Yes I Am 50 - True Love and Infatuation

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 50

TRUE LOVE AND INFATUATION

Another form of intercession is also on a deeply personal level and may well be misunderstood by those who have not learned the right use of their soul-body outer affections.

To start with, as we have intimated when looking into spirit-soul relationships (see Chapter 30): Do any of us know and become settled in the difference between soul-affection and spirit-love without some death-and-resurrection experience of it? The strongest form of desire is misguided soul-body "inordinate affection," which we can mistake for love. It is Paul who calls it "inordinate affection" (Col. 3:5), the misuse of the flesh in its "affections and lusts," which he says we have crucified (Gal. 5:24); and "flesh" is only another word for soul-body.

Human flesh is God’s precious way of manifesting Himself. Jesus was "God manifested in the flesh." "Sinful flesh" resulted from Satan capturing our flesh through its "affections and lusts" - flesh misused for self-gratification. But our Christ in His death "condemned sin in the flesh" (Rom. 8:3), threw sin out of ownership and put it behind bars. This means that sin no longer owns the flesh but is a condemned criminal behind bars, awaiting execution. Meanwhile, however, it shouts at us from behind its bars by using temptations of the flesh. One of these is the use of our soul-body emotions and affections for self-gratification in some diversionary "love" - as if it were genuine love - which is what Paul calls "inordinate affection" and what we here call infatuation.

But God’s love, self-giving love, which is now ours, is other-love. It may or may not be manifested through our soul-emotion and body-desire; but should it be, the emotion is not the love but only an outer expression of it. God’s love, our love as He, is a laying of ourself on the altar for others: spirit-love, a will-love, even when without the emotions of soul-love.

This is supremely so in marriage when the chemistry of the soul-body attractions has simmered down or gone into the background. Love is then the two living together, as one of my friends writes, "when we are for each other, keeping each other where we belong in Christ. It is the reality of a loving God who is living in us for each other."

Indeed, husband and wife then never raise the question of whether they love each other. Of course they do, for love means that each has given himself for the other in their marriage bond "till death do us part." That love is expressed in the practical self-giving of both in all aspects of their family life; and when both are the Lord’s, in the additional bond of spiritual fellowship and service. That is the love, of which physical and emotional love is a beautiful ingredient, but by no means the central reality of the love-bond.

But to go still further, the deepest revelation and understanding of true marriage is that all we who are in Christ are inwardly - each of us in our own self - married to Christ; so we are each inwardly bride to Bridegroom, wife to Husband. That is the only eternal and real marriage, and thus all God’s redeemed people have an inward marriage of the Spirit.

Our outer physical marriage is really a symbol of this eternal inner marriage; and that is why marriage is one to one, is not to be violated by an illicit union, and is not to be destroyed by divorce. This is what Paul is saying in Ephesians 5:25-33: "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery; but I speak concerning Christ and the church" (vss. 31-32).

As a result, when we do understand and recognize our true, eternal marriage, we do not overrate our earthly marriage, or mistake it as our true marriage. It is only as shadow to substance, symbol to reality; and we see our earthly marriage as a means of exemplifying the true, eternal union.

Many of us don’t know this ultimate truth about marriage, and so I repeat it. Each of us has our true Husband within us, we being the bride of Christ. That is the only eternal and true marriage union. Our flesh marriage is an earthly figure of it, by which we learn its joys and responsibilities, and is meant to be secondary to our true marriage. If we mistake our earthly marriage for the real one, we soon find that its hold on us weakens as the dominant factor in our lives, because it is not! It is, certainly, a fixed earthly union, but is only the shadow of the substance. For us who know this, a divorce cannot be considered or be in our vocabulary. "Let it not be named among you, as becometh saints" (Eph. 5:13).

But until we have learned to recognize the difference between spirit and soul love, it is extremely common for us to have a sudden soul-body attraction for one who is not our mate - and this can be devastatingly strong, for God created us with strong soul and body affections for His use. Then, if we have not learned our lesson, this sudden infatuation can fill us with guilt and condemnation. If we do not yet know or are unsettled in the truth that our soul and body as well as our spirit are wholly God’s, and in His total control and keeping, we can remain in great turmoil and suffer distressing temptation - or even be swept off our feet into sin - and we may appear to ourselves to be unfaithful to our mate when we are not. (Of course, those who have not been born of the Spirit can know only flesh love, and divorces these days are the common way of exchanging one flesh love for another.)

Even those of us who are God’s people may - if we have not yet grasped this division between soul and spirit – easily confuse the attraction of a soul-body "inordinate affection" with true, inner, spirit-love. It diverts us like a rival and adulterous "love." And should our mate also not recognize the difference between infatuation and real love, he or she may be consumed with jealousy or retaliation. Let us not mistake the temporary invasion of a soul-affection for the permanent reality of the spirit-love which has bound us in marriage.

Many of us, including myself, have had such an invasion of soul-love, both being condemned by it and intensely resisting it. But by that means we have learned a great secret - that the response to a soul-affection is not to resist or condemn it, but to recognize it for what it is and then use it for another purpose. We use it, and indeed swallow it up, by turning it into an opportunity to express God’s love towards that one who has attracted us. That means I inwardly "fight the battle through" by setting my affections in only one direction, with only one purpose and desire: that the one who has attracted me will have Christ fully formed in her or him - as in me. That is the single eye of faith and so the soul-affection becomes a channel of spirit other-love.

And - though it may take time when the soul-affection is strong - the whole condition is reversed from guilt and condemnation over the temptation into being a means of intercession for the other: that by my dying to a misuse of soul-affection there is a rising - first in me, by which I gain the intercession, and then in the other one - of the reality of Christ within. I have proved that as fact, for it happened just like that, as the intercession was walked and gained.

If one becomes aware of such a soul-affection in his or her mate, and at first is disturbed or jealous because of it, if he (say it is a man), rather, by faith-knowing will believe that his mate is really still fixedly bound in spirit-love to him, and will hold steady - having faith (that is, his intercession) that his mate will use that outer soul-affection for the forming of Christ in the other individual - then there will be no question raised about her continued fixedness in her mated love for him.

I know one close friend, a husband, who loves the Lord. His wife was caught by such an enslaving affection toward another man. But God used that to show her once for all the difference between soul-love and spirit-love, and settled her back in her true love to her husband. Meanwhile, her husband stood steadfastly and loyally by her, though not without pain, and by this he himself grew in the Lord. They now are a wonderful couple, steady in their own family life and helping many who have like problems.

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Yes I Am 49 - An Intercessor In Marriage

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 49

AN INTERCESSOR IN MARRIAGE

I want to delve a bit more deeply, by way of illustration, into a "more personal" area of intercession, where it touches on the use of our affections.

