Tag: Worship

182. Not Of This Creation

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

Therefore I urge You, brethren, 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).

Spiritual service of worship

We are spirit, so this is what we were created for. ‘Service’ and ‘worship’ are exactly the same Greek word, and they go together. You cannot worship Him without serving Him; nor serve Him without worshipping Him. My service, my worship, is God’s will for my life, my eternal destiny; and it will be revealed as I come and offer myself as a living sacrifice.

A living sacrifice

We can treat this living sacrifice as an analogy, as most of us have probably always done, or we can experientially present our lives as living sacrifices, by faith, in reality. It can be a real thing we are doing in a real place, in the presence of God.

heavenly-realms-2 (1)

The altar for this sacrifice is in the tabernacle in the heavenly realms. On a macro scale, the tabernacle is a pattern of the heavenly realms, but on a micro scale it is also an actual dimensional realm of kingdom authority.

The sacrificial lamb was prepared by the priest. It did not prepare itself. We cannot transform ourselves, however hard we try. We need the presence and power of God to change us. All we have to do is surrender, and let Him do the rest.

The priest slit the animal’s throat and drained the blood; skinned it, split it open and washed its inner organs; and split open the backbone to reveal the marrow. As we have gone through this series we have seen what some of those things represent.

Head and legs

Finally he chopped off its head and cut off its legs.

The head is all about government, rule or authority. We surrender our choices, our rights and our decision-making; our own head is severed, and we become connected to the Head: Jesus. We have the mind of Christ. We seek first the Kingdom; God’s rule in, around and through us. We seek His righteousness, ‘His way of being and doing right’ (Matt 6:33 AMP). ‘His way of being’ manifests as the fruit of the Spirit; ‘His way of doing’, as the power of the Spirit. We are under authority and we exercise authority, confidently expecting God to add to us all that we need.

Our legs are symbolic of our walk and lifestyle: we walk a surrendered walk, a walk of obedience. The one who says he abides in Him (Jesus) ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked (1 John 2:6).

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 (Gal 2:20).

Now we can walk by faith, not sight; not swayed by what we see around us. Having a heavenly perspective, we see things through God’s eyes. God blessed Adam: He empowered Him to succeed; and then told him to be fruitful and multiply; to subdue and to bring the rule of God to the earth. He is still calling us to do the same today.

Jesus is the only way

Way, Truth and Life

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me” (John 14:6).

There is no other way we can come. The only access point we have into a relationship with the Father is through Jesus and what He did on the cross. He is our only means of access into the presence of God in the heavenly realms.

Not of this creation

Jesus went into the holy place in the heavenly tabernacle, and the same passage of scripture says that we can go there too:

But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation… For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us (Heb 9:1, 24).

Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water (Heb 10:19-22).

We can enter the same holy place (there is no other holy place any more), and be cleansed, changed, transformed into the image God has of us.

Ark

Know the will of God

And in that holy place is the ark, containing manna, the tablets, and Aaron’s rod. The manna (bread of life) is the will of God (John 4:34); the tablets are the Word of God, now written on our hearts (Jer 31:33), enabling us to recognise Him in what goes on around us; Aaron’s rod is God’s authority, anointing and power to do His will and purpose (Matt 6:10).

I want to know the will of God for my life every day, so each day I step in to where God’s presence rests over the ark, and I take what is in the ark and apply it to my life. The blood of Jesus is always on the mercy seat, so I always have access to come and make a connection.

My spirit needs to resonate and harmonise and agree with the contents of the ark. When I come into agreement with God, I can expect God to reveal His will, His word, and His heart, and to release His authority. I get the thoughts of God, and I ask Him to show me if there is anything He wants me to do today, anything I need revelation of, anything I need specifically to do. If not, I ask Him to touch my heart so that my heart will see and recognise Him around me.

God’s will has a frequency. Resonance happens when I vibrate at the same frequency as God, to produce harmony and agreement; that is when authority and confidence come. Since God has told me to do something, I can be completely confident that He is going to give me everything I need – the authority, the power, the resources – to accomplish it.

Practice

I administer the kingdom government of God through my life, with authority and power, in the sphere of influence He has given me. But it is heaven first, earth second: I need to know the will of God in heaven before I can outwork it here on earth.

I encourage You to practise engaging until You can live and operate out of the revelation you have accumulated, and it becomes a pathway of entrance.

When you learn to drive a car, at first the driving instructor has to constantly remind you to think, be aware, look in your mirrors, step on the gas, apply the brakes and so on. But once you can drive and have built up some experience, you do it all without thinking; it comes as second nature to you.

When I first began to access heaven, it used to take me quite a long time. I was going through the process, learning to present all the different parts of the living sacrifice. Now, I can go from here in this dimension right to the very presence of God in one step, following the pathway I have learned. This is what we mean by learning the protocols of engaging heaven, so that we can step into whatever realm of heaven we need to, whenever we need to, in order to bring the rule of heaven to earth.

We need to live on the other side of the veil, in the realm of His presence. The earth responds when we govern from beyond the veil, no longer looking to live on the earth out of the supply of heaven (great though that sounds), but living our life both in heaven and on the earth, in dual realms, at the same time; no longer trying to get heaven to come down to earth, but to be in heaven, and bring heaven to earth with us.

