16. Intercession

The intermingling of soul with Soul, our personal thoughts, desires, and emotions, intermingled together with Jesus’ personal thoughts, desires, and emotions, is the full meaning of the Eucharist, that is, such communion with Christ happens as we give thanks.

But Christ is always set-forth purpose, and the purpose of our Father for this communion we share inside of Oone Aanother is for the sake of others and of all creation. The word Paul used to describe the action and power of this togetherness of purpose is synergeia, God’s energeia and our energeia swirling utterly together. The purpose, then, of this synergeia is to turn all things in creation towards goodness.

There is another word used in Christian discussion that fits this same purpose of synergeia. That word is “intercession.” The English word “intercession” can be a good translation of the Greek word Paul used in Romans 8:26 – synantilambanomai, that is, the Spirit of God helps us in our prayer. Synantilambanomai contains the familiar parts, lambano, to actively receive, that is, to seize hold of, and syn, together with. It means to share something deeply together with one another, to seize hold of one another’s concerns.

The word, “intercession,” then, places the actions of synergeia, God and us together, upon the Atonement, upon the blood sprinkled on the Mercy Seat of our hearts. It places all redemption inside the outflow of that which turns all things towards goodness.

In this letter and the next, I want to discover what intercession really is for us. I also hope to enlarge ever further on the meaning of sharing soul together with Jesus, a practice that reaches out to include setting forth our souls for one another.

“Intercession” comes from three Latin word parts – ion, or a state or condition of being. “Inter,” that is, between or among, and even further, full reciprocity. And “cess/cede” or surrender. Intercession thus means the condition of bringing a fully mutual and reciprocal surrender, one to the other, between two persons. The term, in every instance, assumes a third actor or person in the equation, that is, an in-between, a mediator, a catalyst, one who takes the hand of each party in the contention and brings them together. The moment the mediator’s work is completed, he or she fades into the background.

To intercede is that action of the mediator to bring two equals into full surrender to one another. An intercessor is a mediator between two, a person who is fully and deeply familiar with both parties in the dispute and who is able to win the attention and trust of both parties and thus is able to bring both parties to a full and mutual surrender to each other. The moment that mutual surrender is complete, the intercessor is no longer needed as an intercessor, but is now just a friend of both.

From the time the Lord brought me back to Himself in December of 1975 until the time I first visited Christian community at Graham River Farm in April of 1977 was less than 16 months. Looking back now, it seems a very in-between time.

During those months I sought the Lord as much as I could, going to every available Spirit-filled meeting or conference or Bible study I found. I attended Pentecostal churches and went to Portland a number of times to be part of charismatic conferences.

Nonetheless, the greatest impact on my life came, not from any of that, but from two books that I read. The first was The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee and the second was Rees Howells: Intercessor by Norman Grubb. Watchman Nee grounded me absolutely into the meaning of the atonement, and Norman Grubb set before me a man who sought God in a living relationship, an example of devotion that caught the passion of my own heart.

It was my reading the story of Rees Howells that connected me with the reality that God does what He says, and that He works through us in ways beyond that for which most Christians were happy to settle. I saw a God who would meet face to face with a man, and I saw a man who gave himself utterly to God. It was my reading of Rees Howells that enabled me to dare raising my hand when asked if God would do what He says in our lives and that gave me that ear that could hear the revelation of Jesus Christ preached to me in the move of God fellowship about a year later.

After reading of Rees Howells, I wanted to be an intercessor in the ministry of Christ. I was never successful at doing so, however, not even in the slightest way. I have always been obsessed with knowing word, I have never had the discipline or staying power to last more than two minutes at any doing of that word.

In 1976, I was nineteen going on twenty. I tried to fast and to seek God as an “intercessor.” My plan was to spend the night up in the mountains with my dog, to fast and to pray. I forgot to take a flashlight; it was too dark to find my way to my truck. I spent a miserable night eaten by mosquitoes. In the morning, the agony of not having eaten for a few hours was so great I certainly could not “pray.” By noon I was on my way to Albany and the buffet restaurant where I heaped more on my plate and into my tummy than normal, something I was highly skilled at doing.

All my efforts to “intercede” since then, though maybe not as dramatic, have followed a similar trajectory. You can see why I NEED a Savior; I am totally useless without One.

All my years of living in Christian community, I spent much of my spare time in the word, drinking it into myself in every way I knew how. Services great and small were far more frequent in that fellowship than in most. The demonstration of the Spirit and of power was everyday normality. I am not an initiator of such things, but I was very glad to participate with those who are so gifted.

