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[00:00:00] Let us read. Ephesians, chapter six, verse ten.
[00:00:08] Ephesians, chapter six, verse ten.
[00:00:16] Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might, put on the whole armor of God that ye may be able to stand. Stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the hosts of spirits, of wicked spirits in the heavenly places, wherefore take up the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day. And having done all to stand, stand, therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace, withal taking up the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, with all prayer and supplication, praying at all seasons in the spirit, and watching thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for all, all the saints. And on my behalf, that utterance may be given unto me in opening my mouth to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that in it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.
[00:02:10] And then in Ezekiel and chapter 22 from verse 23.
[00:02:23] Prophecy of Ezekiel, chapter 22 from verse 23.
[00:02:32] And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, son of man, say unto her, thou art a land that is not cleansed nor rained upon in the day of indignation.
[00:02:44] There is a conspiracy of her prophets in the midst thereof. Like a roaring lion ravening the prey.
[00:02:52] They have devoured souls. They take treasure and precious things.
[00:02:57] They have made her widows many in the midst thereof. Her priests have done violence to my law and have profaned my holy things. They have made no distinction between the holy and the common. Neither have they caused men to discern between the unclean and the clean, and have hid their eyes from my sabbaths, and I am profaned among them.
[00:03:23] Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves, ravening the prey to shed blood and to destroy souls that they may get dishonest gain.
[00:03:33] And her prophets have daubed for them with untempered mortar, seeing false visions and divining lies unto them, saying, thus saith the Lord God, when the Lord hath not spoken, the people of the land have used oppression and exercised robbery. Yea, they have vexed the poor and needy, and have oppressed the sojourner wrongfully. And I sought for a man among them that should build up the wall and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it. But I found none.
[00:04:10] Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them. I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath. Their own way have I brought upon their heads, saith the Lord God.
[00:04:29] And now this evening we come to this last session in our school of prayer, rather cut off in one sense from the earlier, more consecutive times.
[00:04:46] And I want to complete what I began to say last Thursday about this whole matter of intercession.
[00:04:57] You will remember that we spoke last week upon the vital need of genuine intercession. And I pointed out to you that really it was not the great majority of our nation that were the key to the situation we find all around us, nor the majority of any nation, nor was it the majority of true believers, not even a minority of true believers. But it was the intercessor that holds in his or her hands the key to tremendous situations. Just because the Lord is a God of mercy, he does not delight in judgment, and he longs to find those who really will build up the wall and stand in the breach and almost lay down their lives for a nation, that the Lord might show mercy and defer judgment. And of course, we pointed out to you from Ezekiel, chapter 22, how the whole situation in the land was just terrible. And the Lord says, I sought for a man to build up the wall and to stand in the gap, that I might not judge the land, but I found none.
[00:06:37] We spoke last week on the nature of true intercession. We looked at the fact that intercession is not just words, and it isn't even prayer. And it isn't even prayer with feeling. Fervent prayer, merely fervent prayer. It may include all this. It's not just tears.
[00:07:03] Intercession involves your whole being, and it is in fact your body, your spirit, soul and body that God requires for intercession. You remember, we looked at one or two of those who interceded and found out how they were completely involved in this thing. They had to do incredible things at times, had to go through incredible experiences just because they interceded. It was as if God led them in a way that was quite remarkable and unusual, so that they, the thing was in them. It wasn't just a question of being able to set aside 3 hours for intercession or even a day for intercession. It really took them into the situation. They became identified with it. You will remember we looked something at something of that. We saw how Nehemiah was so identified with the situation. The whole thing got right into him, so that the king thought there was something terribly wrong with him. It showed on his face. And so it is with others, too. Intercession identifies us not only with the Lord, brings us into a very practical experience of union with God, but it also brings us into a very real identification with those for whom we are praying.
[00:08:28] We can never pray for them in a superior manner, as if somehow we just say, oh, Lord, they are so awful, but we pray for them. You notice that all the way through the word of God you find that Daniel, even though it's cost him everything not to touch the kings sort of unclean, non kosher food, is still when he prays, seemingly the most terrible sinner. You would never have thought that he had paid any price to remain uncompromised by the way he prays. And the same with Nehemiah. He speaks to the Lord as if he is himself responsible for the deteriorating situation. Now that is intercession. We not only become so identified with the Lord, but we become very identified with the situation itself.
[00:09:25] It is hard to put it into so many words, but intercession being what it is, involves us in the fellowship of Christ's sufferings in a way that nothing else would so involve us. Now we can't talk about that. We've covered it. And last week I ended by saying something about the mystery of intercession. If God is sovereign and works all things according to the counsel of his own will, why the need of intercession?
[00:10:04] And I pointed out to you that until we face the essential mystery of prayer, we will never learn to truly pray, because real prayer is a mystery.
[00:10:22] It begins at the throne of God in a burden in our Lord Jesus Christ, is transmitted into our spirits by the spirit of God, comes out of our lips, perhaps only a fraction of it, in audible prayer, and goes back to the throne of God where it is answered. And that is a mystery. And the only thing I can imagine is that somehow or other the Lord wants to involve us in this most costly of all service.
[00:11:01] Well, now, this evening I want to go on because I want to say quite a deal more about this matter of intercession. And I want first to ask the question, what does God require for intercession? What does God require for intercession? Now this is bringing it all down to the practical side of things. If we want to be intercessuals. If, as a company, we want to know something of a ministry of intercession, if we want to know what it is not only to make supplications and prayers and thanksgivings, but also intercessions, what is it that the Lord looks for that he might lead us into a ministry of genuine intercession? Because when you look around us in this country, and when you look around the nations, and when you look around the people of God, and when you look at our own locality and the people of God in our own locality, there are a 1001 pressing needs for true intercession.
