Teach Me to Pray - Week #11: The All-Comprehensive Gift

After looking at the infinite fatherliness of God from Matthew 7:9-11, Murray goes to Luke 11:13 where Jesus says some similar words as those from Matthew, "If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"

The best of all of the Father's "good gifts" is the gift of His very own Spirit, and so Murray says that the "Holy Spirit is therefore the gift we ought to seek first."

"If the child is to know and understand his father and enter into all his plans for him, if he is to have his highest joy in the father and the father in him, the child must be of one mind and spirit with his father. So it is impossible to conceive of God bestowing any higher gift on His child than His own Spirit."

This was the glory of Jesus as a Man on earth, that the Spirit of His Father was in Him, and it is this Spirit who will educate and prepare us for the holy and heavenly life that God dwells in. "As the Spirit of the Father, He sheds abroad the Father's love with which He loved the Son into our hearts and teaches us to live in that love. As the Spirit of the Son, He breathes into us the childlike liberty, devotion, and obedience in which the Son lived on earth."

This gift of the Holy Spirit must be the first and main object of all prayer, Murray says. I have developed the habit of regularly asking Jesus to fill me with His Spirit anew, because I increasingly recognize my desperate need of His power and grace to live fully each day in the mundane and uneventful days as much as in the out-of-the-ordinary days. I also regularly fellowship with the Spirit of God who dwells in me. I do this through praying both in the spirit (tongues) and with my understanding. Communing/fellowshipping with the One Who is the power of God within me to overcome sin and live the day fully is vital for my ongoing maturing in God. I must hear His voice and sense His nudges throughout the day and to do this, I need to know Him more and more.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Son, the Spirit of adoption, and so by continually receiving His grace and communing with Him, I begin to gain more understanding of what it means to be a daughter of the Father. He shows me what sonship is because He is the very Spirit of Jesus, the Son, Who lived and moved in the confidence and joy of the awareness of His Father's unchanging love and affection for Him.

Lord, thank You for Your Spirit, the best-of-all Gifts that You tell us to ask for freely. What extravagance on Your part to give an "all-comprehensive" Gift in Whom are hidden all other good gifts. I want to know You more, Holy Spirit of God, so that I better understand the Father and Jesus the Son. Thank You for indwelling me today. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Teach Me to Prayer - Week #10: The Infinite Fatherliness of God (Part 2)

This week we continue on the chapter about God's infinite fatherliness. Murray says in this chapter that the Lord's primary lesson for us in His school of prayer is rooted in the name Father and is the source of answered prayer. "Christ tells us that the highest lesson is to learn to say 'Abba, Father!' (Romans 8:15) and 'Our Father in heaven' (Matthew 6:9). The one who can address God with true sincerity and intimacy has the key to all prayer."

A few years ago I heard someone say, "The Father is Christlike." What a wonderful truth! We need continual renewing of our mind related to what His fatherliness looks like because even the best of human fathers are weak and fail often; only the Son could fully reveal what the Father is like. Through His condescension and meekness and lowliness as a Man and His descent into death for love of broken and sinful humans, we see what the Father is like.

The end of this chapter quotes an excerpt from Thoughts on Holiness by Mark Guy Pearse, and I'm going to close this posting with most of this quote and pray that the eyes of our hearts will be increasingly open to these almost unbelievable truths:

"'Our Father in heaven...' We generally speak it only as the utterance of a reverential homage. We think of it as an image borrowed from our earthly life, and only in some faint and shallow meaning to be used of God. We are afraid to take God as our own tender and companionable Father. We think of Him as our schoolmaster or even further off than that - a superintendent who knows nothing of us except through our (school) lessons. His eyes are not on the scholar but on the book, and all must meet the standard equally.

But open the eyes of your heart, timid child of God; let the words sink down into the innermost depths of your soul. Here is the starting point of holiness, in the love and patience and compassion of our heavenly Father. We are not to learn to be holy like a hard lesson in school, (so)that we may make God think well of us; we are to learn it at home with the Father who longs to help us. God loves you not because you are clever, not because you are good, but because He is your Father. The cross of Christ does not make God love us; the cross is the outcome and measure of His love for us. He loves all His children - the clumsiest, the dullest, the poorest, even the outcast of society. His love lies at the back of everything, and we must rest upon that as the solid foundation of our Christian life, not growing up into that, but growing up out of it. We must begin there or our beginning will come to nothing. Seek to grasp this truth.

