YES, I AM - PART THREE

THAT SOUL-SPIRIT UNDERSTANDING

All of us in Union Life know that a special key is given us for our daily stabilizing by the writer to the Hebrews. He declares that this life has rest, not strain as its basis (4:1-11). It is the rest God has had since He rested on the seventh day after completing the creation. It is also that of Israel entering into the land of Canaan. But he goes on to say that the true rest is what we have in Christ, our Joshua. That rest is by no means a folding of the hands, but a fully active life that is a thrill to live because it has adequacy at its center, not inadequacy. Living life without what it takes to live it causes strain; living life with what it takes to live it produces rest. The resting life he describes this way: "He that is entered into His rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from His" (4:10). Living by my own works was when I was the worker. The rest-life will have even more works, for He is the worker. But that type of working is resting. The key to entering into God’s rest and continuing in it is by a revelation nowhere else so clearly stated in the Bible. It is in knowing the difference between soul and spirit (4:12).

We already have seen that the human spirit is the basic self. Soul and body are the means by which we express ourself and live a fully active life. So as long as we confuse what we are in our inner spirit-self with the ways in which we express ourself by our outer soul and body, we are in trouble.

The writer to the Hebrews likens the difference between soul and spirit to the joints and marrow in our physical bodies. The marrow is what contains the inner life of the bones - a picture of spirit. The joints are the way by which that inner life goes into action in hands and feet, etc. - analogous to soul. And he says we have spirit and soul so mixed up that it takes a revelation for us to see the difference. "For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit" (4:12).

In simple terms, in our spirits we love. By our soul emotions and body action we express our love. In the spirit we know. By the soul we express our knowledge by our reasoning faculty. (Peter shows the relationship between those two when he says we should be ready to give "a reason for the hope that is in us.") So soul and body are the precious and only means by which we - our spirit, and God’s Spirit by us - can express ourselves.

The quality of Spirit-spirit union is stillness, for the universal is always still. "Be still and know that I am God." God spoke to Elijah in a "still, small voice." Spirit can be compared to the sea, which, with its mighty currents and streams, is a "still" source of power; the soul is like the rampaging waves which dash about as the expression of that power. The power is in the sea, and not in the waves.

So our danger and problem - till we are awakened to it - is in mistaking the surges of the waves (soul emotions) for the unmoved and calm center (spirit). We get into trouble when we mistake the variable emotions of the soul for our still spirit-center. The waves are feelings such as anger, hurts, jealousies, fears, lusts; or alternatively, soul feelings of depression, deadness, uselessness, meaninglessness, coldness, emptiness, inability to believe - an endless list. The same is true of our soul in its reasoning activities: All kinds of disturbing or evil thoughts can pour into us, with all the doubts and questionings they bring, and influence our mental attitudes. Notice that this verse of Scripture also compares soul and spirit to "the thoughts and intents of the heart": intents, our spirit - fixed purpose; thoughts, our soul - varied opinions about the intents.

That is also why John in his First Epistle (3:19-21) makes a differentiation between our hearts and God. He says, "If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things." "Heart," representing feelings, is soul - and we can get plenty of condemnation in our feelings. But God, who knows all and doesn’t condemn, speaks His assuring word into our spirits.

Even so, it is easy, outwardly, to be strongly drawn by some desire of the heart and seem to be helpless against it. But in my spirit-center, where God is, I know my real desire is His will, and He keeps His firm hold on me. A friend recently wrote regarding a strong desire for a certain thing: "....but in this I felt myself kept. This keeping made me angry at times, because I wanted to have my own way and I knew I could not. I knew it could never be because that wasn’t what the real me wanted." Outward and inward desire: the workings of soul and spirit.

A person inquires of me, "What do I do when I say I am ‘Christ as me’ and yet there is someone I hate?" I laugh and reply, "You are kidding yourself. You don’t hate; you can’t hate. You can only feel you do on your soul/emotional level and mistake that for hate. Hate is only love reversed - and you are love, which is He in you, and you love by the set purpose of the will; and you know that if the real need arose you would give yourself for the one you ‘hate.’ While soul love is emotion, spirit love is will - and we are fixed in that kind of love. So we may feel more like hell and yet be in heaven.

So we see ourselves in our spirit-center, where we and He are one in spirit, and all things are ours in Him. Soul and body are our wonderful means of endless spirit expression. And having grasped, by the revelation of the Word, the distinction between soul and spirit, I do not fear my soul and body... and still less do I foolishly wish I were without their disturbing reactions. No, I thankfully see myself as a whole person, God’s whole person. He has equipped me with these fascinating means for living out my full life as a whole self with Himself, in all my life’s activities. Because they are wholly His, I will put no limits on the liberated use of my soul and body. At the same time, I totally enjoy the fact that He has me safely in hand, even with the surges of the negatives temporarily flooding in. Spirit wins its battles over soul and body diversions, being "kept by the power of God"; and we, "having all sufficiency in all things, abound unto every good work."

ON, NOW, TO THE THIRD LEVEL

We have seen with unmistakable clarity that there are stages in our becoming settled about who we are by grace, and stages through which we must pass; or we can call them grades from which we must be graduated. We have already looked into two of these… (whatever name we decide to call them): justification and unification - Christ for us and Christ in us.

But the Bible makes it plain that there are three grades, not two - and each equally necessary. We have spent much time on the first two, but it is less recognized that there is a third to be consciously entered into.

In calling them "grades" or "levels of being" there is always a danger that we may slip back into the old snare of self-effort and self-development and think of them as something we have to attain to. "Growth," also, is a common concept we use to denote what we think of as spiritual progress. How often I hear it said, "Well, it has taken you time and will take me time to get there." So we need a constant reminder that spiritual growth, or the attaining of a new "grade," is not some form of painfully acquired self-enlargement; rather it is the same old story, nothing but a growth in recognition of what Christ, our last Adam, has attained for us… which is already ours. That is why growth is spoken by Peter in his Second Epistle with these words: "Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." Growth, therefore, is merely the next stage of recognition of who we already are in Him; and that recognition, as we now know, is always and only by the nonworks method of faith, and the Spirit is the one who establishes us.

So with this safeguard, we move on to this third level. The simplest description of the three levels (because he uses a down-to-earth analogy) is John’s, when he writes to his readers as "little children," "young men," and "fathers" (1 John 2:12-14). He makes brief comments about what he means, spiritually speaking, by these three stages. A little child is totally dependent externally on his parents and knows nothing but what they outwardly are to him. So a little child in grace knows simply that he was a sinner, that he is forgiven through Christ, and thus, now, God is his heavenly Father. A young man has moved from outer dependence on his parents to finding his own inner resources for life - progress from outer to inner. "I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one… because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you." This is a plain-spoken description of our being established in the "on top" life which we have spent so long in examining in every detail, and into which we have now moved by the second crisis. We now know we are strong - and we know why. Therefore we are no longer tossed about in those old struggles with devil and flesh. We know inwardly, not just outwardly, what first came to us as outer, written word... but which now abides in us, fused into our inner consciousness by the Spirit. What a total description of an established, achieved life... not of trying, hoping, kind of slipping in and out of it, but being!

