BOOKS: Rees Howells: Intercessor
Warning! Do not touch this book, let alone read it if you do not want to be convicted on every page by Holy Spirit, pierced through, challenged, dismantled and utterly wrecked! This is the book to read if you are willing to undergo a living autopsy of your life at the hands of the true Surgeon General wanting to expose, and dissect and remove what is rotten, selfish, and abhorrent in our soul!
That said, it is the book to read slowly, if you want to accept and grow into Christ’s invitation to be an effective intercessor - after his own kind, to be formed over time through radical obedience and submission to Holy Spirit. We know the Lord seeks intercessors to stand in the gap before him for the nations, to turn the righteous course of judgement to mercy, but sadly too few are found.
Howells, who founded the Bible College of Wales and embodied the meaning of being a ‘contending house of prayer’ was known as the ‘hinge of history’, the man whose powerful prayer life thwarted Hitler’s plans and turned around the course of the Second World War. It is said that ‘inside information wins wars’ – we serve a God who loves to share enemy plans with his friends, and through their intercession in the 1930s and 40s, much like Daniel in Babylon, God downloaded secrets and battle strategies which released victory in and for the nations.
I had read the book many years ago – I recall it left an imprint but in re-reading it now, I’m hit deeply by how much I missed the first time and how much I had by-passed lessons in the Lord’s processes in the intervening years. The cost of intercession is so much clearer – it always involves sacrifice, unlike prayer, and Rees Howell’s life is one of costly sacrifice, a sacrifice detailed in every chapter, on most pages. But oh, what victories, what breakthroughs, what joy awaits after the dying to self and surrender to the Holy Spirit and Lord of life. Creation cannot meet The Creator and not be changed.
The life of Rees Howells is a painful, but inspiring example of what it is to walk in the authority that Jesus gives, that flows from intimacy and obedience and is effective to the level of submitted relationship in which we walk with God. Howells tells story after story of how he was allowed to ‘gain a position of intercession’ through what he suffered and surrendered, to identify with the Lord’s compassion for the subject under prayer.
One of the lessons that impacted me was the Lord’s question to Howells ‘are you an owner or a steward?’ of every penny, pound, possession, desire, choice, word. Howells writes, “I finished with ownership once and for all - I became as dead to money as the stones on the road – it was a great joy that the Saviour…had made me a branch, just a channel through which his own resurrection life could flow to the world…. The (Vinedresser) can never graft the old life back into the vine. The self cannot abide in the Saviour.”
In the chapter ‘What is an Intercessor’, we read ‘There are three things to be seen in an intercessor, which are not necessarily found in ordinary prayer: identification, agony and authority. Howell’s life reminds us there are no quick answers and no fast track to godly authority. The Lord worked deeply in his life, challenging attitudes, choices and health to truly identify with the suffering under prayer. He was to live with little food - like the miners - walk barefoot, not wear a hat (and therefore be socially unacceptable) and suffer like the lady with consumption. To the point of being willing to die in her place, identifying with the Saviour ‘who bore our diseases’ and therefore be an effective mediator - intercessor.
An intercessor friend heard the Lord say to her, ‘the world you see around you is a reflection of the condition of (prophetic) intercession in the Church’. As we face unprecedented war-footing in the heavens threatening to erupt wider on earth, what can we learn from this book and from Howell’s life? His son Samuel commented, “Intercession is the greatest force on earth…when prayer fails, intercession begins”.
Reviewed by:
Joanna Mitrushi
Forge Scotland delegate & teacher
That said, it is the book to read slowly, if you want to accept and grow into Christ’s invitation to be an effective intercessor - after his own kind, to be formed over time through radical obedience and submission to Holy Spirit. We know the Lord seeks intercessors to stand in the gap before him for the nations, to turn the righteous course of judgement to mercy, but sadly too few are found.
Howells, who founded the Bible College of Wales and embodied the meaning of being a ‘contending house of prayer’ was known as the ‘hinge of history’, the man whose powerful prayer life thwarted Hitler’s plans and turned around the course of the Second World War. It is said that ‘inside information wins wars’ – we serve a God who loves to share enemy plans with his friends, and through their intercession in the 1930s and 40s, much like Daniel in Babylon, God downloaded secrets and battle strategies which released victory in and for the nations.
I had read the book many years ago – I recall it left an imprint but in re-reading it now, I’m hit deeply by how much I missed the first time and how much I had by-passed lessons in the Lord’s processes in the intervening years. The cost of intercession is so much clearer – it always involves sacrifice, unlike prayer, and Rees Howell’s life is one of costly sacrifice, a sacrifice detailed in every chapter, on most pages. But oh, what victories, what breakthroughs, what joy awaits after the dying to self and surrender to the Holy Spirit and Lord of life. Creation cannot meet The Creator and not be changed.
The life of Rees Howells is a painful, but inspiring example of what it is to walk in the authority that Jesus gives, that flows from intimacy and obedience and is effective to the level of submitted relationship in which we walk with God. Howells tells story after story of how he was allowed to ‘gain a position of intercession’ through what he suffered and surrendered, to identify with the Lord’s compassion for the subject under prayer.
One of the lessons that impacted me was the Lord’s question to Howells ‘are you an owner or a steward?’ of every penny, pound, possession, desire, choice, word. Howells writes, “I finished with ownership once and for all - I became as dead to money as the stones on the road – it was a great joy that the Saviour…had made me a branch, just a channel through which his own resurrection life could flow to the world…. The (Vinedresser) can never graft the old life back into the vine. The self cannot abide in the Saviour.”
In the chapter ‘What is an Intercessor’, we read ‘There are three things to be seen in an intercessor, which are not necessarily found in ordinary prayer: identification, agony and authority. Howell’s life reminds us there are no quick answers and no fast track to godly authority. The Lord worked deeply in his life, challenging attitudes, choices and health to truly identify with the suffering under prayer. He was to live with little food - like the miners - walk barefoot, not wear a hat (and therefore be socially unacceptable) and suffer like the lady with consumption. To the point of being willing to die in her place, identifying with the Saviour ‘who bore our diseases’ and therefore be an effective mediator - intercessor.
An intercessor friend heard the Lord say to her, ‘the world you see around you is a reflection of the condition of (prophetic) intercession in the Church’. As we face unprecedented war-footing in the heavens threatening to erupt wider on earth, what can we learn from this book and from Howell’s life? His son Samuel commented, “Intercession is the greatest force on earth…when prayer fails, intercession begins”.
Reviewed by:
Joanna Mitrushi
Forge Scotland delegate & teacher
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