Let’s engage as we step in:

Jesus, I thank You that You have opened up the veil.
You are the door, the matrix to the Father
into the realm of His presence

I thank You that You have torn the veil.
So today by faith I step through the veil of the natural world
into the realm of Your presence.

I thank You that while I am standing here in Your presence
I am a gate of eternity.
I open the gate of eternity in me
and I receive the realm of eternity.

I receive the fullness of the breath of God into my body
[breathe in]
that my body would take on the reflection
of who I am in the kingdom as Your son.

Father, I engage that and I push and pull it in
and draw it into my spirit being.
I ask You to breathe into me while I am in Your presence,
Breathe Your spirit and Your being into me.

I draw it into my spirit being
so I become one with You

I step back into the atmosphere of the earth
to administer the breath of God.
[breathe out]
I breathe out the breath of God
into the atmosphere of the earth around my life
to establish Your kingdom.

I step forward into the realm of Your presence.
I open my life to expose my inner being to Your presence.
All that I am, Father, I make open
for Your presence to gaze upon.

Jesus, You are my high priest,
You take my living sacrifice and make me clean.
I receive Your purity and holiness
through the absolute cleansing of Your presence.

Lord I breathe You in,
Baptise me afresh in Your Holy Spirit.
Bring me to the house of wine
to the banqueting table of Your presence
under the covering of Your government and love.

I ask You to fill me with the wine of Your love and presence.
I drink the wine of Your presence
and engage this as provision for my life
out of the realm of heaven.

I step back into the realm of earth
and release the wine and atmosphere of Your presence
into this atmosphere around my life.

I release it out of my spirit being
through the matrix gate of eternity
into the atmosphere of the earth
to administer Your kingdom through me.

You can find your own words; you do not have to use these. But as you practise stepping in by faith day by day, you will start to engage. And as you step out, things will begin to change. You will be bringing God’s kingdom into the atmosphere around your life, to His glory.

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173. Godly Trading Floors – Trading (3)

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

In the last two posts we have looked at the negative side of trading, at the deals we may have done with the enemy. Now, although this is not really part of the Transformation series, in this post I want to write about the positive side.

When Ian Clayton first began to talk about trading, some people were confused because they didn’t quite grasp what it meant. The fact is that we all trade, but we might have other terminology we use for it. Trading is about offering something in exchange for something else. It may be money, or goods, or other physical things, but it may also be love, a promise of God, your life, even the blood of Jesus. At its simplest, it is covenant exchange. When I enter into a covenant relationship with God, then what is mine belongs to Him and what is His belongs to me.

Just as there are different demonic trading floors, there are also different godly ones. For example, when I take a an offering and offer it to God, I actually go to the treasury room in heaven, where Melchizedek presides in his capacity as Chancellor.

Sowing and reaping

We have taught financial trading for many years as the principle of sowing and reaping. God promises increase on what we sow: we bring that promise with us and exchange it for its fulfilment, for what we will reap. It gives us access to the hundredfold return (or even the thousandfold of Deuteronomy 1.11, which I prefer).

Effectively, we can trade on God’s word. If we find a promise in the scriptures, or if He has given us a promise in person, we can go and ask that He actually complies with it. He doesn’t mind that: He likes to be reminded of what He has said. By faith we engage it and use His word to bring us into covenant exchange. Since God has spoken it, and we are in Christ in the new covenant, then it belongs to us.

For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us (2 Cor 1:20).

We can use a scripture like that to trade with. We can go, because we are in Christ, and receive those promises. That is an exchange, a trade.

The Blood and the Cross

I trade mostly using the body and blood of Jesus in communion, trading that for transformation in my own life and resonating with the frequency of God. It is really me giving everything to Him and Him giving everything back to me, multiplied, and for His purposes (not mine). As we have seen before, the cross is the most important place of exchange for us. At the cross we can exchange our sin for forgiveness, unrighteousness for righteousness, old for new, sickness for health, and more.

Trading on the sea of glass

We know the importance of the motives and desires of our heart. We need to ensure that whatever we are looking for when we come to God is rooted in a pure desire to bring glory, honour and blessing to Him. It is not about elevating or promoting us, about giving us a name: we are not trading to get something for ourselves: we are trading to see the kingdom of God advance and expand. It is all about Him.

So when someone compliments us, affirms us, or praises us, we can come and bring those things to God. Just as the elders cast their crowns before the throne on the sea of glass (which only looks like glass, by the way), we too can offer Him the plaudits and position that men have accorded us. It is not that other people’s opinion of us has no value, but that we choose to value our relationship and intimacy with the Father, and His affirmation of us, more highly still.

Some of the fire stones are trading floors, where we go and exchange our life and receive back the fruit of the Spirit, or the revelation of the precepts of God.

Living sacrifice

We give our life in exchange for a return. So whenever I surrender as a living sacrifice to God on the altar of incense, I am trading. I am exchanging my old for the new that comes from the revelation of being in relationship with Him and out of the intimacy that I have with Him.