"I have written unto you, fathers," John states cryptically, "because ye have known Him that is from the beginning." That brings us back to the realization that "knowing" in Scripture usually refers not to mere mental understanding, but implies being mixed with the thing we know. That is why the Bible uses the word for sexual intercourse: "Adam knew Eve his wife." Spiritually, it is inner know-how; and what you know, that you are. "This is eternal life," said Jesus in His great prayer to His Father, "that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." And we who are born of His Spirit know that knowing is the inner union. So when John says that we "fathers" know Him that is from the beginning, he means that, as fathers, we are in inner union with that Eternal One - not in His beginning, but as the One who now, as from the beginning, is in the process of completing what He has begun; and we are involved with Him in that completing process. Amazing grace! The point, then, is that we now are no longer dependent children, but cooperating sons: Father and Sons, Inc.!

What John has given us on its three levels in such understandable terms is seen all through Scripture in those same three forms. We are united with Christ in His crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension - and Paul wrote letters which concentrate on each of these: Galatians on our identification with Him in His death; Colossians on our being risen with Him; Ephesians on our ascended life, seated with Him in the heavenlies, and its outcome.

Paul’s Roman letter we all recognize as his fully developed, detailed, and authoritative statement of what he calls "my gospel." In this letter the three states are plain enough: chapters 3 to 5 - justification (little children); 6 to 8 - unification (young men); 9 to 15 - cooperation, co-saviorhood (fathers).

In Hebrews there are the three again. The writer plainly likens Jesus to Moses because, by the new birth, He saves us out of our Egypt, the world; and to Joshua, because He takes us into the land of milk and honey, the promised rest, after we have emerged from the childhood wilderness. Then he stops short very significantly, and says there is a third likeness: to Melchisedec, king of Salem, priest of the most high God. In this parallel Jesus is our great High Priest. Now whenever there is a high priest, there must be other priests serving along with him. But when speaking here of the order of Melchisedec, the writer does not name anyone as co-priests, because those Hebrew believers had a spiritual blockage en route (5:12-6:2), showed negative reactions to their sufferings (10:32-39), and were tied in knots of self-pity (12:5-13). He does, however, describe the co-priesthood of the third level in his famous list in Hebrews chapter 11 of the giants of faith, who were the intercessor priests of their respective generations. And we are to be such for our God today, "a royal priesthood" (1 Pet. 2:9).

PAUL MOVING INTO THE THIRD LEVEL

The most revealing of all analyses of these three grades of experience is by Paul himself in his Philippian letter. In 3:3-14 he pours out to us some of the Lord’s dealings with him. He starts by mentioning the many qualifications he had "in the flesh," but plainly states that he no longer has confidence in such things. We can sense his thankfulness for his awareness of the false pride he had in his own righteousness, and his disgust as he sees it as the rotten rags of Satanic self-love. He declares: "What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ" (vs. 7). Here he is alluding to his "Damascus road" conversion experience. There the truth had first pierced his honest heart like an ox goad. There the contrast between his own hate and rage and the glory and rapture on the face of Stephen, the battered but forgiving martyr, had been clearly revealed. There, on the Damascus road, in a blinding flash Paul had seen that same supernatural love in the face of the ascended Jesus, who spoke to him not in wrath or retaliation but in loving appeal: "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? Don’t you know I love you?" There he had exchanged the rags of his self-loving self for the eternal gain of Christ’s own garment of self-giving self.

But then Paul made a startling and costly discovery: The ascended Jesus, now a marvelous Savior to him, was much more to him. Christ made it plain that He had come to take over Paul’s whole life and express His own love-selfhood through Paul. "Yea doubtless," continues Paul (vs. 8), "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord…" This was something altogether more revolutionary and advanced than merely Jesus as his Savior and Justifier, marvelous though that was. Now this One is to manage his whole life - take him over - so that Paul becomes an embodiment of Jesus Christ formed in him as well as revealed to him. And this Paul "jumped into"! Everything earthly must go to the winds for that, whatever the cost. There was pain in it: "…for whom I have suffered the loss of all things." There had been the painful cutting-off from all his ambitions as a leading young Jew of his day, with a great future among his own people. This was the paying of the "disciple price," where we hate father, mother, wife, children, houses, lands, physical well-being, and in fact, "all that we have," to be a disciple. Paul paid that, and at that time it was a sacrifice. And this conditioned Paul for his great Galatians 2:20 revelation, which was his unique contribution to the body of Christ through all the coming centuries. This was Paul as a "young man" (1 John 2:13), in the second stage where he now found himself - which meant finding Christ as the exchanged self in him.

Now comes the most revolutionary change of attitude. He suddenly says that the things it "cost" him to surrender would now be a stench in his nostrils to retain! What was once precious is now disgusting to him. What he had called "suffering the loss of all things" he now says he counts as "stinking dung"! "I count them but dung, that I may win Christ…" A total reversal. And why? Because he was no longer concerned with getting his own inner need settled. This was now completed in Christ - not only Christ for him, but now Christ in him, as him. Now he’s free to be one with whom Christ would delight to share His inner self and His purposes. A great ambition had seized Paul - to "win Christ." "Winning Christ" means not depending on Christ for my own convenience any longer but being privileged, rather, to reach a place where He can share with me as His companion, bosom friend, and intimate cooperator what He came down on earth to do. And how supreme this ambition is! But it is not attained through any methods of the flesh, but only through "the faith of Christ." For Paul continues: "... and be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith" (vs. 9).

Then Paul explains what these highest ways "in Him" are: "That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death…" To thus "know Him" means an inner understanding of His ways as the Savior: living by the power of His resurrection, as a heavenly man in every earthly condition or daily demand, as Jesus did; fellowshipping with Him also in His sufferings, not now the joys of union but in Jesus’ costly identification with the world in its needs, as well as meeting its antagonism. Finally, it means pouring out one’s life, not in some quiet retirement, but in God’s appointed way - spiritually or physically dying that others may live. This Paul now embraced and lived out in his co-saviorhood, right to its last limit and into its final glory. As he wrote, "…if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection from among the dead" (literal Greek). In this he did not refer, of course, to his share in the bodily resurrection (which is a gift of God to all believers) but to a death like that of Jesus which brings resurrection to others - that "bringing many sons to glory" for which the Captain of our salvation tasted death (Heb. 2:10).

