Book: With Christ in the School of Prayer
Chapter 6: “How much more?”; or The Infinite Fatherliness of God

MAIN PASSAGE:

‘Or what man is there of you, who, if his son ask him for a loaf, will give him a stone; or if he shall ask for a fish, will give him a serpent! If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in Heaven give good things to them that ask Him!’ Matthew 7:9-11

And so the lesson we have today in the school of prayer is this: Live as a child of God, then you will be able to pray as a child, and as a child you will most assuredly be heard.

This lesson was simple, yet profound. Pay attention to the words Live and Life.

Scripture says, ‘As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the children of God.’ The childlike privilege of asking all is inseparable from the childlike life under the leading of the Spirit. He that gives himself to be led by the Spirit in his life, will be led by Him in his prayers too. And he will find that Fatherlike giving is the Divine response to childlike living.

Let this idea sink into you: We are children of God. We have the Spirit of God. The children of God are led by the Spirit of God. When we surrender ourselves before God and allow ourselves to be led by his Spirit, our dependency upon the Father results in child-like living. As Murray so cleverly put it, “Fatherlike giving is the Divine response to childlike living.” So, what does child-like living look like?

To see what this childlike living is, in which childlike asking and believing have their ground, we have only to notice what our Lord teaches in the Sermon on the Mount of the Father and His children.

The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) can be considered the Magna Carta of the Kingdom of God. In these chapters we learn the essentials of kingdom living: Being Salt & Light; Refraining from Anger, Adultery, Divorce, Swearing Falsely, & Seeking revenge; Loving your Enemies; Giving generously and secretly; Praying to the Father; …. The list goes on and on! Go ahead and read Matthew 5-7 through the perspective of being an obedient child of a loving father. Watch how all sorts of new things pop out from the Sermon on the Mount.

Kingdom living is childlike living. Childlike living is Kingdom living.

The Lord does not demand of us a perfect fulfilment of the law; no, but only the childlike and whole-hearted surrender to live as a child with Him in obedience and truth. Nothing more. But also, nothing less. The Father must have the whole heart. When this is given, and He sees the child with honest purpose and steady will seeking in everything to be and live as a child, then our prayer will count with Him as the prayer of a child.

Oh wow, maybe I was on the right track with my observation last week. In a previous post I said, “Could it be that the very heart of prayer is not the offering of our words, but rather the offering of our entire self to God?” I can confidently say, Yes.

The child who only wants to know the love of the father when he has something to ask, will be disappointed. But he who lets God be Father always and in everything, who would fain live his whole life in the Father’s presence and love, who allows God in all the greatness of His love to be a Father to him, oh! he will experience most gloriously that a life in God’s infinite Fatherliness and continual answers to prayer are inseparable.

Can you imagine having a friend who only talks to you when they needed something from you? It probably wouldn’t take you long to realize that the only time this friend every called you was when they needed to borrow something. Eventually, you will look upon that relationship with less joy and will probably help that friend grudgingly.

I couldn’t even begin to imagine how has God felt with all of the billions of children he has had over the centuries. So many of them crying up to him when they need something, then they seemingly forget about their relationship until the next crisis hits. If I were God, I would be greiving! The good news is that we have a Father that has more love, patience, and kindness than every earthly-father combined. If we do something to grieve him, his loves us just the same.

However, Murray points out that there is a glorious life to be experienced in the fellowship of the Father. When we have our prodigal moments to run off and do our own thing, the prodigal son/daughter will experience less of the glorious life found only in the fellowship of the Father. One of the hallmarks of a glorious life is seeing the Father answer our prayers.

He tells us the first is the highest lesson; we must learn to say well, ‘ Abba, Father!’ ‘Our Father which art in heaven.’ He that can say this, has the key to all prayer.

Book: With Christ in the School of Prayer
Chapter 5: “Ask and It Shall be Given You”; or The Certainty of the Answer to Prayer

‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall opened.’ – Matthew 7:7-8

Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss.’-James 4:3

Here He wants to teach us what in all Scripture is considered the chief thing in prayer: the assurance that prayer will be heard and answered. We cannot but feel how in this sixfold repetition He wants to impress deep on our minds this one truth, that we may and must most confidently expect an answer to our prayer.

Biblical scholars have rightly pointed out how the authors we read from antiquity never had a word processor with bold, italics, and underline in order to emphasize their point. They would frequently use word repetition to emphasize things that needed to be remembered. Jesus was certainly making the point that prayer will have answer!

In the three words the Lord uses, ask, seek, knock, a difference in meaning has been sought….

From here, Murray goes on to creatively distinguish the difference between the three: ask, seek, knock. Personally, I think Jesus was just using multiple illustrations to illustrate the same point. I really don’t see a need to nuance each of the three words.

This is the fixed eternal law of the kingdom: if you ask and receive not, it must be because there is something amiss or wanting in the prayer. Hold on; let the word and Spirit teach you to pray aright, but do not let go the confidence He seeks to waken: Every one that asketh, receiveth.

Oh, what a hard word to accept!