[00:12:15] What is it that the Lord requires in a person or in a company who will intercede?
[00:12:21] I think here we come to the crux of the whole matter.
[00:12:28] Indeed, if it is possible, so to speak, it is here that we find the divine dilemma. I don't know whether it's even incorrect theologically to speak of God having a dilemma, God who can do all things and is all sufficient.
[00:12:48] And yet, in one sense, from the human point of view, there is in this whole matter of intercession and the thing that qualifies anyone to be an intercessor or any company to be intercessuals, we find a divine dilemma.
[00:13:15] Babes cannot travail.
[00:13:22] Children cannot travail.
[00:13:28] The paramount need, if anyone is going to know something of travail, for birth is adulthood.
[00:13:39] Even if it is minimal adulthood, there must be an adulthood. There must be a certain essential minimum maturity before anyone can know anything about travail.
[00:14:00] Now, this is absolutely true of the church, for intercession is travail.
[00:14:07] And we can think that we are interceding when we know very little about it. I have sought already to point out that intercession involves your whole being. True intercession will bring you sometimes into situations where it is impossible to put the whole thing into words. And when you do put it into words, it only adds to your pain, because you are so conscious that you are unable to communicate the real pain or the real burden that has been born and conceived in your heart.
[00:14:44] Now, if intercession is spiritual travail, there must therefore be a certain minimal spiritual adulthood. There must be a certain minimum capacity, spiritual capacity.
[00:15:05] If that is not there. A person may desire with all their hearts to be in the battle, and may desire with all their hearts to get into this matter of intercession, but they're unable to do so. Indeed, it can be dangerous.
[00:15:28] We have to face the simple fact that the church of God is full of babies.
[00:15:36] Some of them are 70, 80 years of age.
[00:15:40] But they are babies spiritually.
[00:15:45] If we could only say before God that all these babies, this great, great number of babies, were the result of a great movement of the spirit of God, which had swept thousands into the kingdom of God. What a joy it would be this evening to say that, well, the kingdom of God on earth at present is filled with new ones, those who've been born of God, what a joy it would be.
[00:16:11] But we cannot say that. What we have to say is that the church of God is made up of a large, large majority who have never moved beyond spiritual babyhood.
[00:16:32] That is the divine dilemma. They are not even children. For the most part, the vast majority of believers should long ago have spiritually grown up, but they are still spiritual babes now, there is nothing wrong with babyhood at the right time. There is not a person in this room who has not been a baby.
[00:17:06] And it would be a very strange thing if somehow or other, you arrived without babyhood.
[00:17:13] Every single one of us has gone through the phase of babyhood, and there is nothing wrong with babyhood at the right time and in the right place. But there is everything wrong with it if it is prolonged. What happens to a mother if she suddenly finds that her child's babyhood is prolonged? It gives cause for very real concern and worry, because prolonged babyhood is unhealthy. And if it becomes quite clear that the child is not going to grow anymore, then there is something seriously, radically wrong. Modern Christianity, for the most part, is built not on laying down your life for the Lord and for others, but on what you can get.
[00:18:06] Now, the principle of babyhood is that the baby is only interested in what it can get. There is nothing wrong with that when it is a baby, you understand, all the time it only thinks of food or being cuddled, or of having rattles or dummies or toys or sort of people cooing, and there is nothing wrong with that. But if a child were to grow up to be 8910 years of age, and all they could think about was what they could get, there was something very wrong indeed.
[00:18:47] When we are first saved, in the most wonderful way, God takes care of us, he almost falls over himself, I may so speak, rather irreverently of him.
[00:18:59] Almost all the time to help us, we only have to cry and he's there to cuddle us. We only have to wail and we get a rattle or a dummy.
[00:19:08] He feeds us every time he feels it's right to feed us. It's quite regular, and the Lord really takes care of us when we're babies. But, you know, for the most part we do not. For the most part, we Christians do not grow out of that babyhood stage. And the tragedy is we glorify it as if it's something that belongs to Christianity and our whole gospel then becomes something of what you get instead of what you give.
[00:19:39] The whole thing becomes a question of everything revolving around you.
[00:19:44] It's for your benefit. Of course, we have to say, as I've said so often before, that the Lord is in his infinite mercy, knows that we're all self centered. He loves us so much that there's not one of us who would be saved or in the kingdom if he hadn't played a little on our self centredness.
[00:20:03] Do you know a single person who's ever really been born of God and truly converted who came to the Lord because they loved the Lord, their God, with all their soul, with all their heart and with all their might?
[00:20:15] I don't. I've gone all over the place. I've never met a single person yet I would love to meet someone who came to the Lord just because they loved the Lord.
[00:20:25] I find that all of us came either through fear of death or fear of disease or fear of living or fear of problems or emptiness or misery or circumstances that were hopeless or something or other. And the law was so gracious. He said, you are dead. I am life. Come to me and I will give you life. You are unsaved. I will save you if you come to me.
[00:20:50] You are neurotic, you are restless. If you come to me, I will give you peace. You have no joy, you are miserable. Come to me and I will give you joy.
[00:21:00] You are going to hell. Come to me and I will get you into heaven. I will give you heaven.
[00:21:09] It is surely the great love of God that he never just simply said, unless you are prepared to love me, I won't save you.
[00:21:22] Unless you show absolute love toward me. That is selfless. I will not save you.
[00:21:30] No, no, no. He loves us so much that he was prepared to get us. Now, in our babyhood stage, the Lord puts up with all our self centredness. But there comes a point when he starts to deal with it. And that is all the difference between growing from childhood to adolescence into adulthood.
