With Christ in the School of Prayer, 38, by Andrew Murray

This post continues 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.

Blessed Lord!  Thou knowest that this, though it be one of the first and simplest and most glorious lessons in Thy school, is to our hearts one of the hardest to learn:  we know so little of the love of the Father.  Lord!  teach us so to live with the Father that His love may be to us nearer, clearer, dearer, than the love of any earthly father.  And let the assurance of His hearing our prayer be as much greater than the confidence in an earthly parent, as the heavens are higher than earth, as God is infinitely greater than man.  Lord!  show us that it is only our unchildlike distance from the Father that hinders the answer to prayer, and lead us on to the true life of God’s children.  Lord Jesus!  it is fatherlike love that wakens childlike trust.  O reveal to us the Father, and His tender, pitying love, that we may become childlike, and experience how in the child-life lies the power of prayer.

Blessed Son of God!  the Father loveth Thee and hath given Thee all things.  And Thou lovest the Father, and hast done all things He commanded Thee, and therefore hast the power to ask all things.  Lord!  give us Thine own Spirit, the Spirit of the Son.  Make us childlike, as Thou wert on earth.  And let every prayer be breathed in the faith that as the heaven is higher than the earth, so God’s Father-love, and His readiness to give us what we ask, surpasses all we can think or conceive.  Amen.