With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, 41

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.

‘If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?’—Luke xi.
 
IN the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord had already given utterance to His wonderful
HOW MUCH MORE?  Here in Luke, where He repeats the question, there is a difference. Instead of speaking, as then of giving good gifts, He says, ‘How much more shall the heavenly Father give THE HOLY SPIRIT?’  He thus teaches us that the chief and the best of these gifts is the Holy Spirit, or rather, that in this gift all others are comprised  The Holy Spirit is the first of the Father’s gifts, and the one He delights most to bestow.  The Holy Spirit is therefore the gift we ought first and chiefly to seek. The unspeakable worth of this gift we can easily understand.  Jesus spoke of the Spirit as ‘the promise of the Father;’ the one promise in which God’s Fatherhood revealed itself. 

The best gift a good and wise father can bestow on a child on earth is his own spirit.  This is the great object of a father in education—to reproduce in his child his own disposition and character.  If the child is to know and understand his father; if, as he grows up, he is to enter into all his will and plans; if he is to have his highest joy in the father, and the father in him,—he must be of one mind and spirit with him.  And so it is impossible to conceive of God bestowing any higher gift on His child than this, His own Spirit.  God is what He is through His Spirit; the Spirit is the very life of God.  Just think what it means—God giving His own Spirit to His child on earth.

With Christ in the School of prayer, 40

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.

We need to get in at the tenderness and helpfulness which lie in these words, and to rest upon it—your Father.  Speak them over to yourself until something of the wonderful truth is felt by us.  It means that I am bound to God by the closest and tenderest relationship; that I have a right to His love and His power and His blessing, such as nothing else could give me.  O the boldness with which we can draw near!  O the great things we have a right to ask for!  Your Father.  It means that all His infinite love and patience and wisdom bend over me to help me. In this relationship lies not only the possibility of holiness; there is infinitely more than that. 

Here we are to begin, in the patient love of our Father.  Think how He knows us apart and by ourselves, in all our peculiarities, and in all our weaknesses and difficulties.  The master judges by the result, but our Father judges by the effort.  Failure does not always mean fault.  He knows how much things cost, and weighs them where others only measure. 

YOUR FATHER.  Think how great store His love sets by the poor beginnings of the little ones, clumsy and unmeaning as they may be to others.  All this lies in this blessed relationship and infinitely more.  Do not fear to take it all as your own.

With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray, 26

This is the final excerpt from Murray's discussion of the Lord's Prayer:

‘And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’  Our daily bread, the pardon of our sins, and then our being kept from all sin and the power of the evil one, in these three petitions all our personal need is comprehended.  The prayer for bread and pardon must be accompanied by the surrender to live in all things in holy obedience to the Father’s will, and the believing prayer in everything to be kept by the power of the indwelling Spirit from the power of the evil one. Children of God! it is thus Jesus would have us to pray to the Father in heaven.  O let His Name, and Kingdom, and Will, have the first place in our love; His providing, and pardoning, and keeping love will be our sure portion.  So the prayer will lead us up to the true child-life:  the Father all to the child, the Father all for the child.  We shall understand how Father and child, the Thine and the Our, are all one, and how the heart that begins its prayer with the God-devoted THINE, will have the power in faith to speak out the OUR too.  Such prayer will, indeed, be the fellowship and interchange of love, always bringing us back in trust and worship to Him who is not only the Beginning but the End:  ‘FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM, AND THE POWER, AND THE GLORY, FOR EVER, AMEN.’  Son of the Father, teach us to pray, ‘OUR FATHER.’

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.

With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, 24

This is another excerpt from Murray's discussion of the Lord's Prayer. God willing, there will be another excerpt from this discussion, posted next Sunday:

‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.’  As bread is the first need of the body, so forgiveness for the soul.  And the provision for the one is as sure as for the other.  We are children but sinners too; our right of access to the Father’s presence we owe to the precious blood and the forgiveness it has won for us.  Let us beware of the prayer for forgiveness becoming a formality:  only what is really confessed is really forgiven.  Let us in faith accept the forgiveness as promised:  as a spiritual reality, an actual transaction between God and us, it is the entrance into all the Father’s love and all the privileges of children. Such forgiveness, as a living experience, is impossible without a forgiving spirit to others: as forgiven expresses the heavenward, so forgiving the earthward, relation of God’s child. In each prayer to the Father I must be able to say that I know of no one whom I do not heartily love.

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.

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.

With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray, 22

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

‘Hallowed be Thy name.’ What name? This new name of Father. The word Holy is the central word of the Old Testament; the name Father of the New. In this name of Love all the holiness and glory of God are now to be revealed.  And how is the name to be hallowed?
By God Himself: ‘I will hallow My great name which ye have profaned.’ Our prayer must be that in ourselves, in all God’s children, in presence of the world, God Himself would reveal the holiness, the Divine power, the hidden glory of the name of Father.  The Spirit of the Father is the Holy Spirit: it is only when we yield ourselves to be led of Him, that the name will be hallowed in our prayers and our lives. Let us learn the prayer: ‘Our Father, hallowed be Thy name.’

‘Thy kingdom come.’  The Father is a King and has a kingdom.  The son and heir of a king has no higher ambition than the glory of his father’s kingdom.  In time of war or danger this becomes his passion; he can think of nothing else.  The children of the Father are here in the enemy’s territory, where the kingdom, which is in heaven, is not yet fully manifested.
What more natural than that, when they learn to hallow the Father-name, they should long and cry with deep enthusiasm:  ‘Thy kingdom come.’  The coming of the kingdom is the one great event on which the revelation of the Father’s glory, the blessedness of His children, the salvation of the world depends.  On our prayers too the coming of the kingdom waits. Shall we not join in the deep longing cry of the redeemed:  ‘Thy kingdom come’?  Let us learn it in the school of Jesus.