It is as if He would tell us that we are not to rest without an answer, because it is the will of God, the rule in the Father’s family that every childlike believing petition is granted. If no answer comes, we are not to sit down in the cloth that calls itself resignation, and suppose that it is not God’s will to give an answer. No; there must be something in the prayer that is not as God would have it, childlike and believing; we must seek for grace to pray so that the answer may come.

Our Father lets His child know when He cannot give him what he asks, and he withdraws his petition, even as the Son did in Gethsemane. … Let us withdraw the request, if it be not according God’s mind, or persevere till the answer come. Prayer is appointed to obtain the answer. It is in prayer and its answer that the interchange of love between .the Father and His child takes place.

Wow, even Jesus withdrew a prayer request after perseverance! I never thought of it that way.

Let us not make the feeble experiences of our unbelief the measure of what our faith may expect. Let us seek, not only just in our seasons of prayer, but at all times, to hold fast the joyful assurance: man’s prayer on earth and God’s answer in heaven are meant for each other.

So true. How often do we use our past experiences to set such low expectations for prayer? Perhaps it’s because we are unaware of the power of prayer. Or, perhaps we don’t want to be disappointed in ourselves if it doesn’t come to pass. Or, perhaps we don’t want to be disappointed in God. God has repeatedly shown himself to be good and faithful throughout scripture… Have we shown ourselves to be confident in his faithfulness? Perhaps that is the essence of faith.

Book: With Christ in the School of Prayer
Chapter 4: “After this manner pray”; or The Model Prayer

Main Passage:

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father, which art in heaven.-MATTHEW 6.9.

Andrew Murray devotes this chapter to the Lord’s Prayer. Here, the master becomes our role model for prayer.

‘Our Father which art in heaven!’ … The knowledge of God’s Father-love is the first and simplest, but also the last and highest lesson in the school of prayer. Prayer begins in a personal relation to the living God, and the personal, conscious fellowship of love with Himself.

In the previous chapter, Murray laid the foundation that our prayers are going to a Father-King. The first line of the Lord’s Prayer reinforces this fact. Our prayers need to embrace a personal and intimate fellowship that comes from the love of our Heavenly Father. To illustrate this truth, it’s like building a house on a sure foundation. Before we can put up the walls and the roof of a house, we first must lay a solid foundation. The solid foundation of prayer is embracing our identity as the children of God.

‘Hallowed be Thy name.’ … In true worship, the Father must be first and must be all. … Jesus would train us to the blessed life of consecration and service, in which our interests are all subordinate to the Name.

Hallowed isn’t a word that I use on a regular basis, so I had to look it up in a Bible dictionary. It means “to separate from profane things” or “dedicate to God” or “to purify”. In Ezekiel 36, there is a brilliant illustration of what this word truly means. In this prophetic passage, Ezekiel is telling the Israelites that they are in exile from the promised land because “they defiled it [the land] by their conduct and their actions.” (v. 17) What actions? “they had defiled it with their idols” (v. 18) HERE IS THE IMPORTANT PART!… God said, “I had concern for my holy [hallowed] name, which the house of Israel profaned among the nations where they had gone.” (v. 21)

God, out of concern for his OWN NAME, decides that HE ALONE is personally going to do something about it. In verse 23 it says, “I WILL show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Sovereign LORD, when I show myself holy through you before their eyes.” I other words, God acknowledges that His people screwed up… BUT he doesn’t write them off! Rather, he makes a promise that HE would intervene in history to redeem his people and make his name holy again!

The Ezekiel 36:24-38 climaxes with an explosion of I WILL’s!!! God makes 15 promises to redeem his people which would be a sign to the nations that God’s name is holy.
1. For I WILL take you out of the nations;
2. I WILL gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land.
3. I WILL sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean;
4. I WILL cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.
5. I WILL give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you;
6. I WILL remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
7. I WILL put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
8. I WILL be your God.
9. I WILL save you from all your uncleanness.
10. I WILL call for the grain and make it plentiful and will not bring famine upon you.
11. I WILL increase the fruit of the trees and the crops of the field, so that you will no longer suffer disgrace among the nations because of famine.
12. On the day I cleanse you from all your sins, I WILL resettle your towns, and the ruins will be rebuilt.
13. I the LORD have spoken, and I WILL do it!
14. Once again I WILL yield to the plea of the house of Israel and do this for them
15. I WILL make their people as numerous as sheep.

You see, the burden of hallowing God’s name rests COMPLETELY upon God. Our part in this process is making sure that God is our first and only desire!

‘Thy kingdom come.’ The Father is a King and has a kingdom. … 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.

One of the primary functions of prayer is to intercede between heaven and earth. Everytime we pray, God’s kingdom (reign and rule) begins to manifest on earth as it does in heaven. Our prayers are lethal weapons against the enemy (Satan).

‘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. … 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.

So true! How many times have we experienced a disappointment, or have been afflicted with some kind of sickness, or experience the death of a loved one; we quickly say, “Well, it must be God’s will.” All too often, we associate God’s Will with bad news that runs contrary to our will. I personally believe that God’s Will is synonymous with God’s Kingdom (reign and rule). When we see glorious signs of God’s future Kingdom breaking into the present, we are seeing his will too!