[00:21:50] You know, we often think even of gifts and of an experience of the Holy Spirit in a totally self centered way.
[00:21:59] People want to be satisfied.
[00:22:03] It's not that people want to serve others or want to serve God or want to get over the problems that they may glorify God, but rather it's give me, give me, give me.
[00:22:12] I want, I want.
[00:22:16] Now that, as I say, is a sign of babyhood.
[00:22:21] And when we all look at ourselves, we have to say, oh, I've found out, because there's hardly one of us that does not come within this category.
[00:22:38] Spiritual maturity is not that you are perfect, but spiritual maturity begins when you go over from the self centred principle to the Christ centered principle. In other words, there comes a point which can be so painful that at the time it may appear to be almost total destruction of your being. But at that time, you move over from what you get to what God gets. And from then on, it's not your joy, it's his joy. It's not your satisfaction. It is his satisfaction. It is not your will. It is his will. And so we can go on. Do you understand what I mean? It's not your increase. It is his increase. From then on, it is all the Lord that matters. Now, that is the beginning of spiritual maturity.
[00:23:34] No one can intercede until they are prepared first to sacrifice themselves. Now, that is the point I'm seeking to make.
[00:23:45] In other words, there is no such thing as intercession in our babyhood stage because somehow or other, we could give half an hour even, and we feel good for it.
[00:23:59] You know the kind of thing I've given half an hour.
[00:24:03] We really feel terribly good about it. I've given half an hour for the law or even a day of fasting. Oh, we feel so good at the end of it. I feel really good, feel splendid. Have to try it again.
[00:24:14] Feel so good.
[00:24:17] Because in any way, it's just a bolstering of what we are. We quite enjoy it because we feel we've done the Lord good and the work of God good. And we've helped along things a little. We feel rather good about it all. But there's not real intercession.
[00:24:31] I mean, real intercession is that your whole time, your money, your energy, your life, your future, your prospects, your everything are taken into the hand of God.
[00:24:44] It's up to him what he does with you.
[00:24:48] Do you think that Ezekiel enjoyed the day that his wife died?
[00:24:55] Do you think it was easy for Hosea to go down into the slave market and buy a prostitute?
[00:25:05] Do you think it was easy for some of these men to live through the kind of experience they lived through in order to become, as it were, those who built up the wall and stood in the gap? Do you think it was easy for Joseph to go down into Egypt and into the dungeon of pharaoh. Until the iron entered into his soul.
[00:25:27] You think it was easy for him, that dream about everything bowing down to him and all the other sheaves bowing down to him and all the other stars bowing down to him and so on, must have in the end seen like a mockery until the iron entered his soul and he no longer bothered about anyone bowing down to him.
[00:25:53] Only that he belonged to God and that he was with God. And then he became an intercessor. And then God took him out of the dungeon, and up and up and up and up. Until he became the supreme power of one of the greatest empires of the world.
[00:26:08] And became a true intercessor, by whom not only was Egypt, but Israel as well.
[00:26:18] And so it is all the way through the book. You find that only when people are prepared to lay down their lives in its totality, can they become real intercessors in the meaning of the word.
[00:26:35] That God gets right into them and involves them in a situation, in such a union with himself, such an identification with himself, that he can touch situations substantially, materially, and indeed in some cases eternally.
[00:26:57] Until we are prepared to lay down our lives. Then we cannot intercede.
[00:27:04] You can give an hour and feel the better for it. You can give a day and feel the better for it. You could give a week and feel the better for it. But to give a lifetime, that is the question.
[00:27:21] If God can get a lifetime for himself, then he can change a nation.
[00:27:29] Then he can touch situations all over the globe. And Reese Howells was the illustration of this principle.
[00:27:41] He taught us that a humble minor son could in the end be taken up by the hand of God. And used to deliver not only the British Isles, but a whole continent from Nazism.
[00:27:59] He taught us that once God could get hold of a body, and not just a mans spirit, but his body, then God can start to do things in this world.
[00:28:15] And thats why I suggest to all of you that you read that book. Rhys Howells intercessor. Oh, Rhys Howells had his thoughts and his failings. And there are many who will speak and speak and speak about his failings, feelings and thoughts still. I hear it where I go. That he was this, that he was that. That he was the other.
[00:28:38] But I remind all those people who love to point out the flies in the ointment that they themselves would not be there. But for Rhys Howells, did they ever give themselves to months and months and months of prayer?
[00:28:57] Were they ever woken up in the middle of the night so that they spent days and days in anguish for a nation.
[00:29:05] Never. All they can do is pull to pieces a man, a humble man, an ordinary man, whom God took hold of because he got his body. Now the interesting thing about Rhys Howells is he puts it very, very crudely. And when I first read it, I could not, I could not take it. It seemed to me to be the antithesis of all that's spiritual.
[00:29:29] I can understand why people sometimes criticize Rhys Howells. You see, if I heard him say, what God wants is your spirit, he wants your heart. When he's got your heart, he's got you. But what we house, it is when the Holy Spirit looks for an intercessor, he looks for a body.
[00:29:50] He looks for a body. Give me your body. I want your body. I want your eyes, I want your ears, I want your mouth, I want your feet, I want your hands. I want your heart. I want your body so that I may, as it were, feel through you, think through you, react through you, so that I can use you, so that the other situations for which you're going to intercede will influence you, will make you feel, feel, will touch you, will pain you.
[00:30:28] How can anyone possibly know anything about genuine intercession if their life is not laid down to give an hour? Why, that requires a little bit of sacrifice. But it really isn't anything, is it? 1 hour out of 24 hours, 1 hour a week. I'm not a mathematician, but work it out. It's not very much, is it?
