Monday, November 26, 2012

With Christ in the School of Prayer (13) ... Prayer and Fasting, the power erupts

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 13, Prayer and Fasting … the power erupts.

He had given them ‘power and authority over all devils, and to cure all diseases.’

The power they had received to cast out devils, they did not hold in themselves as a permanent gift or possession; the power was in Christ, to be received, and held, and used by faith alone, living faith in Himself.  Had they been full of faith in Him as Lord and Conqueror in the spirit-world, had they been full of faith in Him as having given them authority to cast out in His name, this faith would have given them the victory.  ‘Because of your unbelief’ was, for all time, the Master’s explanation and reproof of impotence and failure in His Church.

Our faith has cast out devils before this:  why not this time?  ‘The Master proceeds to tell them:  ‘This kind goes out only by fasting and prayer.’

He teaches us two lessons in regard to prayer of deep importance.  The one, that faith needs a life of prayer in which to grow and keep strong.  The other, that prayer needs fasting for its full and perfect development.

And the first thought suggested by Jesus’ words in regard to fasting and prayer, is, that it is only in a life of moderation and temperance and self-denial that there will be the heart or the strength to pray much.

Prayer is the reaching out after God and the unseen;  
fasting, the letting go of all that is of the seen and temporal. 
While ordinary Christians imagine that all that is not positively forbidden and sinful is lawful to them, and seek to retain as much as possible of this world, with its property, its literature, its enjoyments, the truly consecrated soul is as the soldier who carries only what he needs for the warfare.  


Laying aside every weight, as well as the easily besetting sin, afraid of entangling himself with the affairs of this life. Without such voluntary separation, even from what is lawful, no one will attain power in prayer:  this kind goes out only by fasting and prayer.

Is the prize not worth the price? 
Shall we not give up all to follow Jesus in the path He opens to us here; shall we not, if need be, fast?  Shall we not do anything that neither the body nor the world around hinder us in our great life-work,—having intercourse with our God in prayer, that we may become men of faith, whom He can use in His work of saving the world.”


More on Prayer and Fasting and seeing power erupt in your life:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/murray/prayer.XIII.html
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library has many classic works on prayer and living a Spirit-filled life.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

With Christ in the School of Prayer (12 ) ... Secret of Believing 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 12, Secret of Believing Prayer:

How can I attain the faith that knows that it receives all it asks?


HAVE FAITH IN GOD:  this word precedes the other, Have faith in the promise of an answer to prayer.  The power to believe a promise depends entirely, but only, on faith in the promiser.

It is only where we live and associate with God in personal, loving intercourse, where GOD HIMSELF is all to us, where our whole being is continually opened up and exposed to the mighty influences that are at work where His Holy Presence is revealed.

I must hear the person who gives me the promise:  the very tone of his voice gives me courage to believe.  I must see him:  in the light of his eye and countenance all fear as to my right to take passes away.  The value of the promise depends on the promiser.

It is through the eye that I yield myself to the influence of what is before me; I just allow it to enter, to exert its influence, to leave its impression upon my mind.  So believing God is just looking to God and what He is, allowing Him to reveal His presence,
giving Him time
and
yielding the whole being to take in the full impression of what He is as God.

Faith is also the ear through which the voice of God is always heard and intercourse with Him kept up.  It is through the Holy Spirit the Father speaks to us; the Son is the Word, the substance of what God says; the Spirit is the living voice.  God needs to lead and guide him; the secret voice from heaven must teach him, as it taught Jesus, what to say and what to do.

Listen to the lesson Jesus teaches us this day:  HAVE FAITH IN GOD, the Living God:  let faith look to God   more than   the thing promised:  it is His love, His power, His living presence will come alive to us and work the faith.  

So the cure of a feeble faith is alone to be found in the invigoration of our whole spiritual life by intercourse with God.  Learn to believe in God, to take hold of God, to let God take possession of our life, and it will be easy to take hold of the promise.  He that knows and trusts God finds it easy to trust the promise too.

Because they knew God, these men of faith could not do anything but trust His promise.  God’s promise will be to us what God Himself is.  It is the man who walks before the Lord, and falls upon his face to listen while the living God speaks to him, who will really receive the promise.  Though we have God’s promises in the Bible, with full liberty to take them, the spiritual power is wanting.

We seek God’s gifts:  God wants to give us HIMSELF first.  A heart full of God has power for the prayer of faith.  Faith in God begets faith in the promise, in the promise of an answer to prayer.

