The Ministry of Intercession Part 8

2 Cor. i. 10, 11: "In whom we trust that He will yet deliver us, _ye also helping together by prayer_ for us." Eph. vi. 18, 19: "Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, for all saints; _and for me_ that I may open my mouth boldly, that therein I may speak boldly as I ought to speak." Phil. i. 19: "I know that this (trouble) shall turn to my salvation, _through your prayer_, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ." Col. iv. 2, 3, 4: "Continue in prayer; withal also _praying for us_, that G.o.d would open unto us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ: that I may make it manifest as I ought to speak." 1 Thess. v. 25: "Brethren, pray for us." Philem. 22: "I trust that through your prayers I shall be given to you."

We saw how Christ prayed, and taught His disciples to pray. We see how Paul prayed, and taught the churches to pray. As the Master, so the servant calls us to believe and to prove that prayer is the power alike of the ministry and the Church. Of his faith we have a summary in these remarkable words concerning something that caused him grief: "This shall turn to my salvation through your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ." As much as he looked to his Lord in heaven did he look to his brethren on earth, to secure the supply of that Spirit for him.

The Spirit from heaven and prayer on earth were to him, as to the twelve after Pentecost, inseparably linked. We speak often of apostolic zeal and devotion and power--may G.o.d give us a revival of apostolic prayer.

Let me once again ask the question: Does the work of intercession take the place in the Church it ought to have? Is it a thing commonly understood in the Lord's work, that everything depends upon getting from G.o.d that "supply of the Spirit of Christ" for and in ourselves that can give our work its real power to bless. This is Christ's Divine order for all work, His own and that of His servants; this is the order Paul followed: first come every day, as having nothing, and receive from G.o.d "the supply of the Spirit" in intercession--then go and impart what has come to thee from heaven.

In all His instructions, our Lord Jesus spake much oftener to His disciples about their praying than their preaching. In the farewell discourse, He said little about preaching, but much about the Holy Spirit, and their asking whatsoever they would in His Name. If we are to return to this life of the first apostles and of Paul, and really accept the truth every day--my first work, my only strength is intercession, to secure the power of G.o.d on the souls entrusted to me--we must have the courage to confess past sin, and to believe that there is deliverance.

To break through old habits, to resist the clamour of pressing duties that have always had their way, to make every other call subordinate to this one, whether others approve or not, will not be easy at first. But the men or women who are faithful will not only have a reward themselves, but become benefactors to their brethren. "Thou shalt be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in."

But is it really possible? Can it indeed be that those who have never been able to face, much less to overcome the difficulty, can yet become mighty in prayer? Tell me, was it really possible for Jacob to become Israel--a prince who prevailed with G.o.d? It was. The things that are impossible with men are possible with G.o.d. Have you not in very deed received from the Father, as the great fruit of Christ's redemption, the Spirit of supplication, the Spirit of intercession? Just pause and think what that means. And will you still doubt whether G.o.d is able to make you "strivers with G.o.d," princes who prevail with Him? Oh, let us banish all fear, and in faith claim the grace for which we have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, the grace of supplication, the grace of intercession.

Let us quietly, perseveringly believe that He lives in us, and will enable us to do our work. Let us in faith not fear to accept and yield to the great truth that intercession, as it is the great work of the King on the throne, _is the great work of His servants on earth_. We have the Holy Spirit, who brings the Christ-life into our hearts, to fit us for this work. Let us at once begin and stir up the gift within us.

As we set aside each day our time for intercession, and count upon the Spirit's enabling power, the confidence will grow that we can, in our measure, follow Paul even as he followed Christ.

A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER

CHAPTER XIV

G.o.d seeks Intercessors

"I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night. Ye that are the Lord's remembrancers, keep not silence, and give Him no rest till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth."--ISA. lxii. 6, 7.

"And He saw that there was _no man_, and wondered that there was _no intercessor_."--ISA. lix. 16.

"And I looked, and there was _none to help_; and I wondered, and there was _none to uphold_."--ISA. lxiii. 5.

