The force of intercession

Introduction

1HE act of praying for other people is a daring

I quest. It means that God depends on us and waits to work through us as praying beings. If genuine, it cannot be a formal exercise of remem¬ bering others on our knees because of some fixed habit. It is either a mockery or an heroic conquest in the Spirit world. If real it means great constancy and energy of faith. Prevailing intercession pro¬ claims the freedom and right of a man’s soul to make a neighborhood of high heaven and of all creation. It asserts that a man has an inspiring reach which he must use.

The principles involved in declaring the force of intercession are but a few fundamental spiritual relationships between ourselves, other men, and our God, expressed in reasoned terms. It is a way of so looking at life and of acting in life that here and now the doors of space and time swing open and men of faith work for God as souls that will not cringe nor be dismayed at the taunt of being impractical. Intercessors cease to treat lightly their claim of citi¬ zenship in the Kingdom of God. They use this particular method and plan of intercession in order

INTRODUCTION to make the vast world of spiritual relationships more real than the material sense world.

Because of the lure of material things; because of the failure of these material things to satisfy the claims and ambitions of men; because of the mysterious receipts, of mental and sensuous mixture, fed to hungry souls as a spiritual alchemy; because of the crude substitutes for true religion that blight the perceptions of men, certainly the time has fully come to enter upon intercession as a great plan of faith that will put our spiritual sense to the most definite test. If, as intercessors, we are not visionaries, who pursue a mirage across sands that waste our energies, then we are indeed sharers of a force too powerful and efficient to be disregarded. We cannot safely be lukewarm about intercession. If prayer for others seems only an academic question, it is the danger signal of an impotent, disheveled soul which is in¬ capable of entering upon its spiritual inheritance.

In this study of intercession we seek to realize how God uses men’s prayers as the medium and agency of His aid to men; and why that aid must be withheld until men will plead for their brethren. We believe that a clearer grasp of the truth about intercession will greatly aid the responsive soul in becoming a veritable missioner to the world.

All true living is an effort to discover and use real force. Lower forces of mind or body contend with spiritual forces. Real joy is the vigor of a man’s

INTRODUCTION soul that rejoices in the Master’s test and answers: “we are able.” So we believe in intercession as a prevailing force. We would become intercessors to help wield the force of God’s Spirit which alone can change the world’s period of reconstruction into its great crowning era of regeneration and spiritual unity.

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Chapter I

M AN has been very satisfactorily defined as a ‘praying being.’ It dis¬ tinguishes him from brute creation. It states his kinship to God. History tells us that this is not a theory about man, but is the age-long observation of his nature and experience. It is his nature to pray to God; and throughout all his history man has prayed to God. True enough, some men pray only in great need or calamity. Others appear to pray only in a mechanical fashion. Some seem to have schooled themselves, in neglect or studied denial, to do without praying; but only by starving almost to the point of death those religious instincts (destined of God for con¬ victions) that were bent on prayer.

And how do these so-called ‘strong-minded students ’ of human nature who have de¬ liberately neglected prayer, as an outworn use¬ less habit, explain the common practice of pray- [i]

ing? They are apt to call it a form of self-culture,—a cultivation of generous im¬ pulses towards others. Men feel kindly toward their fellows, they tell us, in deep, constraining ways; so they clothe their thinking with the notions and claims of religion. And when asked how religion took root in human nature — what its origin is—pagan students have an answer ready to explain prayer, the character¬ istic action and habit of religion.

Men have prayed for themselves and others they loved, so we are told, from the time when the universe was new and strange to them. Its mighty natural forces, so terrifying or im¬ pressive before they were explained by science, crowded their lives with dread or awe. And dreams took this raw material of fears and primitive imaginings and peopled natural forces with human instincts. In time the confused company of gods thus wrought out of the ima¬ gination were systematized; and later the god, or family of gods, of the most persistent or loyal adherents of their particular deity, won out in the Jewish and Christian conceptions of religion.

M

So the habit of praying, persisted in from generation to generation, assumed the right and force of an innate and permanent instinct. But, these naturalists add, no real outside aid from a Source of life is to be considered ser¬ iously. Beal communion, they claim, with Divine Life is impossible — since there is no God.

Faith rather than reason must refute this pathetic theory. It creates more difficulties than it can possibly explain away. When we examine the substance of men’s praying for others we find that they pray as if there were communion and aid. If, in fact, there be none, then the so-called cultural value of prayer is gained at the expense of men’s intelligence. The mere idea that aid does come through prayer, makes every praying man impotent and foolish. It makes him unreal and childish in his citadel of conviction, sense-of-kinship and loyalty to God.

