Gods Obsession
The Basis of Our Calling
Paul was a man obsessed. "To me, is this grace given, to preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ: and to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery": "Forgetting those things which are behind …. I press toward the mark of the prize of the high calling." And that same Spirit obsesses us.
We are an obsessed people. We are among the Pauls of our day. Like Paul, "This one thing I do." Paul had a twofold commission (Col. 1:23-28). The first was to bring the Gentiles to Christ. The second, to be sure that when saved, they know the total truthwhat he called "fulfilling the word" to them the completion, the total: that it is not merely a reconciliation relationship to God as His redeemed sons (wonderful enough), but the marvel of the revelation that He brought His human family into existence, made of the stuff of His own being (Acts 17:28), so that they can contain Him, The Person, in their persons. This is the "mystery hidden from ages and generations now made manifest, which is Christ in you," and, not "in" in the separate outer concept we external people have of relationship between the separate things, but the "in" of union"joined to the Lord one spirit." In Jesus’ words, "I in them and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one."
Thus He, "the light of the world," and we "are the light of the world" (Matt. 5:14). And it does not say "have" but "are"it is lamp (we humans) manifesting light (God)which is it, lamp or light? But a complete light can only be manifested by a complete lamp, which means, as Paul said (Col. 1:28), not just a complete Christ in us, but a complete "us," perfect in Him." And that is out total. But how?
Our obsessed commission, now thank God shared by many of us, therefore is to show how we are those completed persons, and we are, and then share our discovery with all our brethren in Christ.
Most of our writings and sharings, as we go from place to place, as in my most recent book, Yes I Am, and in the pages of this our Intercessor magazine, are giving this one total answer. Regretfully, however, we have to face the fact, even in God’s redeemed family, as Jesus said, it is still "few there be that find it," for it is only those who, in the Sermon on the Mount, will not take no, but "hunger and thirst after righteousness" until they are filledand they are still few.
Put very briefly, this vital radical "knowing" is the revelation by the Scriptures (especially Paul’s writings), inwardly and individually confirmed by the only reliable witness, the Spirit Himself. It is that God has forever been the "I AM," not the "I have": He is an Is-er, not a Has-er. All He gives is Himself in His own nature. He IS the love, light, power, wisdom, sanctification, finally "All in all" (1 Cor. 15:28). Not qualities He gives, but Himself expressing His own qualities by our human forms.
Not "Becomers" but "Containers"
This gives a radically different understanding of who we humans really are; not as "becomers" but as "containers," not as self-expressers but Godexpressers, not our nature but His, and we humans having no nature of our own. We are called vessels, but it is not the nature of the vessel but of what it makes available. We are branches, but the nature is that of the vine whose fruit it reproduces. We are temples, but it’s not the type of form of the temple but of its In-dweller. We are body-members, but it is the head which operates through the body. Or in modern terms, we are computers with great potentials, but only operate what the programmer puts into us.
The whole universe as His creation only operates by one other basic reality. All consists of pairs of opposites, and the one utilizes the other to express itself: light, dark; sweet, bitter; hard, soft; yes, no; heat, cold. All is "rhythmic balanced interchange." So it is the same of our personhood, the central reality of the universe: our God-made selves made in His likeness. We can only operate by the interaction of oppo sites. Our human faculties can express the negative of the "spirit of error," selffor- self, or the positive "Spirit of Truth," the self-for-others.
God had eternally settled that for Himself by never being a lonely One who would be for Himself, but in the intensity of His love-longing, eternally begetting His Son as the express image of His person, so that the Two are bound together in their love bond, and the Third, the Spirit then expressing that divine other-love nature in His universe. Tit. 1:2 declares that.
But God then used His rebel heavenly being, Lucifer, who chose the opposite to His Creator and became fixed as the god of self-for-self, to entice our first Adam progenitor, and Eve, into his own false choice, and thus be captive to his nature (Eph. 2:1-3). And this has been the fact of us all, by which we could learn the hell of that way of self-destruction. And this Satannature condition has been marvelously replaced by our Last Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ, representing us in His body on that Tree. He died as us "made sin," (2 Cor. 5:21), expressing as us that sin-nature; and in that death out went the false spirit, and therefore out of our bodies (Rom. 6:6, 10), and rising with His own Spirit of holiness in that risen Body representing us.