"There is _none_ that calleth upon Thy name, that stirreth himself to take hold of Thee."--ISA. lxiv. 7.

"And I sought for a man that should stand in the gap before Me for the land, that I should not destroy it; but _I found none_."--EZEK.

xxii. 30.

"I chose you, and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in My name, He may give it you."--JOHN xv. 16.

In the study of the starry heavens, how much depends upon a due apprehension of magnitudes. Without some sense of the size of the heavenly bodies, that appear so small to the eye, and yet are so great, and of the almost illimitable extent of the regions in which they move, though they appear so near and so familiar, there can be no true knowledge of the heavenly world or its relation to this earth. It is even so with the spiritual heavens, and the heavenly life in which we are called to live. It is specially so in the life of intercession, that most wondrous intercourse between heaven and earth. Everything depends upon the due apprehension of magnitudes.

Just think of the three that come first: There is a world, with its needs entirely dependent on and waiting to be helped by intercession; there is a G.o.d in heaven, with His all-sufficient supply for all those needs, waiting to be asked; there is a Church, with its wondrous calling and its sure promises, waiting to be roused to a sense of its wondrous responsibility and power.

_G.o.d seeks intercessors._--There is a world with its peris.h.i.+ng millions, with intercession as its only hope. How much of love and work is comparatively vain, because there is so little intercession. A thousand millions living as if there never had been a Son of G.o.d to die for them. Thirty millions every year pa.s.sing into the outer darkness without hope. Fifty millions bearing the Christian name, and the great majority living in utter ignorance or indifference. Millions of feeble, sickly Christians; thousands of wearied workers, who could be blessed by intercession, could help themselves to become mighty in intercession.

Churches and missions sacrificing life and labour often with little result, for lack of intercession. Souls, each one worth more than worlds, worth nothing less than the price paid for them in Christ's blood, and within reach of the power that can be won by intercession. We surely have no conception of the magnitude of the work to be done by G.o.d's intercessors, or we should cry to G.o.d above everything to give from heaven the spirit of intercession.

_G.o.d seeks intercessors._--There is a G.o.d of glory able to meet all these needs. We are told that He delights in mercy, that He waits to be gracious, that He longs to pour out His blessing; that the love that gave the Son to death is the measure of the love that each moment hovers over every human being. And yet He does not help. And there they perish, a million a month in China alone, and it is as if G.o.d does not move. If He does so love and long to bless, there must be some inscrutable reason for His holding back. What can it be? Scripture says, because of your unbelief. It is the faithlessness and consequent unfaithfulness of G.o.d's people. He has taken them up into partners.h.i.+p with Himself; He has honoured them, and bound Himself, by making their prayers one of the standard measures of the working of His power. Lack of intercession is one of the chief causes of lack of blessing. Oh, that we would turn eye and heart from everything else and fix them upon this G.o.d who hears prayer, until the magnificence of His promises, and His power, and His purpose of love overwhelmed us! How our whole life and heart would become intercession.

_G.o.d seeks intercessors._--There is a third magnitude to which our eyes must be opened: the wondrous privilege and power of the intercessors.

There is a false humility, which makes a great virtue of self-depreciation, because it has never seen its utter nothingness. If it knew that, it would never apologise for its feebleness, but glory in its utter weakness, as the one condition of Christ's power resting on it. It would judge of itself, its power and influence before G.o.d in prayer, as little by what it sees or feels, as we judge of the size of the sun or stars by what the eye can see. Faith sees man created in G.o.d's image and likeness to be G.o.d's representative in this world and have dominion over it. Faith sees man redeemed and lifted into union with Christ, abiding in Him, identified with Him, and clothed with His power in intercession. Faith sees the Holy Spirit dwelling and praying in the heart, making, in our sighings, intercession according to G.o.d.

Faith sees the intercession of the saints to be part of the life of the Holy Trinity--the believer as G.o.d's child asking of the Father, in the Son, through the Spirit. Faith sees something of the Divine fitness and beauty of this scheme of salvation through intercession, wakens the soul to a consciousness of its wondrous destiny, and girds it with strength for the blessed self-sacrifice it calls to.