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

Monday, November 19, 2012

With Christ in the School of Prayer (11) ... the Faith that Takes

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 11, the Faith that Takes:

BELIEVE that you have received; He will see to it that He does the thing He has promised:  ‘Ye shall have them.

Yes, ‘ALL THINGS WHATSOEVER ye shall ask in prayer
believing, ye receive.’

His promise is most literally true.  He wants His oft repeated ‘ALL THINGS’ to enter into our hearts, and reveal to us how mighty the power of faith is, how truly the Head calls the members to share with Him in His power, how wholly our Father places His power at the disposal of the child that wholly trusts Him.

Believing is the exercise of a soul surrendered and given up to the influence of the Word and the Spirit; but when once we do believe nothing shall be impossible.  God forbid that we should try and bring down His ALL THINGS to the level of what we think possible.

In one aspect there must be faith before there can be prayer; in another the faith is the outcome and the growth of prayer. It is in prayer that Jesus teaches and inspires faith. He who begins to pray and ask will find the Spirit of faith is given nowhere so surely as at the foot of the Throne.

Believe that you have received.’  It is clear that what we are to believe is, that we receive the very things we ask.  The Savior does not hint that because the Father knows what is best He may give us something else.

Nothing that so honors the Father as the faith that is assured that He will do what He has said in giving us whatsoever we ask for, and takes its stand on the promise as brought home by the Spirit, it may know most certainly that it does receive exactly what it asks.

Believe that you have received! now, while praying, the thing you ask for.  It may only be later that you shall have it in personal experience, that you shall see what you believe; but now, without seeing, you are to believe that it has been given you of the Father in heaven.

And ye shall have them.’  That is, the gift which we first hold in faith as bestowed upon us in heaven will also become ours in personal experience.  But will it be needful to pray longer if once we know we have been heard and have received what we asked?  There are cases in which such prayer will not be needful, in which the blessing is ready to break through at once, if we but hold fast our confidence, and prove our faith by praising for what we have received, in the face of our not yet having it in experience.  There are other cases in which the faith that has received needs to be still further tried and strengthened in persevering prayer.

Faith says most confidently, I have received it.  Patience perseveres in prayer until the gift bestowed in heaven is seen on earth.  ‘Believe that ye have received, and ye shall have.’ Between the have received in heaven, and the shall have of earth, believe:  believing praise and prayer is the link.

It was when the disciples expressed their surprise at what He had done to the fig-tree, that He told them that the very same life He led could be theirs; that they could not only command the fig-tree, but the very mountain, and it must obey.  And He is our life:  all He was on earth He is in us now; all He teaches He really gives.”

More on the Faith that Takes::
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/murray/prayer.XI.html
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library has many classic works on prayer and living a Spirit-filled life.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

With Christ in the School of Prayer (10 ) ... Prayer must be Definite

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 10, Prayer must be Definite:

Our prayers must not be a vague appeal to His mercy, an indefinite cry for blessing, but the distinct expression of definite need.  Not that His loving heart does not understand our cry, or is not ready to hear.  But He desires it for our own sakes.  Such definite prayer teaches us to know our own needs better.  It demands time, and thought, and self-scrutiny to find out what really is our greatest need.  It searches us and puts us to the test as to whether our desires are honest and real, such as we are ready to persevere in.  It leads us to judge whether our desires are according to God’s Word, and whether we really believe that we shall receive the things we ask.  It helps us to wait for the special answer, and to mark it when it comes.

And yet how much of our prayer is vague and pointless.  Some ask, perhaps, to be delivered from sin, but do not begin by bringing any sin by name from which the deliverance may be claimed.  Still others pray for God’s blessing on those around them, and yet have no special field where they wait and expect to see the answer.  To all the Lord says:  And what is it now you really want and expect Me to do?

We should ask such questions as these:  What is now really my desire?  do I desire it in faith, expecting to receive?  am I now ready to place and leave it in the Father’s bosom?  is it a settled thing between God and me that I am to have the answer?  we should learn so to pray that God would see and we would know what we really expect.

But the word of the Master teaches us more.  He does not say, What dost thou wish? but, What does thou will?  The will rules the whole heart and life; if I really will to have anything that is within my reach, I do not rest till I have it. Alas! how many prayers are wishes, sent up for a short time and then forgotten, or sent up year after year as matter of duty, while we rest.  But the prayer of faith, finding God’s will in some promise of the Word, pleads for that till it come, content with the prayer without the answer. Faith is nothing but the purpose of the will resting on God’s word, and saying:  I must have it.  To believe truly is to will firmly.