[00:30:52] Quite honestly, what is it?
[00:30:58] But when a life is laid down, then that person's time is the Lord's. It's not as if the Lord will trample over you all the time like debt and simply treat you like dirt. Not at all. God will give you back your time, but your time is his. Your energy is his, your money is his, your being is his, your health is his. Every single thing about you is his.
[00:31:27] Thus, the Lord requires three things for genuine intercession. We will sum them up in this way. First, your bodies are living sacrifice.
[00:31:43] Romans twelve one. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies, a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God, which is your spiritually intelligent worship. And it goes on to say that you may be renewed in your mind and that you may prove what is the good and perfect and acceptable will of God.
[00:32:22] Now that is the first fundamental and essential requirement, requirement for true intercession. If you and I are not prepared to come to the place where our bodies are a living sacrifice, there will be no intercession.
[00:32:44] You will pray, you will supplicate, you will know worship, you will know blessing, you will see the Lord. But the Lord must say when he looks at a 1001 situations. I sought for a man to stand in the gap and to build up the wall, that I might not judge the land, but I found none. You see, many people will say, ah, but surely God's looking. He finds. He finds these people. This person's prepared to pray. This person's prepared to pray? This person, yes, that's a little different. To prepare to pray is one thing, and don't give up praying. But to stand in the gap that may cost you your life. To build up the wall may cost you everything.
[00:33:31] That's another matter.
[00:33:34] Your bodies. A living sacrifice.
[00:33:39] A living sacrifice. No sacrifice was ever dead.
[00:33:44] The one thing that always happened when any animal was brought for sacrifice was that it was alive and it had to be without spot or blemish, perfect. And the priest went right through it, folding back its firm, as it were, to see that there was no spot or blemish, looked behind its ears, looked in its teeth, saw that it was perfect, passed it as perfect. And only then, when it was passed, did it become a sacrifice. And do you know what happened to it? It was consumed. Consumed by fire.
[00:34:22] I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, think about that, to present your bodies a living sacrifice. Now, the second essential requirement for genuine intercession is spiritual maturity and capacity. I think of Ephesians and chapter four in this matter, Ephesians chapter four and verse 15 and 16, which says this, but speaking truth in love may grow up in all things, into him who is the head, o verse 14. That we may be no longer children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, but speaking truth in love may grow up in all things. Into him who is the head, even Christ. Spiritual maturity and capacity, that is the second absolute essential for intercession. You cannot. The Holy Spirit, dear child of God, the Holy Spirit may long to use you, may long to use you. And I'll come to this in a moment. For those of you who feel that we're just shutting you out of all possibility of ever intercession, I'll come to that in one moment. But you know, when the Holy Spirit, when he sees a longing in your heart, the Holy Spirit loves you.
[00:35:48] You see, the Holy Spirit is not some hard, harsh schoolmaster.
[00:35:54] He just loves anyone who has the desire there, even though they have not got the capacity nevertheless, all the desire in the world will not create spiritual capacity, and it cannot be created overnight.
[00:36:14] It is something which God has to do in us, day in, day out, week in, week out, month in, month out, year in, year out. And then a capacity, a spiritual capacity is produced in us. A spiritual maturity is produced. And then when the desire is there to serve the Lord in this way of intercession, then the Holy Spirit can come and can conceive a burden, and that can be conceived in you by the Holy Spirit and developed in you by the Holy Spirit. And finally, he will enable you, as it were, to fulfill that burden.
[00:37:01] That's the second thing. The third thing is a progressive experience of the spirit and the cross.
[00:37:10] A progressive, a progressive experience. It's not enough in this matter of intercession to have had an experience of the Holy Spirit, nor is it enough to have had an experience of the cross.
[00:37:23] It must be progressive.
[00:37:26] You may have known what it is to be baptized into the Spirit in a very real experience, but still not know anything about intercession today, because you are not filled with the Holy Spirit.
[00:37:42] If you are not led by the Holy Spirit, if you do not walk by the Holy Spirit, if you are not filled by the Holy Spirit, then if you are not anointed by the Holy Spirit in a fresh way, you will never know what it is to intercede.
[00:37:59] And this is the same with the cross some of us may have had years ago a real experience of the cross. We laid down our lives, we made a covenant with the law, we saw something, we stepped forward in faith, and God took us at our word.
[00:38:12] But unless were prepared to lay down our lives again and again and again and again, there will be no intercession.
[00:38:23] A progressive experience of the spirit and of the cross.
[00:38:28] Now many may feel after hearing all this that they cannot intercede in any way whatsoever.
[00:38:37] Nevertheless, let me say this for your comfort.
[00:38:41] Everything begins with that initial presentation of our bodies as a living sacrifice.
[00:38:53] If you are young in the Lord, if you have only been recently saved, or if you are at least a little older, but still very conscious of being only a child, don't let anything that I've said make you feel I shall never intercede.
[00:39:12] If the desire is there, give yourself to God in a new way. Remember the old chinese proverb, a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.
[00:39:32] Think about that. I will repeat it. A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.
[00:39:48] Maybe God is calling on you to make an initial step. You don't know where to lead. You it may be a journey of a thousand miles, but you'll never reach the goal unless you first take the initial step. God will do the rest.
[00:40:08] God will do the west for you. Now, I want to say something about corporate intercession and bring all that we've said really about intercession to an end. You see, really, you will see straight away that this matter of intercession is much more specifically related to individual spiritual growth and individual spiritual character than any of the other aspects of prayer, for example, supplication, thanksgiving, praise, and so on. These are petition. All these things are not quite so related to individual growth, but intercession really does rest on individual spiritual capacity and individual spiritual character and growth.