There is a close friend of mine among the many with whom we are linked in fellowship. She knows who she is: Christ in her human form. Her husband was in a good professional position and a good home-provider, but he showed no outward response to Christianity. The time came when she discovered, as a great shock, that he was having an ongoing adulterous relationship with a married woman. She faced out with the Lord the shock, hurt and resentment. What should she do? Knowing that she was not herself but Christ in her, she knew the difference between her soul hates and resentments and the love she had for her husband in her spirit, for it was God loving him by her; and just as important, she recognized that God meant her husband to be tangled up in his sex life to expose his own need to him. So instead of a marital blowout and possible divorce, she informed her husband that she had found out what was going on, but that she loved him as ever - for he was her husband and she his wife. That shook him! When he expected a blast, he got only a confirmation of her unchanged love. This brought a reply to her which was another shock - a good one. He said, "Well, if that is Christianity, I can listen to it!"

The result was that after some weeks, while she knew the adulterous relationship continued, the moment came when she told her husband that she would like to meet with him and the woman. They agreed. The three met - and surely this would be the time for strong words by my friend. Instead, she just accepted facts as facts (despite her inner hurt) and said to them, "It can’t go on like this. Make the choice. Either go with her and leave me and the children, or break off the relationship and return to me." The husband and the woman both agreed. The severance was made, and he returned home. But far more than that, God has done such a transforming work in him, with repentance and renewal, that he is now a strong witness for Christ and busy helping other men who get caught in that same trap.

This is intercession. With little said about the inner-death way in which she walked - which was the background for her steadfast love, and at the right moment, holy boldness - she gained the intercession by the Spirit Intercessor in her, doubtless with "groanings that cannot be uttered."

Another close friend had an experience somewhat the same. Her husband holds a public position in his profession and is a man who loves the Lord. What a shock when she found out that he had a secret liaison, with visits to a motel, with one who was a close friend in whom she confided.

She first challenged her husband about this adultery over the phone. He is an honest man who knows the Lord, and he admitted his descent into the flesh, and his sin against God and wrong against her. But then he added, "If the woman’s husband learns of this, he is a man of such influence that he could destroy me in my profession." My friend’s answer straightaway to her unfaithful husband was, "I am your wife. If you have a crash professionally, then I crash along with you."

This is intercession. With little said about the inner-death way in which she walked - which was the background for her steadfast love, and at the right moment, holy boldness - she gained the intercession by the Spirit Intercessor in her, doubtless with "groanings that cannot be uttered."
 The result of that was that the husband - who, as I say, knows the Lord - took one big jump of faith right then and there, and he has told me how he moved from being the struggling and defeated man of Romans 7 to the liberated man in Romans 8. He saw "in a flash of the Spirit" that there was no more condemnation, and that he was released "by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus." The result in their marriage is that where there had been an unhappy relationship between them, it has so changed that she now tells me her husband is her best friend!

As for the woman who had so wronged and deceived her, the day my friend first heard of this she called the florist and ordered one white rose in a vase to be sent to her. There was admission of guilt, but it took time for a real heart repentance. But the day came when she plainly told my friend that she had not before really admitted her wrongdoing, and she asked for forgiveness. My friend’s answer: "I need forgiveness just as much from you, because of my hate and resentful attitude towards you." And there was a time of reconciliation.

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Yes I Am 48 - Examples : Two Men Of God

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 48

EXAMPLES: TWO MEN OF GOD

I am reluctant to use personal illustrations like the foregoing when there are so many around me, among my Crusade and Union Life fellow workers, who could fill books with like experiences. However, I can give these personal ones in more detail. And it is always my faith that others of you who read this will catch the revelation from the Spirit and the Scriptures that the call to and privilege of being an intercessor is something special. It is obviously available to us all who in Christ are royal priests; but it requires Commission, Cost, Completion - consciously entered into and then gained. A person may even look back on his life and detect, as I can, where he was being an intercessor and yet did not know that was what he was - but now see that it was the law of the harvest being fulfilled. However, because I now know what it is to be an intercessor with the Spirit Intercessor in me, I can more effectively gain an intercession and help others to their "high calling."

The most outstanding examples of intercession - and ones which greatly influenced me - are the lives of C. T. Studd and Rees Howells.

C. T. STUDD

C. T. Studd left for the heart of Africa in 1913, leaving behind his wife, apparently a permanent invalid with an enlarged heart, who was spending half her days in bed. He had to go, he said, and it was the only time he went against the wishes even of his own wife; and when a friend came to tell him that it was not even Christian to leave her in that condition, he wrote on a postcard what became the motto of the Crusade: "If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him."

He went. He found his "black gold" in the Ituri Forest of the Congo. But before reaching there, he wrote back to tell his wife of how he had nearly died on safari of a severe attack of fever. He had one young man with him, Alfred Buxton, and when thinking that he would not be alive by the next morning, he called Alfred into his tent to tell him so. But as Alfred left the tent, "C. T." remembered the promise in James that those who call, when they’re ill, for the elders of the church and are anointed in the name of the Lord, will be healed. So he called Alfred back - Alfred being twenty years old - and said to him, "Alfred, I hereby appoint you an elder of the church of Jesus Christ!" Then he said to him, "Get some oil. All we have is in the kerosene lamp - but the scripture isn’t particular - so get some and anoint me." He did so and the fever was gone by the next day. So he then in his letter to his wife said, "Scilla, don’t trust those earthly doctors. Trust Doctor Jesus and get off your bed." This she did, and began to go through England and the U.S.A. with a fiery challenge to young men and women, of whom I was one, to go and join her husband in getting the gospel to those tribes. So involved were these two at the two ends of the young mission that in the last sixteen years of their lives they saw each other only for one short visit of two weeks! That was a long-drawn-out "death." I know what it cost her - in a way, much more than him - as she was my mother-in-law. She remained "at home" while he was immersed in all the absorbing and dangerous activities of his pioneer life. But note: You don’t choose your own "death" in your intercession; God puts it on you as you proceed. "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."

But the price was fully paid, the intercession gained, both in the heart of Africa and in the world-wide extensions of the Crusade to which I have already referred. The full story, which has had tens of thousands of fascinated readers and has resulted in many being called into full-time service for the Lord, has been written in his biography, which is now available in a number of languages. Once again, this illustrates the three principles of intercession – Commission, Cost, and Completion.

REES HOWELLS

The life story of Rees Howells must be read, as it is by many thousands these days, to catch the continual stream of instances of how the Holy Spirit first got His total possession of that young life, and then began to give him early practice in specific intercessions. There was the derelict of a man living in the boiler room of the tin mill; the tramps; the unemployed villagers; the sick people; and the succession of deliverances having to do with buying the four large properties for the Bible College and School. Each has a fascinating story of "deaths" which led into the gaining of them. Finally he lost his reputation - and perhaps never regained it. For he had a word from the Lord, together with his co-intercessors at the College, just before the start of World War II, that for the next thirty years the world would be kept open for the gospel and a thousand more missionaries would go out from the College. He called it the Thirty Years Vision.