But it is to men who believe in God, the God whom Christ reveals, that we write. We believe that intercession means both communion and aid and can mean nothing less to those who are loyal to the teaching and Spirit of Jesus Christ. And yet to see more plainly how this is, and why this is, will strengthen our belief in inter¬ cession.

All about us men grope and stumble on their uncertain way. War, as a great surgical oper¬ ation, has been gone through with. It has been more successful on the body than on the mind of the world. America has proved herself better as a surgeon than as a physician, bent on healing and prevention of further ill. ‘ Physician, heal thyself ’ is a rightful challenge to ourselves who claim to have healing gifts and powers for the world’s health. Ours is a psychic, a moral, a spiritual lack. But happy are we of America that we begin to perceive these things and to hunger for what is true and strong of soul. If members of God’s Church who claim Christ’s spirit of discipleship would help right mightily we must destroy in ourselves with decisive stroke all enervating doubts about the fundamental things of God and the familiar claims of religion. The flood time in human history which we feel today is the swell of eager¬ ness and passion in men’s souls to live a fuller and freer life. How may we help men to live as brethren of one household? Christians must employ certain definite ways of help. We must decide about intercession as one of these chief ways. Either it is of no practical use in aiding men, and so has no claim upon our time and energy, or else its value is supreme and its mission urgent. We are called upon to face this matter frankly and to decide it as a paramount issue of modern society and of religion.

This is our approach to prayer. We firmly believe that energy in defense of Christian de¬ mocracy would be generated if men’s souls were able to go* out to God in intercession. Is there not, then, some lack of intelligent and deter¬ mined faith? For if Christian patriots really believe in intercession, as a great service and unlimited power, can they ignore this service altogether or pray only in a formal way? How frequently routine prayer is the effort of the be¬ wildered spirits of staggering men to keep their own faith alive! But does not God mean our prayers for others to be the strength of men who, at leisure from themselves, are mediums of God’s great conclusive power? If the struggle to lift the instrument of prayer takes all our energy, how shall we wield it for others?

Prayer may be only an unhappy struggle within ourselves until we have the joy of fight¬ ing with our whole souls for others. What is, after all, the chief hardship in these days of definite issues and decisive action? Is it not this: that our sympathies and vision of what is right is more shocked than used? We often feel that the force of our faith is not employed in any great way. When we have spoken this word, and accomplished this deed, that seems to count so little in making His kingdom come, then must our sympathies stand idle? Is this our reach? Rather our sympathies must be definitely and constantly used as intercession in order to liberate God’s resources.

So we need at the outset to make a faithful effort to realize the task set before us; to per¬ ceive the sweet reasonableness of intercession. In the background is God’s power. In the fore¬ ground is the world’s need of our utmost ser¬ vice. We seek to see more clearly and believe more earnestly that our chief service is to lib¬ erate God’s power. By seeing what intercession means, and something of how onr prayers work, our mission will be made too wonderful and urgent to neglect. Because we go to Calvary in prayer we want to know how it is that Calvary can go to the world. Until our minds understand this better our faith stumbles, and indifference, a lack of intelligent interest, de¬ stroys the vision and vigor of intercession.

Chapter II

W E CAN not reason ourselves into having, and using, the power of prayer. Even if we clearly under¬ stood the rich and deep meaning of intercession, would there yet be any assurance that we would wield the force of prayer? For the measure of men’s impotence is the yawning gap between their knowledge and their service. As Chris¬ tians we cannot issue a subpoena for faith to appear before the bar of reason. For we can be prevailing intercessors and yet know little of the science or philosophy of intercession. On the other hand we may study carefully what prayer means as a social phenomenon and yet have no force of spirit as masterful pleaders.

We know in part. Wisdom will not die with us. We need not accept the hypothesis that men are not expected to intercede for their fellowmen until they understand plainly all that intercession means. Some skepticism or critical faculty shall not pauperize our faith. For we depend on the earnestness and the increase of faith in order to know the true value of plead¬ ing for others.

Prayer means that life is feeling after life. It is an attitude of the soul seeking the fellow¬ ship of other spiritual beings. But thinking must have its rightful place. The mental part of our Godward life has a clarifying and focus¬ ing mission to perform in us. Just because we want our faith to mean the impulse and attitude of our whole being turned to God, we need the intelligence section of the mobilized manhood. The vigor of the outreaching soul in prayer is influenced and somewhat deter¬ mined by the way in which the mind perceives and visions the task of prayer. It matters tre¬ mendously whether or not the mind is assured or dismayed. If intercession does not mean a great deal to us the spirit and force of this ser¬ vice may die in us and leave only the skeleton of habit.

