Alas, how little the church understands or teaches this — that every believer, just like every branch on a tree, exists only to bring fruit and blessing for the glory of the husbandman and the life of men. Christ gave God’s love in charge to his people, entrusted himself and the eternal life to them, that everyone whom the great ‘whosoever’ includes might hear and live. And Christians profess to believe that the hundreds of millions are committed to their care, and must, as the most urgent and important work in the world, have the Gospel preached to them, and yet rest content in giving, out of their abundance, a few pounds a year. And their mind and heart and strength they give to the interests of time. They have no conception of the true Christian life, of the calling and the glory and the blessedness of, like Christ, living as the channels of God’s love to a perishing world.
We do indeed need a great, a mighty revival. Let us plead with God that it may begin with ourselves in secret. It will reveal to us the force of the three great words — the perishing world, God’s saving love, and the Christ who through his members carries life to that world. However ignorant we may be of what we ought to do, or impotent to do what we see of this great work, let us offer ourselves unceasingly to God, to live for nothing less than what he lives for, he will inspire and guide and make us bold. When the great revival begins in our own hearts, it has begun and it will spread. We shall have new confidence in prayer and new power in work. And our work will have a new joy as we realize how it is the devotion to a great cause, which has its beginning in the love of God, its law in the life of Christ, its strength in the power of that Holy Spirit who makes us one with him in the work of conquering the world for God.
(Excerpted from The Coming Revival, by Andrew Murray , pg. 64)
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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.