Unconditional Love – Sons of Issachar

513. Who Are You Really? Unpacking Identity

Mike Parsons –

I believe the world is beginning to experience a series of awakenings. A love awakening, a grace awakening, a joy awakening, a peace awakening. A true God awakening to the reality of who God really is. We are part of that awakening, helping people discover the truth as we discover the truth ourselves, and then share it and live it. It is important that we embrace these awakenings. As we do, we begin to carry and express them naturally.

For a long time, God kept asking me a simple but profound question: who are you? He asked it in various ways over a period of time. At first, my answers were always works-based, tied to what I was doing. Like many people, I identified myself by what I did rather than by who I was. My soul defined my identity, but God was seeking to reveal the true me. For that to happen, my soul had to accept it, and that was not an easy process.

All of us go through a process, and God reveals who we really are in different ways. At the same time, he exposes what hinders us from accepting that reality. Each of us carries things that God has to deal with. Our souls have constructed identities using the data collected throughout our lives: things that happened to us, information we received, and the programming we absorbed through culture, religion and family. Information flowed through our senses, shaping survival strategies that helped the soul cope and protect itself from harsh realities.

Those defence mechanisms, however, often become prisons. They falsely promise safety while preventing us from knowing who we really are. Until the soul surrenders control, we cannot fully trust God for protection, provision and direction. Letting go of control is difficult, especially when we have learned to do everything ourselves. Trusting God sounds simple, but it is not. I believed I trusted God implicitly until he began to challenge what trust really meant in my relationship with him.

So, who am I? That question sits at the core of most people’s inner life.

Imagine a scene. You are in a boat, adrift on a vast ocean. You do not know where you are, and you do not realise that this ocean is unconditional love. You have no sails and no oars. This is the position humanity often finds itself in, unaware of where it truly is and protecting itself from the very reality that surrounds it. This state of despair is an illusion, a deception that causes people to try to navigate the surface of an ocean of love through self-effort.

The answer is to get out of the boat and sink into the depths of unconditional love. There we discover who we really are and who God really is. We are never separated from God, because we exist within him. Acts 17:28 tells us that in him we live and move and have our being. Everything exists within God, who has created space within himself for relationship. Separation, therefore, is an illusion we have created through guilt and shame. That illusion keeps us from intimacy with God and traps us in a lost identity.

Getting out of the boat feels counterintuitive to the natural mind, which has been conditioned to follow an independent, self-directed path. Yet the question remains: who are you, and how will you find out? I would suggest that you will never truly know if you stay in the boat. Even when it feels safer to stay there, paddling with your hands requires constant effort and never brings you to truth.

Who do you think you are? Ten years ago, I would have answered differently than I would today. Five years ago, my answer would have changed again. Thirty years ago, it would have been completely different. Who do others think you are? That question matters, because if we allow it, the opinions of others can define us. Are you shaped by your past experiences, your circumstances, your parents, your friends, your boss or even your genetics?

The deeper question is this: who does love say you are?

Get out of the boat. Sink into the vast ocean of love. Surrender, be immersed and saturated in unconditional love. Return to first love, because it is there that we discover who we really are. God, who is love, defines us. He defines who you are.

So, who are you? I would suggest that we can only truly know through a restored, face-to-face love relationship with God as Father, Son and Spirit. It is that relationship which enables us to discover the truth and to live in it.

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272. One Conclusion: God Is Love

510. Discovering Your Worth: The Truth of Being a Child of God

336. Get out of the boat… and SINK!

502. Breaking Free From Indoctrination | Embracing Love

Mike Parsons –

Over hundreds of years, false doctrine has infiltrated the church and shaped what many people simply accept today.

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Simplicity of the gospel

Over many years, even hundreds of years, false doctrine has infiltrated the church and shaped things into what we see today, and people have simply accepted it. However, there are explanations for this and different alternatives to all of it. To be honest, why spend your time trying to understand something that was never written for you in the first place?