Seeing the Final Deceit
But before we can enter in fullness of understanding and consequent confident living, the final deceit of that error spirit has to be exposed and gotten rid of. That deceit is that he, Satan, was himself never an independent self, for there is no such thing in the universe, but was God’s creature and thus His negative convenient agent, deceiving himself about his false self-sufficiency (Is. 14:13-14), though given limited authority (Lu. 4:6). This self-deceit he imparted to us, giving us this lie of being independent selves. The purpose of God was that, in order for us to become totally reliable inheritors and managers of His universe together with our Elder Brother His Son (Rom. 8:17), we must fully know, experience in all bitterness, and discard forever this false concept of independent self. Then we can become totally reliable by totally knowing that the hidden secret of our free actions is that it is really He as we, in place of that false vine (Rom. 6:21); the True Vine by branch, Light by lamp, liquid in the vessels, etc. Not to be fooled again!
Yet that bitter dose of that deceit is the very nitty-gritty of our permanent awareness of the trick played on us (Rom. 7:11): the lie that we ever "ran" ourselves, when as Jesus said, "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father (not our lusts) ye do." That lying deceit, as if we are self-acting, self-operating, self-relying independent selves is finally eradicated by Paul in Romans 7, when in the solution to his negative self-reactions and the misery they caused him (7:24), the light was finally lit, never again to be extinguished, that those negative self-reactions in him, when he was a new creature in Christ with the fruit of the Holy Spirit, were not really he at all, because we humans never have had a nature of our own, but were the lying deceiving self-reactions of "sin dwelling in him" (7:17, 20)sin the expressed nature of "Mr Sin," that evil one; and he had been cast out at Calvary forever from our bodies as his dwelling place. Then Paul wrote, with his glory shout of confirmed deliverance, "I am free" (Rom. 7:25; 8:1-2).
My human self made by God was never a wrong self in itself; all that God makes in all appetites and faculties is "very good;" it was a misused self by the lying indweller, but now a rightly used self by the Right Indweller: change of indwelling deity, not of the containing vessel or reproducing branch. I am free. No more condemnation of my apparently devious self.
My True Self At Last
And so Paul enters in by his word of affirming faith, such as in Gal. 2:20, which is now also ours. "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me." His own inner knowing of Rom. 8:2, not by some desperate self-effort of trying to commit oneself to be changed, but the simple, though totally radical, recognition of faith that I was and am freed from my false deceiving indweller through Calvary; and now Christ has taken Satan’s place, as I boldly possess my possessions. And what I affirm and confess by the spoken word of faith, the Inner Spirit confirms (1 Jn. 5:10) … I go freea completed human self containing our Complete Christ.
Thus with that personal freedom to be my true self (really my human self with its exchanged operators), I am at last my true self. In this Satan-infected world, all the assaults of false selfresponses by temptations will pour in on me, as they did on the Perfect man (Heb. 4:15); but no condemnation. I accept, not resist or deny, Satan’s rights to pull at me by every means, to get me back to my old reaction of false independent self. I don’t deny all forms of temptation, nor take condemnation; but by recognizing his rights to "roar" at me in this world, I am now free to respond by recognizing who I really amChrist in my form; and that is turning on the light which swallows the darkand replaces Satan’s pulls by the Christnature which I now expresslove for hate, faith for fear, self-giving for selfgratification, etc. Gal. 5:17 thoroughly replaced by 5:18.
But now and only now, can I in the fullness of my liberated reality be my true self. And now what is that self? We have sought to make it fully plainit is my human self expressing His divine self (2 Pet. 1:4). But now what is the nature of His divine Self? We well know through Calvary (1 Jn. 4:10). It is my Father’s nature of other-love, totally absorbed with bringing all of His human family who come within hearing distance into who they really ARE, through His own Calvary completion of 2 Cor. 5:21. He as we! That same Spirit who entered Jesus and established His Life’s purpose, when the Spirit came on Him in the form of a dove. From then onward He knew it was the Spirit operating in His human Jesus-form ("The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach the gospel to the poor…" Luke 4:18-21). I, the Son, "do nothing by myself." And even His going to Calvary was by the Spirit (Heb. 9:14). So also of course His resurrection. And then His plain word at the supper table that the same Spirit would indwell and operate us, and would come to us at Pentecost. So for us all, who are now made conscious of our own Pentecost by faith and confirming witness, by the same Spirit we are AS HE. We are "in the light, as He is in the light": we walk as He walked; we know as He knows; we live the right life as He lived it; we love as He loves; we believe with His believing; and all is headed up by John’s final all-inclusive statement that "as He is, so are we in this world." (1 Jn. 1:7; 2:6, 27; 3:7; 4:16; 5:10, 20; 4:17).
