With Christ in the School of Prayer (22) ... The Word and 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 22, The Word and Prayer:

Before prayer, it is God’s word that prepares me for it by revealing what the Father has bid me ask.  In prayer, it is God’s word strengthens me by giving my faith its warrant and its plea.  And after prayer, it is God’s word that brings me the answer when I have prayed, for in it the Spirit gives me to hear the Father’s voice.  Prayer is not monologue but dialogue; God’s voice in response to mine in its most essential part.  Listening to God’s voice is the secret of the assurance that He will listen to mine.

It is this connection between His word and our prayer that Jesus points to when He says, ‘If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’

Instead of ‘Ye in me and I in you,’ He says, ‘Ye in me and my words in you.’  His words abiding are the equivalent of Himself abiding.

This hearing the voice of God is something more than the thoughtful study of the Word.  There may be a study and knowledge of the Word, in which there is but little real fellowship with the living God.  But there is also a reading of the Word, in the very presence of the Father, and under the leading of the Spirit, in which the Word comes to us in living power from God Himself; it is to us the very voice of the Father, a real personal fellowship with Himself.  It is the living voice of God that enters the heart, that brings blessing and strength, and awakens the response of a living faith that reaches the heart of God again.

‘If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, it shall be done unto you.’  We see what this means.  In the words the Saviour gives Himself.  We must have the words in us, taken up into our will and life, reproduced in our disposition and conduct.  We must have them abiding in us:  our whole life one continued exposition of the words that are within, and filling us.  It is as the words of Christ enter our very heart, become our life and influence it, that our words will enter His heart and influence Him.

‘If my words abide in you;’ the condition is simple and clear.  In His words His will is revealed.  As the words abide in me, His will rules me; my will becomes the empty vessel which His will fills, the willing instrument which His will wields; He fills my inner being.  In the exercise of obedience and faith my will becomes ever stronger, and is brought into deeper inner harmony with Him.  He can fully trust it to will nothing but what He wills; He is not afraid to give the promise, ‘If my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, it shall be done unto you.’  To all who believe it, and act upon it, He will make it literally true.

Nothing can make strong men but the word coming to us from God’s mouth:  by that we must live.  It is the word of Christ, loved, lived in, abiding in us, becoming through obedience and action part of our being, that makes us one with Christ, that fits us spiritually for touching, for taking hold of God.  ‘If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’

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