‘It is no longer I that live but Christ lives in me’ (Gal 2:20): I exchange my old life for new life in Him; ‘the life I now live, I live by faith of the Son of God’ – I live in union and in connection with Him

I present myself to Him as an instrument of righteousness. I am dead, I deny myself, and His whole life opens up to me.

Planting in my garden

As I mentioned, we should not get religious about the terminology. One time I got some things out of a giant’s belly, and went and planted them in my garden. Someone asked me why I didn’t go and trade with them on the sea of glass. The answer is that I did what my spirit led me to do. I went and planted something in my garden and it grew, and then off the tree came two silver trumpets. When you plant something in the ground, it dies to you so that God can return things to you as a result – usually in multiplication. One seed is sown into the ground and dies, and yet it brings forth life out of that death, in a multiplied form.

There is one particular application of trading that you may have seen in a meeting. When a speaker has said something and people want to engage in it, they come and give a small amount of money to trade into the revelation: they are honouring that revelation and want to receive blessing from engaging with it. If it reflects the desire of someone’s heart then it can be helpful for them; but personally I have never really felt the need to do it, or to encourage it here.

Keep pursuing Him

We do need to make sure we are coming from purity of heart in these things, because it will cause a multiplication for which we have to be ready. God is so gracious. He does not give us everything we want all in one go, because He knows we do not always have the wisdom to handle it. Even revelation comes in progression, rather than all at once. That way, we will keep pursuing Him and recognizing our dependence on Him rather than thinking, ‘hey, I know everything’. Actually, I probably know less than a billionth of one percent of everything. I just want to know more of Him.

For myself, I only consciously trade when my spirit leads me to do it. It is not something I do all the time as a matter of course, because then it would risk becoming a formula (and I don’t want anything to become a formula, I want to be led by and directed by the Spirit). I want my spirit to engage in what I do, and whatever I do, I want it to be in life. If I do not have faith for it, then I am just doing it according to the letter rather than the spirit, and that is of no benefit at all.

There is an old adage that you can never outgive God. He always outgives us, and that is really where any trade comes.

God will restore

The revelation of heavenly trading has been stalled by events that have happened in human history. For example, God wrote the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone by His own hand: when Moses brought them out of heaven he was on a sapphire trading floor. He was bringing the engagement of the revelation of God into this realm out of heaven. But when he saw the golden calf and all that was going on in the camp, Moses broke the stones – and an understanding of trading on the sapphire trading floor was lost as a result. I believe God is going to restore that revelation knowledge in days to come. He will unveil much more revelation on how to use the trading floors in heaven, and the seven spirits of God will teach us to understand trading in a greater dimension than we yet know.

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Image attribution: The CrossEqualsLove image is Jeremy’s photo of a chalkboard by his daughter Beth Lane at Valley Church, Bamber Bridge, Lancs UK. http://bethwestcott.wix.com/bethanydesign

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147. Present A Living Sacrifice (3) – practice

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

Because of practice

For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant,.But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil (Hebews 5:13-14).

If we have received revelation, we must act on it. All that we are learning, we have to put into practice. Things do not just happen automatically for us because we have read about them, or even by doing them just once or twice. It takes practice. But even though we call it practice, of course we are doing it for real.

For example, presenting ourselves as a living sacrifice. We have posted about this on a couple of occasions: now we are going to practice doing it (I do it myself every day). As part of that, we are also going to practice stepping in and stepping out of the presence of God.

I suggest that you stand, if you are able. When we step in, take a step forward; and when we step out, take a step back. It is just a practical cue here in this realm, a step of faith into His presence. It reminds us that the kingdom is always right there in front of us and that we can step into it at any time.

Let’s pray along these lines each day:

Father I thank you that You have made a way
for me to come into Your presence

By faith I step in… [step forward]
to the realm of Your presence
into the holy place in the heavenly tabernacle

I stand before the altar of incense
and present myself as a living sacrifice to You
Jesus, my High Priest.

Today, Jesus, I desire and choose,
as an act of my will,
to abdicate the throne of my heart.

I ask You to crucify and kill my flesh
I choose to deny myself all my rights
and to give You my life, to gain Your life.
I am dead to sin and alive to righteousness

I ask You to remove my head
as I surrender to Your lordship.
I choose not my will but Your will in my life.
I give up my right to free will
and choose to seek first Your kingdom and Your righteousness

I ask You to skin me
and remove every covering I have placed around my life.
Remove everything I use to make myself acceptable to You and others.
I renounce all dead works.
Remove all my masks, pretences, defence and coping mechanisms

I ask you split me open down to my bones and marrow.
Cleanse my heart and its motives.
Purify the thoughts and intentions of my heart.
Restore my heart
Give me Your desires.
Renew my mind
Heal my emotions
and strengthen my will.

I ask You to remove my legs
I surrender my walk to You
I choose to do only what I see the Father doing
I choose to walk by faith and not by sight

I step out of heaven… [step back]
back into this realm
I choose to let You do Your works through me
as I become a channel for Your kingdom to manifest
in this world around me.