Then came Hitler and Mussolini and the outbreak of the war, with the threat that these two men would take over the world and close it to all missionary witness. Rees Howells first countered that by publishing a book called God Challenges the Dictators, which openly declared that God would destroy these men who were clamping down on the spread of the gospel. Rees Howells would have been one of the first men to be liquidated if Hitler had conquered Britain!

He then went further. He announced, by the word of the Lord, the day the war would be ended. There had been that first year of so-called war when nothing happened, and we joked about it as "The Phony War" - the French just sitting cozily behind their Maginot line. It was at the end of that year that he called for the celebration of victory to be on Whitsunday of 1941. Some of the national newspapers took up the "prophecy." But that was the very week when the real war broke out, not ended, with the shock of Hitler’s Panzer invasion of Holland, Belgium and France - and threatening Britain. If ever there was a false prophet! His reputation was lost forever. But he held to his Whitsunday celebration. He had gained the victory and the destruction of the dictators by faith, and there he stood.

It actually took four years before the victory was a visible fact. Surely a crazy and mistaken faith. It may have looked like that then, but not now. We couldn’t then see that Hitler had built up such an enormous armament that unless it was wholly destroyed, even if there should be a so-called peace, the free world would have lived faced with a constant threat. In those four years that threat disappeared forever, with the entry of the U.S.A. into the war, and the final destruction of the Nazi and Japanese power.

During those years Rees Howells and his co-intercessors at the College stood on their faith ground. They confronted the challenge of Rommel on the verge of the capture of Alexandria, which would have opened the door for an invasion of the Holy Land, and they got through to the victory of faith which declared that he would never capture Alexandria - and they made that word of faith known. No one had then heard or thought of Montgomery and the way in which he turned Rommel and his army back in flight.

It was the same when the German army had invaded Russia and reached Stalingrad. If they had taken that city, they could have crossed the Caucasus and invaded the Holy Land by that route. The College stood their ground in faith that the Nazis would never take that city. The battle raged for weeks, and the surrender of the German army there was the beginning of the end of the German invasion of Russia.

Then, with the war ended, there came the real gain of this intercession, far beyond anticipation - as Paul puts it, "exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think." With all opposition ended, and the dictators destroyed just as Rees Howells by the word of faith had said they would be, a tremendous upsurge of the gospel throughout the world began. We who are involved in missions know there has been nothing like it in world history. There have been hundreds of new missionary recruits, at more than double the rate before the war, and all kinds of new missionary agencies. But far more important, the freedom of the world from colonial governments has meant many nations finding their identity. Their churches and believers, the fruit of a century and more of missionary labors, have begun to rise up. They have claimed their inheritance as autonomous churches of Jesus Christ with His Word and Spirit and have begun to take their place of leadership both in the spread of the gospel among their own people and in sending their own missionaries to other lands. There is a wholly new "bursting at the seams" of the church of Christ in whole continents like Africa and South America, and in many countries such as Indonesia, Korea, and elsewhere in the Far East.

So we see that the gaining of the intercession for which God called Rees Howells and those with him to lay their lives on the altar, accompanied by "the first fruits going to the altar"(Lev. 2:1-3) in that loss of reputation, has in God’s perfect timetable produced this unbelievable world harvest, beyond what any of us fifty years ago would have dreamed of; and this could not have been produced without the time it took for the destruction of the Nazi menace and the freedom of the years that have followed. It was an intercession gloriously gained, but only seen by those whose eyes are opened to the law of intercession: the corn-of-wheat principle - through death to life. This is what Rees Howells used to make so plain in his teaching on the lives of the Bible intercessors - from Noah, Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Jonah, Daniel, right through to the Savior Himself, and on to Paul and up to our day. Samuel, Rees Howells’ son, has cooperated with Doris Ruscoe in preparing a further book on some of those teachings.

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Yes I Am 47 - An Example: Personal

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 45

ON TO INTERCESSION

Now when we come consciously into this third level, the Spirit all the more consumes us with the desire to bring others to the liberation which is now ours - not only in the new birth, but in the fullness of the Spirit-filled life, with Christ in us as us. Not one of us can be in this union life without this desire being - even if manifested in a hundred different ways - the only basic aim we have. We are bondslaves. The zeal of God’s house eats us up. Our love of Christ, as Jesus said to Peter, takes the ceaseless form (as God brings folks to us or we go to them) of feeding His lambs and feeding His sheep. We become a fiddle with one string. Christ is our main topic of conversation. In place of sharing the scandals of life, we are thrilled to share what we see of Christ leading captivity captive. We are scandal-mongers of a different type!

But just as in our inner faith-activities - in the outflowing of the Spirit through our spirit - we move on from the normal faith-level of all God’s redeemed people to the total use of faith in the management of all life, so now in the Spirit’s use of our body.

This body use we speak of by the Bible word "intercessor." Nothing can be tied down to a word, but "intercessor" does conveniently explain what the Bible tells us of the Spirit’s action through our body. It is really the Spirit making full use of His body temples, precisely as He did of the human body temple of God’s own Son, who "through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot unto God." We see that the final glory of being a person is the saving of others at the price of ourself. It is as with Jesus: "He saved others; Himself He cannot save" was how they mocked Him as He hung on that cross.

So we are now reaching the final and highest point in God’s world-purposes through His family of sons - those who respond to His call to be intercessors. This is Paul’s "pressing toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

The body is the localized individual means by which the Spirit reaches out through us. By our human spirits He can reach out universally and can encompass everything - by faith unlimited. By our bodies He can do only one specific thing, and a different one by each particular body. So this is His highest personalized activity for us, and the highest for each of us. It was said by Jesus, "A body hast Thou prepared Me"; and by this one special body-commitment the Son said to the Father, "Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God." In this world of body people it was only by His body that "we are sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus once for all." By that one offering "He has perfected for ever them that are sanctified" (Heb. 10:5, 7, 14).

We see that the final glory of being a person is the saving of others at the price of ourself. It is as with Jesus: "He saved others; Himself He cannot save" was how they mocked Him as He hung on that cross.  

Therefore it is only by our bodies that God can fulfill His saving purpose in this body world. Let us have this plainly understood. Our service to Christ is only fulfilled by some body action of ours - by body dedication. Only by this means does redemption reach the multimillion bodies of our human brotherhood. There still is for us a body death and body involvement by which God’s saving purposes are fulfilled, as by His own Son’s body. This is intercession.

