This work of the Spirit is now the great mark of the New Testament church, of true Christianity. The seal or heavenly stamp God has set up on every believer and upon his church is the Holy Spirit, who knows the things of God, given into the heart to make them know these. It is not enough that a child be born of healthy real parents, his future depends greatly upon the teacher to whom he is entrusted and the education he received. With the child of God everything depends upon his knowing, submitting to, waiting on, and carrying out the teaching of the Holy Spirit. The feebleness of the church stems from this being not known and believed and acted on. A revival in the church will mean nothing less than this, that ministers and members will together be led to give the Holy Spirit, the divine and only teacher, the place God wants him to take.
Let us just think what the faith and the experience of the blessing this truth brings us would mean in the Christian life. Just consider the influence a full appreciation of it would have on a believer who seeks to give God the whole tithe, his whole heart and life. He begins to know, not in thought, but in faith and power, that the Spirit of God is in him. Not as something alongside and additional to his own life, partly and occasionally influencing it, but as the inmost life of our very selves, not only controlling or helping but far more, as the moving spring and power of our being, inspiring and impelling us in all we are and do.
(Excerpted from The Coming Revival, by Andrew Murray , pg. 38)
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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.