So then what? It can only be that that same Spirit-obsession which "drove" Him to die in faith and rise that we might first die and then live, now obsesses us, if He is the real we! So here it is. This is why I’ve spent so long running through what I’ve just said. If I know who I am – and I must know that I know – then I am totally caught. I am enslaved. I am a Godaholic. And that can only mean that I have one real drive, like Paul, "to make all men see." The Total Self-giver, that Lamb slain for the world, that Lamb now on the Throne, can only be Himself as me, not just in me, but as me. The same "zeal of God’s house" eats me up.
God’s Obsession
We have come to the point of why our magazine is named The Intercessor. If you are a co-knower of the glorious truth of who we are, then you are obsessed. Only the Spirit, however, reveals and confirms this to each of us. Whether you feel it or not, the One who is the real you compels you to have one basic inner purpose. It is Paul’s "this one thing I do" purpose that all the redeemed know and be who they are: He as them. In our feelings we may question our purpose, but we walk discerning soul feelings from the spirit facts.
Thus we are driven persons, and must be, for He has no other nature than the lamb for others and the lion of faith conquests. This is the divine nature we partake of. His one delight is "for the joy set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame" (Heb. 12:2). Therefore, it is our delight. But this means that, in His own original ways, He has divorced us from not only our former sin habits but also from the domination of good selfloves. Our family, friends, possessions, physical health, self interests, and hobbies do not master us. This looks like hate to those who do not yet themselves share in the nature of divine love. We are taken over as knowers by "If any man hate not … he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:25-35).
If you are among us knowers, the Spirit has been doing His confirming, enduing work in you. You are a Luke 14 disciple, now being turned into an apostle. Move in by faith, which then becomes substance: don’t slip back into mixing such faith with the hard-slogging self effort to attain it (back into independent self outlook). Boldly dare to align yourself, not with the redeemed, even Spirit-gifted, brethren of the Corinthian church, who were delighting in their new found riches (1 Cor. 4:8), but align yourself with the Spirit-obsessed few involved in the apostolic life of 1 Cor. 4:9-13. Wise? No, fools. Honorable? No, despised. Strong? No, weak. "Reviled, we bless; persecuted, we suffer it; defamed, we intreat; we are made the filth of the world." Yes, "death in us, but life in you." And Paul warns those Corinthian brethren (4:14-16) lest they miss out. But again remember it is the Spirit who alone takes us this horrendous, no, glorious way. All that is required of the totally earnest is the declared and persisted in faith in Jesus’ heart cry of John 7:38: "He that believes, out of his belly shall flow rivers …." If we believe, the Spirit will see to the outflow. But we must believe with the same total heart believing which took us into John 3:16 and on into Gal. 2:20the belief which is the leap, once for all.
Army of Intercessors
What then does it mean to be conscripts of this army of intercessors whose inner ears have been attuned to the Spirit’s battle cry? Paul uses many battle terms such as "war a good warfare" (1 Tim. 1:18) and "fight the good fight of faith" (1 Tim. 6:12). Paul gives us three challenging standards in 2 Tim. 2:3-7. We are soldiers who, though involved in the daily life of home and profession, are so disentangled in spirit that our real absorption is fighting God’s battles. We are in an athletic contest, and know what victory we are out to gain and how to gain it. We know our skills and how to apply them. We are hardworking farmers who fulfill all the necessities for obtaining a good crop and obtain it. Dedicated soldiers, trained athletes, and hard working farmers. And all of this laboring and striving is not by that old, false self effort, but by an endless upsurge of another stream of inner energy (Col 1:29).
This is the real meaning of the word "intercessor." It is a different category from what is often referred to as intercessory prayer. It includes prayer, but the quality of prayer that "gets there." An intercessor is a person wholly and specifically commissioned to gain a certain objective by the Spirit (Isa. 59:16, 20; Ezek. 22:30). The intercessor accepts his commission, which will cost him all he has to fulfill it. He will participate in the law of the harvest by which a corn of wheat must die before it rises to give life to others (John 12:24).