I attempted prayer as well over the years, in connecting with God, but sustained prayer is just not something given to me. I hardly last five minutes. I connected personally with God on a regular basis and in the exercise of prayer in many unique places and ways, but it always seemed so fruitless. Absorbing word into my heart was my gift, and so I gave myself to that gift for I wanted to know God.

I tried fasting a few times, but I am less able to do that than to engage in sustained prayer.
Please understand that in the present time, it is writing these letters that is my communion with God, my prayer and my intercession. When I write, I hear Jesus singing in my heart. At other times I place myself regularly into the thinking that Christ is all there is in me and that Father is utterly with me in all things. But it is while I write that I know all my heart has longed to know.

That’s why I write so much; I have no other way to connect with my Father.

Leading my own family in prayer is entirely beyond my ability. That’s why I so committedly covenant with God that He would do for them what I cannot. That’s also why I expect God to return us to community inside of this word I share because I so need the gifts God has given to others.

Interceding for you, my readers, is something I take very seriously, it’s just that I cannot sustain such a thing for more than brief moments now and then. That may not make sense to some, but both sides of that statement are true. It is my confidence in God, that He is inside of my not-ness, that makes my inabilities to be His great care for you.

Having set that stage, I now want to turn entirely around with this whole topic of intercession, including even fasting, here inside all the fullness of God, so that we might see this practice together with God as it really is.

Soul with soul. Person inside of person. The intertwining of two together as one.

At the time that I read Rees Howells: Intercessor, it was God’s direction in my life, pointing me towards Himself. Now, as I think back about that text, and even about Norman Grubb who wrote it, I see that only one element of that approach to God is meaningful to us now and that is the devotion of the heart, Rees’s to God’s and God’s to Rees’s. Every other part of the “intercession” as set out in that book has no usefulness to us except as contrast.

Intercession for God’s people comes now out from our full intertwining with Father as one together inside and out from the Holy of Holies. Intercession for God’s people is the Ark of the Covenant going forth with the Mercy Seat upon it.

We cannot be the revelation of the Day of Atonement to millions of Spirit-filled believers in Jesus except we be utterly turned around inside of God ourselves.

Synergeia – sharing energeia together.

Let’s set out the verses using this incredible word, a word that has been entirely hidden from God’s people until now.

Indeed, therefore, the Lord Jesus, while speaking to them, was seized up into the heaven and sat down out of the right hand of God. {This is not a “geographical” transfer, but a transfer of form, into all-here-now, the becoming known of Father in every heart where Father is becoming known.} They, now, having come forth, proclaiming everywhere, the Lord synergeoing with them and continuously and actively confirming the word through the accompanying signs. Let it be so (Mark 16:20).

You see that [Abraham’s] faith was synergeoing with his works and out of his works, his faith was brought to full completion (James 2:22). [Note: I have just finished the JSV of James and it is now on the website. I no longer find in James anything opposed to Paul’s gospel. I find, rather, a very thoughtful man, sharing good wisdom, all of which I also share throughout my letters.]

I encourage you now, brothers and sisters, as you know that the house of Stephanas is the firstfruit of Achaia, and they have ordered themselves into the service of the holy ones, that also you submit yourselves to such as these, and to everyone synergeoing and toiling together (1 Corinthians 16:15-16).

As synergeoing [with God], we also encourage you not to receive and welcome the grace of God into emptiness. For He says: “In an acceptable time, I listened to you, and inside of a day of salvation, I helped you.” Behold, now is the time of favor and of good welcome; behold now is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:1-2).

We know moreover that those who are actively loving God are synergeoing with God to turn with purpose all—all things, all entities, all circumstances, all moments—into pure and intrinsic goodness, that is, into the knowledge of God. These are those who are continuously being called as and by the precise details of God’s Pro-Thesis, His set-forth purpose from the beginning, the Blueprint of His House, the Lord Jesus (Romans 8:28 – expanded).

The phrase, “working together with God,” typically gives the idea of – “we do our little bit over here, God does His little bit over there, and presto, the job is done.” What the term does not do is John 14:20; it does not put us inside of Jesus and Jesus inside of us, such that our synergeoing is utterly entwined as one and inside of one another.

When you look at each of these five verses out from John 14:20 as one of the primary rules by which we define everything, then we see that, indeed, this synergeoing with God is happening inside of us inside of God inside of us.

