7
Four
The Curriculum of Intercession
I will stand my watch
And set myself on the rampart,
And watch to see what He will say to me,
And what I will answer when I am corrected.
Then the Lord answered me and said:
“Write the vision
And make it plain on tablets,
That he may run who reads it"
(Habakkuk 2:1-2).
Inspired Waiting
I will stand my watch and set myself on the rampart.
How steadily all through the Old and New Testament God calls us to stand on the watch and wait for His indications, and how often God’s answers to our prayers have been squandered because we do not watch and wait. Are you thoroughly perplexed over God’s way? Are you unable to reconcile God’s clear way as revealed in His book with the way He is leading you? Take the line of this prophet during his perplexity. Stand and watch to see what God will say—watch at the right place.
There is a difference in the prayers of the Old and the New Testaments. In Chapter 3 the prophet Habakkuk bases his prayer on the character of God and appeals to God’s great mercies. In the New Testament, prayer is based on a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. “When you pray, say, Our Father” (Luke 11:2). There is another difference—the prayers in the Old Testament have to do with an earthly people in an earthly setting. The prayers in the New Testament have to do with a heavenly state of mind in a heavenly people while on this earth. We are continually reminded that we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and the rulers of this world’s darkness.
The first thing to remember is to watch at the right place, the place where God has put us. Watch, that is, for God’s answer to our prayers, and not only watch, but wait. When God calls upon us to pray, when He gives the vision, when He gives an understanding of what He is going to do through us in our Sunday school class, in our church or home—watch. How many of us have had to learn by God’s reproof, by God’s chastisement, the blunder of conferring with flesh and blood.
Are you discouraged where you are? Then get on this tower with God and watch and wait. The meaning of waiting in both the Old and New Testament is “standing under,” actively enduring. It is not standing with folded arms doing nothing. It is not saying, “In God’s good time it will come to pass.” By that we often mean, “In my abominably lazy time I let God work.” Waiting means standing under, in active strength, enduring till the answer comes.
We must never make the blunder of trying to forecast the way God is going to answer our prayer. When God made a tremendous promise to Abraham, Abraham thought of the best way to help God fulfill His promise and did the wisest thing he knew according to flesh-and-blood commonsense reasoning. But God refused to speak to him for thirteen years, until every possibility of his relying on his own intelligent understanding was at an end. Then God came to him and said, “I am Almighty God”—El Shaddai—“walk before Me and be blameless” (Genesis 17:1).
Over and over again God has to teach us how to stand and endure, watching actively and wondering. It is always a wonder when God answers prayer. We hear people say, “We must not say it is wonderful that God answers prayer.” But it is wonderful. It is so wonderful that a great many people believe it impossible. “Whatever you ask in my name, that I will do” (John 14:13). Isn’t that wonderful? It is so wonderful that I do not suppose more than half of us really believe it. “Everyone who asks receives” (Matthew 7:8). Isn’t that wonderful? It is so wonderful that many of us have never even asked God to give us the Holy Spirit because we don’t believe He will. “If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 18:19). Isn’t that wonderful? It is tremendously wonderful. “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” (James 5:16). Isn’t that wonderful?
If you have had a vision of how wonderfully God can answer prayer, are you watching today for Him to answer along His line? Are you on your tower, watching steadfastly every sign of God’s goings? Or are you coming under the bitter blight that came on Meroz? When the Spirit of the Lord came on Deborah, the prophetess of the Lord, she cried, “Curse Meroz, . . . curse its inhabitants bitterly, because they did not come to the help of the Lord . . . against the mighty’ (Judges 5:23).
The first chapter of Habakkuk speaks of the tremendous devastations that are to come upon Israel (see vv. 1–11). In our own day, the majority of us are sound asleep to the devastation going on. And we too will come under the bitter curse of Meroz if we do not rouse ourselves and stand with God against the mighty—spiritualism, supernaturalism, Christian Science, Millennial-dawnism[7]—all terribly widespread, sweeping, devouring errors. Are we thoroughly awake and watching, or are we crying in a cowardly way, “Tell us the things that please us, that rouse us up and kindle us on our own lines. Don’t tell us about the perplexities of a prophet or handmaid of God?” God grant that every child of His may get on the watchtower and stand and watch.
As soon as a difficulty comes on the horizon and clouds gather, where is the intense watching? We sulk and turn aside. We turn our backs on God and on His messengers and say, “You have not brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey” (Numbers 16:14). God grant that in times of perplexity we may get back again to the watchtower, back again to inspired waiting, back again to the wide-eyed wonder of a child at God’s answers to our prayers.
Intelligent Witnessing
And watch to see what He will say to me.
I do not think we have enough of the wondering spirit that the Holy Spirit gives. It is the child-spirit. A child is always wide awake with wonder. But as we get older we forget that a child’s wonder is nearer the truth than our older knowledge. When through Jesus Christ we are rightly related to God, we learn to watch and wait, and wait wonderingly. “I wonder how God will answer this prayer.” “I wonder how God will answer the prayer the Holy Spirit is praying in me.” “I wonder what glory God will bring to Himself out of the strange perplexities I am in.” “I wonder what new turn His providence will take in manifesting Himself in my ways.”
