirit senses, train your soul senses, and we are going to see transformation taking place.
You have been invested with authority, but you have to come into that place of succession so that you can be enthroned. To bring God’s kingdom from heaven to earth, you have to dethrone the soul. Now that is not an easy process, but you can do it.
With God and our spirit working together, we can all do it.
Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits.
Or you can use this blue button to support our work with a one-time gift*. Thank you! *Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation.
For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead.
Featured image attribution: “Nabatean Well Negev 031812” by Mark A. Wilson (Wilson44691) – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons – https://goo.gl/ycuom2
Are you part of the Joshua Generation?
We developed this just for you:
Engaging God on the Heavenly Pathways of Relationship and Responsibility is our online school for equipping a Joshua Generation of supernatural sons of God to live according to the order of Melchizedek.
The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?
(Jer 17:9)
That is why our heart needs to be transformed.
For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.
(Prov 23:7).
The way our heart thinks will determine how we live and how we are. We cannot be content to allow our nature (the record of our past generations) to programme our heart, nor nurture (the events which have gone on around us and shaped our history), nor trauma (things which have happened to us and conditioned us to respond in particular ways). Our heart must be programmed by our spirit and by the Word of God.
For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart (Matt 12:34).
We are called to be speaking spirits, to have authority to call things into being, so it is really important that our hearts are pure and that what comes out of our heart is a flow of the life of God.
Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life.
(Prov 4:23)
Life comes from within our heart, as it is fed from the river of Life with the Spirit. But not if it is fed instead from the world around us.
When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart (Matt 13:19).
We have to be really careful about the state and condition of our hearts. In the parable of the sower, Jesus is talking of the soil of our heart, its condition, and the things that are sown there. There were stones, weeds, all sorts, but it was the good soil which produced an abundance of fruit.
A tree of life
Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But desire fulfilled is a tree of life (Prov 13:12).
Because we have not fulfilled our eternal destiny, there are disappointments in our lives which bring sickness to our heart. God wants to restore and heal it. Instead, let us draw from the tree of life, as it says in the second half of this verse. The tree of life is in the Garden of God as it always was, and we can access it today if our hearts are right.
For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Heb 4:12).
Our heart has thoughts and intentions. We need to be aware of what is motivating us. We can choose to be motivated only as Jesus was, by the things He saw the Father doing. We will learn how to do that.
12 laws
I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people (Jer 31:33).
The ‘law’ here is not the Ten Commandments. but the laws which are the principles of the kingdom. Someone asked the other day what they are, because I have mentioned them before. They are:
Law of the Spirit of Life
Law of Sin and Death
Law of Love
Law of Faith
Law of Sowing and Reaping
Law of First Mention
Law of First Born
Law of Abundance
Law of Justice
Law of Righteousness
Law of Judgment
Law of Grace
Delight and desire
Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He will give you the desires and secret petitions of your heart (Psalm 37:4).
If I delight in Him, the desires of my heart will then be the desires that God has for me, which are written on my scroll. I do not want my heart’s desires to be those that have shaped me or come from my past generations or from the experiences of life, I want them to come from the scroll of destiny that is in my heart. I need my heart transformed and changed, so that His desires become my desires.
In the intimacy of relationship that I can have and enjoy with God, He restores my soul. He restores my heart, and brings it back into its original intended purpose. He guides me in the things that He has written about me that I am to outwork; He leads me according to those paths. I have to stay close to God, engage with Him, and allow Him to restore my soul.
The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside quiet waters.
He restores my soul;
He guides me in the paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake
(Psalm 23:1-3).
Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits.
Or you can use this blue button to support our work with a one-time gift*. Thank you! *Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation.
For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead.
Are you part of the Joshua Generation?
JOIN US IN ENGAGING GOD!
Engaging God on the Heavenly Pathways of Relationship and Responsibility is our online school for equipping a Joshua Generation of supernatural sons of God to live according to the order of Melchizedek.
Our own spirit.
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The kingdom of God – the seat of God’s government of heaven
Our heart – our subconscious mind
The garden in our heart, in which we can engage God. Rivers that flow from heaven, flowing through our spirit, our garden, and out to the world.
Our scroll of destiny, in our heart.
That is quite a list of what is in us, things we have to learn to engage with, and we have to understand how they all function in us, so that we can work with them.
Here is an outline image of a body, showing all those things within us.
You can see our heart, and within our heart there is a scroll. Our heart is our subconscious mind.
There is a throne, the seat of God’s government within us.
Where is our spirit? I was talking to Ian Clayton, and God started to speak to me about it. Our spirit man lives in a membrane which goes over the brain and down our spinal column. That membrane is not connected to the blood. That is important because our blood supply carries the record of our DNA and past generations, and it needs to be purified, cleansed and changed. So our spirit is not connected directly to our blood supply. It is connected through our heart.
