If we study God’s word carefully we shall be surprised to find how many things there are which it contrasts with knowing, and what danger there is in knowing without its leading to that which it was meant to produce.
Scripture contrasts knowing and believing. The mind can form a conception of the most spiritual truths, the love of God, the atonement of Christ, the power of the Spirit, can be fully convinced of their truth and value, and so give them a perfect intellectual assent, while the heart does not believe them, does not open to yield itself to their all-controlling influence.
Scripture contrasts knowing and doing. In the Sermon on the Mount our Lord warns against the danger of knowing and not doing. To his disciples he said: ‘If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.” James says: “Be ye doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deluding your own selves… But a doer that worth, this man shall be blessed in his deed.”
Knowing is contrasted with hearing. Just as there is a great pleasure in a beautiful picture of some interesting object, so the mind may delight in the contemplation of the divine realities of which the Bible tells, of the love God, of the beauty of true humility or great devotion to God or man, while the heavenly grace itself is not possessed, and the possession is hardly desired.
Knowing is contrasted with being. As the science of education is advancing, the teacher is ever more being reminded that his work is infinitely nobler than imparting a certain amount of knowledge, or even than developing the pupil’s power of thought, so that we may be able to acquire knowledge for himself. The true teacher tries to instill into a pupil that character is everything — it is not what a man knows, but what he is, that is the real standard. This is infinitely more true in God’s school in which God’s children are being trained. What we actually are, as humble, holy, believing, devoted children of God, is the only proof that God’s word has in truth entered into us and done its work.
And knowing is contrasted with living. In each child of God, there is working the power of an endless life. God’s own life is secretly striving within him. As the great work of education is to waken a child to the consciousness of its power as a living being, all this success of the Christian life depends upon the clear and abiding consciousness of a life from God growing within us as surely as the lily is clothed with its beauty by a power from him.
The knowledge that occupies and pleases and at length satisfies the mind without day by day leading to the faith, and the actions, and the character, and the true inner life for which God meant it, is the most dangerous of all enemies.
(Excerpted from The Coming Revival, by Andrew Murray , pg. 20)
Be the first to react on this!
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.