With all of this, whether it is true or not, let us go back to the simplicity of the gospel that Jesus talked about. Let us love one another. We do not have to agree: let us love one another. Let us love the world rather than trying to convince someone of something. Let the Holy Spirit, who is the only one who can renew someone’s mind, do that work. If people are genuine, then you can have a conversation, but if they are just trying to prove you wrong, then it is a waste of time.

A different view of God

If someone is genuinely searching and thinking, “I am struggling because this does not align with God, how could this be God?”, then they are on a journey towards restoration and renewal of their mind, and you can help them along that path. If all they want to do is convince you that you are wrong, and that there is going to be tribulation and judgment and a millennium and all of that, then that is a very deceptive doctrine, and you will not argue someone out of it. I think God will renew many people’s minds and deconstruct a lot of people, but many will remain stuck in religion and in the system, sadly. But many are leaving it, and many are coming to a different view of God.

We can help them discover that God is love by loving them. It is better to love them than to argue with them. It is better to keep a friend than to win an argument and lose a friend. I think saying, “Look, I do not really want to get into a lot of this stuff, because I think it will just cause problems in our relationship, and I value our relationship more than being right,” and leaving it at that, is often the best way.

It is better to keep a friend than to win an argument.

It is a difficult deception that keeps people in darkness and in bondage, and ultimately only God can bring the light into that. If people had tried to convince me that my eschatology was wrong back in the 1980s, I would not have believed them. But God spoke to me. God did it. I could not argue with God. I just went on a journey where he unfolded a whole different view that I had never even imagined.

God deconstructed me himself

I did not read books about it at first. God showed me through the Spirit by taking me through the whole thing. Once I realised that my whole understanding had been twisted, then I found some books that supported that view, and I realised I was not on my own. Loads of other people believed this as well. But I did not find it through other people. God totally deconstructed me over a two or three year period himself. Then that was confirmed by me reading other things, and there were people who were helpful to me, especially David Chilton: Paradise Restored, The Great Tribulation, and The Days of Vengeance, which is his book on Revelation, a massive book. You can find free PDFs online here:

Paradise Restored: A Biblical Theology of Dominion (1985)
The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (1987)
The Great Tribulation (1987)

David Chilton started off as a partial preterist in that he believed chapter 20 of Revelation was still future, but he ended up a full preterist because he came to realise that it was all in the past. He got himself excommunicated from the group he was in because he believed that and was persecuted.

Inevitably, I think, if you are open, you will move through partial preterism into preterism. I do not want to be labelled a preterist or not, because there are other things within that system that I do not necessarily think are true, but let us say I am a realised eschatologist. All eschatology is realised. It is already the end. The study of the last things is the study of what happened in the past, not the study of what will happen in the future. For me, that is where I have moved towards.

Not the end of the world

Ultimately, my understanding of that, and the same Bible verses that talk about what would happen at the end of the old covenant, also talk about and have been interpreted as what is hell. Then I realised, I do not believe this is talking about the end of the world. So this is also not the end of the world. Gehenna is not hell. Gehenna is literally talking about the end of the age when the old covenant was put into the fire and destroyed. Jerusalem and the people were put into the fire in Gehenna if they continued in Jerusalem, as Jesus warned them would happen.

They did. The Romans crucified hundreds of thousands and burned them in Gehenna. That was not the end of their life. That was the end of their physical body. Their actual soul would go into the fire of God’s love and hopefully bring about their restoration. I imagine a lot of people would have remembered what Jesus said when the armies turned up, but it was too late if they were besieged, and they would probably have remembered what Jesus said, “You are going to end up in Gehenna.” Hopefully, they would also then have remembered Jesus’s offer of life.