_G.o.d seeks intercessors._--When He called His people out of Egypt, He separated the priestly tribe, to draw nigh to Him, and stand before Him, and bless the people in His name. From time to time He sought and found and honoured intercessors, for whose sake He spared or blessed His people. When our Lord left the earth He said to the inner circle He had gathered around Him--an inner circle of special devotion to His service, to which access is still free to every disciple: "I chose you, and appointed you, that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in My Name, He may give it you." We have already noticed the six times repeated three wonderful words--_Whatsoever_--_In My Name_--_It shall be done_. In them Christ placed the powers of the heavenly world at their disposal--not for their own selfish use, but in the interests of His kingdom. How wondrously they used it we know. And since that time, down through the ages, these men have had their successors, men who have proved how surely G.o.d works in answer to prayer. And we may praise G.o.d that, in our days too, there is an ever-increasing number who begin to see and prove that in church and mission, in large societies and little circles and individual effort, intercession is the chief thing, the power that moves G.o.d and opens heaven. They are learning, and long to learn better, and that all may learn, that in all work for souls intercession must take the first place, and that those who in it have received from heaven, in the power of the Holy Ghost, what they are to communicate to others, will be best able to do the Lord's work.

_G.o.d seeks intercessors._--Though G.o.d had His appointed servants in Israel, watchmen set by Himself to cry to Him day and night and give Him no rest, He often had to wonder and complain that there was no intercessor, none to stir himself up to take hold of His strength. And He still waits and wonders in our day, that there are not more intercessors, that all His children do not give themselves to this highest and holiest work, that many of them who do so, do not engage in it more intensely and perseveringly. He wonders to find ministers of His gospel complaining that their duties do not allow them to find time for this, which He counts their first, their highest, their most delightful, their alone effective work. He wonders to find His sons and daughters, who have forsaken home and friends for His sake and the gospel's, come so short in what He meant to be their abiding strength--receiving day by day all they needed to impart to the dark heathen. He wonders to find mult.i.tudes of His children who have hardly any conception of what intercession is. He wonders to find mult.i.tudes more who have learned that it is their duty, and seek to obey it, but confess that they know but little of taking hold upon G.o.d or prevailing with Him.

_G.o.d seeks intercessors._--He longs to dispense larger blessings. He longs to reveal His power and glory as G.o.d, His saving love, more abundantly. He seeks intercessors in larger number, in greater power, to prepare the way of the Lord. He seeks them. Where could He seek them but in His Church? And how does He expect to find them? He intrusted to His Church the task of telling of their Lord's need, the task of encouraging and training, and preparing them for His holy service. And He ever comes again, seeking fruit, seeking intercessors. In His Word He has spoken of the "widows indeed, who trust in G.o.d, and continue in supplication night and day." He looks if the Church is training the great army of aged men and women, whose time of outward work is past, but who can strengthen the army of the "elect, who cry to Him day and night." He looks to the great host of the Christian Endeavour, the three or four million of young lives that have given themselves away in the solemn pledge, "I promise the Lord Jesus Christ that I will strive to do whatever He would like to have me do," and wonders how many are being trained to pa.s.s from the brightness of the weekly prayer-meeting and its confession of loyalty, to swell the secret intercession that is to save souls. He looks to the thousands of young men and young women in training for the work of ministry and mission, and gazes longingly to see if the Church is teaching them that intercession, power with G.o.d, must be their first care, and in seeking to train and help them to it. He looks to see whether ministers and missionaries are understanding their opportunity, and labouring to train the believers of their congregation into those who can "help together" by their prayer, and can "strive with them in their prayers." As Christ seeks the lost sheep until He find it, G.o.ds seeks intercessors. (Note F.)

_G.o.d seeks intercessors._--He will not, He cannot, take the work out of the hands of His Church. And so He comes, calling and pleading in many ways. Now by a man whom He raises up to live a life of faith in His service, and to prove how actually and abundantly He answers prayer.