To gain this - that by his dying many should live - Paul, now in his old age, pressed toward the mark in that high calling. As he wrote, "Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect; but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus." He lived to take hold of that for which Christ had taken hold of him. People often mistakenly interpret this saying of Paul’s as if he wasn’t perfect in the sense of sanctification, not yet in the full victory life, and had yet to attain that one day. Not so. Paul had long passed through that second, "young man" stage of handing his whole life over to the Lordship and indwelling of Christ. That was settled forever, as with us who now know our second stage. But here he was in his co-saviorhood with Jesus... who Himself had also said that He had "a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" As Jesus cried out triumphantly on the cross, "It is finished," Paul also in his final letter to son Timothy, when facing his execution, wrote, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course" - the glorious course of a gained intercession. Paul the father, Paul the co-priest, Paul carrying right through the purpose for which he was seated in the heavenlies in Christ... yes, Paul the corn of wheat sown in the ground and dying, and bringing forth much fruit.

Now we see what this third level means in our own experience, and that it is to be taken seriously as a third crisis of faith and experience. As seriously as the first and second crises. The key scripture summoning us from the second level, to move into the third, is Paul’s Romans 12:1: "I beseech you therefore, brethren,… that ye present your bodies [as] a living sacrifice." (For intercession involves the body, as we shall see later.)

The second stage had been thoroughly established with its final triumphant shout of "no separation" - no separation possible from our eternal union. Paul’s "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?... I am persuaded that [nothing] can separate us…" (Rom. 8:35-39). But now a shock! There is a new and glorious reversal from "no separation" to a voluntary separation from God if necessary - even going to hell that our brother humans may be saved. For Paul immediately thereafter writes about his "great heaviness" for his own people: "I could wish myself accursed [i.e., separated] from Christ for my brethren." This was Paul the intercessor, and it is as such that he calls on us all - all who are redeemed - to present our bodies now as living sacrifices on the altar of self giving for others. While death works in us, life will come to them. And from this point on in his Roman letter, nothing is spoken about except how the light and life of Christ reaches out by us to the world, and how we thankfully use the various gifts with which the Spirit has equipped us - about eighteen in all.

What this means is a total move over, by the compulsion of the Spirit, to a life of unceasing love-activities in spirit and body - from the discipleship to the apostleship level, from the apprenticeship to the proficiency level, from the school of faith to the life of faith… yet all (as ever) on the "can’t help it" level, with all the zest of living, the enthusiasm, the gaiety-at-heart of a permanent seriousness, where "the zeal of God’s house" has eaten us up.

So this is as much a total entry into a fully meaningful relationship with Christ on this third level as was the entry into the "replaced life." It is entering into the final and total meaning of our portion of suffering in this life. From the suffering in our sin condition, to the suffering in our striving condition, to the suffering in our self-giving condition. It is revolutionary - and to those not settled and at home with the Trinity in our union relationship, it will again appear blasphemous - because we are really now saying that we are co-gods with God, just as the man Jesus said this to the Pharisees opposing Him (John 10:34-35).

So we see how we have now been permitted to share in the true purpose of sonship: no longer just the privilege of fallen sinners being sons and brothers with the Son, but joining with the Father in His eternal love-purposes for the "final reconciliation of all things," when He’ll be known as "God all in all." But if that is glorious for us, it is also most serious; for it means that as sons in this present moment of history, we are co-saviors, co-intercessors, in completing the number of His elect, co-laborers with Him in the harvesting. That also means co-sufferers with Him in "filling up that which is behind [i.e., still lacking] of the afflictions of Christ... for His body’s sake" (Col. 1:24). We’re on the saving level with Him, and boldly accepting ourselves as such, carrying out the details of His plans, pressing toward the mark, paying the price, and "knowing that our labor is not in vain in the Lord."

FROM DISCIPLES TO APOSTLES

But what does this actually mean to us individually? It means that we recognize that we never again have any other meaning to our lives except His loving others by us. For as He is the God of love and thus the total self-giver for His universe, so are we. We no longer regard our lives from the aspect of our own convenience, or pleasant or unpleasant situations or relationships, not even our physical well-being. This is the outcome of what was settled within us on our discipleship (learning) level. Jesus had to speak of that in drastic terms to awaken us from any comfortable tendencies to drift along with the tide. He had to say it shockingly: "If any man... hate not his father, mother, wife, children, brethren, sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple" (Luke 14:26). Hold hard! What can that mean? How could Jesus say that? He said it like that to shock us into thinking it through. It seems so wrong, and even ridiculous, that we are forced to ask, What did He mean? It can’t mean that! But when we do think it through, we see that all that ever motivated us in our unsaved days was self-love. Our love of others was really only to satisfy our self-love. My father, my mother, my wife, my children. The "my" was the real thing to us, not the "them." The me, my, mine is all I had. And it is "me" - not the loved ones - that I hate when I come to Christ. Then when I have come, and He to me, the miracle is that the me, my, mine is changed to you and yours. I am now a you-lover, not a me-lover. And now I have the kinsmen all back - to love them, rather than to be loved by them.

But wait a minute - something has happened! Though we do have them back to love and serve them, an inner cutoff has taken place in which we really love only One and are joined to One, and our loves for others are secondary expressions of our one love. It is no longer God first and others second. No, it is God only, and all others we love as forms of Him. There is a detaching here which will certainly bring opposition, and maybe persecution, from some loved ones who feel - and rightly so - that they are replaced in the center of our hearts by our Eternal Lover. But during our disciple days, let’s be careful. Again, it is not by works: it’s not that we "try" to cut ourselves off from anything or anybody. No! He does the cutting off, and all He does is always beautiful; and, of course, it does not result in less concern for our loved ones but in more total concern for them to become the total people they really will be in Christ once they come to know Him, though meanwhile our attitude may appear to them as hate or neglect. Neither do we cut ourselves off from the normal way in which God provides our material security, by our jobs or investments. But in His own way He does an inner cutting off, by which we know Him as our true source of supply. Even if our employment or financial securities are taken from us, we only praise Him because He is giving us our chance of proving His faithfulness according to His Matthew 6:31-33 word about taking no anxious thought about food or clothing, but rather, "seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." Many of us have proved that through the years. But again, remember, it is He who lovingly loosens us from all earthly ties... until by the Spirit we’ve taken that "flight from the alone to the Alone." He will certainly do it, because He must have us for our eternal destiny as sons expressing the Father in His Father-nature of love, and in which alone you and I can find our heart and life’s delight. But He always has His own clever ways, so that what we might fear turns out to be a joy and blessing. For all is "for His good pleasure," and what He enjoys He will see to it that we also enjoy.

You should read the life of Rees Howells, the Welsh intercessor, to see a perfect example of how God turns a disciple into an apostle. He got Rees Howells point by point, to the place where the Holy Ghost had no rival in his life, until He had him finally fitted-out for his great life’s ministry of intercession.