This is a far cry from the loose way in which we Christians continually talk of intercession in terms of intercessory prayer. Intercession is the whole mountain of which prayer is one peak. There are only one or two places in Scripture where the word intercession is linked just to prayer. So let us lift it out and put it in its full perspective, and see that we ourselves accept our highest privilege as intercessors, who are also saying "A body hast Thou prepared me.... Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God"; and each in his unique calling into intercession.

Intercession is revealed in the Bible as God looking for special men by whom He will give some special deliverance. In Isaiah 59:16, God wonders that there is no man, no intercessor, among Israel in its backslidden condition; and then the prophet leaps on from Israel’s failure to have the-man-for-that-moment to speak of the-Man-for-the-whole-of-history: "And the Redeemer shall come to Zion… [for] My Spirit is upon thee" (59:20-21).

So we see the intercessor is the Spirit Himself through His chosen bodies. And the way of intercession is "death" in the soul and body of the human intercessor that others might live. Of Jesus it was said: "He hath poured out His soul unto death... and He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors" (Isa. 53:12).

And that means a completed task. "It is finished"; and when finished, the intercession is gained and the fruit of it appears. It was said of the ascended Jesus, "Wherefore He is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them" (Heb. 7:25). That was the completed intercession of the great High Priest.

So it is the calling still today of us as priest-intercessors to fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ for His body’s sake. It is the law of harvest: "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." If a corn of wheat remains comfortably in its bin, it feeds no one. If it is sown into the ground, wrought upon by rain, snow, and frost, it disintegrates, but reappears as food for the world. That is the general body principle of intercession, just as we saw a general spirit principle of faith.

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Yes I Am 46 - What Is An Intercessor?

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 46

WHAT IS AN INTERCESSOR?

Now let us examine it more closely. We would again say it for those within hearing distance: There is suffering as well as glory in this. We all come to the cross for salvation, then we take our place on the cross for our union, and we now can take up our individual cross for the world, if we are willing to. The first two are necessities, the third is voluntary. "Take it up, if you wish," and this time for others.

The first form intercession takes is commission. The Spirit causes me to know that there is something He will do, and do it by me, specifically. It is not something I sought, but it sought me. I’m simply caught by it and cannot escape. I just find myself immersed in it and obsessed by it. So get this clear: It is not a matter of my running around and trying to find my commission. No, it finds me. It is from the Holy Spirit. Don’t try and find such a commission. That will be the old snare of self-effort. If not conscious of such a specific commission, then I can say to the Lord who is living His life by me, "If You give me such a commission, You’ll make me know it. If not, I just tell You I am ready."

Such a commission is no passing thing. It is not a prayer I can take up and put down. It is not participating in various interests and activities. It is "This one thing I do." It will be the main drive of my life until it is gained.

Then when conscious of the commission, I respond like Isaiah, "Here am I; send me." By that I mean my body is wholly available, which of course includes my soul with its emotions, and my concentrated thought-processes. And somewhere along that line is coming travail and death. There will be a price paid equivalent to a death; but there again, we do not seek that out or make it up. He brings us into it and through it. We may not even recognize the death process until we are well into it. It may mean literal sacrifice of all that goes with our body living: our time, our faculties, our possessions, our finances, our homes, and usually most costly and common of all, our reputation. Misunderstanding and even opposition may arise in our own family circle, among our friends, our social circle, our church fellowship, or right out to the public. As we go through or have gone through our intercession, we shall well know where we have died.

One who brought to light the principle of intercession to the church in our generation was Rees Howells, to whom I have several times referred. He always spoke concerning intercession as "the firstfruits going to the altar," which referred in type to the meal offering of Leviticus 2. There the first handful of the flour is burned on the altar, and the rest feeds the priests. By that he meant that there would be this "death" in which the self-life, the body-soul life, has had its human setbacks, sacrifice, maybe failure in the eyes of the world or church, and out of that death came the life to others. It is the 2 Corinthians 4:7-12 principle, but this time in specific rather than general form - for this is where Paul is speaking about bearing in our body the dying of the Lord Jesus. He then writes, "So death worketh in us, but life in you."

The intercession is completed, first by being gained on the level of faith, as the intercessor becomes settled in his inner consciousness that the Lord has done it; and second, by his own continued involvement in it, by whatever action accompanies it, while the Spirit brings the thing to pass. And it continues until the intercessor knows that his part in it is fulfilled.

Commission. Cost. Completion.

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Yes I Am 45 - On To Intercession

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 45

ON TO INTERCESSION

In place of sharing the scandals of life, we are thrilled to share what we see of Christ leading captivity captive. We are scandal-mongers of a different type

Now when we come consciously into this third level, the Spirit all the more consumes us with the desire to bring others to the liberation which is now ours - not only in the new birth, but in the fullness of the Spirit-filled life, with Christ in us as us. Not one of us can be in this union life without this desire being - even if manifested in a hundred different ways - the only basic aim we have. We are bondslaves. The zeal of God’s house eats us up. Our love of Christ, as Jesus said to Peter, takes the ceaseless form (as God brings folks to us or we go to them) of feeding His lambs and feeding His sheep. We become a fiddle with one string. Christ is our main topic of conversation. In place of sharing the scandals of life, we are thrilled to share what we see of Christ leading captivity captive. We are scandal-mongers of a different type!

But just as in our inner faith-activities - in the outflowing of the Spirit through our spirit - we move on from the normal faith-level of all God’s redeemed people to the total use of faith in the management of all life, so now in the Spirit’s use of our body.

This body use we speak of by the Bible word "intercessor." Nothing can be tied down to a word, but "intercessor" does conveniently explain what the Bible tells us of the Spirit’s action through our body. It is really the Spirit making full use of His body temples, precisely as He did of the human body temple of God’s own Son, who "through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot unto God." We see that the final glory of being a person is the saving of others at the price of ourself. It is as with Jesus: "He saved others; Himself He cannot save" was how they mocked Him as He hung on that cross.

So we are now reaching the final and highest point in God’s world-purposes through His family of sons - those who respond to His call to be intercessors. This is Paul’s "pressing toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

The body is the localized individual means by which the Spirit reaches out through us. By our human spirits He can reach out universally and can encompass everything - by faith unlimited. By our bodies He can do only one specific thing, and a different one by each particular body. So this is His highest personalized activity for us, and the highest for each of us. It was said by Jesus, "A body hast Thou prepared Me"; and by this one special body-commitment the Son said to the Father, "Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God." In this world of body people it was only by His body that "we are sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus once for all." By that one offering "He has perfected for ever them that are sanctified" (Heb. 10:5, 7, 14).

Therefore it is only by our bodies that God can fulfill His saving purpose in this body world. Let us have this plainly understood. Our service to Christ is only fulfilled by some body action of ours - by body dedication. Only by this means does redemption reach the multimillion bodies of our human brotherhood. There still is for us a body death and body involvement by which God’s saving purposes are fulfilled, as by His own Son’s body. This is intercession.