While, then, we do not insist upon a clear and full understanding of all that intercession means before we are willing to pray, yet, on the other hand, unless prayer does possess and hold our reason more and more as we pray — until it does interest and stimulate and use our clearest thinking with ever-increasing force — in the end the result may be the same as if we did bring prayer and faith to the bar of reason. For indifference to prayer and the giving of interested thought to other things will cause intercession to die out of our life. And so the greatest danger is not that we will make a formal demand concerning what we must under¬ stand before we consent to pray. Chiefly we need to he on guard lest uninterested minds will, in fact, fail to intercede . And it is not the theory but the fact (the energy, the force) of intercession with which we are so greatly con¬ cerned.

We are, therefore, prepared to give full weight both to faith and to reason. We do not feel mentally bound when we give chief em¬ phasis to faith; because we believe that the mind’s part in prayer is reasonable obedience to the Way—the great Intercessor. He alone can set the mind free in His truthfulness. And He has set the task of intercession. It was a great part of His mission to arouse men’s minds and give men mental vigor. His method of education was for men to try out what He told them in order that they might have an experience and witness of His teaching in them¬ selves. This would make them more and more able in mental power. “If any man will do His will he shall know . 1 y The worldly mind, skillful in the things of earth, is impotent to sense and estimate the value of intercession. But Christians, if truly men of the Spirit, move on a plane of forceful worth that worldly men are ignorant of. The knowledge that such living is reasonable is inherent in the increasing in¬ sight and spiritual force that we feel in obeying the great Intercessor. The Spirit of God blows as a healing, saving breath through faithful, obedient-minded intercessors and sweeps on towards men in need;—given human mission and qualified by the conscious good-will and sympathy of men who pray for their fellows.

This then is our mental attitude towards intercession. We intercede with God for men because there grows up within us the belief that it is reasonable to trust God. He tells us to pray for others. And so as Christians we ac¬ cept the hypothesis that our faith, responsive to Him in an active, earnest fashion in prayer for others, will constantly inform and assure us with the intelligence of God’s own Spirit of light and truth. By the act of doing His will in intercession we are illumined and em¬ powered by the Spirit of Wisdom to perceive what intercession means, and to rejoice in its value. 41 Seek and ye shall find.” We verify by faith at work in prayer the Master’s state¬ ment that if any man will do His will he shall know.

Yet it is plain we do not put aside the “how” and “why” of intercession. It is also clear that we do not seek to answer these thoughts that arise in us as skeptics or rationalists hut as men of God who would register their ex¬ perience of the Spirit of God working in them. As men striving humbly for greater faith and spiritual insight we would awake mentally to the great power and urgency of intercession. The Body of Christ too frequently hesitates to express His sympathy and power in the reach of intercession because of the scepticism and [ 12 ]

doubts and earth-born criticisms about the ways of God which St. Paul says cannot be judged aright by once-born men. Why should Chris¬ tians let the scoffing of worldly minds cast a chill over their impulse to pray, and make inter¬ cessors self-conscious to the point of spiritual impotence? And where mental indifference is the cause we have need to consider with burn¬ ing shame the bare intervals of neglect in our intercessions. Are they not yawning gaps of selfish unconcern separating us from our Lord and His mission? So it is that we challenge our imaginations, our interest, our mental vigor con¬ stantly to consider why it is that intercession is so powerful, and how it is that our soul life can be of inestimable worth in, and as, intercession.

CHAPTR III

Kinsmen of God

W E HAVE seen that intercession has no intelligent moral force, and so need not hold our attention, unless it means spiritual communion with the Source of Life. Now many men, realizing this, do not find it difficult to talk with God and even make per¬ sonal requests in prayer. They believe God can and will help them. But here is the stumbling block: how shall man ’s praying help God do His great, saving work in the world?

Let us realize at the outset that this is not the isolated difficulty of intercession. It introduces us to the right way of thinking of all that con¬ cerns the soul and its kinship to the Source of Life who constantly feeds the soul, and gives it worth by making its work in the world count. Let us think that religion means life; and that life, consciously akin to God, means religion. God is a Spirit, He tells us. And we know that we are spiritual beings. And our oneness —our

KINSMEN OF GOD kinship — with God means the One Spirit in us. We share His spiritual nature. Of course God transcends us as He dwells in all men and all creations. So we will not understand how our work of intercession can count (can be of great value to God) until we perceive how our very souls count, and what our spiritual per¬ sonality means, as a ‘ force ’ which God makes and sustains and stimulates constantly with His own life.

