With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, 23

This is another excerpt from Murray's discussion of the Lord's Prayer. God willing, there will be more excerpts from this discussion later:

‘Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.’  This petition is too frequently applied alone to the suffering of the will of God. In heaven God’s will is done, and 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.  Because the will of God is the glory of heaven, the doing of it is the blessedness of heaven.  As the will is done, the kingdom of heaven comes into the heart.  And wherever faith has accepted the Father’s love, obedience accepts the Father’s will.  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.’  When first the child has yielded himself to the Father in the care for His Name, His Kingdom, and His Will, he has full liberty to ask for his 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?  We may indeed in full confidence say:  Father, I live for Thy honour and Thy work; I know Thou carest for me.  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.

This post continues what is intended to be a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here. The previous post is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color.