There is a daily dying, Paul says, in meeting the normal negative pressures of life. We die daily in Christ to the negative stirrings of temptation toward independent self outlook: in their place the risen life of Christ is "made manifest in our bodies." "We are cast down, but not destroyed" and all Paul’s list in 2 Cor. 4:7-10. This, however, is not intercession, but the daily overcoming walk.
Intercession is found in 2 Cor. 4:11 where we are always "delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake." That means some specific form of death produced in us, but life in others (2 Cor. 4:12). This commission is specifically for me (though it may be along with others), and I know it. And I know the difficulties or impossibilities that confront me in it. For Moses it was going back to face Pharaoh: "Come now and I will send you" (Ex. 3:10). God said to Gideon, "Go in this thy might and thus shalt thou save Israel" (Judges 6:14). John was "a man sent from God" (John 1:6). And so on throughout the history of the true Church of Christ. Read E. H. Broadbent’s Pilgrim Church, which we boldly claim contains present day members in both suffering and action. The size and type of commission has nothing to do with being commissioned. You simply know what your present intercession is.
Prayer of Faith
Certainly it does include intercessory prayer. But now it is that Elijahlike prayer of faith set forth in James 5:17, 18. The emphasis is on the faith. It is no longer just the walk of faith by which we are in our fixed union relationship with Christ. It is the developed faith which now is stretched to inwardly see God as meaning evil (Gen. 50:20; Acts 4:24-28). Prayer has then moved on beyond its former basis of making requests. Now our first inquiry of God is "what are you up to?" however dark the apparent situation may be. For behind the devil’s fiercest attacks are God’s meaningful purposes. Then, after inwardly discerning His purpose, what is our desire? When that is settled, we express our desire by a word of faith which declares that it has been received. This is the "whatsoever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive" of Mark 11:24. And with that word of faith, there is the patient persistence of faith which anticipates and watches for the substance. Repetitive thanksgiving is more the occupation of our praying. This is the authority of the intercessor who is king as well as priest.
So many of us have learned intercession from Rees Howells. There was one famous occasion when he and all with him, and indeed all Europe, were confronted with an advancing and victorious Hitler who would surely cut the world off from the spread of the gospel. After many sessions of prayer, he announced, "Prayer has failed. It must be intercession." Through the intercessions which followed, many of them with fasting (see Doris Ruscoe’s small book, The Intercession of Rees Howells), the word of faith came fully through that Hitler was defeated and would be destroyed with all his power. After this word was spoken, the celebration of victory was publicly held and described in the newspapers. Yet that was the very time in which Hitler’s panzers overwhelmed Holland and Belgium, seized France, and threatened Britain! What an absurd celebration! Most English Christians dismissed Rees Howells as a madman and a ridiculous false prophet. But he and those with him persisted, though it first cost him his reputation and ultimately led to, I believe, his early death. And today? Where are the dictators? Was the world ever so free and so responsive by millions to the gospel in nearly all the nations? The greatest harvesting in history is now being reaped. There it is: commission, cost, and completion.
With the inner warfare and victory of faith, there is the body action in some form by which we "fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ for His body’s sake" (Col. 1:24). There are physical martyrdom of intercessors through the centuries. But death there will always be, which is the negative pressure that intensifies living faith. "A body thou has prepared me" and "we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ" (Heb. 10:5, 10). So the intercessor will have all sorts of costly bodily activity. It may be the willing service of the toiling missionaries, the building teams, the editors and secretaries, the open homes, or the sacrifices of time and money.
Faith in action and persistent labor bring the vital outcome, apart from which there is not an intercession. This is the GAINING of the intercession (Heb. 7:25). Prayer may. Intercession MUST. We intercede to see it come into being. Yes, we see it. In a sense we all die in faith, not having received the promises. But we surely received the promises. But we surely receive a good portion enroute, as in Hebrews 11. We are "in it to win it," as my friend Roy Putnam said. Let us make no mistake about that. Intercession is gained. We do not enter into and recognize it as a Spirit’s commission to us unless we have that settled in our conviction. We are called to see it through. Such was God’s word to Joshua when He commisioned him: "Then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success" (Josh. 1:8).
