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Andrew Murray

Andrew Murray

Andrew Murray (1828 - 1917)

Brother Andrew Murray was a well-known writer/preacher in South Africa who ministered amongst the Dutch Reformed churches. His writings now are widely accepted by modern evangelicals and he is published more than ever in his life-time.

Some of his better known books titles are: "Abide In Christ", "Absolute Surrender," and "Humility." His burden for the body of Christ were teachings on the abiding Spirit of Christ in the believer, the life of faith with God daily, and the life of intercession and prayer in the Church.


Andrew Murray was possibly the strongest spokesman of the Philadelphian age to expound the Body's necessity to abide in Christ, like the Apostle John before him.

Murray was born into a family of four children in the then remote Graaff-Reinet region (near the Cape) of South Africa. Educated in Scotland, which was followed by theological studies in Holland, Andrew returned to his native land to work as a missionary and minister. Given the daunting task of ministering to Bloemfontein, a remote region of 50,000 square miles and 12,000 people beyond the Orange River, Murray already began to sense the need to for the "deeper Christian life".

Though successful in preaching and bringing many to Christ, Murray found many of his greatest lessons in the School of Suffering, as will all who follow in the path of obedience.

      Andrew Murray was one of four children born to Pastor Andrew, Sr., and Maria Murray. He was raised in what was considered to be the most remote corner of the world - Graaff-Reinet, South Africa. Educated in Scotland and Holland, in 1848 Andrew, Jr., returned to South Africa as a missionary and minister with the Dutch Reformed Church. His first appointment was to Bloemfontein, a territory of nearly 50,000 square miles and 12,000 people.

      Andrew and his brother John had been in close contact with a revival movement in Scotland, an evangelical extension of the ongoing Second Great Awakening in America. He prayed for the same sort of awakening for the church in South Africa and wrote, "My prayer is for revival, but I am held back by the increasing sense of my own unfitness for the work. I lament the awful pride and self complacency that have till now ruled my heart. O that I may be more and more a minister of the Spirit." (J. du Plessis, The Life of Andrew Murray)

      In 1860, revival did come to the churches of Cape Town, South Africa, and subsequently spread to surrounding towns and villages. Even remote farms and plantations felt the impact as lives were changed. Where once the churches had not been able to find one man ready to be a leader for God, the revival raised up 50 in Murray's Cape Town parish alone. There were more conversions in one month in that parish than in the whole course of its previous history. (Leona Choy, Andrew Murray: Apostle of Abiding Love)

      Greatly concerned for the spiritual guidance of new converts and renewed Christians, Andrew Murray wrote over 240 books. His writings reflect his own longing for a deeper life in Christ and his prayer that others would long for and experience that life as well.

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Until a humility which will rest in nothing less than the end and death of self; which gives up all the honor of men as Jesus did, to seek the honor that comes from God alone; which absolutely makes and counts itself nothing, that God may be all, that the Lord alone may be exalted, until such a humility is what we seek in Christ above our most important joy, and welcome at any price, there is very little hope of a religion that will conquer the world. I
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Lord Jesus! I ask Thee this day to enrol my name among those who confess that they know not how to pray as they ought, and especially ask Thee for a course of teaching in prayer. Lord! teach me to tarry with Thee in the school, and give Thee time to train me. May a deep sense of my ignorance, of the wonderful privilege and power of prayer, of the need of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of prayer, lead me to cast away my thoughts of what I think I know, and make me kneel before Thee in true teachableness and poverty of spirit.
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The truth is this: Pride must die in you, or nothing of heaven can live in you.
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In not granting an answer, the Father tells us that there is something wrong in our praying. He wants to teach us to discover it and confess it; He wants to educate us about true believing and prevailing prayer. He will only attain His objective when He brings us to see that we are to blame for the withholding of the answer - our aim, or our faith, or our life is not what it should be.
topics: prayer  
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The Word must dwell and abide in us; the heart and life must be under its influence day by day. Not from without, but from within, comes the quickening of the Word by the Spirit. Only he who yields himself entirely in his whole life to the supremacy of the Word and the will of God can expect in special cases to discern what that Word and will permit him to ask boldly.
topics: word  
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Yes, let us most joyfully say, ignorant and feeble though we be, 'Lord, teach us to pray.
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Many do not understand this union of the teaching of the Word and the Spirit, so there is a twofold difficulty in knowing what God's will may be. Some seek the will of God in an inner feeling or conviction and would have the Spirit lead them without the Word. Others seek it in the Word without the leading of the Holy Spirit. The two must be united - the Word and the Spirit - because only in these can we know for sure the will of God and learn to pray according to it. In the heart, the Word and the Spirit must meet; it is only by such indwelling that we can experience their teaching.
topics: word  
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secret
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we offer ourselves as learners; we would indeed be taught of Thee. 'Lord, teach us to pray.
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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. 'And
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meditating on it believingly, you will be strengthened to walk in the truth (Psalm 26:3).
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enabled for immediate performance, we must meditate believingly on Christ’s saving benefits as they are discovered in the gospel, which is the only doctrine which is the power of God to our salvation, and whereby the quickening Spirit is ministered to us, and that is able to build us up, and give us an
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You must take special care to act faith in your meditation, mix the word of God’s grace with it, or else it will not profit you (Hebrews 4:2). And if you set the loving-kindness of God frequently before your eyes, by
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Nothing can preserve you from carelessness or make it possible for you to persevere in living, powerful prayer, except daily close fellowship with Jesus our Lord.
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Your Father
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Because of hasty and superficial communion with God, the sense of sin becomes weak and there is no motive strong enough to help you to hate sin and flee from it. Nothing except secret, humble, constant fellowship with God can teach you as His child to hate sin as God hates it. Nothing but the close fellowship and unceasing power of the living Christ can make it possible for you to understand what sin is and to detest it. Without this deeper understanding of sin, we cannot truly appropriate the victory that Christ made possible for us.
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There may come times of intense desire when it is felt strongly how the body with its appetites, lawful though they are, still hinders the spirit in its battle with the powers of darkness, and the need is felt to keep it under control. We are creatures of the senses. Our mind is helped by what comes to us embodied in concrete form; fasting helps to express, to deepen, and to confirm our resolution that we are ready to sacrifice anything - to sacrifice ourselves to attain what we seek for the kingdom of God.
topics: fasting  
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And so He teaches us two lessons of deep importance about prayer. The one is that faith needs a life of prayer in which to grow and keep strong. The other is that prayer needs fasting for its full and perfect development.
topics: fasting  
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Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit and watching in this with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints and for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth with confidence, to make known the mystery of the gospel . . . as I ought to speak (Ephesians 6:18-20).
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Faith is the one condition on which all divine power can enter into man and work through him.
topics: faith  
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