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142. Present A Living Sacrifice (2)

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

Therefore I urge you, brethren, 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
 (Romans 12:1-2).

Transformation is complete, thorough, radical change. It enables us to prove (to find out and be sure of) what is the perfect will of God for us (that is, what is our destiny), and then to outwork it.

Present ourselves daily

But it involves sacrifice.

Worship is surrender. Worship is obedience. So we come to Jesus, our High Priest, and we present ourselves at the altar as a living sacrifice. This is something we are to do every day. We present ourselves to God so that He can use us, He can transform us, He can change us. It is not the sacrifice who is responsible for the changing. We do not have to transform ourselves: we merely have to present ourselves and God will do the changing.

So by faith we enter the Holy Place, in the heavenly tabernacle, in the heavenly realms. There is an altar there. Not the bronze altar where Israel used to offer sacrifices: Jesus was offered on that altar once and for all. We come instead to the altar of incense. When we give ourselves to God as a living sacrifice, the fragrance of our submitted lives goes up before Him, and He loves it.

Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus… (Heb 10:19).

Because of Jesus’ sacrifice and death, we can come right into the Holy Place. We do not come on our own merit, we come by the blood of Jesus. The blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:17).

Jesus is our High Priest, and He prepares the sacrifice that we give Him: our life. We have to present ourselves to Him and allow Him to deal with us. So we come by faith to surrender. We have looked before at the details of how the sacrificial lamb was prepared for sacrifice. It is really helpful for us to understand how those steps apply to us. If you are not familiar with this, please do take the time to read about it before moving on.

Click this link to read our earlier post (opens in a new window or tab): Present A Living Sacrifice (1) or copy and paste this line into your browser:
https://freedomarc.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/present-a-living-sacrifice/ 

Preparing the sacrifice

It is a picture of what we need to have done to us. The priest slit its throat, drained its blood, chopped off its head, skinned it, split it open, right down to the marrow of the backbone. Everything was opened up before God. All the inner organs were washed and  the legs cut off. Then the pieces were put on the altar.

We have to surrender our lives to Him, fully, for Him to do what He needs to do. Jesus said, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it” (Luke 9:23-24). We surrender our life to God, and exchange His life for ours. That is the meaning of sacrifice.

Dead, but alive

Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
(Rom 6:11-13).

If the flesh has to die, how is it a living sacrifice? It is because the flesh dies, but we carry on living in the spirit. Then our flesh does not get in the way, and the members of our body can be presented as instruments of righteousness, so that God can use us for His kingdom purposes. ‘Not my will, but Yours be done’, as Jesus said.

For the Word that God speaks is alive and full of power [making it active, operative, energizing, and effective]; it is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line of the breath of life (soul) and [the immortal] spirit, and of joints and marrow [of the deepest parts of our nature], exposing and sifting and analyzing and judging the very thoughts and purposes of the heart (Heb 4:12 AMP).

We are allowing God to open us up and reveal the deepest parts of our nature, to cleanse us, to purify us, and restore us; to expose, sift, analyse, and judge the very thoughts and purposes of our heart. And because he loves us, He will change us from the inside out, so that we are more like Him.

‘In like manner’

In our daily walk we are surrendered and obedient to what God wants to do in us. We walk by faith and not by sight; according to His will and not ours, only doing what we see the Father doing. And the Father in us is able to do all His works through us. That is how Jesus lived every day, and He wants us to live every day that way too.

We cannot do it in our own strength. We cannot do it by the flesh. We can only do it in the spirit. We have to surrender.

Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner” (John 5:19). If Jesus could do nothing of Himself, how much less can we?

Faith of the Son of God

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20 KJV).

When Jesus was on the cross, bearing our sin, we were crucified with Him. He is living in me, and that life is lived by faith of the Son of God (I have purposely quoted a translation that says ‘of’: it is not even my faith that I live by, but His). Jesus surrendered His life so that we could have full, abundant life. I want to encourage you, every day to present yourself as a living sacrifice before God. Surrender, and allow Him to prepare you, to change you, to transform you from the inside out, to deal with your soul so that your spirit can flow in the life of God.

We are going to pray, and I want to encourage you to be willing to daily deny yourself and allow the Spirit and the life of God to flow through you, out from you, and to change you.

Every day, present yourself. I do, every day; so that every day, God can use me.

Father, I thank You that You sent Jesus
to die on the cross for me
to take my sin, my sickness,
and everything about my flesh,
and to die in my place.

I choose to surrender myself as a living sacrifice to You,
and allow You to prepare my life
for the life of Jesus to flow from me.

Prepare my life as I surrender,
so that everything that has come through nature
can be transformed
everything that has come through nurture
can be transformed,
everything that has come through trauma
can be transformed,
so that I live a life flowing in the Spirit and in the power of God
bringing the kingdom of God from heaven to earth,
living as a manifestation of Your presence here on earth,
that Your light would shine through me.

I open up my life in surrender to You.
so that You can do Your work through me
and that I might bring glory to You.

Jesus, as You gave Your life for me,
I choose to give my life to You, daily,
as a living sacrifice,
in order to fulfil my destiny
and the purposes of God, here and now in this time,
so that in eternity I will be able to fulfil all You have for me to do there.

