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.