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WITH CHRIST
In the School of Prayer
Thoughts on Our Training
for the
Ministry of Intercession
BY
REV. ANDREW MURRAY
Lord, teach us to pray.
NEW YORK
CHICAGO TORONTO
Fleming H. Revell
Company
Publishers of
Evangelical Literature.
PREFACE.
Of all the promises connected with the command, ‘ABIDE IN
ME,’ there is none higher, and none that sooner brings the
confession, ‘Not
that I have already attained, or am already made perfect,’
than this: ‘If
ye abide in me, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done
unto you.’ Power with God is the highest
attainment of the life of full abiding.
And of all the traits of a life LIKE CHRIST there is none higher and
more glorious than conformity to Him in the work that now engages Him
without ceasing in the Father’s presence—His
all-prevailing
intercession. The more we abide in Him, and grow unto His
likeness, will His priestly life work in us mightily, and our life
become what His is, a life that ever pleads and prevails for men.
‘Thou
hast made us kings and priests unto God.’
Both in the king and the priest the chief thing is power, influence,
blessing. In the king it is the power coming downward; in the
priest, the power rising upward, prevailing with God. In our
blessed Priest-King, Jesus Christ, the kingly power is founded on the
priestly ‘He
is able to save to the uttermost, because He ever liveth to make
intercession.’
In us, His priests and kings, it is no otherwise: it is in
intercession that the Church is to find and wield its highest power,
that each member of the Church is to prove his descent from Israel, who
as a prince had power with God and with men, and prevailed.
It is under a deep impression that the place and power of prayer in the
Christian life is too little understood, that this book has been
written. I feel sure that as long as we look on prayer
chiefly as
the means of maintaining our own Christian life, we shall not know
fully what it is meant to be. But when we learn to regard it
as
the highest part of the work entrusted to us, the root and strength of
all other work, we shall see that there is nothing that we so need to
study and practise as the art of praying aright. If I have at
all
succeeded in pointing out the progressive teaching of our Lord in
regard to prayer, and the distinct reference the wonderful promises of
the last night (John
xiv. 16)
have to the works we are to do in His Name, to the greater works, and
to the bearing much fruit, we shall all admit that it is only when the
Church gives herself up to this holy work of intercession that we can
expect the power of Christ to manifest itself in her behalf.
It
is my prayer that God may use this little book to make clearer to some
of His children the wonderful place of power and influence which He is
waiting for them to occupy, and for which a weary world is waiting too.
In connection with this there is another truth that has come to me with
wonderful clearness as I studied the teaching of Jesus on
prayer.
It is this: that the Father waits to hear every prayer of
faith,
to give us whatsoever we will, and whatsoever we ask in
Jesus’
name. We have become so accustomed to limit the wonderful
love
and the large promises of our God, that we cannot read the simplest and
clearest statements of our Lord without the qualifying clauses by which
we guard and expound them. If there is one thing I think the
Church needs to learn, it is that God means prayer to have an answer,
and that it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive what God
will do for His child who gives himself to believe that his prayer will
be heard. God hears prayer; this is a truth
universally
admitted, but of which very few understand the meaning, or experience
the power. If what I have written stir my reader to go to the
Master’s words, and take His wondrous promises simply and
literally as they stand, my object has been attained.
And then just one thing more. Thousands have in these last
years
found an unspeakable blessing in learning how completely Christ is our
life, and how He undertakes to be and to do all in us that we
need. I know not if we have yet learned to apply this truth
to
our prayer-life. Many complain that they have not the power to pray in
faith, to pray the effectual prayer that availeth much. The
message I would fain bring them is that the blessed Jesus is waiting,
is longing, to teach them this. Christ is our life:
in
heaven He ever liveth to pray; His life in us is an ever-praying life,
if we will but trust Him for it. Christ teaches us to pray
not
only by example, by instruction, by command, by promises, but by
showing us HIMSELF, the ever-living Intercessor, as our Life.
It
is when we believe this, and go and abide in Him for our prayer-life
too, that our fears of not being able to pray aright will vanish, and
we shall joyfully and triumphantly trust our Lord to teach us
to
pray, to be Himself the life and the power of our prayer.
May God open our eyes to see what the holy ministry of intercession is
to which, as His royal priesthood, we have been set apart.
May He
give us a large and strong heart to believe what mighty influence our
prayers can exert. And may all fear as to our being able to
fulfil our vocation vanish as we see Jesus, living ever to pray, living
in us to pray, and standing surety for our prayer-life.
ANDREW MURRAY
WELLINGTON, 28th October 1895
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