Father, I praise You,
Father, I bless You,
In Jesus’ Name

.Amen.

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138. Own it, Repent of it, Renounce it

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott

Each of us has a destiny, a plan and a purpose God always intended us to fulfil. In preparing for that destiny, we have a choice, whether we want to go through this process and allow God to change us. Today I want to look a little more at our soul gates.

Conscience

Our conscience gets dulled because of sin and rebellion, and therefore if we have operating in our lives any weaknesses, patterns of sin, ‘normal, acceptable behaviours’ (which are neither normal nor acceptable to God because He sees the damage they do to us), we have to be willing to own them.

We cannot argue with God in this process. If we do, we will lose the argument and it will be much harder to be transformed. I have learnt to confess it, own it, repent of it and renounce it. Repentance has nothing to do with feeling sorry, or with doing penance! The Greek word metanoia really means ‘having the same mind as God’, so to ‘repent’ is to change your mind and think about something the way God thinks about it.

If God shows me something, He is always right about it: I am not going to deny it. He knows what is there. I do have sin areas, weak areas in my life. And God showed me patterns of sin when I went through this process that I had to own and say ‘yes, I have acted like that’. And I did not realise it, until God showed me, until I opened up my heart and asked God to show me what goes on inside me.

In doing that, I was able to repent (in the true sense), renounce, and my conscience became really sharp. I applied the blood of Jesus to it. I received forgiveness and cleansing. I refused to feel guilt, shame and condemnation (which are things the enemy brings). Every one of us needs to know that we are righteous. That is part of ‘having the same mind as God’ – He has made me righteous, and He calls me righteous! Then reverence can flow through that conscience gate and guide me and direct me in everything I do every day. But if that conscience gate is damaged, or blocked, affected by sin, it will lead me astray. I need to have it transformed.

Reason

Rationalism, scepticism, cynicism, denial, projection: our mind will fool us into putting the blame on somebody else, and not dealing with what is on the inside of us. We might have words, ideas, philosophies and doctrines in us that need changing, familiar spirits or religious spirits operating in us, behaviour cycles that we recognise. Just own it. Do not argue, give up. Surrender. Stop fighting for the flesh, and surrender to the spirit. As we do, we apply the truth of the word which God speaks to us. The mind of Christ will start flowing through us: the thoughts of God flowing through us; revelation and faith flowing through us.

Imagination

Every one of us has seen a great many negative images in our lifetime. We have to deal with them. Otherwise the enemy will bring them back and use them to pollute our imagination. We want to be able to see revelation, images, and visitations, both in the heavenly realms and in this one; we may be hindered from doing so if our imagination is polluted.

TV, films, games, magazines, books, fantasies – even life itself:  we are going to need to get rid of whatever we have seen that is negative. Again, I owned everything I saw as sin. I repented and renounced it and I painted it out with the blood of Jesus.

I now no longer have any of those images in my memory. They are completely gone. It is like having a filing cabinet in my mind that has folders in it. Each one has an index tab with something written on it; but when you look inside the folder, there is nothing in it. I can remember the things that have happened in my life but I can no longer remember the details of them or recall the images of them because they have gone. They have been cleansed: all those images are completely wiped out of my memory.

So if you have images that you are plagued with, put them under the blood of Jesus and paint them out so that they are no longer there. We can have a purified memory and a cleansed screen, so that we are able to see visions and have dreams, and experience revelation from God flowing.

We will have the eyes of our heart opened and enlightened: a flow of hope, and a flow of revelation: visions, dreams, visitations in the heavenly realms, all because our imagination is now clean. We can be cleansed. But we need to actually allow God to do it.

Subconscious Mind

It is the same thing with our subconscious mind. All the memories, words, vows, curses: every trigger that I experienced in my life, every defence mechanism, every coping mechanism. I owned it, repented of it (changed my mind about it) and renounced it. As we apply the blood of Jesus, that soil of our heart will be dealt with. The hardness will be dealt with; the stones, and the weeds. We will just get a flow of revelation knowledge from God; it will flow through our subconscious and trigger the right things, and we will be moved by the things that move God.

Emotions

Our emotions are affected by all the trauma, all the hurts, all the betrayal, all the abuse: disappointment, pain, and rejection we have felt and experienced. And we have to admit we have hurt other people as well as being hurt by them. If you are feeling anger or withdrawal or depression, all those things arise from emotions that we have not dealt with. We either turn in or we turn out.

We need to own all those mechanisms: we need to repent, forgive and release all the hurt, repent of everything we have done to hurt others, and renounce it all. Then we are going to start to get a flow of God’s heart, of intuition, of being moved by what moves God.

Will

If you are stubborn and if you have been rebellious, willful, or controlling you have to own it. Fear, doubt, unbelief, indecision: if they are operating in your life, own it, repent and renounce it, and in that process apply the truth of the blood of Jesus, and God will begin to work things in you, positive things: patience, boldness, courage, perseverance. You will begin to get into a flow of worship, a flow of obedience, in which we are outworking the truth of God’s word day by day.

