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.