Then by the story of a church which makes prayer for souls its starting-point, and bears testimony to G.o.d's faithfulness. Sometimes in a mission which proves how special prayer can meet special need, and bring down the power of the Spirit. And sometimes again by a season of revival coming in answer to united urgent supplication. In these and many other ways G.o.d is showing us what intercession can do, and beseeching us to waken up and train His great host to be, every one, a people of intercessors.

_G.o.d seeks intercessors._--He sends His servants out to call them. Let ministers make this a part of their duty. Let them make their church a training school of intercession. Give the people definite objects for prayer. Encourage them to take a definite time to it, if it were only ten minutes every day. Help them to understand the boldness they may use with G.o.d. Teach them to expect and look out for answers. Show them what it is first to pray and get an answer in secret, and then carry the answer and impart the blessing. Tell everyone who is master of his own time that he is as the angels, free to tarry before the throne and then go out and minister to the heirs of salvation. Sound out the blessed tidings that this honour is for all G.o.d's people. There is no difference. That servant girl, this day labourer, that bedridden invalid, this daughter in her mother's home, these men and young men in business--all are called, all, all are needed. G.o.d seeks intercessors.

_G.o.d seeks intercessors._--As ministers take up the work of finding and training them it will urge themselves to pray more. Christ gave Paul to be a pattern of His grace before He made him a preacher of it. It has been well said, "The first duty of a clergyman is humbly to beg of G.o.d that all he would have done in his people may be first truly and fully done in himself." The effort to bring this message of G.o.d may cause much heart-searching and humiliation. All the better. The best practice in doing a thing is helping others to do it. O ye servants of Christ, set as watchmen to cry to G.o.d day and night, let us awake to our holy calling. Let us believe in the power of intercession. Let us practise it. Let us seek on behalf of our people to get from G.o.d Himself the Spirit and the Life we preach. With our spirit and life given up to G.o.d in intercession, the Spirit and Life that G.o.d gives them through us cannot fail to be the Life of Intercession too.

A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER

CHAPTER XV

The Coming Revival

"Wilt Thou not revive us again: that Thy people may rejoice in Thee?"--PS. lx.x.xv. 6.

"O Lord, revive Thy work in the midst of the years."--HAB. iii. 2.

"Though I walk in the midst of trouble, Thou wilt revive me: Thy right hand shall save me."--PS. cx.x.xviii. 7.

"I dwell with him that is of a humble and contrite heart, to revive the heart of the contrite ones."--ISA. lvii. 15.

"Come, and let us return to the Lord: for He hath torn, and He will heal us. He will revive us."--HOS. vi. 1, 2.

_The Coming Revival_--one frequently hears the word. There are teachers not a few who see the tokens of its approach, and confidently herald its speedy appearance. In the increase of mission interest, in the tidings of revivals in places where all were dead or cold, in the hosts of our young gathered into Students' and other a.s.sociations or Christian Endeavour Societies, in doors everywhere opened in the Christian and the heathen world, in victories already secured in the fields white unto the harvest, wherever believing, hopeful workers enter, they find the a.s.surance of a time of power and blessing such as we have not known. The Church is about to enter on a new era of increasing spirituality and larger extension.

There are others who, while admitting the truth of some of these facts, yet fear that the conclusions drawn from them are one-sided and premature. They see the interest in missions increased, but point out to how small a circle it is confined, and how utterly out of proportion it is to what it ought to be. To the great majority of Church members, to the greater part of the Church, it is as yet anything but a life question. They remind us of the power of worldliness and formality, of the increase of the money-making and pleasure-loving spirit among professing Christians, to the lack of spirituality in so many, many of our churches, and the continuing and apparently increasing estrangement of mult.i.tudes from G.o.d's Day and Word, as proof that the great revival has certainly not begun, and is hardly thought of by the most. They say that they do not see the deep humiliation, the intense desire, the fervent prayer which appear as the forerunners of every true revival.

There are right-hand and left-hand errors which are equally dangerous.