True humility is ever in company with strong faith, which only seeks to know what is according to the will of God, and then boldly claims the fulfillment of the promise:  ‘Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’

More on Prayer must be Definite:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/murray/prayer.X.html
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library has many classic works on prayer and living a Spirit-filled life.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

With Christ in the School of Prayer (9) ... Prayer Provides Laborers

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 9, Prayer Provides Laborers:

“He would have them understand that prayer is not to be selfish; so here it is the power through which blessing can come to others.  The Father is Lord of the harvest; when we pray for the Holy Spirit, we must pray for Him to prepare and send forth laborers for the work.

‘He saw the multitude, and was moved with compassion on them, because they were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd,’ that He called on the disciples to pray for laborers to be sent among them.  He did so because He really believed that their prayer was needed, and would help.

He knew that as to these men of old, and to Himself for a time, here upon earth, the work of God had been entrusted, so it was now about to pass over into the hands of His disciples.  He knew that when this work should be given in charge to them, it would not be a mere matter of form or show, but that on them, and their being faithful or unfaithful, the success of the work would actually depend.

When they have taken over the work from Him on earth, to make this one of the chief petitions in their prayer:  That the Lord of the harvest Himself would send forth laborers into His harvest.  The God who entrusted them with the work, and made it to so large extent dependent on them, gives them authority to apply to Him for laborers to help, and makes the supply dependent on their prayer.

And how little they believe that our labor-supply depends on prayer, that prayer will really provide ‘as many as he needs.’ The Lord of the harvest will, in answer to prayer, send forth the laborers, and in the solemn conviction that without this prayer fields ready for reaping will be left to perish.

And yet it is so.  So wonderful is the surrender of His work into the hands of His Church, so dependent has the Lord made Himself on them as His body, through whom alone His work can be done, so real is the power which the Lord gives His people to exercise in heaven and earth, 
that the number of the laborers and the measure of the harvest
does actually depend

upon their prayer.


Such prayer will ask and obtain a twofold blessing.  There will first be the desire for the increase of men entirely given up to the service of God.

The other blessing to be asked will not be less.  
Every believer is a laborer;
not one of God’s children who has not been redeemed for service
,
and has not his work waiting.


Wherever there is a complaint of the want of helpers, or of fit helpers in God’s work, prayer has the promise of a supply.  There is no Sunday school or no Bible reading or rescue work, where God is not ready and able to provide.  It may take time and importunity, but the command of Christ to ask the Lord of the harvest is the pledge that the prayer will be heard:  ‘I say unto you, he will arise and give him as many as he needs.

It will make us feel how really we are God’s fellow-workers on earth, to whom a share in His work has in downright earnest been entrusted.  It will make us partakers in the soul travail, but also in the soul satisfaction of Jesus, as we know how, in answer to our prayer.”

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

Sunday, November 11, 2012

With Christ in the School of Prayer (8) ... The Boldness of God’s Friends

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 8, The Boldness of God’s Friends.


“He speaks of  how they ought to pray, and repeats what he formerly said of God’s Fatherliness and the certainty of an answer.  But in between He adds the beautiful parable of the friend at midnight, to teach them the two fold lesson, that God does not only want us to pray for ourselves, but for the perishing around us, and that in such intercession great boldness of entreaty is often needful, and always lawful, yea, pleasing to God.

The parable is a perfect storehouse of instruction in regard to true intercession.  
There is, first,
the love which seeks to help the needy around us:  ‘my friend is come to me.’  
Then the need which urges to the cry  ‘I have nothing to set before him.’  
Then follows the confidence that help is to be had:  ‘which of you shall have a friend, and say, Friend, lend me three loaves.’  
Then comes the unexpected refusal :  ‘I cannot rise and give thee.’  
Then again the perseverance that takes no refusal:  ‘because of his importunity.’  
And lastly, the reward of such prayer:  ‘he will give him as many as he needs.’  

A wonderful setting forth of the way of prayer and faith in which the blessing of God has so often been sought and found.

There is a twofold use of prayer:  the one, to obtain strength and blessing for our own life; the other, the higher, the true glory of prayer, for which Christ has taken us into His fellowship and teaching, is intercession, where prayer is the royal power a child of God exercises in heaven on behalf of others and even of the kingdom.

