With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, 43

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.

For every need of the spiritual life this is the one thing needful, the Holy Spirit.  All the fulness is in Jesus; the fulness of grace and truth, out of which we receive grace for grace.  The Holy Spirit is the appointed conveyancer, whose special work it is to make Jesus and all there is in Him for us ours in personal appropriation, in blessed experience.  He is the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus; as wonderful as the life is, so wonderful is the provision by which such an agent is provided to communicate it to us.  If we but yield ourselves entirely to the disposal of the Spirit, and let Him have His way with us, He will manifest the life of Christ within us. He will do this with a Divine power, maintaining the life of Christ in us in uninterrupted continuity. Surely, if there is one prayer that should draw us to the Father’s throne and keep us there, it is this:  for the Holy Spirit, whom we as children have received, to stream into us and out from us in greater fulness.

In the variety of the gifts which the Spirit has to dispense, He meets the believer’s every need.  Just think of the names He bears.  The Spirit of grace, to reveal and impart all of grace there is in Jesus.  The Spirit of faith, teaching us to begin and go on and increase in ever believing.  The Spirit of adoption and assurance, who witnesses that we are God’s children, and inspires the confiding and confident Abba, Father!  The Spirit of truth, to lead into all truth, to make each word of God ours in deed and in truth.  The Spirit of prayer, through whom we speak with the Father; prayer that must be heard.  The Spirit of judgment and burning, to search the heart, and convince of sin.  The Spirit of holiness, manifesting and communicating the Father’s holy presence within us.  The Spirit of power, through whom we are strong to testify boldly and work effectually in the Father’s service.  The Spirit of glory, the pledge of our inheritance, the preparation and the foretaste of the glory to come. Surely the child of God needs but one thing to be able really to live as a child:  it is, to be filled with this Spirit.