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.

With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, 21

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

‘Hallowed be Thy name.’ There is something here that strikes us at once. While we ordinarily first bring our own needs to God in prayer, and then think of what belongs to God and His interests, the Master reverses the order. First, Thy name, Thy kingdom, Thy will; then, give us, forgive us, lead us, deliver us. The lesson is of more importance than we think.  In true worship the Father must be first, must be all.  The sooner I learn to forget myself in the desire that HE may be glorified, the richer will the blessing be that prayer will bring to myself.  No one ever loses by what he sacrifices for the Father.

This must influence all our prayer.  There are two sorts of prayer:  personal and intercessory. The latter ordinarily occupies the lesser part of our time and energy.  This may not be.  Christ has opened the school of prayer specially to train intercessors for the great work of bringing down, by their faith and prayer, the blessings of His work and love on the world around.  There can be no deep growth in prayer unless this be made our aim.  The little child may ask of the father only what it needs for itself; and yet it soon learns to say, Give some for sister too.  But the grown-up son, who only lives for the father’s interest and takes charge of the father’s business, asks more largely, and gets all that is asked.  And Jesus would train us to the blessed life of consecration and service, in which our interests are all subordinate to the Name, and the Kingdom, and the Will of the Father.  O let us live for this, and let, on each act of adoration, Our Father! there follow in the same breath Thy Name, Thy Kingdom, Thy Will;—for this we look up and long.

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.

With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, 20

We now come to a discussion of the Lord's Prayer. God willing, there will be more excerpts from this discussion later.

The Model Prayer.
‘After this manner therefore pray ye:  Our Father which art in heaven.’—Matt. vi. 9.

EVERY teacher knows the power of example.  He not only tells the child what to do and how to do it, but shows him how it really can be done.  In condescension to our weakness, our heavenly Teacher has given us the very words we are to take with us as we draw near to our Father.  We have in them a form of prayer in which there breathe the freshness and fulness of the Eternal Life.  So simple that the child can lisp it, so divinely rich that it comprehends all that God can give.  A form of prayer that becomes the model and inspiration for all other prayer, and yet always draws us back to itself as the deepest utterance of our souls before our God.

‘Our Father which art in heaven!’  To appreciate this word of adoration aright, I must remember that none of the saints had in Scripture ever ventured to address God as their Father.  The invocation places us at once in the centre of the wonderful revelation the Son came to make of His Father as our Father too.  It comprehends the mystery of redemption—Christ delivering us from the curse that we might become the children of God.  The mystery of regeneration—the Spirit in the new birth giving us the new life.  And the mystery of faith—ere yet the redemption is accomplished or understood, the word is given on the lips of the disciples to prepare them for the blessed experience still to come.  The words are the key to the whole prayer, to all prayer.  It takes time, it takes life to study them; it will take eternity to understand them fully.  The knowledge of God’s Father-love is the first and simplest, but also the last and highest lesson in the school of prayer.  It is in the personal relation to the living God, and the personal conscious fellowship of love with Himself, that prayer begins.  It is in the knowledge of God’s Fatherliness, revealed by the Holy Spirit, that the power of prayer will be found to root and grow.  In the infinite tenderness and pity and patience of the infinite Father, in His loving readiness to hear and to help, the life of prayer has its joy.  O let us take time, until the Spirit has made these words to us spirit and truth, filling heart and life:  ‘Our Father which art in heaven.’  Then we are indeed within the veil, in the secret place of power where prayer always prevails.

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.

Dare I say it? I'm thankful for carbohydrates

I'm thankful for carbohydrates! I know, carbohydrates have gotten a rather bad reputation. There have been fashionable diets that tried to eliminate them. In fact, this Wikipedia article on carbohydrates says that they are not absolutely needed in our diet -- we can get the energy and nutrients we need entirely from other sources. So why be thankful for carbohydrates?

Well, for one thing, I like sugar and sweet things. Sugars are carbohydrates. So are starches, which are complex molecules made from many sugars. Starches are broken down into sugars as part of digestion. Some of that digestion takes place in the mouth, and mouth-digested starchy foods can taste sweet.

For another, much more important reason, carbohydrates are the first usable food products of the processes that make up photosynthesis, the amazing, and absolutely essential activity that turns water, carbon dioxide, and light into food. Carbohydrates are also turned into almost every other organic molecule in living things, by metabolism. The D in DNA stands for deoxyribose, a sugar. Amino acids, which make up protein, are synthesized, directly or indirectly, from molecules produced in making or breaking down sugars in our cells, or the cells of other organisms. Vitamins, steroids, and other critical cell components are made from carbohydrate raw materials. Plants use cellulose, a carbohydrate, for much of the structure of their cell walls. Lignin, synthesized from carbohydrates, makes up most of the rest. Without cell walls, plants wouldn't have the essential structures that they do, such as roots, stems, flowers and leaves. (Cell walls are also a major constituent of cotton and other natural fibers, and of paper.) In other words, without carbohydrates, life as we know it would be impossible.

Jesus said, in the Lord's prayer, "Give us our daily bread." Bread was an essential part of the diet of people of Bible times. David brought loaves of bread to the army. Bread was put out as a sort of offering in the Tabernacle. Bread contains carbohydrate. However, it also has protein, fiber, important minerals, and other things we ought to take in.

Sure, I can eat too many carbohydrates, and be a sugar glutton, but, all in all, I'm thankful to God for carbohydrates. Thanks for reading.

This post was expanded on November 24, 2018.

I have posted about other things I am thankful for, probably including carbohydrates, at other times. See here and here for links to these posts.

I'm also thankful to you, my reader!