‘Give us this day our daily bread’ … Consecration to God and His will gives wonderful liberty in prayer for temporal things.

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. … 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.

‘And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’ … 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.

Book: With Christ in the School of Prayer
Chapter 3 – “Pray to thy Father, Which is in Secret”; or Alone with God

Main Passage:
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee. – MATTHEW 6:6

After Jesus had called His first disciples, He gave them their first public teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. There He explained the Kingdom of God – its laws and its life – to them. In that Kingdom, God is not only King, but Father. He not only gives all, but is Himself all. In the knowledge and fellowship of Him alone is its blessedness. Hence it came as a matter of course that the revelation of prayer and the prayer-life was a part of His teaching concerning the New Kingdom He came to establish.

Anyone who knows me pretty well knows that I love to talk about the Kingdom of God! Murray has two profound observations about the Kingdom of God (reign and rule):
1. Even though God is King, he is still our Father. (a very important tension to maintain)
2. Prayer plays an essential role in the coming of his Kingdom.

God is a God who hides Himself to the carnal eye. As long as in our worship of God, we are chiefly occupied with our own thoughts and exercises; we shall not meet Him who is a Spirit, the unseen One. But to the man who withdraws himself from all that is of the world and man, and prepares to wait upon God alone, the Father will reveal Himself.

I can be so guilty of being full of myself! I find that, at times, I allow myself to be distracted by my own thoughts and worries of life during times of corporate worship, or in private reading and meditation of the scriptures, or just praying to God. My worries are primarily related to the fleshly-worldly-visible things in life. During these times of distraction, I miss out on encountering God, who is a Spirit. I suspect that when my eyes are on locked on what is seen, I miss out in meeting with the One who is unseen!

Do not be thinking of how little you have to bring God, but of how much He wants to give you. Just place yourself before, and look up into, His face; think of His love, His wonderful, tender, pitying love. Just tell Him how sinful and cold and dark all is: it is the Father’s loving heart that will give light and warmth to yours.

So many times I have come to God completely void of energy and life; so weighed down with problems and sin! Murray’s quote got me thinking about something: In a sense, we can consider prayer as a kind of offering to God. Sometimes, in our dark times, we don’t feel like we have any prayers to give. What else could we possibly give him? Perhaps we should redefine our understanding of prayer. Could it be that the very heart of prayer is not the offering of our words, but rather the offering of our entire self to God?

Our Lord teaches us that because God meets us in secret with infinite Fatherliness and Faithfulness, we should meet Him with childlike simplicity of faith and be confident that our prayer does bring down a blessing.

I think Andrew Murray is touching the essence of faith with this quote. In other words, Faith is resting in the Faithfulness of God.

To be alone in secret with the Father: this be your highest joy. To be assured that the Father will openly reward the secret prayer so that it cannot remain unblessed should be your strength day by day. And to know that the Father knows that you need what you ask should be your liberty to bring every need in the assurance that your God will supply it according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

This chapter of “With Christ in the School of Prayer” felt somewhat incomplete, almost like he was just introducing the idea of praying in the Spirit. Also, he unexpectedly linked “worshiping in the spirit” with the idea of “praying in the spirit”. We’ll have to see how he develops this idea throughout the book. Honestly, I’m still digesting much of what Andrew Murray has said in this chapter.

On a semi-related note: In most Charismatic circles, “praying in the Spirit” is code for “praying in tongues”. While I would agree that praying in tongues is an expression of praying in the Spirit, I would suggest we define “praying in the Spirit” not in terms of exercising a specific Spiritual gift, but rather entering into a kind of intimate fellowship that is freely given to anyone who has the Holy Spirit. OK, I’m done with my rant!

Chapter 2 – “In Spirit and truth”; or The True Worshippers

Main Passage:
The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for such doth the Father seek to be worshippers. God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth. John 4:23-24

Worship in the spirit must come from God Himself. God is Spirit: He alone has Spirit to give. It was for this He sent His Son, to fit us for spiritual worship, by giving us the Holy Spirit.

This quote is playing games with my mind! The picture I see in my mind is God depositing the Holy Spirit into my body. Then, somehow this Spirit within me actively engages the Father in spiritual worship. This next quote might clarify:

It was when Christ redeemed us, and we in Him had received the position of children, that the Father sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts to cry, `Abba, Father.’ The worship in spirit is the worship of the Father in the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Sonship.

Surprisingly so far, Andrew Murray has placed much of the burden of worshiping in the Spirit on the Holy Spirit himself! This final quote gets straight to the point:

We are carnal and cannot bring God the worship He seeks. But Jesus came to give the Spirit. He has given Him to us. Let the disposition in which we set ourselves to pray be what Christ’s words have taught us. Let there be the deep confession of our inability to bring God the worship that is pleasing to Him; the childlike teachableness that waits on Him to instruct us; the simple faith that yields itself to the breathing of the Spirit.

God desires worship, but somehow we lack the ability to give God the worship that can please him unless this worship originates from the Spirit itself. We just need to be completely surrendered to God.