We must seek as much to be kept from the superficial Optimism, which never is able to gauge the extent of the evil, as from the hopeless Pessimism which can neither praise G.o.d for what He has done, nor trust Him for what He is ready to do. The former will lose itself in a happy self-gratulation, as it rejoices in its zeal and diligence and apparent success, and never see the need of confession and great striving in prayer, ere we are prepared to meet and conquer the hosts of darkness.

The latter virtually gives over the world to Satan, and almost prays and rejoices to see things get worse, to hasten the coming of Him who is to put all right. May G.o.d keep us from either error, and fulfil the promise, "Thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left." Let us listen to the lessons suggested by the pa.s.sages we have quoted; they may help us to pray the prayer aright: "Revive Thy work, O Lord!"

1. "_Revive Thy work, O Lord!_"--Read again the pa.s.sages of Scripture, and see how they all contain the one thought: Revival is G.o.d's work; He alone can give it; it must come from above. We are frequently in danger of looking to what G.o.d has done and is doing, and to count on that as the pledge that He will at once do more. And all the time it may be true that He is blessing us up to the measure of our faith or self-sacrifice, and cannot give larger measure, until there has been a new discovery and confession of what is hindering Him. Or we may be looking to all the signs of life and good around us, and congratulating ourselves on all the organisations and agencies that are being created, while the need of G.o.d's mighty and direct interposition is not rightly felt, and the entire dependence upon Him not cultivated. Regeneration, the giving of Divine life, we all acknowledge to be G.o.d's act, a miracle of His power.

The restoring or reviving of the Divine life, in a soul or a Church, is as much a supernatural work. To have the spiritual discernment that can understand the signs of the heavens, and prognosticate the coming revival, we need to enter deep into G.o.d's mind and will as to its conditions, and the preparedness of those who pray for it or are to be used to bring it about. "Surely the Lord G.o.d will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto his servants the prophets." It is G.o.d who is to give the revival; it is G.o.d who reveals His secret; it is the spirit of absolute dependence upon G.o.d, giving Him the honour and the glory, that will prepare for it.

2. "_Revive Thy work, O Lord!_"--A second lesson suggested is, that the revival G.o.d is to give will be given in answer to prayer. It must be asked and received direct from G.o.d Himself. Those who know anything of the history of revivals will remember how often this has been proved--both larger and more local revivals have been distinctly traced to special prayer. In our own day there are numbers of congregations and missions where special or permanent revivals are--all glory be to G.o.d--connected with systematic, believing prayer. The coming revival will be no exception. An extraordinary spirit of prayer, urging believers to much secret and united prayer, pressing them to "labour fervently" in their supplications, will be one of the surest signs of approaching showers and floods of blessing.

Let all who are burdened with the lack of spirituality, with the low state of the life of G.o.d in believers, listen to the call that comes to all. If there is to be revival,--a mighty, Divine revival,--it will need, on our part, corresponding whole-heartedness in prayer and faith.

Let not one believer think himself too weak to help, or imagine that he will not be missed. If he first begin, the gift that is in him may be so stirred that, for his circle or neighbourhood, he shall be G.o.d's chosen intercessor. Let us think of the need of souls, of all the sins and failings among G.o.d's people, of the little power there is in so much of the preaching, and begin to cry every day, "Wilt Thou not revive us again, that Thy people may rejoice in Thee?" And let us have the truth graven deep in our hearts: every revival comes, as Pentecost came, as the fruit of united, continued prayer. The coming revival must begin with a great prayer revival. It is in the closet, with the door shut, that the sound of abundance of rain will be first heard. An increase of secret prayer with ministers and members, will be the sure harbinger of blessing.

3. "_Revive Thy work, O Lord!_"--A third lesson our texts teach is that it is to the humble and contrite that the revival is promised. We want the revival to come upon the proud and the self-satisfied, to break them down and save them. G.o.d will give this, but only on the condition that those who see and feel the sin of others take their burden of confession and bear it, and that all who pray for and claim in faith G.o.d's reviving power for His Church, shall humble themselves with the confession of its sins. The need of revival always points to previous decline; and decline was always caused by sin. Humiliation and contrition have ever been the conditions of revival. In all intercession confession of man's sin and G.o.d's righteous judgment is ever an essential element.