So we see that there must be a serious weighing-up of our position on the third level, just as there has been on the first and second. We "count the cost," as Jesus said. We need to face the fact that it means that we don’t assess life any more on the grounds of What do I get out of it? What happens to me? or Will I achieve what I’m meant to be? And when things "happen" to us in life, we no longer may say "Why this?", as if implying we have been hardly done by. No! We see it all in terms of His fulfilling some love and saving purpose for others through it, even though at the moment we cannot see that in it.

While that is the negative side of this third-level life, the positive is tremendous - so tremendous that is appears fantastic to our human sight. The positive is what Jesus taught about the Spirit’s filling. It is not simply that we thirsting ones may fully drink of Him and remain filled, but Jesus says, "Stretch your believing further. The Holy Spirit didn’t come merely to fill you; but from your fullness others will be filled." In other words, He is in you now as rivers of living water flowing out from you. This is Jesus’ fantastic statement in John 7:38: "He that believeth on Me… Out of his inmost center shall flow rivers of living water." John, in verse 39, points out that because Jesus spoke this before the Spirit was poured out on all believers at Pentecost, therefore the "shall" has been fulfilled and now is!

But out of us will never flow these rivers if we forget our union reality and look at ourselves in our humanity. It then becomes a joke. "Rivers - through me?" But once again, there is only the one way - faith. "He that believeth on Me." So we are right back where we started. Of course, again that "takes the heat" off us. "Jesus can save me, a sinner?" Yes! Just transfer your believing to Him and you are saved. "He can deliver me from the efforts of my striving self?" Yes! Just reckon yourself as dead to sin and risen in Him, and now He replaces that spirit of error in you. "There can be rivers of living waters flowing through me?" Yes! Drop your negative believing in your weak little self, stuck away in your small, local situation… and look to Him who said that rivers are flowing through those who are believing.

I took my first step into that third level (of John 7:38) as a young man, when starting out on my call to the Congo. I was so hesitant, and it seemed so absurd that rivers of the Spirit could flow out of me, that, though I did believe, I was a bit like the man who said to Jesus, "Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief." So I said, "Lord, I believe this word, at least for a muddy trickle to flow out!" But I did believe! And He has surely done more than I asked or thought! So BELIEVE - which is not one whit different from the believing in John 3:16 for salvation and in Galatians 2:20 for oneness. Stand there, laughing, maybe - as I did - at the absurdity of its ever being fulfilled. But remember: faith is substance!

I hope that I have made it plain that the full entry by faith into this apostleship level is definitely a crisis experience involving a fixed inner knowing, as with the other two. Even so, it is true that when we came to Christ we began to be other-lovers and intercessors and witnesses, from our new birth onward. We might say that was the "muddy trickle" stage!

But we are now, again, speaking of something total, from which we don’t look back, which becomes as fixed in us as did the other two. We are now fathers, apostles, bondslaves, co-laborers, co-saviors, intercessors - and the Spirit seals it to us. It requires of us that kind of serious "counting the cost" that Jesus spoke of in Luke 14:28. It is the taking up of our cross voluntarily (and for keeps), just as there was our coming to the cross, and then the taking of our place on the cross. This is now the cross-bearing for others.

I thank God that it was serious for Pauline and me. In our engagement days He was working in my heart in that direction, and He had to work on hers to seal it to us both. She got frightened when, perhaps unwisely put, I told her on one occasion, after I had been stirred by reading Charles Finney’s Revival of Religion, that I had a battle and was alarmed about whether I loved her more than Jesus. So she gave me back the ring, and that really hit me, because what had seemed so clearly of God in our six-month engagement seemed to be completely broken in pieces. But the Lord kept me faithful to my Congo calling, even though in those days we were really only a "family mission" with half a dozen of us living in the Ituri Forest... and I had to face it, now our engagement was broken, that a friend of mine had his eyes on Pauline and I might find myself in the Congo forest living side by side in the next hut to Pauline and her husband! Then an uncle of mine suggested that I drop going to the Congo and take an opening he offered as a missionary in India. It was a temptation, but I knew God’s voice well enough to know that He had called me to the Congo, so I could not turn back. When this news got back to her, she realized that we did love each other and sent an invitation to me to return. I say she proposed to me this time! So we went - and thank God we went! But the main point is that what had bothered her was now settled for both of us. Apparently she had at first said to herself, "If I marry that man, God will be first, God’s work will be second, and I’ll be third; and I’ll be third in no man’s life!" But she still is, after sixty years, and I am third in hers. That settled our "apostleship" calling, and it was so serious a settlement that by God’s grace we have never gone back on it, and have often renewed it together.

So by one means or another, the Lord will get us fixed as firmly into this third level as He has in the second. If you see this as God’s highest and ultimate calling to you, then MOVE IN BY BELIEVING - as you did when you first reckoned on the union, before the realization came. So believe and He will confirm.

There is one other precious word which fits in with John 7:38. It is Galatians 2:8, where Paul says the Lord is "mighty in me toward the Gentiles." He is in you and me, but now He is mighty, not for our interests, but with a power which will establish Him in others. Mighty - toward the Gentiles. TAKE IT!

NOT TWO POWERS - ONLY ONE

In what ways does the Spirit flow out of us as rivers? Have we any clear pointers? Yes, there are two. We shall see that He flows out of us as Spirit through spirit (Chapters 34-43) and Spirit through body (Chapters 44-51), and we shall see how He does this.

Let us look into the most basic first: the way He flows out through our spirit. That way, of course, is the way of faith, for the Spirit way is the faith way. We shall be foolish if we think we already know plenty about that way. We have hardly begun! We shall soon find, as I have, that there is plenty more to learn and apply through the whole of life.

The faith way is the one and only way by which the Spirit has flowed into us, and it is the one and only way by which He flows out. As I near the end of my days on earth, I have no more fascinating and fruitful occupation than living the life of faith in action. I join not only with those men of Hebrews 11 in their exploits of faith, but also with great men of faith of my earlier years, such as George Muller and Hudson Taylor, from whom I have eagerly picked up invaluable lessons of faith. But crowning all, for me, have been my years of intimacy with that man of faith and intercession, Rees Howells.

It was not now the faith of my own relationship to God in new birth or union that was interesting me. It was faith applied, and applied effectively, to every incident of my daily life; and beyond that, to the lives and needs of all to whom I was and am sent, or who come to me. This required of me, first, a new expansion to my seeing of things. I had learned that before I can believe, I must see what I am to believe. First, see - then believe - single sight, then simple faith. But I had double sight, and that was my confusion. I saw two powers, good and evil - with plenty of evil. How could I bring the evil within reach of effectively believing God is dealing with it?

So my first step of enlarged understanding was to discover the single eye - to step from seeing God personal to God universal. It cost me a year to get this finally and completely settled. Thank God, He put me through that painful period. It has altered all my many years - this seeing and knowing how to believe with no weak spots in any situation - and made me able to help others to do the same. As I say, the change didn’t depend on the believing, but on the knowing what I could believe. There had to be an expansion of my inner understanding before there could be an expansion of believing.