I know this is a lot to take on board all at once. I am putting it all out there and I am just encouraging you to use the gateways diagram (or spinner) to begin to deal with whatever of this is in your life. Ask Jesus to come and stand in the gateways with you, and show you what he sees. It may not be a quick process, but with a bit of application you can do it.

Own it, repent of it, renounce it. All it takes is surrender, and allowing God to deal with it.

Related articles from Freedom ARC
Related resource from Freedom ARC

RELEASING TOXIC EMOTIONS

Seminar with Kari Browning

Get the recordings here!

We were delighted to host internationally renowned speaker Kari Browning, teaching on this topic for the first time in the UK.

Toxic emotions are often the source of emotional pain, relational difficulties, and physical illness. By releasing toxic emotions you will come into a place of rest for your soul and health for your body.

The technique Kari uses to release toxic emotions involves prayer, the laying on of hands, and the use of therapeutic-grade essential oils.

These recordings from Kari’s seminar here at the Freedom Centre in August 2018  include downloadable video and audio versions together with PDF files of her presentations. The cost is £36.17 GBP (inc VAT). Available at https://freedomarc.org/kari

This blog post was the last day of our participation in #NaBloPoMo – a post every day for the month of November 2013

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paintedout

134. Gateways of the Spirit

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott

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.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

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123. Cultivate a Garden Relationship

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

We have seen how we need to take the testimony of what God has shown us, given us, and done for us, and plant it in the garden in our hearts. But planting alone is not enough: if we want to produce fruit, we are to tend and keep what is growing there. And that means we have to cultivate a relationship with God on the inside.

If you do not yet know how to do that, you can learn. It is all about practice, and really no different from relating with God anywhere else. If you can sense God’s presence in a meeting, you can sense His presence on the inside when you are in worship in your own life.

Practice

There is no ‘quick fix’: we train our senses by practice. When I first started sharing this teaching here with Freedom Church in Barnstaple some folk began by saying, “I can’t see anything. I don’t get any of this stuff” but within a couple of years were seeing angels and having the most amazing heavenly encounters. They trained their spiritual senses to perceive the spiritual realm.

In the natural realm we have all learned to interpret what enters our eyes. It is no different with seeing in the spiritual realm. Actually, we all had this ability to see spiritual things when we were very young (how many stories are there of children seeing angels?), but most of us lost it. We need to recover that ability and start to see spiritual things again.

I am using the word ‘see’, but please do not get too hung up on that word. Really I mean ‘perceive’. Some people are very visual, and they will describe it as ‘seeing’, but others will become aware of what is going on in the spirit in different ways.

Angels, atmospheres, the four faces of God we are encountering when we get together – you can train your spirit through practice.

The screen of our imagination

All of us have an imagination. Try it now. Close your eyes for a few seconds and imagine your front door, where you live…

I am pretty sure you will have been able to do that. That means you have an imagination. “But I’m just imagining it”. Good. Your imagination is the screen on which God projects things, like vision, and heavenly experiences. And our imagination can convey sounds, sensations, fragrances, tastes, and textures, as well as visual things. That is how we can know what our garden is like, and that is how we can experience the heavenly realms.

We can also use the screen of our imagination to open up what we read in the Bible. That is an experiential way in which we can use it as another means of access into the realms of heaven.

I want to encourage you to open up your heart, and be willing to get into training. We will help you, on this blog, through the YouTube channel and with our other resources, so that your senses can learn to discern the things of the Spirit.

Let’s pray.

Father, I release the revelation
that the garden in our hearts will be open;

that all of us will be able to open the door in our hearts
and allow You to fill us,
to become Lord,
and that You will change us
and transform us from the inside out;

that we will be able to see in the realm of the spirit
from the inside out
as well as see naturally from the outside in.

And I release that prophetic word as a testimony
of what has happened in my life
and in the lives of people here in Barnstaple,
to declare that everyone reading this
will be able to see and perceive in the realm of the spirit,
engage in the heavenly realms,
enjoy an intimate relationship with the Father, with Jesus, with the Holy Spirit
on the inside
to fulfil their destiny
and to see what is on that scroll that has been written before the foundation of the world.

And I call forth people’s destinies
to fulfil that purpose of God for their lives.
In Jesus’ name,

Amen.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

SoundTrack: Journey Into Eden – Instrumental Soaking Track by Creative Sound
“This music is inspired by encountering God in His Garden.”

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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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119. One Spirit With Him

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For He says, “The two shall become one flesh.” But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. (1 Corinthians 6:15-17).

When we speak of intimacy, let us be clear on the kind of intimacy we are talking about. This verse is contrasting what it is to be joined sexually with somebody to become one flesh, and what it is to be joined with the Lord and become one spirit (which is the goal for us in pursuing intimacy). True intimacy is giving yourself to another. He has done that for us, and it is what He is seeking from us.

Patricia King wrote this in 2006, but it is still true for us today:

‘Get ready for a breakthrough unlike any other you’ve had in the past. You may have had breakthrough in your finances, or in other areas of your life, but this is a breakthrough into intimacy. That’s right, the King Himself has invited you into His chambers to tell you the secrets of His heart. The Lord is about to woo you into deeper levels of love, revelation, and passion. You’re breaking through a barrier of flesh, and entering a new season of relationship with the Lover of your soul.

