are you willing?

Next week we’re studying Intercessory Prayer, and reading
the book “Rees Howells, Intercessor” so I started on it last night. It’s the story of a man from Wales who was
born in 1879, and became the channel of African revivals, was taught the
principles of divine healing, and basically prayed down heaven onto earth to
the point that World War II and other major world events were affected by his
prayers. I’m only on page 41, but its
already an incredible story of a man completely sold out for the Lord- desiring
more of Him at any cost- His dignity, His money, etc… the following was a
thought-provoking passage on how following Jesus isn’t just a one-time
decision- its moment by moment, giving up the right to have the last word, or
the need to defend oneself always, or its giving of your money when you don’t
have much of it, or dedicating time to spend in the word when you feel rushed…

Three years after Rees became a Christian, he was at a
conference when the Holy Spirit took hold of his life. A man asked him the question, “Have you been
quickened by Christ? Have you been
raised up to sit with Him in heavenly places?”
Rees knew he hadn’t been raised up with Christ to the place of power. He realized that the Church knows more about
the Savior, who was only on the earth thirty-three years, than about the Holy
Ghost who has been here two thousand years. He had only thought of Him as an Influence
coming on meetings, but that night He came to Rees, saying, “As the Savior had
a body, so I dwell in the cleansed temple of the believer. I am a Person.
I am God, and I am come to ask you to give your body to Me that I may
work through it. I need a body for My temple
(1 Cor 6:19), but it must belong to Me without reserve, for two persons with
different wills can never live in the same body. Will you give me yours? (Rom 12:1). But if I come in, I come as God, and you must
go out (Col
3:2-3). I shall not mix Myself with
yourself.

“He was not going to
take any superficial surrender. He put
His finger on each part of my self-life, and I had to decide in cold blood. He could never take a thing away until I gave
my consent. Then the moment I gave it,
some purging took place (Isaiah 6:5-7), and I could never touch that thing
again… He was coming in as God, and I had lived as a man, and ‘what is
permissible to an ordinary man,’ He told me, ‘will not be permissible to you.'” The Holy Spirit, on the basis of his initial surrender,
step by step replaced the self-nature with His own divine nature (2 Peter 1:4).
First there was the love of money, that “root
of evil”… The Lord told him that He would take out of his nature all taste for
money and any ambition for the ownership of money. “I had to consider what that meant,” Rees
said. “Money would be no more to me than
it was to John the Baptist or to the Savior. To an extent this was dealt with in being born
again, but now the Holy Ghost was getting at the root.” The dealings went on for 5 days- Rees gave up
his right to a choice in making a home, his ambition, his reputation (what if
the Lord wanted him to live like John the Baptist? “If I live My life in you, and that is the
kind of life I choose, you can’t stop Me,” was the Lord’s word on it). As the Savior was despised, he must be willing
to be the same. The Spirit summed up the
issue for him- temporal or eternal gain- and this is the same question He asks
all of us: “On no account will I allow you to cherish a single thought of self,
and the life I will live in you will be one hundred per cent for others. Now, are you willing?”

We must remember that God’s best is always better than our best. It hurts to release our own desires, but what He replaces them with are far superior.