I first had to have a shock - and this was God’s way of shocking me: In the course of my reading, I ran across William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience. As I read, it seemed to me that he was saying that Paul’s conversion was just an inner self-adjustment, not an outward meeting with God on the road to Damascus. I may have misread him, but God meant me to read it like that, for my benefit: a negative to fit me for a total positive! Its effect on me - crazy though it may seem to you of more settled faith - was suddenly to make me wonder whether, after all, there is a human self-sufficiency with no need of God - and perhaps even no God! In other words, I did not have an all-encompassing faith which answered all possible doubts and questionings. But I needed a God with no possibility of a hole in Him.

That sent me on a desperate search. I must have a "total God" or nothing. Indeed, I went so far as to say to God, if there was a God, that I’d had a twenty-year love affair with Him... He was all in all to me… so if He really was phony and nonexistent, I would choose to be phony also, and in my love would cling to Him and be a phony along with Him. Love weathered the storm when the "faith boat" was being rocked. I went through a year’s search with much agony of spirit - believing, yet not believing. I need not go into details, except to say that, helped somewhat by the great mystics in their pursuit of and finding union with God, I too finally had a great inner "recognition" that He is all. That is why I am so strong on that now His being "all" has meant for me, ever since, that whatsoever there is in the universe, of whatever kind - whether good or evil, negative or positive, including Satan and all his works - God is the source of all, for He is the True All, the Alpha and the Omega. (I am not saying at this moment how that can include evil as well as good, but will explain that shortly.) But it became burned in me like a brand that I am one with Him in whom the universe is one. It is like a permanent inner light in me, for He is light... and we are light. Some talk of a "cosmic consciousness," and this became that to me, and I am branded.

FROM NEGATIVE TO POSITIVE BELIEVING

Universal seeing and knowing, with no further double vision - that is what matters. That is the only key to a believing with no kinks in it. While we see Good and Evil as two powers - which was my trouble - we will naturally have a seesaw believing.

The first principle of faith in action, then, is that inner seeing must come before proper believing. Now in this world full of evil and problems, we will always, as humans, start by "seeing things as they are" - as they appear to be - and that means seeing and believing in something that disturbs us, which we call evil, and so it may be. This is "negative" believing... and what we are inwardly seeing, and therefore believing, is what we outwardly transmit to others. We can’t help it in our looks, words and deeds, for all we share with others is ourselves; and if we see things as evil we transmit negative believing to others - we transmit darkness, not light; death, not life.

Is there an alternative? Yes, there is - and that was what settled into me, once I saw God as all: that there cannot be two powers, for He is one, absolute and supreme. But how, then, can I include the workings of an evil power, of which the world and people are so full, as an expression of the one power which is God, who is love?

For that I had to find my solution, and of course I turned to the Bible. There I found the plainest statements, which did link God with evil. The prophet Isaiah said plainly (45:6-7), "I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil [Hebrew ra - adversity, calamity]; I, the Lord, do all these things." That statement is total enough. But there are plenty more. To Moses, God said (Ex. 4:11), "Who hath made... the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the Lord?" When Jeremiah spoke of God’s coming judgment on rebellious Israel with the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, he said that God had called the heathen king who would destroy them "Nebuchadnezzar, My servant" (43:10)! The Assyrians God called "the rod of My anger" (Isa. 10:5). All the destructive plagues of insects that destroyed harvest after harvest in the days of Joel the prophet, "the palmerworm, the locust, the cankerworm, the caterpillar," God spoke of as "My great army which I sent among you" (See Joel 1:4 and 2:25). There are dozens of such sayings by the prophets.

We all know about Joseph, and he went even further. He left no room for us to say that God "permits" evil things to happen but does not direct them; for, even though he had suffered thirteen years by being sold as a slave by his brethren and then being thrown into prison because of the false accusation of Potiphar’s wife, still he told his brethren, "Ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good" (Gen. 50:20). Meant it! To "mean" is not to "permit." It is direct purpose and planning.

Peter, in a startling statement in his speech on the day of Pentecost, when referring to the greatest crime in history, told the crowds: "Jesus of Nazareth... Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain" (Acts 2:22-23). Determinate counsel - there’s no possible permissiveness there! And when the believers in those early days of persecution were praying together, they said in their prayer: "For of a truth, against Thy holy child, Jesus,... both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, for to do whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel determined before to be done" (Acts 4:27-28). What could be stronger? Jesus Himself, above all, when He stood before Pilate, and Pilate had said "Knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee?", answered, "Thou couldest have no power at all against Me except it were given thee from above"! From above? We would say, if we believed in two powers, "from beneath"!

But Jesus saw only one power. At the Last Supper, as Judas left the table to betray Him, Jesus merely said to His disciples, "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me." Nothing! Jesus did not see Satan as having any inward footing in Him. And He said the final word when the soldiers were come into the garden to arrest Him, and He told Peter, "Put up thy sword into the sheath; the cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?" And what was that cup? Satan’s taking Him to Calvary.

I had the answer to God "meaning evil" when I saw that a person is a person only because he is free. Therefore, when God created persons in His own image, they could be persons only by being free, as He is free. And as we have seen manifested in the history of our human family, that had to include our freedom to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree, which in turn had to include its tragic consequences, the sorrows that God in His faithful love told Adam and Eve would come to them. So in creating persons like Himself, who would be free to manage His universe, they must be free and responsible. He could do no other, or they would not have been persons. As freedom involves the necessity of making choices, He therefore created them with the possibility of choosing the opposite to Himself, the evil - and they did. In that sense, therefore, God created evil, because, as we have seen, there cannot be consciousness without opposites.

It does not mean that God is the doer of that evil. As Paul said, "God forbid!" (Rom. 9:14). And James said, "God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man" (1:13). God does not sin; nor is He responsible when we sin. He created freedom, and it is in freedom that there must be this possibility of the alternative choice, and thus in that sense alone He created evil. Satan himself was God’s created being, of the highest order. In his freedom he rebelled, and founded the kingdom of darkness of which he is the god. But he is still forever God’s Satan, and God deliberately used Satan, for instance, to bring Job to the final end of himself (as He uses him in all our lives!). And that is one of the great recorded evidences in the Bible that God is manipulating Satan, not Satan God (Job 1:8 and 2:3). Stretch this out, and (without excusing Satan for his evil designs) we find in all human history we can boldly call Satan "God’s convenient agent." We have already sought to make plain that if Satan had not first been free to take us the wrong way, we would never now be safely settled in the right way through Christ. Watch carefully, and see God continually using evil for good purposes: "meaning" the evil as the product of our freedom, but using it for His overcoming grace.

In that sense, then, the Bible says that God "intends" the consequences of evil, whether referring to its corruptions within our personal lives or to all its horrors of disease, disasters, death, cruelties, "man’s inhumanity to man." To think that God is taking pleasure in these things, however, is utterly untrue. We know that our fallen, evil condition so pierced His heart that, to redeem us from it, He came in the person of His Son to be perfected in suffering, right up to "tasting death for every man."