Therefore it is only by our bodies that God can fulfill His saving purpose in this body world. Let us have this plainly understood. Our service to Christ is only fulfilled by some body action of ours - by body dedication. 

  This is a far cry from the loose way in which we Christians continually talk of intercession in terms of intercessory prayer. Intercession is the whole mountain of which prayer is one peak. There are only one or two places in Scripture where the word intercession is linked just to prayer. So let us lift it out and put it in its full perspective, and see that we ourselves accept our highest privilege as intercessors, who are also saying "A body hast Thou prepared me.... Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God"; and each in his unique calling into intercession.

Intercession is revealed in the Bible as God looking for special men by whom He will give some special deliverance. In Isaiah 59:16, God wonders that there is no man, no intercessor, among Israel in its backslidden condition; and then the prophet leaps on from Israel’s failure to have the-man-for-that-moment to speak of the-Man-for-the-whole-of-history: "And the Redeemer shall come to Zion… [for] My Spirit is upon thee" (59:20-21).

So we see the intercessor is the Spirit Himself through His chosen bodies. And the way of intercession is "death" in the soul and body of the human intercessor that others might live. Of Jesus it was said: "He hath poured out His soul unto death... and He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors" (Isa. 53:12).

And that means a completed task. "It is finished"; and when finished, the intercession is gained and the fruit of it appears. It was said of the ascended Jesus, "Wherefore He is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them" (Heb. 7:25). That was the completed intercession of the great High Priest.

So it is the calling still today of us as priest-intercessors to fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ for His body’s sake. It is the law of harvest: "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." If a corn of wheat remains comfortably in its bin, it feeds no one. If it is sown into the ground, wrought upon by rain, snow, and frost, it disintegrates, but reappears as food for the world. That is the general body principle of intercession, just as we saw a general spirit principle of faith.

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Yes I Am 44 - From Spirit Action To body Action

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 44

FROM SPIRIT ACTION TO BODY ACTION

We have now seen how the Holy Spirit flows out of us in rivers on our fatherhood, or ascension, or royal priesthood level - Spirit through our spirit, by the launches of faith unlimited. Being on such a level means advancing from faith as the almost subconscious background of our life in Christ - and that is marvelous in itself - to faith consciously recognized and continuously used as the "Open sesame," the Aladdin’s lamp, to God’s unlimited treasure chamber. Not an incident or condition of life is outside its reach: "All things are possible to him that believeth." The word of faith may be applied to even the commonest daily incidents, such as the loss of a pin or the loss of a job, or to the salvation of the unsaved and the changing of a community. It is applicable not just to so-called religious activity, but extends to all of life, for we now know there’s really no difference between the secular and the spiritual.

Once the Spirit has revealed faith to us as the principle of achievement in all life, the key to the handling of all evil as well as good, we can say that life is never less than "the adventure of adversity" (as I called it in that little book Touching the Invisible). And it is. I would not be writing this if it were not so. But again I say it is conditioned on this third-level understanding of the word of faith as the weapon of our warfare by which we "fight the good fight of faith," and not works. From our new position in the heavenlies we are not being handled by life, but rather are handling it.

So we now move on to the other channel through which the river of the Spirit is flowing - our bodies. Here again there is what I would call the normal level of His working and the revealed "special level." The normal level is that from the moment the Holy Spirit takes possession of our bodies at the new birth, both as His temple and lighthouse, we cannot help ourselves. We are under a new drive! My body formerly was used for fleshly self-satisfaction; now it is for benefiting others. As one has just written me: "I’m learning the times I am fulfilled are when the Lord is using me for others."

From our new position in the heavenlies we are not being handled by life, but rather are handling it.
  Precisely. The God of other-love has taken us over at our new birth. There is that something in us which gives us no rest until we share with others this priceless treasure which is now ours. We can’t help it. Knowing we once were on the road to eternal death, but now have eternal life! - we have to tell others. We cannot but speak of the things we have seen and heard. When Christ became real to me at the age of eighteen I was not yet a vigorous witness, but I had to write of it to my mother from my English boarding school, Marlborough College; and I had to tell my closest friend at school (now a bishop) what had happened to me. In those days, at our English "public schools," it was a rare thing to find a master or boy who had any living experience of Christ, and indeed when I told my friend what had happened, he commented, "If that is Christianity, none of us have it!"

So I’m saying the "normal" is that by some means or another we are witnesses. As Jesus said, men don’t light a lamp and put it under a bushel but on a lampstand, so that it lights the whole house. The Spirit in us compels us to be His witnesses by one means or another. Our bodies are used by Him so that by work or word, Jesus is reaching others.

Our witness is intensified as the Spirit is consciously given full control of our bodies. In my own young life, a few months after my new birth, His uncomfortable challenge came to me through a small booklet to break the one close friendship I had with a girl who did not want to go all the way for Jesus, but just remain "a good church girl." I knew God had spoken, and I wriggled this way and that for weeks. But the Spirit kept saying to me, "You can’t have Christ and anti-Christ in your heart."

The final break cost me plenty at the moment of doing it; but with my body-interests now freed from a lesser attraction, the Spirit at once took right over. I had just received my commission and was joining my regiment as a soldier in World War I; and it simply grabbed me that I must get eternal life to my fellow soldiers, officers and men… as we would soon be facing death in the trenches, for we all joked about becoming "cannon fodder." My colonel did not like my effort and I lost promotion by it, but I did witness.

this is really the beginning of the fatherhood level, for in actual fact, all levels are already in us in Christ.  

So there are varying degrees of intensity in the Spirit’s use of our bodies to bring Christ to others, progressing from our new birth to our conscious body-commitment to Christ. Indeed, we cannot be born again by the Spirit of other-love and not have our first urgings to share Christ with others - and this is really the beginning of the fatherhood level, for in actual fact, all levels are already in us in Christ.

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Yes I Am 43 - Body Healing

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 43

BODY HEALING

Faith also influences my attitude toward my physical health. Our bodies, especially when sick, are very real to us. We cannot help being body-minded. The immense appeal of any healing ministry, naturally, is the hope of a body healing; and we know that as in the days of Jesus there were wonderful healings, so also there are today. Some people have and use the healing gifts which Paul mentioned among the gifts of the Spirit.

But Paul did plainly warn us all that our bodies are not to be redeemed until the resurrection. "We ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body" (Rom. 8:23). Only about our bodies did he say that we are saved in hope, and "hope that is seen is not hope" (vs. 24). In everything else we walk by faith and may experience immediate deliverances. But our outer man perishes, and the majority of us have body infirmities of some kind, whether eyes, teeth, ears or elsewhere. So we can easily be very body-minded. But I find the answer to this in the fact that I am not a body person, but a spirit person tabernacled in my body. Therefore, whatever my body condition, I keep reminding myself that I am in God’s eternal life, and in perfect spirit health, and that’s the real health.