You may have distanced yourself from Him because of fear, or doubt of where you stand in your relationship with Him. Today the Lord says, “Let My perfect love cast away all your fears.” Drop any preconceived notions you may have in your arms now and prepare for a full embrace with the King’.

Jesus said, ‘ I am in the Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you’ (John 14:20). You really can’t get much more intimate than that. When we give our lives to Him, when we enter into a personal relationship with Him, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit come to live on the inside of us.

And in our heart there is a secret place, a garden:

And the Lord will continually guide you,
And satisfy your desire in scorched places,
And give strength to your bones;
And you will be like a watered garden,
And like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.
(Isa 58:11)

Indeed, the Lord will comfort Zion;
He will comfort all her waste places.
And her wilderness He will make like Eden,
And her desert like the garden of the Lord;
Joy and gladness will be found in her,
Thanksgiving and sound of a melody.
(Isa 51:3)

It is watered by the wellspring bubbling up (John 4:14) and a river of living water flowing (John 7:38); it is within us, and we can walk there with God, just as Adam and Eve did. This is a song we often use here at Freedom to ‘practise’ going there…

‘I’m no longer my own
I’m Your garden’.
(Misty Edwards – Garden)

(If this video does not play on the page, you can click here to open it in YouTube)

Related articles from Freedom ARC

Support Freedom ARC

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

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.

88. The Fall of Lucifer, the Light-Bearer

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott

We have seen that something catastrophic happened between the first two verses of Genesis. Satan fell.

When God made the earth, as it is now, He removed it from the sphere it was in and placed it into time and space. God said, ‘Let there be light’ before He made the sun, and the moon, and the stars. Because He is light, and that light is creative light. And there are two speeds of light: there is the speed of light that operates in the heavenly realms, and the speed of light which operates here, which is slowing down (as some scientists have now suggested), although at the beginning they were the same speed. Because of Adam’s fall, the speed of light started to slow down and so time used to be quicker (if you understand what I mean). That is why the earth appears to be 10,000 years old in the biblical account, and yet it is 14 billion years old as measured by science. Time was different, time was stretched out, the heavens were stretched out.

There is a passage in 2 Peter which speaks of this period: For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water (2 Peter 3:5-6).

This is not Noah’s flood. This is talking about the original destruction of the earth, and the fall of Satan. Earth was flooded with water at that time, the first flood. That is why we then find that the Spirit of God was brooding upon the waters in Genesis 1:2.

The anointed cherub who covers

We need to see what happened when Satan fell. He was originally a covering cherub, one of those angels who covered the throne, one who cried ‘Holy, holy, holy’. When he cried ‘holy’, he was exclaiming with wonder as he received from God the revelation of His purposes.

At some point, God revealed His plan to use Man, a person with DNA, to carry the DNA of God on the earth. And God revealed that it was to be His sons in DNA who were going to inherit the earth and the heavens (rather than the sons of glory, the angels).

Instead of crying ‘holy’ this time, all of a sudden, something else started to form in Satan’s heart.  He rebelled, and in his heart he was saying, ‘I want to ascend to the place where I will be like that!’

Now Satan had a reptilian form, and he was covered in stones. He was called Lucifer, the light bearer, and he was also the leader of the worship in heaven. So those stones were supposed to reflect the light of God’s glory, and he was supposed to be responsible for training Man to come into the fullness of God.

In Ezekiel 28 we can read about Satan’s fall.

Thus says the Lord GOD, “You had the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering: the ruby, the topaz and the diamond; the beryl, the onyx and the jasper; the lapis lazuli, the turquoise and the emerald; and the gold, the workmanship of your settings and sockets, was in you. On the day that you were created they were prepared (Ezek 28:12-13).

The garden of God (Eden) was connected to the earth. In Genesis it says God had a garden in Eden, and then He planted a garden east of Eden. So there were two gardens, and at that point heaven and earth overlapped. The garden of God was where God walked, Adam had access to that; it was where the Tree of Life was.

And then we read about all the stones that covered Satan’s body. You will notice that Satan had nine stones, but Man has 12 stones: the breastplate of the High Priest had 12 stones, there were 12 tribes, there are 12 foundations to the New Jerusalem, 12 fruits on the Tree of Life. The number 12 speaks of government, and Man was supposed to exercise godly government.

[Biblical numerology is really interesting: threes and sevens and tens and twelves and forties are everywhere once you start to see them, but we can’t go fully into that here.]

Then it goes on,

You were the anointed cherub who covers, and I placed you there. You were on the holy mountain of God; You walked in the midst of the stones of fire. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created until unrighteousness was found in you. By the abundance of your trade you were internally filled with violence, and you sinned; therefore I have cast you as profane from the mountain of God. And I have destroyed you, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire (Ezek 28:14-16).