But it is necessary that we do recognize that, in another sense, He does "mean" evil in all its tragedy, and understand why He means it. Only by that recognition can we be firm and strong - and praising! - when the storms of evil are blowing around us. If, when distressing conditions hit us or our neighbors, we only can say that God "permits it," we seem to imply a weakness in God as if He is sorry about such things but can’t help it. However, an element of disturbing incongruity keeps us from ever picturing God as sitting back and leaving the devil free to do his damndest.

So what is the result? When we have these solid grounds for knowing there is no other way except that we humans must reap our share of the sorrows of life, and that God purposes exactly what has come to us, we then can accept these trials in a totally opposite way - as all joy, instead of all horror. For we know this is the negative background for His great design of perfect love. All is perfect, and He is working out everything "after the counsel of His own will." It is always "the good pleasure of His goodness." And if good and enjoyable to Him, we know it is good and enjoyable to us.

FAITH IN UNLIMITED ACTION

What a difference this denouement makes to our normal negative headshaking over all that is happening to us in our personal lives, our families and the world! As we have said, we always start with the negative impact of this world’s discords on us, whether in our family life, business, or church relationships. It affects our emotional responses, and we just don’t like it. We start with the ever-present temptation to simply believe a thing to be evil - which it is to human eyes. We realize, of course, that we’re off-center, because the effect of our negative believing is at once an inner disturbance and darkness. A frown is on our face! We are tempted to quick reactions of temper, impatience, and negative judgmentalism.

By this we learn that, in all problems, the only real problem is ourself. It is our negative believing. What we hold, holds us; and what we are, we transmit. I always know I am off-center when things disturb me. Self-outlook has taken the place of Christ-outlook. When I start that way in my negative human reactions, being tempted to slip back into an independent-self outlook, there is a healthy touch of hell in me.

But now that this wonderful truth has settled into us as total truth - that God is the Lord and there is none else (Isa. 45:5-14), so nothing but what He wills, exists - we know that all these discords are merely disturbed outer conditions, whether in things or people... of which the inner center is He. They are disturbed forms of Him and His perfect kingdom of heaven. And now it is simple for us to exchange our negative believing for the positive recognition of God in all. It is surely surprising and humbling to us when we suddenly wake up to how long we have often remained in our negatives!

So now we clearly see that the first way in which rivers of the Spirit flow out of us is in this reversal of our inner seeing. We must constantly remember that all we are is spirit, and that all which comes out of us to others is our inner seeings.

We recognize we shall always start with our negative reactions to things or people as they appear to us. We cannot be human and do less. But they are the necessary negative background to Him, the Positive, revealing Himself. We have it now altogether clear that there is none other Lord in the universe but that Perfect One, and that all imperfection is distortion through devil or man - that evil is the misuse of good. And we know that Christ has come to swallow up death with life.

So now we take constant inner practical action. We immediately confront our negative reactions. We recognize them as negative human outlooks which mistake outer appearance for reality. Though hurt by them, perhaps badly and repeatedly, we from our inner center reverse our inner seeing. We die to the human outlook by "bearing about in our body the dying of the Lord Jesus." We cannot change our soul-feelings, but we do change our spirit-attitude. Then we affirm that all is perfect, horrible or offensive though it may appear. We always see Him "meaning" that situation - even meaning persons to be in their distorted forms, but with Him at their hidden center. We see only perfect love and perfect power. We see now with heavenly, not earthly eyes. We see as He sees. We count the "divers trials" as all joy. We glory in the tribulation. We believe against appearances, and accept and praise. We repeat this perhaps a thousand times in our daily lives, in things large and small, and it turns the distresses of life into daily adventure. He that sits in the heavens laughs, and we laugh with Him.

And that laughter rings out of us in word and look, and touches our world. "How can this crazy person be happy and thankful in evil circumstances? He’s got something, crazy or no!" "I wish I could be happy and peaceful in my depressing conditions." A secret hunger is there. Some come and inquire and ask for help, and we give it to them. We always share what we’ve got; and some get fed and become feeders of others, and so the rivers flow.

So our faith attitudes give life, even before they become faith actions (which we shall shortly look into) "Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." Daily, momentarily, we keep our inner attitudes God-centered in God’s purposes, and life issues from us. This is the pure heart that sees only God, and views all circumstances with Him of whom it is said, "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil." It produces the thrill of our daily adventure, and is within reach of us all, in all conditions. Let us remember that nothing outer holds us. We are only held by our own self-attitudes. If we see evil, and are held by our seeing, we have our inner hells of fear, hate, struggle, pessimism. If in all things we see Him who is always perfect goodness, we have our present heaven, and are busy introducing others to it.

MODERN SCIENCE HELPS

Though not directly affecting us, yet it is both encouraging and helpful to take a glance for a moment at the radical changes in the attitude of modern science to the material universe. I do it as an ignorant amateur, but one greatly interested.

We see how great has been the break-up of the old materialistic concepts of a generation ago, with a move over from the material to the immaterial. These concepts don’t affect our living faith, which has wholly other foundations, but the startling changes are interesting and greatly intriguing, and we would say helpful to faith.

Science has really taken a great leap to a certainty that, as the Bible said long ago, the visible is made out of the invisible. Mass is energy, and matter is really trapped light. The physicists have reached so far these days that they have passed beyond the atom to the sub-atoms, all those mysterious so-called particles; and their remarkable findings are that these can no longer be tied down to being what we would call "material particles," however minute. They can only be described as "events" where there is a conjunction of space and time; and they are moving so rapidly that they can only be spoken of as "patterns of probabilities." They can only be known by their interconnectedness with the whole, and these interconnections are inseparable, so that everything is contingent on the existence of the rest. Thus, for instance, a spin dryer, which by its motion throws out the water from the clothes, only does so "by its relation to the fixed stars"; and if the stars disappeared, the force of the rotating body would disappear also. Thus everything in the universe is interconnected. There is no such thing as empty space. All is filled with dynamic energy, just as much as visible matter is. Indeed, as Einstein said, all are "fields of vibrating energy," and what we regard as matter is "constituted by the regions of space where the field is extremely intense." All is really an unbroken wholeness, and absurd as it sounds to us in our ignorance, "a single particle contains all other particles." With that has come the new recognition, which was the basis of Einstein’s relativity theory, that all depends on us, the observers. All is relative to where we stand and how we see a moving thing. There are even suggestions (still more absurd to such as us) that all things are products of the observers, even to the effect that we could influence or change past history as well as future. Fantastic! But is not all this pointing to matter as a product of mind, and don’t we believers know Him who is the one Mind of the universe? Does it not also take us nearer to Paul’s statement that the whole groaning creation waits to find its deliverance by the manifestation of the sons of God? "For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God,... because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Rom. 8:19-21). And it was God Himself who "made the creation subject to vanity," with that glorious purpose in view.