There is a door in our spirit, that Jesus spoke about in Revelation 3:20. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are dwelling within our spirit, and we have to let them out. God will not force Himself upon us. We have to open that door and let Him out, every day, into our spirit. Our spirit is within us and is connected to the seat of government in our lives.
The seat of government
When we are first developing in our relationship with God and we invite Him to come in and fill us, He occupies the seat of government in our lives. Then as we grow and mature, He gives us more and more access to that seat of government. The kingdom of heaven is both within us and in the heavenly realms, so we are also seated there in authority: we are seated with Him in the heavenly places.
He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. (1 Cor 6:17)
The more we are surrendered, and the more we become transformed into His image, the more we experience the reality of becoming one spirit with Him. We start to rule together. That is what the kingdom is all about: ruling together.
That seat is within us and as we open up the door, God comes and sits on that seat.
Then we can invite Him to come into our heart. That is a phrase people often use when praying a prayer of salvation, but what does it mean? If He comes into our heart, He comes to change us and transform us.
The DNA of God
He comes into our heart, and starts to reprogramme our heart, and the blood that is in our heart, with the DNA of God. That is why we take communion, to be reprogrammed with the DNA of God, to be transformed by the life of God in us. Then that transformation spreads out from our heart, carried by our blood to our brain, where it transforms our thinking, and renews our mind.
Blood circulates. It goes around our body, and back again to our heart. In our natural bodies it goes to our lungs and picks up breath, oxygen. So in the spiritual sense our heart needs to draw life from our spirit, send it around the body to transform our life then go back to the spirit for more. That is what the heart does.
As we sit in the seat of government and rule together with God, the kingdom of heaven comes to manifest around us. Rivers of living water and anointing and power start to flow out through us. We learn to walk in His ways, keep His laws, and rule.
Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits.
Or you can use this blue button to support our work with a one-time gift*. Thank you! *Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation.
For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead.
Subscribe to Engaging God
Get 2 weeks free – then pay just £12 GBP per month (around $14 USD – but dollar amount varies slightly each month as the exchange rate changes).
Engage God through Jesus (the Way, Truth and Life) in the realms of heaven and within your own spirit and heart; and take up your responsibility as a mature son [daughter] in God’s kingdom. Terms and conditions apply.
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).
Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits.
Or you can use this blue button to support our work with a one-time gift*. Thank you! *Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation.
For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead.
Subscribe to Engaging God
Get 2 weeks free – then pay just £12 GBP per month (around $14 USD – but dollar amount varies slightly each month as the exchange rate changes).
Engage God through Jesus (the Way, Truth and Life) in the realms of heaven and within your own spirit and heart; and take up your responsibility as a mature son [daughter] in God’s kingdom. Terms and conditions apply.
God wants us to come into that place of relationship and responsibility into which Adam would have matured if he had not chosen to follow the DIY pathway of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
For that to happen, we have to build our spirit. If we are not strong in spirit, we will not be able to overcome and dethrone the soul.
We were created to be spirit, soul and body, with the spirit taking the lead. But because our spirit was dead to God, our soul has become accustomed to having its own way. When we are born again and our spirit comes alive, that has to change. The soul must submit to the spirit, but it will not do so willingly.
How to build our spirit
There are a number of things we can do to build our spirit. We will look at them in more detail later on in this series, but I will just list some of them for now:
1. Make sure we give God first place, first love, first priority.
2. Pray and sing in tongues.
3. Wait on the Lord and be still.
4. Meditate on Bible verses and passages.
5. Praise and adoration, soaking in the presence of God.
6. Come to God and ask Him to build our spirit. Often we do not have because we do not ask (James 4:2).
7. Confess and call things into being. Call forth our spirit. Speak it out.
8. Persevere. You don’t build your spirit in a day.
If you want to get fit and have rippling muscles in the natural, you have to go to the gym and train, session by session, week after week, until you build muscles. It is the same with your spirit. Your spirit grows stronger through exercise; spiritual exercises train and equip your spirit to connect with God, to flow in revelation, and to rule in your life. You have to persevere.
Desire, discipline, delight
If we give up on exercise, it is usually because we don’t enjoy the discipline. Discipline itself is not very pleasant. I would love to have a real six-pack, and the body of Mr Universe, but I have not got the discipline to go in and train myself to do it. It would take a lot of training, and I do not want it enough to submit to the discipline.
But what I do want enough is a strong spirit, and therefore I am willing to do whatever it takes to train it. I spend a lot of time training my spirit. Hours, every day, training my spirit to discern the words of God, to flow, and to build up my spiritual senses. You can do the same. We will look at each of them in more detail in coming posts, but there is nothing in the list of 8 things above that you cannot do. It just takes practice and perseverance.
