Sunday, October 28, 2012

With Christ in the School of Prayer (5) ... the Certain Answer to Prayer

by Dale Shumaker
Spirit Savvy Network
www.spiritsavvy.net

Finding your mission, Empowering your life through prayer,
Becoming a Missionary in the Marketplace
Leading others to be Missionaries in the Marketplace

An all-time Christian Classic on prayer which is a foundational study on prayer that anyone interested in Prayer should read. So, I decided to summarize it chapter by chapter. With Christ in the School of Prayer is a classroom on the Power of Prayer in your Life.
With Christ in the School
of Prayer by Andrew Murray,
Chapter 5, the Certain Answer to Prayer.


“Jesus gives as ground for such assurance the law of the kingdom:  ‘He that asks, receives; he that seeks, finds; to him that knocks, it shall be opened.’  He wants to impress deep on our minds this one truth, that we may and must most confidently expect an answer to our prayer.

In the three words the Lord uses, ask, seek, knock, first, ASK, refers to the gifts we pray for.  But I may ask and receive the gift without the Giver.  SEEK is the word Scripture uses of God Himself; Christ assures me that I can find Himself.  But it is not enough to find God in time of need, without coming to abiding fellowship:  KNOCK speaks of admission to dwell with Him and in Him.

One thing is sure:  the Lord does want us to count most certainly on it that asking, seeking, knocking, cannot be in vain:  receiving an answer, finding God, the opened heart and home of God, are the certain fruit of prayer.

According to this teaching of the Master, prayer consists of two parts, has two sides, a human and a Divine.  The human is the asking, the Divine is the giving.   If no answer comes, there must be something in the prayer that is not as God would have it, childlike and believing; we must seek for grace to pray so that the answer may come.

There may be cases in which the answer is a refusal, because the request is not according to God’s Word, as when Moses asked to enter Canaan.  But still, there was an answer:  God did not leave His servant in uncertainty as to His will.  God will teach those who are teachable and give Him time, by His Word and Spirit, whether their request be according to His will or not.  Let us withdraw the request, if it be not according to God’s mind, or persevere till the answer come.  Prayer is appointed to obtain the answer.

If we take His words in simplicity, and trust Him by His Spirit to make them within us life and power, they will so enter into our inner being, that the spiritual Divine reality of the truth they contain will indeed take possession of us, and we shall not rest content until every petition we offer is borne heavenward on Jesus’ own words:  ‘Ask, and it shall be given you.’

Let us take time, as often as we pray, to listen to His voice:  Every one that asks, receives.

More on the Certain Answers to Prayer
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/murray/prayer.V.html
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library has many classic works on prayer and living a Spirit-filled life.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

With Christ in the School of Prayer (4) ... The Model Prayer


by Dale Shumaker
Spirit Savvy Network
www.spiritsavvy.net

Finding your mission, Empowering your life through prayer,
Becoming a Missionary in the Marketplace
Leading others to be Missionaries in the Marketplace

An all-time Christian Classic on prayer which is a foundational study on prayer that anyone interested in Prayer should read. So, I decided to summarize it chapter by chapter. With Christ in the School of Prayer is a classroom on the Power of Prayer in your Life.
With Christ in the School
of Prayer by Andrew Murray,
Chapter 4, The Model Prayer.


"Every teacher knows the power of example.  He not only tells the child what to do and how to do it, but shows him how it really can be done.  We have in them a form of prayer in which there breathe the freshness and fulness of the Eternal Life.  So simple that the child can lisp it, so divinely rich that it comprehends all that God can give.  

A form of prayer that becomes the model and inspiration for all other prayer.

Our Father which art in heaven!’  None of the saints had in Scripture ever ventured to address God as their Father.  The invocation places us at once in the centre of the wonderful revelation the Son came to make of His Father as our Father too. It is in the personal relation to the living God, and the personal conscious fellowship of love with Himself, that prayer begins.  It is in the knowledge of God’s Fatherliness.  In the infinite tenderness and pity and patience of the infinite Father, in His loving readiness to hear and to help, the life of prayer has its joy.

Hallowed be Thy name.’  There is something here that strikes us at once. First, Thy name, Thy kingdom, Thy will; then, give us, forgive us, lead us, deliver us. In true worship the Father must be first, must be all.  The sooner I learn to forget myself in the desire that HE may be glorified, the richer will the blessing be that prayer will bring to myself.  This must influence all our prayer. 

There are two sorts of prayer:  personal and intercessory.  The latter ordinarily occupies the lesser part of our time and energy.  This may not be.  Christ has opened the school of prayer specially to train intercessors for the great work of bringing down, by their faith and prayer, the blessings of His work and love on the world around.