It is when we draw near to God as the friend of the poor and the perishing that we may count on His friendliness; the righteous man who is the friend of the poor is very specially the friend of God.  This gives wonderful liberty in prayer.

That a child obtains what he asks of his father looks so perfectly natural, we almost count it the father’s duty to give.  But with a friend it is as if the kindness is more free, dependent, not on nature, but on sympathy and character.

The one thing by which man can honor and enjoy his God is faith.  Intercession is part of faith’s training-school.  There our friendship with men and with God is tested.  There it is seen whether my friendship with the needy is so real, that I will take time and sacrifice my rest, will go even at midnight and not cease until I have obtained for them what I need.  There it is seen whether my friendship with God is so clear, that I can depend on Him not to turn me away and therefore pray on until He gives. O what a deep heavenly mystery this is of persevering prayer.

He trains them, in the school of answer delayed, to find out how their perseverance really does prevail, and what the mighty power is they can wield in heaven, if they do but set themselves to it.  There is a faith that sees the promise, and embraces it, and yet does not receive it.

O let us thank Him that in delaying His answer He is educating us up to our true position and the exercise of all our power with Him, training us to live with Him in the fellowship of undoubting faith and trust, to be indeed the friends of God.  And let us hold fast the threefold cord that cannot be broken:  the hungry friend needing the help, and the praying friend seeking the help, and the Mighty Friend, loving to give as much as he needs.”

More on the Boldness of God’s Friends
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/murray/prayer.VIII.html
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library has many classic works on prayer and living a Spirit-filled life.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

With Christ in the School of Prayer (7) ... All-Comprehensive Gift

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 7, the All-Comprehensive Gift.


“Instead of speaking, as then of giving good gifts, He says, ‘How much more shall the heavenly Father give THE HOLY SPIRIT?’  He thus teaches us that the chief and the best of these gifts is the Holy Spirit, or rather, that in this gift all others are comprised  The Holy Spirit is the first of the Father’s gifts, and the one He delights most to bestow.  The Holy Spirit is therefore the gift we ought first and chiefly to seek.

The best gift a good and wise father can bestow on a child on earth is his own spirit.  A king seeks in the whole education of his son to call forth in him a kingly spirit. The Father can bestow no higher or more wonderful gift than this:  His own Holy Spirit, the Spirit of sonship.

If we but yield ourselves entirely to the disposal of the Spirit, and let Him have His way with us, He will manifest the life of Christ within us.  He will do this with a Divine power, maintaining the life of Christ in us in uninterrupted continuity.  Surely, if there is one prayer that should draw us to the Father’s throne and keep us there, it is this:  for the Holy Spirit, whom we as children have received, to stream into us and out from us in greater fulness.

HOW MUCH MORE shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him.’  In the words of God’s promise, ‘I will pour out my Spirit abundantly;’ and of His command, ‘Be ye filled with the Spirit’ we have the measure of what God is ready to give, and what we may obtain.

Just as the branch, already filled with the sap of the vine, is ever crying for the continued and increasing flow of that sap, that it may bring its fruit to perfection, so the believer, rejoicing in the possession of the Spirit, ever thirsts and cries for more.  And what the great Teacher would have us learn is, that nothing less than God’s promise and God’s command may be the measure of our expectation and our prayer; we must be filled abundantly.

As we pray to be filled with the Spirit, let us not seek for the answer in our feelings.  All spiritual blessings must be received, that is, accepted or taken in faith.  Let me believe, the Father gives the Holy Spirit to His praying child.  Even now, while I pray, I must say in faith:  I have what I ask, the fulness of the Spirit is mine.

It is such prayer that not only asks and hopes, but takes and holds, that inherits the full blessing.  In all our prayer let us remember the lesson the Saviour would teach us this day, that, if there is one thing on earth we can be sure of, it is this, that the Father desires to have us filled with His Spirit, that He delights to give us His Spirit.

And when once we have learned thus to believe for ourselves, and each day to take out of the treasure we hold in heaven, what liberty and power to pray for the outpouring of the Spirit on the Church of God, on all flesh, on individuals, or on special efforts!  He that has once learned to know the Father in prayer for himself, learns to pray most confidently for others too.  The Father gives the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him, not least, but most, when they ask for others.

More on the All-Comprehensive Gift
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/murray/prayer.VII.html
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library has many classic works on prayer and living a Spirit-filled life.