[00:41:04] Nevertheless, whilst there are great individual intercessors, and even more wonderfully twos or threes that are bound together in intercession, there is nothing, nothing in the whole universe as powerful as corporate intercession.
[00:41:28] I believe that the devil has fought like fury to keep the people of God from ever coming to the place of corporate intercession. Why? Because he knows that in the moment the people of God come to the place of corporate intercession, all kinds of situations will be radically altered.
[00:41:54] Things can be touched in a way that nothing else will touch them. Keys can be used, the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
[00:42:07] I believe that is one of the reasons why the devil hates any recovery of the church. You see, some people have got the idea, or whether Satan hates any recovery of the nature of the church coming together with the people of God, simply because Jesus said, upon this rock I will build my church. But in actual fact, the church is even a means to an end.
[00:42:30] It is for the expression of Christ, the manifestation of Christ. Do you understand?
[00:42:36] And you see, the most wonderful thing about being the body of the Lord is that the members are so related to the head, so related to, as it were, the one spirit, that the burden in the head can come into the members, and that all kinds of things can be done on earth by the risen, ascended and glorified head.
[00:43:04] I think, of course, of a number of intercessors that are individual intercessors.
[00:43:12] And I certainly can think of twos that I've known and threes. I think of Miss Lyblick and Miss Smith as a marvelous example of two intercessors bound together for many years, who won so many great battles in the arabic speaking part of the globe. And then I think, of course, of those three amazing danish sisters, Anna Mickelson and Sophia Johansson and Anna Haugu, I think her name was? I never met her. Stengor Stingor. Thank you, Anna Stingor. Those three who gave their lives really virtually to intercession for Scandinavia and particularly for Denmark, there are others too, I could mention. But having said that, they themselves would agree with me that even such being brought together and bound together is a substitute for what God really would require. And that is the building of his house in such a way that there is corporate intercession, church intercession.
[00:44:24] Now, obviously, not everyone in a church can be of the same spiritual maturity or capacity that must surely occur to all of you. Indeed, that's not what God requires. In any healthy company of God's people, there will be all the different spiritual ages. There ought to be those who are spiritual babes, there will be those who are spiritual children, there will be those who are spiritual adolescents. You must have that in any healthy company of God's people. And of course, I must say this, that as things lie at present and right to the very end, we shall have those who are babies long beyond babyhood stage, and those whose spiritual growth has become deformed or somehow paralyzed.
[00:45:11] We have to say that nevertheless, the Lord will take the nucleus in that company and train them and educate them and qualify them for corporate intercession. And if they are ready for it, all kinds of inexplicable personal family situations will come to them to bring them to the place of spiritual capacity and spiritual maturity as quickly as the Lord can.
[00:45:47] But in any company, there must be a nucleus of people who have laid down their lives and presented their bodies as a living sacrifice to God.
[00:46:04] Then that great work of qualifying them for intercession, educating them for intercession, training them for intercession, begins.
[00:46:16] And even more wonderfully, the Lord will add to that nucleus once he has established it all the time. Now this is the wonderful thing, and I hope that God will use this not only in this company, but wherever else this message goes, that once God has been able to establish, and it will cost that nucleus everything, once God has been able to establish that nucleus in any church of real intercession, so that they can corporately intercede, then all the time, the Lord will add the new ones into it all the time.
[00:46:55] And it will be through the older ones and the way they pray and their character in prayer and the way they bear the holy things upon their shoulders that will influence the younger ones and almost spontaneously educate them and train them into the same ministry, sometimes in the most marvelous ways, often inexplicable. The Lord will take that whole church into the ministry of Intercession, and then the youngest in the church will benefit aby it and will be part of the intercession. Now this is the lovely thing about corporate intercession, that though youngsters will not be able to feel the pain and know something of what it is to have something locked up, as it were, inside, yet they will still be in the good of the intercession and indeed be part of it, just because it is a body thing. Now see, once God has got that nucleus, he can bring all the others into it.
[00:47:59] I hope I make this plain and clear.
[00:48:09] I don't believe there has ever been a time in our history when we have needed to know more about this matter of intercession. And when we stand more seriously at the crossroads, none of us know how long we have.
[00:48:32] We do not know what the prospects are for Europe or indeed for the free world.
[00:48:45] But I do feel that the Holy Spirit would teach us, from the youngest to the elders, something more about intercession.
[00:49:03] Our experience in this matter, in this company may be worth rehearsing.
[00:49:13] In 1951, I, in the beginning of August, end of July, beginning of August of 1951, I and a few others here in this town were deeply burdened for the state of things.
[00:49:33] We felt, somehow or other, that with all the great evangelical paraphernalia we had around us, we were not really seeing people touched for the Lord locally, nor were we seeing any real building work. To put it into words, which I couldn't have done then. God had no home in Richmond.
[00:50:01] He had plenty of believers and plenty of evangelical places of worship, but there seemed to be no home for the Lord. Now, at that time, all the talk was the Hebrides revival. These two old ladies who had spent six months in prayer every night until in that most sovereign way, God poured out his spirit upon the Hebrides. And the old gentleman, the seven old gentlemen, the other end of the island, unbeknown to the two sisters who had for two years met once a week for a prolonged session of prayer to pray for the same moving of the spirit of God upon those Ireland. Everyone talked about it at the time. It was all the talk, and everyone was hoping that somehow or other this outpouring would come down south and that we would see something happening everywhere at the same time. I had read Charles Finney's lectures on revival, and if you wish to be deeply disturbed, then read Phinney's lectures on revival, and particularly the chapter on plowing up the fallow ground.