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266. A Happy Eschatology

431. Breaking Free from Deceptive Teaching | Rediscovering God’s Love

426. The Nature of God: Rethinking Our Beliefs

345. The Rapture of the Saints

318. Not the End of the World

501. Deconstructing Beliefs: A Journey to Authentic Faith

Mike Parsons

The deconstruction of our way of thinking comes from experiencing God. If I present people with theory about God, they will soon spot the gaps in that theory reflected in my own life. If I share the testimony of my experience of God, based on knowing that God loves me unconditionally, that there are no conditions attached, that I have been reconciled and included in Christ and all those wonderful things, then I am able to share that good news with others because I have truly experienced it.

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If I only offer theory, people will sense it is not real in me. The best form of deconstruction is to experience the truth, which will then challenge the areas in our lives that are not true. Rather than attempting to change lies, experience the truth. Focusing on changing the negative aspects of our lives only makes us focus on the problem, causing it to grow and become more difficult to overcome. If we focus on the solution, the solution addresses the problem.

No one can deconstruct their own mind. Only God can accomplish this. If we keep walking with him, he will do things in our lives that will completely challenge everything we have thought about ourselves, about him, and about everything else. People may try to teach you to deconstruct your mind, though they might use the term “renew your mind” instead. I see deconstruction as the removal of negative things. However, I do not believe it is something God attempts directly; rather, deconstruction happens as a result of God revealing his true nature to us. Instead of God saying, “I am not like this,” he focuses on showing us who he truly is.

Renewing our minds brings about deconstruction because it challenges what I previously believed was true and shows it is not. Those beliefs are then deconstructed. You cannot deconstruct yourself because you do not know what you do not know. You allow God to reveal to you his truth, his love, his light, his relationship, his grace, and his mercy. Those experiences will change the areas in our lives that do not align with such truths.

Deconstruction is a consequence. God is not actively trying to deconstruct you. He is trying to give you the truth, and the truth will change the lies. If people focus on trying to change the lies, they end up concentrating on them. You can modify your belief system, but that is only a set of facts you have chosen to believe are true. That is quite different from truly knowing the truth.

I have changed many things I used to believe because I became convinced that something else was better or that it was actually true. However, until I experienced the truth, it remained an intellectual understanding; the truth is a person – Jesus, who is the way, the truth, and the life.

I am never going to discover truth by simply trying to invent a new belief system. You need to allow God to show you his character, and that will naturally transform the areas of your life that do not yet reflect who he really is. I know people, and I was the same, who tried to change their thinking by memorising, quoting, or confessing Bible verses. I did that myself. The Holy Spirit was able to work with me to some extent through that process, but essentially, confessing scripture will not make me experience it. It may provide a new perspective, so that I know the verse and can quote it or use it, but until I experience the truth behind it, I do not have a testimony of it in my life. That is the key.

I think deconstruction is spoken about a great deal at the moment because many are undergoing this process. It is not, however, God attempting to deconstruct their minds; it is God giving them a new revelation and experience of the truth, which then causes what is false to fall away. God is not going around trying to destroy your beliefs; instead, he wants to give you something true, and those false beliefs will simply fall away, which is far better. Having a testimony is so much better than having a belief.

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190. By Personal Encounter and Experience

426. The Nature of God: Rethinking Our Beliefs

330. Find Truth Within: Trust Your Own Connection with God

491. When I Let Go Of Penal Substitutionary Atonement

Mike Parsons

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Penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) was the first to go. When I began to express my doubts about it to others, one woman involved in mystic and mentoring groups emailed me, saying I was trying to take away ‘the cornerstone of her faith’. She was serious and angry at me because she wanted to hold onto PSA as the cornerstone of her belief.

I told her that if that’s where she wanted to remain, that was her choice, but I was moving on. Naturally, that upset some people, but many others resonated with the idea that it didn’t make sense for God as Father to kill or punish His Son. And when you investigate further, you find that PSA is actually a doctrine that only emerged in the tenth century…

299. PSA Sounds Nothing Like Jesus! (Penal Substitutionary Atonement [1])

304. Wrath is not the solution | Penal Substitutionary Atonement [2]

487. My First Hand Experiences Of Hell

Mike Parsons

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So between 2005 and 2010, I had a number of experiences which I described at the time as hell-like, simply because I had no other reference point in my life. I thought I had encountered hell, and so my framework for understanding was the usual concept of hell. That’s what I believed the experience meant, because I couldn’t see it any other way; I had no other frame of reference.

