28 "For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it--
29 "lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him,
30 "saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.'
31 "Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?
32 "Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.
33 "So every one of you who doesn't renounce all that he has cannot be My disciple.
34 "Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its flavor, how shall it be seasoned?
35 "It is neither fit for the land nor for the dunghill, but men throw it out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!"

"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, but it must belong to Me without reserve, for two persons with different wills can never live in the same body." Excerpted from 'Rees Howells, Intercessor' by Norman Grubb

Holy Spirit, we invite You to deal with our hearts, calling us to yield those things which are important to us…. areas of our lives which are strongholds for the enemy. We ask that You will appear to us and be ever present with us this week, as you were with Rees Howells-ever dealing with us, showing us those areas that you will want full control over. Start today, Holy Spirit, that we might count the cost-that we might yield ourselves and our desires to You to be replaced with Your own. We want to say to You "I am willing". We know that it is only then that You will be able to truly use us for Your purposes. May we be willing to give You everything, because Jesus poured Himself out for us, and gives us so much. Our life, for His. Help us, Holy Spirit, to be able to say "yes" to You. Pull us through. In the Name of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Amen.

This lesson is rather intense….. be sure to prepare for it spiritually. After the prayer, give the kids time to pray on their own and absorb it all. This is the "Wow, heavy" lesson before next time when we show them how much they are worth to Jesus!




The Holy Spirit takes possession An excerpt from the book Rees Howells: Intercessor by Norman Grubb

The next morning at the Convention, Mr. Hopkins spoke about the Holy Spirit. He made it plain that He is a Person, with all the faculties of a Person, exactly like the Savior. He has intelligence, love and a will of His own; and, as a Person, before He comes to live in a man, He must be given full possession of his body.

"As he spoke," Rees said, "the Holy Ghost appeared to me……..It never dawned on me before that the Holy Ghost was a Person exactly like the Savior, and that He must come and dwell in flesh and blood…….I had only thought of Him as an Influence coming on meetings, and that was what most of us in the Revival thought. I had never seen that He must live in bodies, as the Savior lived in His on earth."

"I saw Him as a Person apart from flesh and blood, and He said to me, '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 Corin. 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 your self.'

"He made it very plain that He would never share my life. I saw the honor He gave me in offering to indwell me, but there were many things very dear to me, and I knew He wouldn't keep one of them. The change He would make was very clear. It meant every bit of my fallen nature was to go to the cross, and He would bring in His own life and His own nature."

It was unconditional surrender. From the meeting Rees went out into a field where he cried his heart out because, as he said, "I had received a sentence of death, as really as a prisoner…. I had lived in my body for 26 years, and could I easily give it up? Who could give his life up to another in just an hour? Why does a man struggle when death comes, if it is easy to die? I knew that the only place fit for the old nature was on the cross. Paul makes it very plain in Romans chapter 6. But once this is done in reality, it is done for ever. I could not run into this (hastily)."

"I intended to do it, but oh, the cost!! I wept for days. I lost 7 pounds in weight, just because I saw what He was offering me. How I wished I had never seen it! One thing He reminded me of was that He had only come to take what I had already promised the Savior (when I accepted what Jesus did for me), not in part, but the whole."

"Since He died for me, I had died in Him, and I knew that the new life was His and not mine…..I saw that only the Holy Ghost in me could live like the Savior. Everything He told me appealed to me; it was only a question of the loss there would be in doing it. I didn't give my answer in a moment, and He didn't want me to."

It took five days to make the decision, days which were spent alone with God. "Like Isaiah, I saw the holiness of God," he said, "and seeing Him, I saw my own corrupt nature."

"Nothing is more real to me than the process I went through for those five days," he continued. "The Holy Spirit went on dealing with me, exposing the root of my nature which was self…..sin was cancelled (by his trusting in the work of Jesus), and it wasn't sin He was dealing with; it was self-- that thing which came from the Fall." (when Adam disobeyed God, and we became more interested in pleasing ourselves than pleasing God)

"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 (cleansing) took place (Isaiah 6:5-7), and I could never touch that thing again. It was not saying I was purged and the thing still having a hold on me; no, it was a breaking, and the Holy Ghost taking control. Day by day the dealing went on. 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. 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 my new birth, but now the Holy Ghost was getting at the root." The dealings on that lasted a whole day, and by the evening his "attitude towards money had entirely changed."