The child-like wondering mind of the Holy Spirit, if I may say so reverently, was exhibited in the Lord Jesus Christ as everlasting wonder and expectancy at His Father’s working. “I do not speak on my own authority,” and “the Father who dwells in Me does the works” (John 14:10). Our Lord said that when the Holy Spirit is come, “He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak” (John 16:13). The Lord Jesus spoke and worked from the great big child-heart of God. God Almighty became incarnate as a little child, and Jesus Christ’s message in us must become as that of little children. God always keeps the minds of His children open with wonder, with open-eyed expectancy for Him to come in where He likes. I wonder how many of us have been getting our ideas and convictions and notions twisted. Thank God for the confusion if it is going to drive us straight to the watchtower with God. There our doctrines and creeds are going to be God’s, not doctrines and creeds out of God’s Book twisted to suit our preconceived ideas, but the doctrines of God woven into the flesh and blood tissues of our lives by the indwelling Holy Spirit—watching, waiting, wondering, and witnessing.
Take all the Old Testament prophets. God never spoke with them without a corresponding wonder on their part. Over and over again the prophets were staggered with wonder at the strange things God did, and if they leaned to their own intelligence without sufficiently relying on the tremendous power of God, there was instant confusion. We have to “receive, recognize, and rely on the Holy Spirit,” and never get beyond that stage. God grant we may have the wonder of the child-heart that the Holy Spirit gives, and that He may keep our minds young and vigorous and unstagnant, never asleep, but always awake with child-eyed wonder at the next wonderful thing God will do. “The Lord reigns; let the earth rejoice” (Ps. 97:1).
God grant we may get to the place where the only thing we take seriously is the place God has put us, watching, waiting steadfastly for God’s goings. Never take anything said by any man or woman, or in any book, without waiting and watching before God. “Try the spirits,” test them, see if they be of God. I want you to beware of a mistake I have made over and over again of trying to interpret God’s plan for other lives according to the way He has led me. Never do this! Keep open-eyed in wonder. Can God do what He likes in your life? Can He help Himself to you? Can He take you up and put you down? Can He introduce His schemes through you, and never tell you the reason? Can He make you a spectacle to men and angels, as He did Job, without giving you any explanation? Can He make you a wonder to yourself and to others, while He gives you the implicit childlike understanding that somehow or other things are working out all right?
Inviolable Walking
Write the vision, and make it plain on tablets, that he may run that reads it. No longer watching and waiting, but actively set toward the divine goal to which God is calling.
Have you ever noticed the “wondering-ness” (if I may coin a word) of the people who go on with God? They never seem to be overanxious or overconcerned and they always seem to be getting younger. What is the characteristic of the people of this world who have not got the child-heart? They are always sighing; they have mental and spiritual rheumatism and neuralgia, moral twists and perversities, and nothing can rouse them. Why? They need the child-spirit, the Spirit that was given to the disciples after the resurrection and in its fullness at Pentecost; then nothing will turn them aside.
After Pentecost came the sword and great persecution. The disciples were all scattered abroad, but nothing could stop them from preaching the Word. There was a hilarious shout all through these men’s lives because of the mighty baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire. There was running then! No power on earth or heaven above or hell beneath could stop the tremendous strength of the child-life of the Holy Spirit in them. Have you got the wonder in your heart or are you sighing, “Thank God I have managed to squeeze enough grace out of God to last through this day?” Blessed be the name of God, all the unsearchable riches of Christ are at your disposal!
Thank God for every life that is running in the strength of the tremendous vision. Keep your eyes on your file leader, Jesus only, Jesus ever, “and make straight paths for your feet” (Hebrews 12:13). Watch for His goings. When He stands and hides Himself in a cloud—stand, watch, and wait. When the meaning is clear, then you will run. A vision puts enthusiasm into you, a thrilling understanding of God’s Word, and you soar above in tremendous ecstasy. Then you come down and run without being weary, and then you come to the grandest days and walk without fainting.
“For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry” (Habakkuk 2:3). “I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?’” (Isaiah 6:8). That is a wonderful point—“Who will go for Us?” Some say, “Lord, there is Mrs. So-and-so. She is ready, send her.” Is that the answer you give? “O Lord, I know there ought to be a movement in my church and there is Mr. So-and-so. He’s just the one, send him.” If you have been watching, waiting, and wondering, you will say: “Here am I; send me.” If God came to you tonight, would you say, “Here am I?” Do you know where you are? Some people live in a fog. They don’t know where they are, but if you know anything about waiting on God and walking before Him, you will say, “Here am I, do what You like with me.”
O Lord, explore down to the deepest springs of my spirit where Your Spirit works, and read my deepest prayer I cannot pray in expression. Lord, touch my body; it is Your temple. Shine out in and through it, O Lord.
O Lord, lift up the light of Your countenance upon us this day, and make us to fit in with Your plans with great sweetness and light and liberty, and a lilt to You all day.
O God my Father, the clouds are but the dust of Your feet. Let me discover in every cloud of providence or nature or grace no man but Jesus till there is no fear.