Once I actually encountered God and encountered love, I was able to revisit those experiences and see what he had really been showing me through them. I came to realise that I had completely misunderstood and misinterpreted what had happened, just as many others do when they claim to have been in hell for a few minutes. They are framing their experience through their theological understanding of hell.

404. Framing Hell in a New Light

244. The Hell Delusion

486. Take It Back To The Father

Mike Parsons

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We should weigh both what we feel and what we believe God has said. Does this align with love? If it does, we can wholeheartedly accept it. If it does not, then something has gone wrong in how we’ve understood it. In that case, we can take it back to the Father and ask why we misinterpreted it, recognising that often it is our own mindset that causes misunderstanding.

I had to do that many times when my experiences did not line up with what I thought to be true. When that happened, cognitive dissonance arose, and I was left with a choice: which should I trust—my experience, or my belief system? Over time I came to see that when my experience was aligned with love, that was what I needed to trust. And when it was not aligned with love, it was usually my interpretation of the experience that was the real issue.

330. Find Truth Within: Trust Your Own Connection with God

421. Belief to Reality | Living in the Truth

485. Having Our Minds Renewed

Mike Parsons

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We’re all in a process of having our minds renewed so that we won’t be moulded and shaped by the upbringing, conditioning and programming we’ve received. Our minds are renewed so we’re not pressed into that mould, but instead transformed into who He said we were from the beginning.

That process is relational. By experiencing Him, our minds are changed. We can’t make it happen by trying to use the Bible as a tool, since misunderstanding it was what created the problem in the first place. Our minds are changed when we let Him do it, as we submit ourselves to the relationship He gives us—always weighing everything with love as our measuring stick.

287. Unconditional Love, Grace, and the truth about salvation

431. Breaking Free from Deceptive Teaching | Rediscovering God’s Love

484. Measure Everything Against Love

Mike Parsons

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We should weigh the things that we feel and what we think God has said. We should weigh them. We shouldn’t just accept them carte blanche. We should weigh it.

What do we weigh it with? How do we measure it? I measure it with love. Is this loving? Is this going to help people experience God and experience His love? So I’m measuring it against that.

So I know that if I thought God told me to do something which was contradictory to love, I know it couldn’t be Him. And people say, but you’re now saying that God can’t do something! Yes, I am. He can’t contradict Himself as being love, and he wouldn’t ask us to contradict himself and contradict what love is either.

So whenever something we think God said is not aligned to true love – true unconditional love – then we’ve got to question it.

431. Breaking Free from Deceptive Teaching | Rediscovering God’s Love

365. I Don’t ‘Believe’ In Unconditional Love

482. Is Your Heart Aligned with God’s Kingdom or Culture?

Mike Parsons

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There are many questions we should be asking and signs we should be looking for. If God is doing something—like Enoch appearing or other unusual things—what is that about? I cannot give a hard, fast answer, but I do believe God is challenging us to think and to question what we believe. What are the foundations of our lives and the way we live? Are they kingdom foundations, or are they cultural?

If they are cultural and oppose God’s kingdom, which is love, then we must ask, where is my heart? Is it aligned with God’s heart, or with the culture where I live? I do not want to be known culturally as British. Yes, I was born in Britain, it is on my passport, but I do not want to be subject to the culture of Britain if it is anti-kingdom. I would never call myself a British Christian, or even a Christian. I just want to be seen as a follower of God, of the Father.