We help God in our work of intercession because we are God’s work. Our nature is His ‘pleroma’ or fulness of creative force thrust out beyond Himself — as creation — and yet ever claimed as His kind and kindred. He, in us, is our force — indirectly as the faculties and personal powers we call human, and directly as immanent Spirit. Now when we are conscious of His kinship it means the touch and impulse of God’s own Spirit in us. Intercession is the sense of kinship with God put to service for others. So it can not mean that we, in our human strength, apart from God, help God do His work by praying for others. What ever help we are in prayer goes right to this ques¬ ts]

tion: ‘ ‘ What is our nature that we share with God?” Then at once we are led to consider how our kinship to Him means His very life constantly creating and sustaining us. It fol¬ lows that we cannot isolate our work in prayer and discuss it apart from His work in our praying.

We would read Gospel truth with tire and force of imagination. In God we ‘Give and move and have our being.” This is a tre¬ mendous, inspiring fact! We are constantly coming out from Him and being enkindled and invigorated by Him. “In Him was life and the life was the light of men” — “the true light which lighteth every man coming into the world.” Hence our intercession is not the movement of our individual, isolated soul toward God. It means God’s Source-life in us reaching up to the Source-life outside us. It means God’s Spirit of kinship in us offering itself to those outside ourselves. For this Spirit of God in us is one Spirit everywhere. With powerful intent He would awaken in all men that force and joy of His fellowship which we feel in prayer.

KINSMEN OF GOD

Do we, then, not see plainly how shallow and superficial is the objection to intercession as our powerless effort to aid, unless we are pre* pared to deny our spiritual nature and Chris¬ tian inheritance. When we ask what we can do to help God we must ash what the instigating Spirit in us can do to help God; can do to help Himself — being God! Of course we have no self-reservoir of spiritual force to help God with, simply by pleading for others. We seek Him in prayer as Intercessor because His Spirit of intercession possesses us, and accord¬ ing to His intercessory nature strives to work in us and through us to reach those in need.

Surely God y s presence in us must mean some¬ thing — must do something. Every answered prayer, however beclotted and beclouded with earthiness our pleading may be, bears witness to our kinship to God. Our pleading is our record of the impulses of God in the soul. The great Intercessor says He can use us. Can He? Either He can use us as instruments or we must block His work, since we can not be neutral.

CHAPTER IV Men of God’s Plan

W E WOULD not be limited in spiritual power by our physical presence. All the world calls for our help. We feel the shame of dissipating our force of good-will in vain reflections and vague regrets and wast¬ ing pity concerning the crying needs of men. Exhaustive complaints about self-limitations absorb the mental powers that might be used to raise sympathy and good-will to the nth power in intercession. With true soldier-spirit we assent obediently to the placing of our prayers at the disposal of others, and intercede, because God tells us to. But we want to see more clearly what we do; how we do it; why we do it. It will make prayer more interesting; more sig¬ nificant. We want to perceive what intercession means because it will enlighten, invigorate, impower faith more and more as God’s instru¬ ment. We use our minds to strengthen our morale as intercessors.

MEN OF GOD’S PLAN

But it will not avail to draw abstract con¬ clusions. As judges looking on apart from praying men, we can reach no spiritual con¬ clusions about prayer. Only as praying men groping for the light will we find light. We cry in the world’s darkness for the dawn. We intercede with our Father on behalf of deso¬ lated homes and for those who pay the cruel toll of battlefields and merciless persecution. Our spirit of sympathy is raised to Love in intercession for orphans and exiled poor, and for women of Eastern lands who suffer shame¬ less crimes of war. But then, it may be, as we strive to pray the light of our pleading becomes dim! Hope, as the strong expec¬ tancy of faith, begins to lose force. The mind begins to ask questions and the answer we give ourselves will encourage or distress us! Is not God wise enough to know, we ask, and intent upon supplying, His children’s need? Of course we must give money to feed and shelter. We must go or send others to help the hungry and down-trodden. And those who help the oppressed must serve them with Christian sympathy. But to lift my heart to God in His

House of Prayer, or in the home, and ask Him to help His own children — of what possible value is this ? Is He not willing to aid without the fragile force of my moral energy in prayer?