Then when I have some attack of sickness, I first accept it as from God, for all is always from Him, and therefore He means me to be like that for the moment. I do not put a desire for physical healing first, but I see myself in Christ’s eternal health … and praise Him, though that’s not easy when in pain.

Though while we are on the subject, click for some exciting science just in......

But then I can also rely on Paul’s words in Romans 8:11, that the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in me and "shall... quicken our mortal bodies"; and I can enlarge that from "shall quicken" to "does quicken," for He does dwell in us. So I take body quickening for granted, and look also for healing. I take what medical remedies are available, but I am inwardly maintaining my position of being in God’s health. As we do this - I along with many others - we have proved both the quickenings and body healings. Yet not always. There are those who are not healed, and though they long for it - and may be experiencing questionings and travail - they accept their condition as from God. Usually they have to fight the battle of faith in refusing condemnation from those who say that they lack faith or they would be healed. That is good for them, because it gives them experience in not taking questionings about their faith from man; for they learn to have the inner peace which comes only as we hear God’s voice, and that gives light and assurance. Then Christ is very specially magnified in them, as they still praise Him and adjust their lives to ministering His love to others.

When requests for prayer are asked for in a meeting, the majority given are for people in their sick condition in the hospital and so on. It would be good if such requests were channeled into prayers that the sick ones should be praising the Lord in their sickness, so that those around them might see the victory of faith. Then the prayers for the physical healing would only be secondary, and that is proper.

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Yes I Am 42 - Difficult People

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 42

DIFFICULT PEOPLE

Then there is the matter of loved ones. How many carry burdens for loved ones unsaved or backslidden. We cry day and night like the importunate woman calling on the unjust judge. But suppose we kind of "gather up our garments about us" and speak the word of faith: "It is done." We know that we should do this because we can have what we want. Well, do it! By faith see God at work in that precious one, beneath all the appearances of sin and flesh and maybe antagonism and contempt. Don’t see him or her in those fleshly appearances. See him as a precious and loved son of God, though still a prodigal son. See him as a marred son of God, just as I was - prodigal, but a son. Tell him you have seen him in your faith and that God will get him, for he is His. And see all the positives you can in his life, which you can appreciate and for which you can be thankful.

Always remember our true perspective: God is the All in all. Therefore, when I am confronted with this or that situation it is He who put me there, and I know why: He is going to come through with some new and glorious manifestation of Himself - the positive through the negative. He only works through His sons, and in this case He is telling me, "I am going to do it through you." My hurt and disturbance is His way of stirring me to move into my word of faith. That is why in Isaiah there is that upside-down statement, "Before they call, I will answer" (65:24). "No," we would say. "Call first on the phone and then get the answer. Not answer before call!" But God already has the answer - and He has in me a son whom He can trust not to be knocked down by the problem, but to turn it into a call on Him; and my way of calling will be my word of faith... and through the faith will come the substance. Indeed, He deliberately puts me in my "hot spots" to cause me to want deliverance, and to speak that deliverance-word of faith. That is how He finds me - and you - to be a profitable son.

That loved one is saved. We may have often to repeat that to ourself or to others, when nothing seems changed. But we repeat it - not the prayer of request, but the word of faith. What burdens that takes off our heart, and how it changes our attitude toward the one we have believed for, because we practice seeing through to who he is by the eyes of faith, rather than being obsessed by the unpleasant present appearances; and our change of attitude is what God uses to change him, for beneath the facade of defense there is really a hungry, watching heart. And by taking such positions of faith for those nearest to us, we then are ourselves freed to reach out in faith for others. St. Augustine, when he found the Lord after his dissolute life, asked his mother where he had been all those years. "In my faith and love," she answered.

When someone asks me to pray with them for a loved one, maybe a husband or wife, I say briefly to her (supposing it’s a wife), "It isn’t your husband who is the problem. You are the problem. You as a daughter of God have the right to speak the word of faith that God has your loved one saved or delivered." I give her the scriptures and the promises. Then I say, "I won’t pray for you more than this one time. But if you like - and you see that you have this right to believe - I will join you now in your word of faith." That is much more help to her than my just praying a prayer with her. It is helping her to be the wife of faith.

"Hasn’t he a will of his own?", my answer is that his will is not what controls him. It is his wants, and his will will follow his wants.

 And if someone says, "But how can you say by faith that God has your loved one saved? Hasn’t he a will of his own?", my answer is that his will is not what controls him. It is his wants, and his will will follow his wants. And God has His own clever way of changing our wants. He can make us sick of what we used to want from this world, and can make us want Him. Then our will will follow our want.

Our relationship to our fellow Christians radically changes also, when we know who we are, for then we know who they are. I first see my brother just as a human person, who may or may not appeal to me. I always start like that, but then the change. I know who I am, so I know and see who he is. He is Christ to me, even in his human form. More than that, we all have mannerisms, habits, ways of saying and doing things in which we are different from each other, and this can rub each other the wrong way. But since I know that I am as God means me to be, warts and all, so I know my brother is as God means him to be, and we love and accept each other as we are, for we are Christ to each other.

And when clay feet appear in us (and they do), in habits that we have which at least appear as flesh turning up, we still say that is how God means my brother at present to be. He will be taking care of any changes that are needed. We are all being "conformed to the image of His Son." My part is to have it fixed in my faith that God is doing that in my brother, as I see Christ perfect in him. That saves me from being judgmental of him. The time may come when the Lord gives me the freedom to talk things over with him. This is where what Jesus said about the mote and beam takes effect. If I have the beam in my eye, it means that I am seeing my brother’s weak spot more vividly than enjoying Christ in him. I cannot then take out his mote. But if my love and esteem of my brother is greater than any lesser shortcomings, and he senses that, then he is likely to hear me about his mote. So this is the beautiful way in which our brother is always Christ to us in his human form; and whenever he is less than that to me and the clay feet are obsessing me, I am the one off-center more than he. I adjust myself to who I am, and I have nothing then which obscures my clear sight of him as who he is. Always the single eye to my brother, as to Christ.

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Yes I Am 41 - What If It Doesn't Happen?

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 41

WHAT IF IT DOESN’T HAPPEN?

Now the question is, Does this illustration bring home to us the fact that faith is consummated in our word of faith? For third-level living requires a catching on to the mind of God through our minds in a situation, replacing our negative thinking; then boiling it down to a clear, specific objective; then stating that objective in its direct, practical form by my word of faith; then believing that it is already in existence, because there is no time factor (past, present or future) in God’s "fourth dimension." So we also, as He, call the things that be not as though they are.