So, what might cause me to have views which may be contradictory to the kingdom? We need to ask: what has shaped my life, my thinking, my belief systems, my worldview? Are they aligned with God’s heart, or do they need deconstruction? I see three main areas where God is challenging people (there may be more): religious deconstruction, political deconstruction, and financial deconstruction. A friend of mine said God was taking him through those things, and I realised he was doing the same with me. I now know to look at things differently in those areas and make sure that I am not thinking in a cultural way that puts me into contradiction to God.

So, financially, my views have changed from religious rules about tithing to simply asking, “God, what do you want me to do?” Politically, I had to face assumptions about why I voted as I did. I had assumed God agreed with me, but he showed me I had never asked him. I had to be completely unravelled and deconstructed in that area. Now I ask, “Is there a way you want me to vote?” And if he says it does not matter, then I examine my own heart and motives. Each of us may have a different way of looking at that question.

God wants our whole mindset aligned with the kingdom and with one another, to become one mind, the mind of Christ. That requires major shifts, deconstruction, and honest questioning of why we think, believe and act as we do. Most people never really consider these things, but I believe it is part of the process God is taking us through so that heaven can be established on earth.

For the past ten years, God has been deconstructing most of my old assumptions. My thinking has changed in many areas. This does not mean there are simple answers, because each of us must discover what God is asking of us in our own sonship. But it does mean we must begin to make decisions based not on selfishness, economics or cultural conditioning, but on God’s heart.

Strong opinions are often shaped by culture rather than by God. Even in raising my children, I tried to let them think for themselves, yet they still reflected my political views. That made me wonder whether I had been more vocal than I thought. The key is not to pass on political perspectives but to help people find God’s heart.

Some people vote based on economics, others on compassion, but the real question is whether our choices reflect God’s heart or merely our conditioning. I am not convinced God is as invested in political systems as solutions as we might think. Much of the prophetic movement seems to have become politicised in a way it never was 20 years or so ago, perhaps out of disillusionment when promised revivals did not happen as expected. Whatever the reason, it seems to have become blind to the real issues in some way…

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288. Enoch’s Secret to Walking with God

241. You Have Not Desired

277. On Earth as in Heaven

480. The Heart of Evangelism | Meeting People Where They Are

Mike Parsons

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The Importance of Showing Real Interest

God loves people and takes a genuine interest in their lives. If we fail to show any interest ourselves, how will they ever believe that God is truly interested in them? Demonstrating care means asking about their situation and engaging with their story. It is not about forcing a single message upon someone, insisting that they must receive it whether they want to or not.

Instead, it is about recognising that God personally meets each person in their own circumstances. He cares, He desires to help, and He longs for them to discover who they truly are. In doing so, they can understand that God already loves them. This is a very different approach, one that treats each individual as unique rather than as a commodity, project or statistic.

Meeting People Where They Are

In the past, many forms of evangelism tended to focus on strategies and techniques. Courses often emphasised how to deliver a message and how to ensure that people listened. Yet this approach often missed the point. Evangelism should not be about ticking boxes or securing conversions. It ought to begin with real interest in people themselves—the realities of their lives and the struggles they face.

Rather than asking, “How can I insert this message into a conversation?”, we should be asking, “How can I develop a genuine relationship with this person, one that may open the door for them to encounter God for themselves?”

A Personal Approach

People need to meet God in us. They need to see and sense something of Jesus expressed through our lives. This may not always be conscious on their part, and sometimes it may not even be conscious on ours, yet God shines through us all the same. In this way, we carry His presence into every encounter.

As Scripture explains, Jesus was the clear image of the Father, revealing to those around Him what God was really like. Many have no true idea of God’s character until they encounter Christ.

Treating Individuals as Unique

In the same way, we are called to be ambassadors of reconciliation. Our role is to represent God’s heart faithfully and to help others to see that He has already done everything needed to restore their relationship with Him.

Summary: When our lives reflect His presence, others can begin to sense His love and discover for themselves the truth of who they are in Him. By treating people as individuals rather than commodities, we embody the message that God cares deeply for them. Evangelism then becomes not about delivering a formulaic message, but about relationship, love and presence.

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