[00:51:12] And, well, I found myself very, very disturbed at the time. And so it came up to me sort, well, two or three or four of us, we were talking together. We were all burdened more than that, really. About eight of us, I suppose, nor. And we talked about it and we felt, well, now look here, is this burden a burden of God or is it a burden that is emotional subject really to outside influences, not from the Lord? So we covenanted together to do an extraordinary thing. We covenanted that we would not speak about revival, read about revival, pray about revival for one whole month now. We said, if at the end of that one month this burden is still in us, we shall know it is the Lord.
[00:52:03] And we covenant to give ourselves to prayer until the Lord does something. And so for one whole month, the month of August of 1951, we neither spoke about revival. We didnt read about it and we didnt pray about it. At the end of the month, we found that the burden in us was greater than ever. It was a pain. Now I can only describe it as a pain. Now, I was only young Christian, but it was all I can describe it was as a pain, an incurable pain. You couldn't get it out of your system. It was just there like a deep, deep anguish of spirit. On the first day of September of 1951, we started to pray. And we prayed for every evening of September, October, November and December up to the Christmas of 1951.
[00:52:59] Our times of prayer began just after 07:00 and went on till ten to 1030. In the middle of it we had the severest fog. Some of you will remember that London had ever known in which 3000 people died.
[00:53:15] You will remember that for ten days we could not see across the street. All transport stopped at one point. And you remember, well, it was hopeless, but it never stopped our prayer. We walked, I used to walk from East Twickenham right the way to Berwyn Avenue in Sheen, just sheen, every evening to those times of prayer. Sometimes there were only two of us. We were never less than two and we were never more than eight, but we played every single single night. We used to pray on Saturday afternoons from 02:00 till 06:00 so that we could go along to the young people's time in the evening. And we used to. We got permission to pray in the vestry of the church so that on Sunday evening, so that we weren't just being like a faction or a division. And we prayed for the service as well as for others. Now, the incredible thing to me is that we knew not too much about prayer. I had learned some lessons in intercession already in Egypt. And I had seen a whole number of people that God had put on my heart, saved. It had cost me everything to pray for those different ones, but I had seen them, but I knew nothing of corporate intercession. Now, I must tell you this, that to me it was amazing that we had one simple burden, and we never varied from that burden. It wasn't if we prayed for NEpal or China or Japan or Australia or America. We prayed simply for Richmond.
[00:54:42] We prayed for the Thames valley. And we prayed night after night, and we prayed, you know, how hard it is to sustain prayer for half an hour.
[00:54:49] We prayed every night for something like 3 hours, never less than 3 hours. I'm amazed at it myself now. It's like a dream.
[00:54:58] But I remember that when we began, we could do nothing else but pray. But at the end of those 3 hours, it was as if like a tank drained of all its water and one could get up quite relieved. By next morning, the tank was full again. You know, you just felt uncomfortable and unhappy, as if you had a pain inside. The only way to let it out was prayer. Now, that was my first real experience of corporate intercession, because it was the spirit of God who was in us.
[00:55:30] And so it was that the spirit of God within us was, as it were, keeping alive a burden. So it was as if we were praying the same thing. We pray for nightclubs, we pray for hospitals, we pray for schools, we pray for colleges. It is a very interesting thing that many of these schools have seen. Blessing of the places we prayed for night after night after night after night.
[00:55:52] We pray for all these different places, all the institutions, all the places. Of course, we had no idea that one of the nightclubs we prayed for would be closed down by the police for immorality, and we would actually get possession of it and meet there for one whole year. That's whatever entered our heads when we were praying.
[00:56:09] But it was an incredible experience, those four months of prayer and praying the same thing and feeling as if somehow or other we were under, we were in some sovereign flow of God. I can only explain it like that.
[00:56:26] Well, I can only fall back on saying to you all, you know, how hard it is to pray for one subject for half an hour.
[00:56:36] We prayed for virtually one subject from all angles, for 3 hours every single day, right up to Christmas of 1951.
[00:56:49] Out of that came Koinonia, that sort of interdenominational get together of young people in this town just to wait upon the Lord. And of course, it was there that God met us and began to do the remarkable things out of which all this work came. Now, my point is, we had covenanted with the Lord that we would not stop praying until we saw two things. We saw the unsaved enrichment turning to the Lord, and we saw the people of God renewed.
[00:57:27] We went on playing in 1952, I remember, for the first three weeks of January, or some of those weeks of January, but we could not go on anymore. The interesting thing was the burden lifted and we couldn't understand it, and we felt so terrible. You see, we had sort of covenanted with the Lord that we would pray until we saw this thing happen. Of course, never in our wild doesn't moments did we think of Koinonia as an answer to our prayers.
[00:57:54] And because the Holy Spirit was in charge, we knew that we could not flog, if I may so use a vulgar expression, a dead horse.
[00:58:05] We found that it was no good just going on in prayer. Evening, afternoon, the whole anointing had gone from it. And so we let it over to the Lord and said, lord, we leave it with you. You bring it back at the right time. Now, those of you who were with us, I don't think there's anyone who was with us in the actual times of prayer except my sister, now present in the company. But there are others of you who were with us in those very early days. And you will remember that from time to time we had weeks of prayer, which were tremendous times. We had these weeks of prayer where we really got hold of the Lord and laid hold of him for this area. And it was the same old burden again that God would do something. So always we got same promise that in the end God would do it. Then we found the burden lifted and we would go.
[00:58:54] It was our experience of corporate intercession.
[00:59:02] It is an amazing thing to me that exactly a decade later, in 1961, on the first day of September of 1961, we began to pray again with exactly the same burden.