Then, having done that by our word of faith, we never repeat it again in the form of a request; we don’t ask, we thank. We continue repeating our "thank you" in our inner recognition of what is coming, for our faith has within it a "sense" of the thing anticipated. We already "see" in faith as well as speak that word of faith.

Never, of all things, do we ask, "Why hasn’t it happened?" We surely give ourselves totally away, if, when the answer has not yet come (or even after it "cannot" come, for the time for the answer has passed with no answer) we say, "He hasn’t done what I believed for. It hasn’t happened. Faith doesn’t work." By that we would imply that the answer depended on our faith, and this has failed; or we have believed amiss, or something. But it is His faith expressed by us, and we are saying He has done it. Not we, but He. Therefore, if it is a done thing by the word of faith, we never say it hasn’t been done. Never! For our word of faith means that we have said it has happened in the spirit. It has happened, and if someone says it hasn’t happened, we still say it has happened. God will fulfill His own word. It was He who told us to say to that mountain "Be gone!" and to believe that, when we pray, we have received. So it has happened. Hold on! Even if we do not see things until the other side of the grave! For it was said of the men of faith in Hebrews, "These all died in faith, not having received the promises but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them." But even if they did not receive the fullness, they did have a good slice of the cake en route! I believed God for a solution to a problem in our missionary work forty years ago. I expected the answer, but did not see it come, and was tempted to say, "No answer. I must have been mistaken." But just now the answer is appearing.

Of course the temptation is to question. "Was it my faith at fault?" "Was my motive right?" "Was I mistaken or presumptuous in speaking that word of faith?" Never accept those questionings which come from our souls. They come from the recurring temptation to move back into "separation" - as if it is not God speaking by us in our fixed union, but that we still have our separate, self-condemning selves. Condemnation accompanied by darkness comes from beneath. Conviction accompanied by light and peace comes from above. Go back to our spirit-centers where the word is "Be still, and know that I am God." If I totally trust Him with a single eye, I shall see that what appeared to me to be a mistake, or to have had some flesh motivation behind it, is not; God will give the perfect and fully satisfying fulfillment. Such times, when apparently faith does not become substance, are given us to establish us more thoroughly in the fact that we have the mind of Christ and must not recognize the false possibility that we are back in our old, divided, self-motivated outlook.

As for "presumption," what that really means is that my word of faith had behind it a desire for my own satisfaction or self-display, rather than being solely for the glory of God or the benefit of others, or perhaps was meant to test God’s faithfulness. Don’t be frightened by such a barb. Don’t accept that in our union relationship with Christ our motives are flesh-centered. Stand to your "launch out in faith," and believe that God meant it.

Sometimes, as with Paul, the exact desire, as first named, is refused: not with a No but with a far vaster Yes. Because if Paul had gotten the removal of his thorn in the flesh, we should all have forgotten about that as an incident of history. But we never forget the answer he received - a support to the whole church of Christ in all of the pressures of life - that "God’s strength is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor. 12:7-11). And so inwardly conscious of this did Paul become that he went on to say, "Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake"; and then, no longer mentioning God in it, "....for when I am weak, then am I strong." That is union. That is Paul speaking and living as God. A far vaster answer for the centuries than a temporary healing. So here it is. Keep speaking the word of faith, as I do, all the time. Say again and again, "This has happened, that has happened, for I inwardly see it has happened." Watch for the happening, and enjoy the many times you see it happen.

By now it is surely clear that this is radically different from the normal underlying faith by which all who are born-again live. In that sense all Christians walk by faith and not by sight. But on the third level, "father" grade, of which we are now speaking, faith is the operating agent, the one and only means by which every situation of life is authoritatively handled. We are mountain-movers. Like those in Hebrews 11, we are stopping the mouths of lions; out of weakness we are made strong. We have an appetite for "tight corners," as C. T. Studd said, to "give us the luxury of seeing God deliver us out of them." We are now in permanent faith-action, as Jesus was on earth. This is the commissioned third-level life, using the word of faith as naturally and continually as we make normal human decisions. It is our common habit and practice.

We say this to underline that third-level living - with the rivers flowing outward, with the Spirit "mighty in us" towards all - means life is constant faith-action, way beyond the normal way of life in which, on occasions, prayer or faith is a useful resource. On this level, all life is faith-in-action. We are "fathers in action."

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Yes I Am 40 - A Faith Illustration

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 40

A FAITH ILLUSTRATION

I learned the speaking of the word of faith as a regular principle of life through my friend Rees Howells. I listened to him in his daily talks on how the men of God in the Bible came to the point of speaking that word of faith. It gradually soaked into me that this was not some occasional, rather exotic way of handling life’s challenges, but the normal one. I saw it in the men of the Bible, and supremely in the life of Jesus Himself. Moses announced the ten plagues to Pharaoh one by one, crossed the Red Sea, got water from the rock, assured the people of daily manna... each by some specific word, such as "Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord which He will show you today; for the Egyptians whom ye have seen today, ye shall see them again no more forever. The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace" - when the Israelites were terrified by the chariots of Pharaoh pursuing them. Joshua, when the priests blew the trumpet, commanded the army around Jericho: "Shout, for the Lord hath given you the city"; David declared to Goliath, "This day will the Lord deliver thee into my hand"; Elijah told Ahab, "There shall not be dew nor rain these years but according to my word."

Those great Bible examples could seem out of reach to us ordinary twentieth-century folk. But I observed Rees Howells at his Bible College put faith into present-day action. And I have since seen multitudes of instances of this during my years in the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade.

I had, as a young man, joined C. T. Studd in the heart of Africa, after my army years in World War I and a time at Cambridge. I had been attracted by his new venture, then called the Heart of Africa Mission, because it was founded on the principle that God alone would be the supplier of all needs... according to His promises, with no appeals made to man, and no needs mentioned except to God. The Crusade has remained wholly faithful to this principle these sixty-eight years of its existence. Pauline and I lived like this with C. T. Studd and our fellow workers in the Belgian Congo, and experienced God’s faithfulness.

Meanwhile, back in Britain I had become a close friend of Rees Howells, and the first link between us was his sense of oneness in spirit with C. T. Studd, whom he had never met. From Rees Howells I learned not just an almost unnoticed walk of faith regarding the daily supplies coming from God, but a principle of faith to be definitely applied to every challenging circumstance of life, the way Jesus plainly acted in meeting every variety of need.

My Waterloo came when C. T. Studd in the heart of Africa was "glorified" (the way we always speak of the "death" of God’s servants), going to the Lord in 1931 with "Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" as his last words. He had commissioned Pauline and me to return to the home base in England and carry on the Crusade with the thirty-five workers in the Congo, and just we two at home. That first month at home we received $500 for those workers for a month! And it was precisely then, at the bottom of a dry well, as it were, that I looked up to the glimmer of light at the top and was challenged to put into practice on my own what I had learned from others.