It starts with a desire, it takes discipline, and then it becomes a delight.
Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits.
Or you can use this blue button to support our work with a one-time gift*. Thank you! *Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation.
For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead.
Subscribe to Engaging God
Get 2 weeks free – then pay just £12 GBP per month (around $14 USD – but dollar amount varies slightly each month as the exchange rate changes).
Engage God through Jesus (the Way, Truth and Life) in the realms of heaven and within your own spirit and heart; and take up your responsibility as a mature son [daughter] in God’s kingdom. Terms and conditions apply.
On this blog we are just at the beginning of a new series of posts about preparing for our destiny.
We prepare according to God’s Prophetic Timetable of events for the future, so that we will be ready for what he is doing and ready to play our part in it. From a place of intimacy with God, we will allow Him to change and transform our lives, removing from us everything that is a hindrance or a stumbling-block.
He is raising up a Joshua generation who will press into their own inheritance, and lead the following generation into receiving theirs too. We need to receive that inheritance so that in the situations we will face in the coming days and years, when the world’s systems have broken down, we will be ready with the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit operating in our lives. We must be like Jesus: He brought the kingdom, and He calls us to do the same.
From eternity, God has a destiny appointed for us to fulfil, and we have been invested with authority to fulfil it. We need to wake up and take hold of who we are as the sons of God.
Man’s destiny has always been to rule, to bring heaven to earth (Gen 1:28). We bring the rule of heaven to earth so that we transform not just this planet but the whole of creation – our universe and even beyond that – which is groaning and longing for the sons of God to be fully revealed.
Psalm 24:7 says ‘Lift up your heads, O you gates’. It is talking about us being lifted up to that place of rulership and authority, so that we become a gateway for the King of Glory to come in and fill this world through our lives. That is what God wants to do through us: everything He is, grace, power, mercy, would be channelled through us, and that we would manifest them here on earth.
The Angel of the Lord admonished Joshua, the High Priest, who was standing in the presence of God in the heavens and said,
“If you will walk in My ways
and if you will perform My service,
then you will also govern My house
and also have charge of My courts,
and I will grant you free access
among these who are standing here”
(Zechariah 3:6-7).
This involves a progression of relationship and of levels of authority and responsibility that would bring us to our sonship.
We live here on the earth, with the atmosphere of the earth around us. In that atmosphere at present are the principalities, powers and rulers of wickedness. It is a kingdom in darkness. We ‘walk in His ways’ here, and we recognise that the kingdom of God is within us, but that we are also connected to the kingdom of God realm in the heavens.
As we keep the laws, the principles of the kingdom, as we administer righteousness and justice, so we learn to be lords, kings, and sons at that level in the heavenly realms (and also within us). Once we understand who we are and what our identity is, we can start ruling the house (our own house, but also the house of the Lord).
Then we can start judging the courts. The kingdom has foundations of righteousness, and justice, and it is God’s people who are eventually going to judge angels, and fallen angels. We have a right to bring judgment to change things in this realm, and eventually to have access to stand among those who are operating in the heaven of heavens.
When we start doing that, we remove those hierarchical authorities from the atmosphere of the earth, and we can rule. We rule in light, rule in love, rule in righteous power. The influence we have in the heavens will be manifested here on earth. God wants us to understand and to access those realms. The more we do so, the more we will bring the kingdom of God on the earth, both in us and through us, so that we shine with the glory of God.
That will deal with sickness, disease, poverty – all the things which rob God’s people (and the world) of their inheritance – and all that stolen inheritance will be restored.
We will manifest the rule of heaven on earth, just as Jesus did.
The topic of this post is taken up again in Mike’s new book, ‘Engaging the Father’, 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.
Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits.
Or you can use this blue button to support our work with a one-time gift*. Thank you! *Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation.
For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead.
Subscribe to Engaging God
Get 2 weeks free – then pay just £12 GBP per month (around $14 USD – but dollar amount varies slightly each month as the exchange rate changes).
Engage God through Jesus (the Way, Truth and Life) in the realms of heaven and within your own spirit and heart; and take up your responsibility as a mature son [daughter] in God’s kingdom. Terms and conditions apply.
I closed yesterday’s post by calling forth people’s destinies, to fulfil that purpose of God for their lives. That calling forth of destinies is something written on my own scroll. Fulfilling their destiny is important not only for the individuals themselves, but also for the church and the purposes of God going forward.
Everlasting Doors
Here is a diagram showing the sphere in which we live, the sphere of the earth, and the atmosphere of the earth that is around us. Within that atmosphere there are principalities, rulers and powers. Then there are the heavenly realms.