[00:59:23] Now a number of you, of course, were present, so you will remember those days.
[00:59:28] You will remember what led up to them. You will remember our studies on the book of Joel and that recognition that the day of Pentecost was not. The prophecy had not been exhausted on the day of Pentecost, but it had included the whole of the age in which we are found right to its end.
[00:59:50] And you will remember our studies on the book of Jonah and our shock to discover that God was interested as much in Nineveh as he was in Jerusalem, and knew the people of Nineveh as much as he knew the people of Jerusalem. Out of this came two burdens. One, once again was that unsaved people would be saved in our area. And the second was that God would do something now and his people all over the country. Now, from 1951 to 1961, God led us and we saw some very precious truths and we experienced above all some very, very great ways of the Lord. But we were a shut up company.
[01:00:29] No one would touch us. No one would touch us with a barge pole. We were sort of the offscouring. We belonged to that sort of most dreadful of all groups on a oak, and anyone who had in any way associated with on a roak was absolutely beyond the pale. Be careful of them, be careful of them. They've got some sort of spiritual infection that will touch others and destroy them. So for all those ten years, hardly anyone ran the gauntlet, the sort of blockade, and got in to us, except those that God saved amongst us. But it was a remarkable thing that I went away in August of 1961. And dear 1, may it be said everlastingly to his credit, sent to the whole company at the time. Do you not all feel that God is calling us to prayer?
[01:01:28] And if he is calling us to prayer, are we prepared to sacrifice everything that we may intercede? Do you remember those days? And you will remember that whilst I was away, I had not too much to do with this. You all decided, right? We will sacrifice everything. Every gathering will go by the board, except the Lord's table. And Sunday gathering, those are the only two we will retain on Sundays. But everything else will be prayer. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, we will meet every night for prayer. And we will take hold of the Lord as he enables us until something happens. Now, the remarkable thing is, no one recognized that it was ten years to the day that we started to pray.
[01:02:14] No one recognized that point at the time. It was only a month afterwards. Suddenly we realized, oh, we're back again on the old thing, as if after ten years has gone by, and here we are. Only this time, instead of praying for Richmond and Thames Valley, we're praying for the whole british isles.
[01:02:34] And we're praying that the house of God will be built in the British Isles and that there will be a renewal that somehow rather will sweep the people of God into a new way with the Lord. Now we pray. Do you remember we prayed? Oh, many of you were in those times of prayer? Well, we went right through one whole year and we never had a Bible study for a year. Do you remember that? We never had a Bible study for a year. The amazing thing is we began to see quite a few more people saved. Remember we went on into our second year and we didnt have a Bible study for a second year. Do you remember that?
[01:03:03] We went two years without a Bible study and then we found we had so many new ones saved, almost sort of unwittingly so, all getting saved that someone said, dont you think they ought to be taught? Because the only thing they were getting was prayer. I mean, they were. They were growing marvelously in prayer. But there was no. No. There was no actual teaching. And so we said, yes, well, we'll bring back the Thursday Bible study. So then we had Sunday and Thursday and every other night, you will remember, was prayer. Remember, you will remember that third year. Now, of course, by then, some people thought we were crazy not only outside the company, they always thought we were crazy outside the. But some people inside the company thought we were crazy by then I remember people coming to me and saying, I think it's ridiculous. All this prayer, it's destroying everybody. People are absolutely war now, where are we getting. We're getting nowhere. We're absolutely getting nowhere. But we had a burden in our hearts that somehow or other something had got to be done, something's got to go through. We could not let it go and we were very conscious ourselves. Are we flogging a dead horse?
[01:04:07] I mean, here we are, day in, day out, day in, day out, saying the same thing, taking hold of the law, and yet we can't get away from it I remember so well that Wednesday, I think it was, of the third year. Do you remember, some of you? It was the fewest we'd ever been I think we were about 15 in all on that prayer meeting von wasn't there. None of the responsible folks were there even, I think, Eileen, I think you weren't there and you'd been every single one of those occasions even Eileen wasn't there I can't remember what it was for. And I mean, that is really. She should be given a medal for it because she was there on every other occasion but, I mean, it was incredible that Wednesday. Oh, it was an oppressive time now, this may be for the encouragement of you all, because, you see, so often we feel when there's an oppression, that there's something wrong when in actual fact there may be something very, very right when there's a deep, deep oppression come upon a country, you may be right on the brink of very real blessing. Now, that night, I don't know. Eric was with us. Weren't you, Eric? You were only one of the other brethren who were with us that night. I remember that when we were so deeply depressed. And I was wondering to myself, I really think we are flogging a decade horse. I'm going to talk with the brothers as to whether perhaps we should really let this whole thing go.
[01:05:34] It's really silly. 1415 of us. It was a rather lovely, hot evening.
[01:05:40] And I remember that suddenly, I don't know, don't ask me how it happened. Suddenly it was as if all of us looked into heaven.
[01:05:50] And that's the only way to describe it, isn't to do it.
[01:05:53] We were just as if we were looking into heaven. And the time became hilarious.
[01:05:58] We laughed.
[01:06:00] I remember it. It was such a heavy time. We were laughing, laughing and sort of almost stupid.
[01:06:13] And then a word came from the Lord. Within a year, within a year, the walls will come down.
[01:06:21] This was confirmed in other ways, of course. People thought we were praying for the local. We were not praying for. We were praying for the whole country.
[01:06:32] And the most interesting thing was that a while later, we heard how, unbeknown to us, altogether down in Cornwall, the spirit of God had been poured out on a group there. It was the first beginnings of what has become in our country, of what has been called the charismatic.