Then there was the fact that he would never have the right to a choice in making a home. "I saw I could never give my life to another person, to live to that one alone. Could the Savior have given His life and attention to one person, instead of to a lost world? Neither could the Holy Ghost. He took plenty of time to show me exactly what it would mean: the life He would live would be for others. Was I willing for that?"

Among other things that were dealt with was ambition. How could he have any if the Holy Ghost came in? The way the Lord showed it to him was like this: Supposing he had a mission in a town and another mission opened in the same place; if there was jealousy between the two, and it was better for the town only to have one mission, then it would be his which would have to go. Or suppose that he and another man should apply for the same job; he would have to let the other have it. Or if he were earning 12s. a day, and another man with a family was earning much less, the Spirit would tell him to give his job to that man. He saw the Holy Ghost in ways like-- that taking the place of the other, and suffering instead of him. Yes, he was willing for that.

On the fifth day his reputation was touched. As he was thinking of men of the Bible who were full of the Holy Ghost, and particularly John the Baptist, the Lord said to him, "Then I may live through you the kind of life I lived through him." A Nazarite clothed in camel's hair, living in a desert! Even in this, or what might be its modern day equivalent, a real decision had to be made. "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.

By Friday night each point had been faced. He knew exactly what he was offered: the choice between temporal and eternal gain. The Spirit summed the issue up for him: "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. You will never be able to save yourself, any more than the Savior could when He was on earth. Now, are you willing?" Rees was to give a final answer.

The Spirit challenged him: "You have seen the position of the overcomers, but you have not entered in. I have been dealing with you for five days; you must give Me your decision by six o'clock tonight and remember, your will must go. On no account will I allow you to bring in a crosscurrent. Where I send you, you will go; what I say to you, you will do." It was the final battle on the will.

"I asked Him for more time," Rees continued, "but He said, 'You will not have a minute after six o'clock.' When I heard that, it was exactly as if a wild beast was roused in me. 'You gave me a free will,' I answered, 'and now You force me to give it up.' 'I do not force you,' He replied, 'but for three years (since he had accepted what Jesus did for him) have you not been saying that you are not your own, and that you wanted to give your life back to the Savior as completely as He gave His for you?'

"I climbed down in a second. The way I had said it was an insult to the Trinity. 'I am sorry,' I told Him, 'I didn't mean what I said.' 'You are not forced to give up your will,' He said again, 'but at six o'clock I will take your decision. After that you will never get another chance.' It was my last offer; my last chance! I saw that Throne (Rev. 3:21) and all my future for eternity going. I said, 'Please forgive me, I want to do it.'

"Once more the question came, 'Are you willing?' It was ten minutes to six. I wanted to do it, but I could not. Your mind is keen when you are tested, and in a flash it came to me, 'How can self be willing to give up self?' Five to six came. I was afraid of those last five minutes. I could count the ticks of the clock. Then the Spirit spoke again. 'If you can't be willing, would you like Me to help you? Are you willing to be made willing?'

"'Take care,' the enemy whispered. 'When a stronger person than you is on the other side, to be willing to be made willing is just the same as to be willing.' As I was thinking upon that point I looked at the clock. It was one minute to six. I bowed my head and said, 'Lord, I am willing.'"

Within an hour the Third Person of the Godhead had come in. He gave Rees that word in Hebrews 10:19, "Having therefore boldness to enter into the Holiest by the blood of Jesus." "Immediately," said Rees, "I was transported into another realm, within that sacred veil where the Father, the Savior and the Holy Ghost live. There I heard God speaking to me, and I have lived there ever since. When the Holy Ghost enters, He comes in to 'abide for ever.' To the Blood be the glory!!

"How I adored the grace of God! It is God who goes so far as to give us repentance. It was God who helped me to give up my will. There were some things He had asked for during the week that I was able to give, because I was the master of them; but when He asked me to give up my self and my will, I found I could not --- until He pulled me through."

When he awoke the next morning he said, "I realized that the Holy Ghost had come in to 'abide for ever.' The feeling I had was that 'He brought me to the banqueting house, and His banner over me was love.' It is impossible to describe the floods of joy that followed."