This is very interesting. I am also just completing the JSV translation of 1 Corinthians. I have found that James’s letter is far more in tune with Paul’s gospel than huge chunks of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. At times Paul seems not to understand his own gospel much worse than James might not have understood it. I wrote into the translation my complete repudiation of some of the things Paul states in 1 Corinthians 7, for instance, a chapter that may have done more hurt in church history than Paul’s true gospel has done good.

Anyhow, I am more confirmed than ever that the Bible becomes the Word of God to us ONLY as it enters through Christ to be the only life we are. Just as Paul and Jesus paid zero attention to many of the ideas found in the Old Testament, so we do the same with some of the ideas found in the New. That’s exactly what Jesus meant when He said, “The words that I speak to you are Spirit and they are life – they are not mental ideas of outward human appearance.”

 The next letter, however, is practical synergeoing. Here we want to continue with placing the practice of intercession.

Here is the heart of the atonement. – If anyone should miss the target [sin], we have One close to us, always connecting with the Father {one might say, always hitting the target or always connecting us with Father and Father with us}, Jesus Christ, the righteous. And He is the propitiation [the resolution] {the Mercy Seat} all around our sins; but not all around ours only, but also all around [the sins of] the entire cosmos (1 John 2:1-2).

The “resolution” taking place as the propitiation is the mutual surrender of one to the other, of Jesus with this one who has not known Him, that is the goal of our intercession. Jesus’ surrender took place in Gethsemane, yet it is actively all-here-now. Our surrender is when we receive Him as our only life.

Now, the thing for us with intercession, with prayer and fasting, and so on, is that everything gets turned around. Rees Howells’ version of intercession would be ungodly unbelief for us simply because Howells was always attempting to connect with God and often imagining himself as fallen short. More than that, the “God” with whom Howells was connecting, though still the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, was defined by Howells through the image of the serpent as One demanding outward perfection and outward performance from him.

Our intercession is always utterly together with Father, He and us together working towards the entrance of others into His knowledge. At no point do we intercede “for ourselves” as if we are fallen short or in any way disconnected from Father in Person through Christ our only life.

So, if we fast, we do NOT fast to “seek” God, for that would be a return to wallowing in gross unbelief. Rather, if we fast, it is God and us together, focusing our shared and holy Spirit into the work of making Jesus known as He is to others.

Now, in this letter and the next, “Synergeia,” I am rambling more than usual. My hope is to give shape to three ideas, with the hope of seeing these three ideas merge together in the process.

The first idea is the meaning of our intercession for the Church of Jesus Christ in this hour. And I tell you what, the darkness and the flood out of the dragon’s mouth are not “coming.” We are in it. We are in the final years of this age.

The second idea is the role of thanksgiving in the setting free of each individual person in all creation, including how Paul’s audacious claim might work, that Charles Manson, etc., WILL speak the same words as the Lord Jesus out from a heart submitted to Him.

The third idea, then, is how these two things together, our place of intercession as the very Mercy Seat of God and our giving thanks, that is, speaking good grace into all things, become tithemi psuche, the setting forth of our souls for the brethren.

And, of course, in all of these, we are speaking of only one thing, and that is, synergeia, God and us utterly together. You see, we do not think of what we do without thinking that God is doing it. And we do not think of what God is doing without thinking that we also are doing it.

And so “synergeia” is not a fourth topic, but rather, the one place inside of which these other three things, intercession, thanksgiving/speaking good grace, and setting forth our souls for the brethren, have any meaning or reality at all.

So – intercession.

I have recently read an article and watched a YouTube video from unelated sources, but on the same topic. That topic is the generally held understanding that in the event of a collapse of the fragile and intricate system that sustains us in this world, it is expected that 50% of the population will perish within one month and 90% of the population within the first year. Both article and video discussed the reasons for and causes of these deaths.

The US government just took out the entire electrical power system in the nation of Venezuela with a series of cyberattacks that were designed to ensure that not only the entire system broke, but that the immediate attempts to fix it would also fail. This is an act of war at the most barbaric of levels, but, of course, the US denies it and who will challenge such a beast?

There is this little thing called justice. We dare not think that what we do to others will not, in turn, be done to us. Such a fantasy is a complete mockery of God.

There is talk about “civil war” in America. Such an idea is absurd. There can be no civil war, for the moment the system is shattered, everyone will be fighting to survive as individuals or gangs, without care for any larger issue. Within one week after the trucks stop running, thousands will be dying and within three weeks tens of millions will be dying.