Our present interest is that this is showing us that what we used to call "material substance" is altogether broken up today. Researches are going on into what they call a "fourth dimension," where space and time are interrelated in a way beyond our natural understanding. It is in that realm that the true origin of our material universe is found, where all is really energy. For mass is but energy divided by the inconceivable speed of the speed of light multiplied by itself (M = e/c², or E = mc²). And we are now seeing how all this is being connected with the involvement of the observer with what is observed. It is an approach to the dimension to which we have already come, to the dimension of spirit, where Paul said long ago of Christ as Creator: "By Him all things consist [cohere, are held together]" (Col. 1:17), and that God’s revealed purpose is "to gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth" (Eph. 1:10). The physicist, however brilliant, cannot, with only his natural mind, find ultimate truth through science; truth is a living Person, the living Christ, and He can only be found person to person at the foot of His cross, whether by a Nobel prize-winner or an uninformed layman. But scientists are more allies than opponents in accepting the spiritual as the real when they say that all is really light, "trapped light." For "God is Light."

SPEAKING THE WORD OF FAITH

We have seen that one stream of the rivers of living water flows out from us in our believing attitudes. We might call this the Power of Positive Believing. We have it clear that everyone, with no exception, is projecting his attitude. No man can live unto himself. Modern science informs us that every atomic particle has its field of attraction or repulsion; so also we humans have. The poet Francis Thompson wrote in "The Mistress of Vision":

Paul said the same with his "None of us liveth unto himself, and no man dieth unto himself."

We know well enough what our frowns and head-shakings and pessimism and general negative attitudes do. How wonderful it is, instead, to be constant inner-see-ers of God, in His perfect ways, meaning everything and everybody to be at this moment just what they are. Thus "with the lift of our soul," without effort or put-on-ness, maybe saying nothing, but with the replacement of the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, not trying to impress or change a person, we cannot but be a light of hope, praise, and faith in dark places. We are not hiding the apparent hurts. But mercy is rejoicing against judgment in us, and there is no hiding it. The Spirit is secretly touching the strings of response in hearts where there are only the bass notes sounding.

But spirit attitude is only the preliminary to spirit action. No person on earth functions without first inwardly reacting to things, and is always in a negative or positive attitude toward them. From this he moves on to the moment of decision as to what he will do about it. The general thought-level, which can move in any direction, is now replaced by a decisive, inner word-level. He says within himself, "I will do this," "I will take that," "I will go there." Thus he speaks within himself his "word of faith." From that inner process, by which general thought is replaced by specific word, he now moves on to outer deed - from thought to word to deed. From Father-level to Son-level to Spirit-level. By no other process has any single conscious action ever taken place in all human history. It is the universal human process of self-manifestation, whether it is the taking and eating of some food from a plate, or a decision of the United States Congress! It is also the process of creation in Genesis 1. The Father has His universal plan of the ages; the Son, called the Word, gives the plan its particular form with His "Let there be"; the Spirit moves upon the face of the waters and transforms the word into substance. Father, Son, Spirit - thought, word, deed.

The critical moment of any action, whether by the Three-in-One, or by man made in His likeness, is the speaking of the decisive word: attitude (Father) moves into word (Son) and action (Spirit). That is why we say that a word puts a person in action.

In any mundane activity, this is the order. Thoughts are preparatory. Deeds are the products. Speaking the decisive word transmutes the thought into deed. The word is at the heart of the process. So a person in action is really his word in action.

Now move that up into the operations of the kingdom of God, the realm of the spirit dimension, of which all earthly forms are visible reproductions - spirit-essence slowed down to the point of visibility. Now we are the sons of God operating in the Spirit kingdom, though outwardly flesh members of a three-dimensional world. How then do we operate? Precisely as we do in our three-dimensional world of space-time. Not one iota of difference. We operate from the Father-level of our general understanding of situations and the purpose in them, on to the Son-level of the decisive moment of the spoken word of what is to come to pass, and on to the Spirit-level of the thing done. But how can we say that? Because we as sons of God are in union with the Father, Son, and Spirit by His grace and election; and that union means that we are so inwardly one that we act as He. We think His thoughts; we speak His word of faith; we do His deeds.

How do we think His thoughts on the Father-level? Because we have the mind of Christ, as the Scripture states. We no longer look around outside us, or upward, to gather His thoughts. We understand that He is living out His perfect purposes by His body members... and therefore by me as one of them. Therefore, whatever situation I am at present in is precisely the expression of His present mind for me. All, then, that I have to do is to sort out in my mind what is the situation in which He is now living by me, and what is my relation to the people with whom He has linked me. This necessitates seeing each situation as His perfect purpose.

But now we go further. I have taken it for granted that He has a distinct purpose to fulfill by me, His son, in the situation. I must now, therefore, particularize the circumstances or the people concerned, and know what it is He purposes doing in them. What is that particular thing? I must get that "in the clear" to move on to the decisive word of faith. How do I get it clear? By boldly taking it for granted that He thinks His present thoughts by me. For He is "working in me to will and do of His good pleasure." He is causing me to desire His desires. So I name that desire precisely, for "What things soever ye [not He] desire…, ye shall have"(Mark 11:24). I do not hesitate, except for whatever time it takes to formulate my desire. (And if I am part of a group, together seeking the mind of God, it may take a while to get to one mind.) So first comes attitude.

Then I move straight in to the Son-level of speaking the word of faith. I do precisely what Jesus (in Mark 11:20-26) told His disciples to do. He had earlier commanded the fig tree to bear no more fruit (vss. 12-14). The next morning, when they passed the withered tree, Peter commented on it: "Master, look, the fig tree you cursed is withered away." Jesus simply replied, "Now you have this same ‘faith of God’" (which is the literal rendering, rather than "faith in God"). And what does that mean? Obviously, seeing as God sees the situation, and thus believing with His believing. And how does God do this? Through my eyes and inner comprehension. So if something appears like a mountain of difficulty to me, that is how He is first causing me to see it.

Jesus then tells His disciples to say to any such mountain, "Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea," and in doing so, to believe it is a completed fact. The result: "You will have whatever you have said." It couldn’t be simpler. Don’t beg. Don’t beseech. Just say it! But there is the added proviso that we don’t doubt in our hearts - don’t allow mental soul-doubts, which we surely have, to disturb our fixed, inner word of faith: "Whosoever... shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith" (vs. 23).

But how can I say "Be removed" to a mountain? Because it is only a mountain to my human seeing. Read what God said to Zerubbabel in Zechariah 4:7: "Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel... a plain." Thus to the eyes of faith a "mountain" is no obstacle, and as Jesus said, is removed and cast into the sea by the word of faith.