[01:06:55] And then we heard of reports because we were very suspicious of it, by the way, we heard about all these people speaking in tongues. Everyone thought, hmm, that's not what we are praying for. But I do remember, I do remember that when we were praying, I remember Ron quite clearly because, because I thought it was so wonderful. I remember one saying, Lord, Lord, we don't care what to do. We're even prepared to speak in tongues. I remember that quite clearly. Even prepared to speak in tongues. Lord, if you can only do something with your people everywhere.
[01:07:25] But the incredible thing is this, that whatever was our feeling at that time, the walls came down.
[01:07:34] And by the grace of God, they have never been put up again.
[01:07:39] Until that date, we were an ostracized company. From that day onwards, our ministry as a company extended to the ends of this country and all over, in many ways, all over the world, because God had started to do something which was irreversible.
[01:08:00] Whatever people may say about the charismatic, it has brought thousands into a new experience of the Lord. And people who were dead, dry, old bones, you couldn't have fellowship with them, not for all the tea in China.
[01:08:18] And suddenly you met them and found that you could have fellowship with them. They were hungry for fellowship they wanted fellowship, and they began to talk about being in the body. Why? I remember, I remember one famous evangelist's wife saying, I can't understand lance, all this talk about the body. It is so niggardly.
[01:08:40] When we are in heaven and see our Lord Jesus, she said to a mutual friend, it will all seem so silly and so stupid.
[01:08:51] But now we found everywhere people talking about the body, about being in the body of Christ.
[01:08:57] You will remember that in those days, if you met in a house or in a home, you were considered to be absolutely below par.
[01:09:05] Something very, very suspicious about you. Now we began to find that from then on, all over the country, in farmhouses, in homes, in cottages, in big, beautiful houses, in some cases, people were meeting in drawing rooms and lounges to worship the Lord, to seek God in prayer. I'm not saying that there are great weaknesses and excesses and failings, but the fact of the matter is that God was doing something which was irreversible.
[01:09:37] I don't want any of you ever to forget that it was four years of prayer.
[01:09:44] The last year, you will remember we spent every evening praising the Lord. I'm not saying that was hard to praise the Lord, but in many ways, you know, we praised the Lord that the walls were down and it seemed so stupid, but the Lord said it. And so we said, well, we're going to praise him. We won't pray anymore. We've spent three years in prayer, now we'll praise the Lord.
[01:10:15] We must be very, very careful that we do not lose what God has given us in this matter.
[01:10:25] Intercession is the most hidden of all ministries.
[01:10:36] By its very nature.
[01:10:39] The laying down of the life is not a thing that's trumpeted by its very nature.
[01:10:46] It is within a person's being or accompanies being, for the most part hidden.
[01:11:04] There are few who are prepared to enter such a ministry of intercession.
[01:11:11] I believe that with all our failings in this part of God's family, he has taught us something about intercession which has been, if I may so say it, incredibly precious to the Lord.
[01:11:29] I believe also that it is something which the devil hates, and he will work unceasingly as we grow larger and become more popular and more in demand to take away, to undermine such a ministry.
[01:11:51] That is why we have spent two evenings on this matter of intercession.
[01:11:59] We need to hear the cry of God.
[01:12:03] I sought for a man to stand in the gap and to build the wall, but I found none.
[01:12:18] Therefore, have I poured out my indignation upon the lamb.
[01:12:27] When I was a little boy, I remember being told a story that gripped me as a child.
[01:12:41] It was the story of a little dutch boy, six or seven years of age, who playing some way away from home on the dikes of Holland that keep back the sea from flooding that low lying country.
[01:13:03] And playing on those dikes.
[01:13:06] He suddenly heard the sound of running water.
[01:13:10] And when he looked down, he saw the sea coming through a hole.
[01:13:19] And he knew, though he was very young, that that meant death for thousands and thousands and thousands of people.
[01:13:30] He didn't know what to do.
[01:13:33] So he did the only thing that came into his head.
[01:13:37] He put his arm in the hole.
[01:13:42] He was found dead the next day with his arm right in the hole. But he had effectively plugged the breach.
[01:13:55] Thousands upon thousands of people were saved, but it had cost him his life.
[01:14:04] I believe that that story more beautifully illustrates genuine intercession than anything else I could say.
[01:14:20] I sought for a man to stand in the gap or breach and build up the wall.
[01:14:33] That I might not judge the land.
[01:14:37] But I found none.
[01:14:42] Shall we pray?
[01:14:58] Dear Lord, we do pray together that thou wilt not allow us to lose what thou has given us in this matter of intercession. We thank thee, Lord, unworthy as we are, for anything that thou hast done in producing even the smallest intercessory ministry in this part of thy family.
[01:15:23] O Lord, we do appeal to thee that thou wilt guard what thou hast given us and develop it, Lord, that it may not be undermined by enemy devices or by our carelessness or pride.
[01:15:40] But, Lord, we may be a people who are alive to this call and commission of thine.
[01:15:50] Make us truly thy remembrance as lord, who give thee no rest and take no rest until thou hast done the thing that thou hast revealed and declared.
[01:16:04] O Lord, we commit ourselves to thee.
[01:16:09] Thou knowest, Lord, where there are bodies that need to be living sacrifices.
[01:16:16] Thou knowest, Lord, where there are others of us who have indeed committed ourselves in this way. But somehow, Lord, we are not filled with thy spirit and we are not laying down our lives today.
[01:16:32] O Lord, we pray by thy spirit, visit us and melt our hearts and reach us anew, Lord, with those mercies of thine.
[01:16:46] That, Lord, we may know what it is to move on with thee and be a company who watch and pray.
[01:16:58] And we ask all this together in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
[01:17:05] Amen.