To Our Summit
So let us have it clear that my sole purpose for writing this is to call us who are knowers on to our summit. It has been necessary for us to first know the total truth of how we are fully liberated selves in Christ, and can be and ARE ourselves. That was why I gave the title Yes I Am to my last book and not the title Yes He Is, which would have had more appearance of giving our Lord Jesus Christ all the glory. Why? Because His whole heart satisfaction and purpose is fulfilled when we, His co-sons and brethren, ARE HE in all His love actions by our human selves, yet in such a paradoxical (and we might also see it as humorous) method that it is WE IN ACTION, while it is really He!!!
Only when that is our fixed, eternal inner knowing by His Spirit revelation and we are happily settled into it, do we move on to our full functioning as intercessors, fathers, soldiers in battle, laborers, harvesters, and all the rest of it. The real purpose of all of us linked together in this high calling, and expressed in The Intercessor magazine, is to see all settled in the recognition that this is who we now are by grace.
It does help to know that we actually start being intercessors from the time of our becoming new creations in Christ. I have written a series on my own life experiences, covering my ninety years, to illustrate this fact. From my first born-again days in 1914, at the start of World War I, there was that first step of giving Christ the lordship over my body interests, as well as my heart love. I faced a choice when my girlfriend did not want what had happened to me in finding Christ. I could not have two masters. After a three week battle, He won, of course. From the moment on, His intercessor Spirit grabbed me. I had no further say in it. Perhaps the reason why more born-again brethren are not grabbed by the intercessory life is that some have not made that initial, total body commital. Jesus said, "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out!" (Mt. 5:29). So from that moment onward, I was caught. "Once caught, no escape!" In my five army years, I had to be more a witness for Christ than a British soldier (though I did my soldier’s job also!). In my college days I had to be a witness, which brought the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship into being. Then I had to join C.T. Studd in the heart of Africa. There was always a "have to," a compulsion, and my pressing through by grace was often with painful labor. I was an intercessor without knowing who I really was.
But how different when, after those first years, the Spirit led me, in the Congo forests, into the total truths of who we are. Since then, and largely through my close fellowship with Rees Howells, as well as C.T. Studd, I learned the Scriptural and Spirit meaning of being an intercessor, not a hit and miss one. I know now where my fifth, and probably final, intercession isour present high calling. Thankfully, there is an enlarging number of us, including many of you who read this. We are bringing within reach of the whole redeemed body of Christ a total, Biblical, Spirit confirmed reality: the news that we were formerly Satan-I, and now through Calvary are Christ-I. Now we enjoy the right human self-sufficiency the right "yes I am"in our commissioned intercessions, having moved from little children, to young men, to fathers, and thus co-saviours.
The Last Stronghold
We know there will be suffering and opposition. Satan’s last stronghold of resistance is the lie that we are independent selves, functioning in our Christian living and service by our helping the Lord, our counting on Him, our working for Him, and our battling areas of sin and failure. It is THE LIE. But that false belief in independent self is not easily given up. It is the last lying deceit to be recognized and died to. It is the false idea THAT WE HAVE GOOD SELVES THAT CAN WORK FOR HIM. In actuality, a so-called good self is still Satan’s lie of independent self, which he has tricked us into believing is our own self-nature. Of course, there is no such thing. This is the final stronghold to be captured, seen in Romans 7. Only the desperate, who will take no substitute, are conditioned to discover what the Spirit showed Paul in those Romans 6-8 chapters. Therefore, we know that we shall, and already frequently do, meet with cries such as: dangerous heresy; keep away from such teaching; preserve our human nature; and be a good self!
But knowing as we know, we press on, and the glory outweighs the negative oppositions. But how we welcome the brotherhood in the Spirit of any who know, share and teach this total reality, though we have to say that at present we don’t know many. Coming to the edge, but not taking the leap won’t do. There are many victorious life teachers who take us a good way, but not the final way of from Satan-I to Christ-I, which is the total leap of faith.
For this we continue our forward march and welcome all who join arms with us. Much of our message has to be for folks to find the truth of the young man stage: who we really are. Therefore, we spend much time on sharing and teaching just that. Yet we are, by infinite grace, the fatherhood intercessors in its full meaningthe Spirit by us. We are Royal Priests. Our royalty is in knowing we are the faith operators; our priesthood as lambs is in bringing many sons to glory.