Heaven is on a mountain, ‘the holy mountain of God’ (v14). The whole structure of heaven is a mountain and there is a plateau on top. On the mountain there is a throne and from the throne runs a river of fire – imagine how lava flows from a volcano. There are stones that operate on that fire which are stones of revelation. I have been on that mountain and I have walked on those stones, and another time I will maybe explain what those stones are. They represent what Satan would have done to bring Man into the fullness of God.

But then unrighteousness was found in him. It was exposed because of his role as covering cherub and the revelation that God gave him. The scripture goes on to speak about Satan’s trading and about his being filled with violence.

Again, I am going to have to teach on trade and trading floors another time, because it is to do with covenant and to do with exchange. For now, let’s understand that it worked like this: Satan had information, revelation of what God was going to do, and he traded it with the other angels. Man was going to inherit the heavens, rather than the angels doing so, because the angels were all about being ministering spirits for those who would inherit salvation (Heb 1:14). All the angels were created for us, and that now became clear. When Satan discovered this revelation, he went to some of the other angels and a third of them decided they were going to receive and act on it, and they were going to seek to rule the heavens instead of Man.

Like lightning from heaven

So Satan fell, like lightning from heaven, Jesus said. As a result of his fall, Satan no longer has access to Heaven (but has not lost access to all of the heavenly realms). He has no access to the River of Life or the stones of fire, or anything else which is found in that heavenly realm.

And when he fell, ‘there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war, and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him (Rev 12:7-9).

Here Satan is referred to as the dragon (I was writing about dragons and giants a few weeks ago in a previous post). This is where the word ‘dragon’ comes from: it is a description of Satan. A third of the angels – and that is a great number – took the trade Satan offered them, and fell with him.

As I say, that was in the original creation. Satan’s activity on the earth brought down God’s judgment upon it in the first flood, which resulted in a planet that was ‘formless and void’, covered in waters over which the Spirit would hover, brood or vibrate (Gen 1:2). And in the second creation, Adam’s rebellion would give Satan access to heaven again and open some of those realms back up to him.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

28. Present a Living Sacrifice (1)

Mike Parsons –

Paul writes to the Romans,

I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship (Rom 12:1).

A living sacrifice is a prepared sacrifice. It will help us if we understand what was involved in offering a sacrifice in the Old Testament. When they sacrificed a lamb they prepared it in a certain way so that it was able to be received as an offering. It was the High Priest who prepared and arranged the sacrifice on the altar, and we know that Jesus is our Great High Priest (Heb 4:14). So now we come into the holy place within the heavenly tabernacle and present ourselves on the altar of incense to be a sweet-smelling aroma to God; we invite Jesus to prepare us as a sacrifice: we know what He is going to do, and we deliberately allow Him to do it.

This is how the High Priest prepared the sacrifice:

  1. He slit its throat and drained its blood. If we are going to be prepared as a living sacrifice, we have to be willing to have our throat slit and our blood drained so that our life in the flesh is exchanged for His life in the spirit. Not literally, not physically having our throat slit, I hasten to add. But Jesus said, “You need to deny yourself, take up the cross daily, and follow me”. Lose our life, to gain His life. We are going to need to totally die to doing it our way, as a choice where we say, “I die to myself,  I deny myself”, daily.
  2. The head was chopped off. We cannot be in charge, with our head. We have to be saying, like Jesus, “Not my will, but Yours be done”. He is the perfect sacrifice. He did this every day. He presented Himself morning by morning as a disciple (Is 50:4). I renounce the right to my free will. Every time, my flesh would get in the way and I would choose to do what suits me rather than what suits God. Therefore, not my will, but Yours be done: I am not going to let my head decide what I am going to do.
  3. The skin was removed. We cannot have defence mechanisms, protection mechanisms and our own self-righteousness as a barrier: we have to be vulnerable and transparent before God, and before others. We cannot protect ourselves: we must live in His protection. We have the armour of light, the armour of righteousness, and the armour of God to protect us. We do not have any of them if we try to protect ourselves with inferior armour of our own making. It is time to let it go.
  4. He split the body completely open, and washed all the inner parts. God wants our heart purified, refined and washed in the living water of His Word and His Presence. We have to be willing to open up our heart, open up our life. That’s what a living sacrifice is, it is saying “Everything belongs to You. I am not hiding anything from You. You have it all”.
  5. Finally, He chopped the legs off. We cannot walk our own way, we have to surrender daily and walk according to how the Spirit leads. “I am going to do nothing other than what I see the Father doing” (John 5:19). That is how Jesus did His miracles: He saw the Father doing it. He is calling us to do the same: miracles, signs and wonders, being led by the Spirit daily, following Him, not doing our own thing and going off in our own direction, but every day surrendering that day to God and saying, “God, this day belongs to You. This is Your day, I am just here as a servant. You lead me, You use me, empower me, envision me, show me what You are doing”.

When we go to heaven and He gives us revelation there, when we spend time in our spirit, in communion and fellowship with Him; if we present ourselves as a living sacrifice, He will reveal Himself.  He will use us if we give Him the opportunity. But we have to surrender and allow Jesus to prepare us to be the sacrifice, and we cannot offer it half-heartedly; because if we do, He knows.

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