Where will you get your food when the trucks stop driving down the freeways? And if you have food, how will you keep your neighbors from taking it from you by violence? Consider southern California. Destroy the set of huge waterlines miles away from the cities and within three days more than 15 million people will be dying of thirst.

There is NO recourse. And people are so programmed away from either having the slightest idea what to do AND from knowing how to work together with their neighbors AND from any moral integrity.

Now, I have known all these specifics for many years. Considering this present presentation inside the present day almost scared the tar out of me. – Almost, yes, but the legitimate and overwhelming concern was displaced by something else arising inside of me.

That something else was – “NO!”

There are, let’s say, 75 million good Christians in this country.

Yes, millions of good Christian people in Germany either were burned to death or starved to death from 1942-1947. Where was Reece Howells in his intercession? He was interceding, not for God’s people, but for their destruction in his delusion that the English were the “good guys”!

I am done with nationalism and with sectarianism. I will have ALL whom the Father has given to Jesus.

Then I get an email from a brother with a strong forehead who is committed to knowing a bunch of powerful religious ideas coming from Bible verses tacked together instead of knowing Jesus Sent into him. I know these people, and I don’t want to like them.

I have a problem, though. You see, I have been speaking Christ my life for over twelve years. And I know that Christ lays down His life for me even while I am raging in hostility against God. And I know that this same Christ fills my heart with His glory and is the only life I am.

For that reason, I know that the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge, embraces these my brethren, regardless.

Consider these lines from Isaiah 59; the lines that require Christ to become our only life.

Then the Lord saw it, and it displeased Him that there was no justice. He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor; therefore His own arm brought salvation for Him. – So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west, and His glory from the rising of the sun; when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him. – As for Me,” says the Lord, “this is My covenant with them: My Spirit who is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth, shall not depart from your mouth…”

The Intercessor is the Lord Jesus, of course, the only life we are.

I don’t know. I just will not accept the idea that Blood in the dirt of this planet brings no victory, that the Church of Jesus Christ upon this earth is a failed experiment.

There IS a Man. And He fills our hearts with His own passion. And that passion is extended out over every single person upon this planet right now who already belongs to Him, whether they are born again at present or not.

And so, over the last several days, I have found this same Spirit working through me in tears, in travail, in believing God for that which must flow out from us to ALTER the normal courses of human action, and to establish our brethren all across this earth inside the HOLY OF HOLIES as Christ Jesus always present, walking this earth as us, His physical body together.

If there must be a Day of Elijah, then let that Day begin, and if it must come through human hearts filled with God, then let those hearts be ours.

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse (Malachi 4:5-6).

I looked up the Hebrew words in this passage and found nothing needing adjustment. Nonetheless we know such a word as this only as Christ and only as our life.

The great and dreadful day of the Lord IS the cross of Christ wherein Jesus put all creation to death inside Himself. If One died for all, then all died (2 Corinthians 5). We know of this “curse” in only one way – Christ became that curse for us (Galatians 3).

Of course, God sent John the Baptist before the foreshadowed Atonement in order to close out the old covenant by the action of pointing Israel to the New in the form of a Man walking among them. Yet Jesus, in acknowledging John’s role, also said that Elijah must yet come. There must be a second witness of Christ upon this earth.

That “Elijah to come” IS the fulfillment of the Day of Atonement now inside the Church of Christ all across this planet.

Now, I have well established the authority of the Blood sprinkled upon our hearts, that our hearts as the Mercy Seat of God possess the authority and the power to intercede and to turn aside the flood of Death.

God does not just “do.” He cannot. Just “doing” never enters God’s mind, for God gave the authority to mankind and removing that authority is something He is incapable of thinking about. – By man death, by man life.

Yet apart from Him, we can do nothing. For that reason, it must always be God and us together.
So what do I do?

My intercession cannot be from “me” as somebody. My intercession is the grounded expectation of God that rules my heart. I have His word in my mouth, the Lord Jesus, and as I speak what God speaks, so the real River of Life goes out from me to birth, first, in the Church of Jesus Christ a reality of life and power never before known inside this heaven/earth.

I do not know what it is, I do not know how it works, but I do KNOW that there is something so deeply holy, so utterly out from the core of God’s Being, that takes place inside of our hearts as we place ourselves in utter agreement as the very Word God is continuously speaking.

And I place myself here, with all the fierce boldness of my human heart made just like God’s heart, inside this agreement, inside this Christ, inside this Father, inside this Hheart I share with God, inside this synergeia of a symmorphic existence.

Let it be to me according to Your Word.

Because I will not be found anywhere else, regardless.