Think of these as dimensions that are around us. Not linear, 1, 2, 3, going up, but dimensions that we can access by simply stepping into them. And between the atmosphere of the earth and the heavenly realms, there are everlasting doors. We read about them here:
Lift up your heads, O you gates! And be lifted up, you everlasting doors! And the King of glory shall come in. (Psalm 24:7 NKJV)
These doors were open in the time of Adam, but they were closed when God set the cherubim and the fiery sword to prevent him having access to the Tree of Life. When they are closed, they block the way between the two realms.
Mountains and thrones
Within the heavenly realms there are mountains and thrones of authority. Every church has its own mountains and thrones of authority, seven of them, but so too do each of us in our own lives, in the Kingdom of God heavenly realm.
We are supposed to rule there, and to bring heaven to earth. We have access to the Kingdom of God because it is within us, as well as being in the heavenly realms. When we are ruling there, it enables us to bring the glory of God through from that realm into this one.
We must see people raised up to occupy those dimensions of rulership in the heavenly realms. When that happens, the principalities and powers and rulers get forced out. When we just bring the light that is in us and the light of the presence and the glory of God into that realm, then they cannot stay there. Darkness cannot remain in the presence of light.
If you put a candle into a dark room, it is no longer dark. You cannot add more darkness to smother that candle, but you can bring more light in to dispel more of the darkness. The brighter the light, the more the darkness has to go.
Let’s bring the light of God’s glory from the heavens into the earth.
Arise, shine, for your light has come And the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
(Isaiah 60:1).
The atmosphere of the earth
The devil is called the ‘prince of the power of the air’ (Ephesians 2:2), but only because we have not yet taken back that realm. So as we start to fill and occupy that space in the atmosphere of the earth, bringing the authority and rulership of God there, the everlasting doors are opened. When they are, we start to see the manifest presence of God in our midst. Maybe we call it ‘revival’.
There are everlasting doors associated with each of our mountains of authority. We have seen that we have seven mountains of authority, seven spheres in which God has called us to have influence. Within each mountain is a mandate from God, and there are thrones upon those mountains, from which we are to rule.
A measure of God’s glory?
As we have begun to see people raised up to rule on the mountains in their own lives and on mountains associated with the local ekklesia, we have begun to see a measure of the glory of God coming down through those everlasting doors. We see salvation, healing, deliverance; we see the angelic operating, and the presence of God’s kingdom manifesting among us.
But we want to see God’s glory filling our area, transforming our community, the fullness of God’s kingdom being manifested, and at the moment that is not happening so much. We are seeing a little here and there, now and again. Some of the time, when someone operates in that realm of authority, we have a manifestation of the glory of God, but it is not there continually. Sometimes we see miracles, sometimes we see healing. It is increasing, but not enough. And I know that it is the same elsewhere too.
If we want to see these things happen consistently, we need people raised up as lords to operate in authority on those mountains. We need them ruling and bringing the keys of the kingdom, and using the declarations of authority that they have been given. Then we are going to see the kingdom of God manifested in people’s lives, opening their eyes to the goodness and kindness of God towards them and revealing that He has been at work in them all along.
So there is a task to be completed, and it is what this blog and the other resources we have available are all aimed at bringing about: to see people raised up as sons to occupy those places of authority. There may be much that you need to learn, and understand, and operate in, whether you are ruling on your personal mountain, on a church mountain or on an embassy of heaven mountain: but with practice, every one who is called to that realm can learn these things.
Change the atmosphere
That will change the atmosphere of the earth from darkness to light. The enemy will do all he can to prevent it, but the only authority he has is what we give him. Our attitudes form an atmosphere around us which operates in the spiritual realm to draw things towards us, whether good or bad.
Fear is always the number one weapon he uses. But there are also specific things he will use to block each everlasting door, attitudes and strongholds which specifically oppose the area of authority concerned. Our strengths in those areas that God has called us to can also be our weaknesses, because the enemy will attack them.
Refinement and purification
Ultimately, this is about us all surrendering our lives. It is about allowing God to purify us and refine us and bring us into a place of holiness, so that the authority that our sin gives to the enemy is removed. And God is challenging us to do that now, bringing us to a place of refinement and purification.
We will see open heavens, blessing, and a harvest. We will see transformation. We will see the glory of God streaming in through those everlasting doors. We will see people raised up to occupy their place in the heavenly realms. You can be among them. That is our mandate: to encourage you and teach you how to come into that place.
The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Everything we need to fulfil our destiny is within His presence and within our relationship with Him.
Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits. Or you can use the blue button to contact us about making a one-time gift. Thank you! *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.
Subscribe to Engaging God
Get 2 weeks free – then pay just £12 GBP per month (around $14 USD – but dollar amount varies slightly each month as the exchange rate changes).
Engage God through Jesus (the Way, Truth and Life) in the realms of heaven and within your own spirit and heart; and take up your responsibility as a mature son [daughter] in God’s kingdom. Terms and conditions apply.
Sons of Issachar 