The little child may ask of the father only what it needs for itself; and yet it soon learns to say, Give some for sister too. And Jesus would train us to the blessed life of consecration and service, in which our interests are all subordinate to the Name, and the Kingdom, and the Will of the Father.  O let us live for this.

Hallowed be Thy name.’  What name?  This new name of Father.
It is only when we yield ourselves to be led of Him, that the name will be hallowed in our prayers and our lives.

Thy kingdom come.’  The Father is a King and has a kingdom. The coming of the kingdom is the one great event on which the revelation of the Father’s glory, the blessedness of His children, the salvation of the world depends. Our prayers cause God's Kingdom to form around us.

Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.’  The Master teaches the child to ask that the will may be done on earth just as in heaven:  in the spirit of adoring submission and ready obedience. As the will is done, the kingdom of heaven comes into the heart.  The surrender to, and the prayer for a life of heaven-like obedience, is the spirit of childlike prayer.

Give us this day our daily bread.’  A master cares for the food of his servant, a general of his soldiers, a father of his child.  And will not the Father in heaven care for the child who has in prayer given himself up to His interests?  Consecration to God and His will gives wonderful liberty in prayer for temporal things:  the whole earthly life is given to the Father’s loving care.

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.’  We are children but sinners too; our right of access to the Father’s presence we owe to the precious blood and the forgiveness it has won for us.  Let us beware of the prayer for forgiveness becoming a formality:  only what is sincerely confessed is really forgiven.  Such forgiveness, as a living experience, is impossible without a forgiving spirit to others:  as forgiven expresses the heavenward, so forgiving the earthward, relation of God’s child.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’  Our daily bread, the pardon of our sins, and then our being kept from all sin and the power of the evil one, in these three petitions all our personal need is comprehended.  The believing prayer in everything to be kept by the power of the indwelling Spirit from the power of the evil one.

Children of God! it is thus Jesus would have us to pray to the Father in heaven.  O let His Name, and Kingdom, and Will, have the first place in our love; His providing, and pardoning, and keeping love will be our sure portion.  We shall understand how Father and child, the Thine and the Our, are all one.

FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM, AND THE POWER, AND THE GLORY, FOR EVER, AMEN.’  Son of the Father, teach us to pray, ‘OUR FATHER.’

More on the Model of Prayer
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/murray/prayer.IV.html
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library has many classic works on prayer and living a Spirit-filled life.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

With Christ in the School of Prayer (3) ... Alone with God


by Dale Shumaker
Spirit Savvy Network
www.spiritsavvy.net

Finding your mission, Empowering your life through prayer,
Becoming a Missionary in the Marketplace
Leading others to be Missionaries in the Marketplace

An all-time Christian Classic on prayer which is a foundational study on prayer that anyone interested in Prayer should read. So, I decided to summarize it chapter by chapter. With Christ in the School of Prayer is a classroom on the Power of Prayer in your Life.
With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray,
Chapter 3, Alone with God.


"It came as a matter of course that the revelation of prayer and the prayer-life was a part of His teaching concerning the New Kingdom He came to set up.  Moses gave neither command nor regulation with regard to prayer:  even the prophets say little directly of the duty of prayer; it is Christ who teaches to pray.

The first thing the Lord teaches His disciples is that they must have a secret place for prayer; every one must have some solitary spot where he can be alone with his God.

He wants each one to choose for himself the fixed spot where He can daily meet him.  That inner chamber, that solitary place, is Jesus’ schoolroom.  That spot may be anywhere; that spot may change from day to day if we have to change our abode; but that secret place there must be, with the quiet time in which the pupil places himself in the Master’s presence, to be by Him prepared to worship the Father.

First, ‘Pray to thy Father which is in secret.’  God is a God who hides Himself to the carnal eye. As long as in our worship of God we are chiefly occupied with our own thoughts and exercises, we shall not meet Him who is a Spirit, the unseen One.  But to the man who withdraws himself from all that is of the world and man, and prepares to wait upon God alone, the Father will reveal Himself.  As he forsakes and gives up and shuts out the world, and the life of the world, and surrenders himself to be led of Christ into the secret of God’s presence, the light of the Father’s love will rise upon him.  The secrecy of the inner chamber and the closed door, the entire separation from all around us, is an image of, and so a help to that inner spiritual sanctuary, the secret of God’s tabernacle, within the veil, where our spirit truly comes into contact with the Invisible One.

He tells you that when you go to private prayer your first thought must be:  The Father is in secret, the Father waits for me there. Do not be thinking of how little you have to bring God, but of how much He wants to give you.