There are those who fear to face burning questions like these. They prefer blind faith or credulity — lest the equilibrium of what faith they have be upset. Others face them honestly and cease to pray. Others go on praying, not wisely but too well versed in the form of sound words to cease to pray. But the Apostle bids us give a reason of the hope that is in us. How can my prayer reinforce God? Does prayer mean making God strong enough to rescue His own world? Is not this an impious and im¬ possible task? How is it possible to add to the Father’s power a weight of good-will and sym¬ pathy in prayer sufficient to turn the scales in behalf of His kingdom!

In our study of kinship to God we found the answer to these questions. But confidence is gained as we face them at every turn and challenge their utmost attack. God is all in all. He constantly lighteth every man. He, we have seen, is the force of that spiritual nature

MEN OF GOD’S PLAN in us which prays to Him. No, we can not ‘reinforce’ God. God’s grace goes before and follows us. Our highest achievement is to be¬ come a living medium — the agent — of God’s good-will and power of love that moves in us, and out from us, in intercession.

Keen, reverent minds are encouraged to know that they are not asked to add to the all-embracing Love of God. But a further question often vexes and distresses men: if we do not ‘add’ to God’s power, is it possible that His force of good needs direction through me? Is God so partial or indecisive or capricious that He helps only as He is asked by men? How does He so work in me and through me that I can be used by Him as a force to help those I pray for?

The following studies will be an effort to answer these questions. We shall see that God’s help to men has method and plan. Just because God is all-powerful Love He will not fail to employ (so far as we are able in will) the potential power of love which He has en¬ trusted to each of us to use for others in inter¬ cession. Else our personality would be a useless piece of machinery in God’s plans. If not a 4 way through’ we would of necessity be an abandoned trail of God’s Spirit. It would mean that the atmosphere of the soul was too enervating and stagnant to communicate with others in the One Spirit of fellowship and love. The Spirit would of necessity have to seek some other current outside us. We were created as a part of God’s plan to which He committed Himself when He made us akin to Him. It was His plan to make us men of faith-reach, and so of spirit-force, who would use the limited time and space life only as a springing-board to leap from. So we see that God in His wisdom works by a definite plan in helping men, and that whatever other plan He might have de¬ signed, we are in fact a real part of the plan He does employ to save and satisfy men with Himself.

CHAPTER V Plan of Incarnation

W HEN we have studied with spiritual insight the history of the Jewish people and the history of the Christian Church we understand plainly that God has been developing and reclaiming the souls of men according to a definite method. The re¬ ligious insight and faith of the Hebrew people was used of God as an entering wedge into the apostate life of the world. He took this faith in Him, infused with His Spirit, and prepared the consciousness and will of the Jews for the destined advent of Messiah. And when in the fulness of time God revealed Himself in human flesh, as the Son of Man, He pointed men for¬ ward to the time when the Spirit of His incar¬ nate Life (which He lived in life and death) working through His disciples, should redeem the race and establish His kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven. “ Neither pray I for these alone but for them also which shall believe on [ 23 ]

Me through their word.” He bade men pray and strive for this with all the enthusiasm and force of their loyalty and determined service. He did not consider it an impossible dream. He mapped it out as a practical program for men of faith.

Our Lord, then, arranged that His worldconquest should be accomplished by His dis¬ ciples becoming His living plan. But as complete in themselves — apart from Him — they could do nothing. He had revealed to men His Spirit of loving trust and eager friendship. Men had felt the Spirit of His strong sympathy and honor and moral trueness. They knew His indignation at the strong hold of sense-life that took the spiritual freedom and joy out of His human kin. He promised men that the Holy Spirit, as this Spirit Who had been revealed in His life, would possess and control them accord¬ ing to the measure of their faith and obedience. “He will guide you into all truth .... for He shall receive of Mine and shall show it unto you.’ ’

So God’s incarnate plan was that men should communicate to each other, in God’s presence, [ 24 ]

PLAN OP INCARNATION the Spirit Who had won men in His earthly life. If God can not use men as His plan of redeeming the race, then the plan of the Incarnation fails. Bnt unless that plan is limited to the physical presence of man with man, intercession is a great agency of spiritual reach and fulness little appreciated and used. Our Lord said much more about using our faith than He did about using our physical powers and senses. And He showed that faith has no physical limits. The reach of our faith — actual, living faith — towards men is the unchecked, untrammeled personal medium which God seeks to use to possess men every¬ where with the Spirit of His Incarnation.