So, having the mind of Christ, as "sons in action" we discern that "next thing" God is moving us on to and bring it into being. It is just that simple. It is only the "graveclothes" of suspicion of our old self-seeking selves which makes us hesitate about saying that the thing we desire is His mind. But He has said, "What things soever ye desire when ye pray, believe..." (vs. 24). You desire. Then let’s be that simple. If He in us trusts our desires to be His desires, let us trust ourselves. We have discarded and rejected those doubtings and questionings of our motives by accepting our vital Galatians 2:20 relationship, so let us now practice holy boldness, just as John keeps saying in His union epistle: "We have confidence toward God.... This is the confidence that we have in Him.... We may have boldness [even] in the day of judgment."

Then, being bold in defining exactly what are the things we are presently desiring in place of the mountain confronting us, and naming them, we speak the key word of the countdown - we press the button marked, "SAY." We do that from our inner spirit-center, simply by our authority as sons of God. Jesus has plainly told us to act as God by "the faith of God" - by His inner believing imparted to us, by our inner union of mind and understanding. This means that in acting as He, all of His mighty resources are at our disposal. It is not now a matter of us being at His disposal, but of Him being at our disposal. He is operating in this present world-system by us. We say with Caleb, "Let us go up at once and possess it, for we are well able to overcome it." And in so doing, we laugh the laugh of faith.

Speaking this word of faith (having once settled what the desire is) could not be more simple. It is the "obedience of faith" (Rom. 16:26). That is all the "works" involved. It is a work of faith to this extent: all that the outer appearances can pour on us at such a "speaking" moment, they will pour. That is to say, we shall likely feel the full impact of the foolishness of faith. It looks absurd. It is absurd. because the agony of faith is that nothing can ever be experienced until after we’ve committed ourselves to it, not before. As we’ve seen, that is actually true in a minor way of even the least act of everyday faith, like sitting on a chair. How much more when it is these leaps into what is invisible and impossible and unattainable by human methods! So there is a travail of faith because of the assaults on us by every emotional reaction to the absurdity and impossibility of it. And equally, by every rational objection to what spirit-faith has always been - the irrational. So in that sense, we say speaking this word is not simple. Yet it is, because it is just speaking the word! And that is why something equivalent to "confessing it with our mouth" is a seal on it - a means by which, once we have said a thing, it’s a settled matter - and the affirmation to ourself or to others helps to settle us into it. But that’s all. These are our supreme moments when the rivers of the Spirit are flowing out of us on our spirit level. This is the faith that gives substance to things hoped for.

HOW IT AFFECTS OUR PRAYER LIFE

Speaking the word of faith obviously makes a big difference to our prayer life. In explaining this new understanding of prayer I have sometimes said that "I don’t pray any more." I should not say that, chiefly because the Bible is full of exhortations to prayer and illustrations of prayer. What I’m meaning is that at the heart of my praying, the prayer of request has been replaced by the prayer of acceptance of what I’ve asked for. Certainly, prayer cannot mean what we often interpret it to mean - having special times of prayer, etc. - because Paul has told us to pray without ceasing, and that we cannot do unless we see prayer to be a condition in which communion with God is always continuous, on our subconscious (and, as needful, conscious) level.

I am not now referring to those periods of corporate prayer expressing fellowship, worship and praise. Some enjoy them in the quietness of an Episcopal-type worship service, or of the Lord’s Supper. Others, including myself, though being most at home in home fellowships, also enjoy the Spirit-led outpourings in more charismatic-type meetings when all are unitedly and vocally pouring out their hearts in praise; and this may often include both songs and singing in the Spirit, in one great volume of sound, sometimes interspersed with messages in tongues and interpretations. This was obviously part and parcel of the normal worship times in the early church (1 Cor. 14:26-33). It shows how far we have cooled off from the glow and freedom of those days when, in our established churches, we have a pastor to do the praying and preaching. This is a far call from a fellowship so living, and with so many wanting to take part, that it isn’t a question of calling on and encouraging the brethren to participate but rather of having enough orderliness for one to follow another, and giving room for two or three to speak in tongues also.

How far we’ve come when such a message in tongues would cause a shock (and even division) in the church fellowship, instead of being so ordinary that no notice is taken. I was in a fellowship I like to be with in Halford House, Richmond, England, on a Sunday morning, with about two hundred present. In the freedom of the worship hour I heard one speak in tongues with an interpretation. Then another spoke and no interpreter. When I inquired afterwards about the one with no interpretation... "You made a mistake," said my friend. "The second one was a Chinese sister speaking in her own language." But the point I am making is that in a period of worship and praise by song, prayer, Scripture, a message in tongues may be taken for granted; and it was a non-Pentecostal assembly. How far we have wandered.

It is something to hear the rising and falling of the sound of the Spirit in a Korean country congregation, maybe of a couple of thousand - and Presbyterian - unitedly praying at 4:00 a.m.; and that glow and glory can be shared today in many fellowships of many natures, by no means officially Pentecostal.

But back to our main line about the word of faith as the heartbeat of our prayer life. We have seen that we first need to know the mind of Christ, in each given situation, expressed through our own minds - relating to the challenge, the mountain that confronts us. Knowing that His mind and ours are in union, we come to a plain settlement (even if it takes time to sort things out) of what it is that we desire in the situation. We then boldly take it for granted that that means His desire by us, knowing that He freely said in Mark 11:24, "What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them."

And now we are moving into the heart of the matter. Jesus had just said, "Say unto this mountain, Be thou removed...", and you will have whatsoever you say. Now, speaking of naming our desires in prayer, He said, "Believe that you have received them, and they shall be granted you" - "have received," not "receive" - and I quote the New American Standard version here, because it best brings out the meaning of the Greek aorist tense.

This is where the difference lies between my former request-type praying and what Jesus was saying to His disciples and now us. I see God marvelously privileging me and you to be His agents of production in lives and conditions. Just as we produce in the material realm by specifically deciding what we shall make and then making it, so now in the realm of the Spirit. For me, I ask no longer, unless I also believe and receive.

Folks say, "But doesn’t God tell us to ask?" Yes, but asking is not to inform God of what I need. "Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things," said Jesus. What is required is God getting me in my childish ignorance to the point of deciding what He is meaning me to ask for. Just as you get a child to choose which cookie he will take and then ask for just that one. So asking is just a steppingstone to receiving. As Jesus said, "Ask. .. seek... knock, and it shall be opened unto you." So to my asking I add taking and receiving. Indeed, as I get used to taking by the word of faith, I hardly notice I’m asking - one is almost dissolved into the other.

So I move right in and speak the desire into reality. How? By that word of faith which "calls the things that be not as though they were," which is said to be God’s form of faith (Rom. 4:17), and therefore mine. I speak that word. When it is on the mundane, human level that I speak any such word, I then go on to fulfill it. This time I am recognizing that it is God speaking that word by me, and so He goes on to fulfill it - and it is precisely the same as when He brought the visible creation into being by the word of His Son.