And thy Father, which sees in secret, will reward you.’
Our Lord would thus teach us that as infinite Fatherliness and Faithfulness is that with which God meets us in secret, so on our part there should be the childlike simplicity of faith, the confidence that our prayer does bring down a blessing.  ‘He that comes to God must believe that He is a rewarder of them that seek Him.

Your Father knows what things you have need of before you ask Him.’  At first sight it might appear as if this thought made prayer less needful:  God knows far better than we do what we need. My Father knows I need it and must have it.  And if there be any delay in the answer, it will teach us in quiet perseverance to hold on:

We are in danger of being so occupied with our fervent, urgent petitions, as to forget that the Father knows and hears, let us hold still and just quietly say:  My Father sees, my Father hears, my Father knows; it will help our faith to take the answer, and to say:  We know that we have the petitions we have asked of Him.

Dwell much in the inner chamber, with the door shut—shut in from men, shut up with God; it is there the Father waits for you, it is there Jesus will teach you to pray.  To be alone in secret with THE FATHER:  this be your highest joy.  To be assured that THE FATHER will openly reward the secret prayer, so that it cannot remain unblessed:  this be your strength day by day.  And to know that THE FATHER knows that you need what you ask;  this be your liberty to bring every need, in the assurance that your God will supply it according to His riches in Glory in Christ Jesus.

More on Alone with God at
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/murray/prayer.III.html
The Christian Classic Ethereal Library has many classic works on prayer and living a Spirit-filled life.

Sunday, October 07, 2012

With Christ in the School of Prayer (2) ... True Worshipers



by Dale Shumaker
Spirit Savvy Network
www.spiritsavvy.net

Finding your mission, Empowering your life through prayer,
Becoming a Missionary in the Marketplace
Leading others to be Missionaries in the Marketplace

An all-time Christian Classic on prayer which is a foundational study on prayer that anyone interested in Prayer should read. So, I decided to summarize it chapter by chapter. With Christ in the School of Prayer is a classroom on the Power of Prayer in your Life.
With Christ in the School of Prayer
by Andrew Murray,
Chapter 2, The True Worshipers.


"The Father seeks worshipers...  our worship satisfies His loving heart and is a joy to Him.  He seeks true worshipers, but finds many not such as He would have them.  True worship is that which is in spirit and truth.

To the woman of Samaria our Lord spoke of a threefold worship.  There is first, the ignorant worship of the Samaritans:  ‘Ye worship that which ye know not.’  The second, the intelligent worship of the Jew, having the true knowledge of God: ‘We worship that which we know; for salvation is of the Jews.’  And then the new, the spiritual worship which He Himself has come to introduce:  ‘The hour is coming, and is now, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth.’

There were among them godly men, who called upon God with their whole heart.  And yet not ‘in spirit and truth,’ in the full meaning of the words.  Jesus says, ‘The hour is coming, and now is;’ it is only in and through Him that the worship of God will be in spirit and truth.

Among Christians one still finds the three classes of worshipers. They pray earnestly, and yet receive but little.  Others there are, who have more correct knowledge, who try to pray with all their mind and heart, and often pray most earnestly, and yet do not attain to the full blessedness of worship in spirit and truth.  It is into this third class we must ask our Lord Jesus to take us; we must be taught of Him how to worship in spirit and truth.  This alone is spiritual worship; this makes us worshipers such as the Father seeks.

There must be harmony between God and His worshipers. The man who would truly worship God, would find and know and possess and enjoy God, must be in harmony with Him, must have the capacity for receiving Him.  Because God is Spirit, we must worship in spirit.  As God is, so His worshiper.

And what does this mean? Worship is no longer to be limited to a certain place. As God is Spirit, not bound by space or time, but in His infinite perfection always and everywhere the same, so His worship would henceforth no longer be confined by place or form, but spiritual as God Himself is spiritual. The second thought that comes to us is that the worship in the spirit must come from God Himself.  God is Spirit:  He alone has Spirit to give. It was when Jesus had made an end of sin, and entering into the Holiest of all with His blood, had there on our behalf received the Holy Spirit.

The worship in  spirit is only possible to those to whom the Son has revealed the Father, and who have received the spirit of Sonship.  It is only Christ who opens the way and teaches the worship in spirit.

And so worship in spirit is worship in truth; actual living fellowship with God, a real correspondence and harmony between the Father, who is a Spirit, and the child praying in the spirit.

Pentecost was needed to reveal its full meaning.  We are hardly prepared at our first entrance into the school of prayer to grasp such teaching. We are carnal and cannot bring God the worship He seeks.

To have Christ the Son, and the Spirit of the Son, dwelling within us, and revealing the Father, this makes us true, spiritual worshipers."

More on The True Worshipers at
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/murray/prayer.II_1.html
The Christian Classic Ethereal Library has many classic works on prayer and living a Spirit-filled life.