02.07. The Methods of the Lord

It is true also that the Lord is demanding a closer adherence to His appointed methods. As the individual believer matures in the Christian life, he often finds greater difficulty in maintaining spiritual victory. He had expected opposition to decrease, or at least to be more easily overcome. But he discovers that God is laying upon him heavier burdens, and testing him for larger ministries. In like manner, as the age is advancing, the church is being prepared for the final struggle by being taught lessons of individual responsibility that in the past were the property of advanced saints only. All believers might have known them, for they are revealed in the Word of God, but only the few pressed on to their attainment. For the greater struggles of our day and the thickening atmosphere into which we are entering, the church needs intercessors who have learned the secret of taking hold of the power of God, and directing it against the strategic advances of the enemy. She needs those who have understanding of the times to know what ought to be done amid the crashing down of old standards, and the introduction of that which is uncertain and untried.

God is waiting for those whom He can trust and use, who will have the discernment to foresee His steppings and the faith to command His power. Authoritative intercessors are men and • women, whose eyes have been opened to the full knowledge of their place in Christ. To them the Word of God has become a battle chart on which is detailed the plan of campaign of the hosts of the Lord. They realize that they have been appointed by Him for the oversight of certain sections of the advance, and they have humbly accepted His commission. Deeply conscious of their own personal unworthiness and insufficiency, they yet believe God’s statement concerning their identification with Christ in His throne power.

Increasingly they realize that heavenly responsibility rests upon them for the carrying forward of the warfare with which they have been charged. Their closet becomes a council chamber from which spiritual commands go forth concerning matters widely varied in character and separated in place. As they speak the word of ’command, God obeys. His delight is in such co-working. They have caught his thought concerning the method of the advance of His kingdom. Through them He finds it possible to carry forward purposes and to fulfil promises which have been long held back for lack-not of human laborers nor of financial means-but of understanding spiritual fellow laborers.