I am writing this not from any special interest in the incident, but because it illustrates what we are talking about how to use the word of faith. The way we then did it is the way I and so many others still do it today. Not one iota of difference. That is why I mention it in detail: as an example of practicing the faith way as the only way - the only workable way - of living, applicable to every detail of our lives. For though learned, perhaps, in a crisis, it is then to be practiced in all our daily situations.

There were four of us together one day at the house which was our London headquarters in 1931. There was Pauline and I, one missionary recruit, and one missionary on furlough. What did we do? First we faced our negatives. Things were at the collapsing point: Trouble had arisen and many had left us. The Depression had hit and money was practically nonexistent. We had plenty of advice to "give up" - close the small mission, or offer it to others. (This situation was of the same kind that we are all confronted with at times, with pressing, even disastrous negatives: What shall I do about this mountain, this hopeless situation, this impossible person?)

Well, I had learned the first step from Rees Howells. Not calling on God and asking Him for deliverance; nor listening to man - but listening to God. In other words, not what we think about it, but what has He to say to us about it. "What’s up, God?" This is revolutionary (and has remained so) because it reverses prayer. It is not we talking to Him and bringing Him our needs, but giving Him the chance to talk to us.

For us at that time it certainly was the difference between collapse and continuing. We listened. But how does God talk to us, or we hear His voice? We have already gone into that: by knowing our inner spirit-union, then catching on to what comes to our minds as what He is saying to us. On that occasion, a thought came to us fully suitable to our special calling. We remembered that our founder, when he first went alone as a pioneer to the heart of Africa, wrote that God had spoken to him on board ship "in strange fashion" and said to him, "This journey is not only for the heart of Africa but for the whole unevangelized world." He had added, when he wrote this home to his wife, "To human reason it sounds ridiculous, but faith laughs at impossibilities and cries, ‘It shall be done!’"

Well, that was certainly absurd to us. Our thirty-five in the Congo were almost at starving level, and here God was coming back to us through our founder and saying, "Not only for the heart of Africa but for the whole unevangelized world." But we knew it was the word of the Lord in all this impossibility, and we accepted it. For C. T. Studd had said specifically: "Faith laughs at impossibilities," and this was where he and Rees Howells talked the same language - faith!

So the next thought that came to us - His mind in our mind (We were not doing any official praying, not on our knees. We were sitting talking, and this was our prayer!) - was, What does "faith" mean when it comes to a matter not of theory but of action? That led us to the Bible, which was always our foundation - the Bible interpreted to us by the Spirit. It seemed practical to us to turn to the experience of Joshua, for he was Moses’ successor… and in a minute way we were successors to our Moses, C. T. Studd. So we read Joshua chapter one, and that was where God’s mind speaking through our minds put us right into focus, put us right along the lines Rees Howells had always talked about and showed us in his own life. We read how God spoke to Joshua and told him to pick up the torch that Moses had laid down and go forward into the promised land, crossing the Jordan River.

Well, that was still theory to us. Exhortation wasn’t what we needed. It was how to get into action. So we read further. That interview with God closed with verse 9. Then the paragraph mark: change of subject. And here was our key illumination - a lifelong one to me. We read that Joshua called together the officers of his army and told them to make practical preparations - commissariat, food, etc. - for Joshua said, "Within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan." That was what struck us. By what authority did Joshua name "three days" and then say with total confidence that they would then cross the flooded river? God had not said that to him.

.....calling on God as though at a distance and He not too willing to help 

 Then we saw. We got into focus how Joshua and all such men spoke their words of faith. They named their needs. They, not God. "What things soever ye desire." This was the secret. The hidden key. This life is not to be we men pathetically depending on God, calling on God as though at a distance and not too willing to help. It is God’s marvelous plan of entrusting Himself to man, joining Himself to man as man. It is man speaking as God. It is union in action, just like with Moses, Elijah, and the rest. It was Joshua who, as a military commander, calculated the days needed for preparation and then fixed a timetable by the word of faith. He had got it! He understood that God had entrusted His own plans and the power for their fulfillment to His anointed agents - which we all are. You define what you need and how much you need. Then you say so. That’s all. You say it is coming. That it is there already in your sight. "Within three days ye shall pass over."

It is always our speaking our word of faith which puts a person into action. But this is not human action. It is God-action, Spirit-action, and the river will dry up and the people cross. So we see that all hangs on this spoken word of faith, and that’s all; because it really is God the Father speaking His word by His son or daughter, through whom the Spirit then moves into manifestation. Do we see this?

We did that morning. We sat together and spoke that word. We calculated our "three days" to be that God would start sending new recruits, the first of a great army, to fill gaps in the Congo as well as going to other lands. (We took no note of the needs of the existing workers, for we knew that was God’s normal business.) We named "ten," and that as the first token of a world-wide advance to begin in the Congo. They would come in a year, by the first anniversary of C. T.’s glorification. We said it, named the number, and the day - July 16, 1932 - and used that scripture we have already quoted in Mark 11:24. We believed we had received, as it says.

Next day as we gathered, one of us asked the Lord to remember and send the ten. The Spirit rebuked us. Do you ask for what you’ve got? If you got it yesterday, shouldn’t you give thanks? So for the rest of that year - no man knowing what was happening - we thanked, watched, and often laughed, as the ten came: called (with Bible-school training), financed, and commissioned to the Congo where they all went. The last one, Ivor Davies, was given the name Kumi in Africa, which means "ten." The last £200 needed for his passage there came three days before the anniversary. We were in Belfast, in a prayer conference which began five days before, watching each mail, and the telegram came from Pauline in London: "200 pounds for the ten, Hallelujah." We heard later that it had come from two old ladies whom we had never met. So thank God for old ladies!

The next year we moved on to fifteen, the next twenty-five, the next fifty, the next seventy-five - and they came. There would be no point in giving further details, for we are looking at principles. But I thank God that the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade, coupled with the Christian Literature Crusade (which was born out of it), together have some 1500 workers, establishing the gospel in over forty fields. Thank God, today thousands around the world have confessed Christ and are themselves now forming national churches, spreading the gospel witness. The whole company of Crusaders are still living with enthusiasm on the promises of God, applying these same principles of faith to all kinds of advances. Millions of dollars now come in annually... when it was but five thousand that first year. I do not mean to disregard the fact that there have been failures en route. And trials. For some there has been the glory of martyrdom, as they have laid down their lives for Christ. There are objectives of faith not yet in the visible; but on the whole, we have seen overwhelming evidences of the truth of God’s word-that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

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