'Our Father in heaven...' Speak them over to yourself until something of the wonderful truth is felt. It means that you are bound to God by the closest and gentlest relationship, that you have a right to His love and His power and His blessing - to His answers to your prayers. O the boldness with which we can draw near to Him! O the great things we have a right to ask of Him! He is our Father. It means that His infinite love and patience and wisdom cover us and enfold us. In this relationship lies not only the possibility of holiness but infinitely more.

Here we begin, in the patient love of the Father. He knows each of us in all our peculiarities, in all our weaknesses and difficulties. A master judges by the result, but our Father judges by the effort...He know the cost of your efforts and weighs them where others only measure...Do not fear to take it all as your own."

I realize how I need ever-increasing understanding of the nature of a father in order to walk more and more confidently in believing prayer and in the daily affairs of life.

Spirit of the Father, once again I ask for Your ministry to us. I ask you to open the eyes of our heart to understand Jesus more fully, knowing that He will show us what the Father's nature is like; I ask for courage and faith to believe what You say about Jesus and the Father and to accept gladly what the Father says about His tender affection about us even in our clumsiness and weaknesses. Thank You that You really do hear our prayer!

Teach Me to Pray - Week 9: The Infinite Fatherliness of God

The next chapter of Murray's book is about the "infinite fatherliness of God". By his repetition of this theme in this book, it's obvious that Andrew Murray understood well the profound need we fallen humans have for a revelation of God's heart as Father, and he applies this particularly to effectiveness in our prayer life. He teaches this theme using Matthew 7:9-11, a powerful portion related to the nature of God. In order to do it justice, I'll be taking two weeks on this chapter.

"Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?" (Matthew 7:9-11)

Murray writes: "...the prayer of a child of God is influenced entirely by the relationship he has with the Parent. Prayer can exert that influence only when the child is living and walking in loving relationship in the home and in the service of the Father. The power of the promise "ask and it will be given to you" lies in that good relationship."

He goes on to say that the mark of a true child is "childlike living", which is summed up in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. (Notice how often the words "sons" or "Father" appear in the Sermon on the Mount,especially "Father." I counted about 19 times!) The characteristics of a child in Jesus' teaching there are the following:
1. Those with the virtues given in the Beatitudes: poverty of spirit, mourning over sin, meekness, hunger and thirst for righteousness, mercy, purity of heart, peacemaking, suffering for righteousness' sake (Mt. 5:3-11)
2. Those who let their light shine before men (5:16)
3. Those who walk in love (5:45)
4. Those who seek to be perfect (5:48)
5. Those whose fasting and praying and giving is not done for man's praise (6:1-18)
6. Those who forgive as their Father forgives them (6:14,15)
7. Those who trust the Father for all earthy needs, making the pursuit of God's Kingdom their highest priority (6:26-32)
8. Those who not only say "Lord, Lord" but actually do the will of the Father (7:21)

"Such are the children of the Father...To God's true children, answered prayers are certain and abundant."

This list could be overwhelming and demotivating if we read this thinking that we have to arrive at all of it before having any hopes of answered prayer! But Murray touches something so profound and staggering about God that we struggle to actually believe it: "A child is weak; children differ much in age and talents. But the Lord does not demand a perfect fulfillment of the law, only a childlike, wholehearted surrender to Him in obedience and truth. Nothing more and nothing less. The Father asks for a whole heart. And when He sees the child honestly, consistently seeking to live as a child, He will consider the prayer as the prayer of a child. If anyone studies the Sermon on the Mount and takes it at face value as his guide, he will find, in spite of weakness and failure, an ever-increasing liberty to claim fulfillment of the prayer-promises."

If there was ever good news for one who wants to learn to pray effectively, this is it! What a God!...a Father Who is "so much more" than the best of earthly fathers and so unlike the worst of earthly fathers.

Although at first glance this seems to be a simple and obvious truth about God, it
takes the power of the Holy Spirit giving us living understanding for it to impact us in real life situations including believing prayer.

Next week I'll finish with this topic; I pray that the Spirit of truth will touch us related to the nature of God the Father. I'm seeking to know and understand this reality more myself. Lord, come by Your Spirit and cleanse our hearts and minds and imaginations of wrong images of God our Father. Lift us up and out of the quagmire of wrong thinking about what Your fatherliness looks like. Thank You, Jesus, that it's Your delight to show us the Father!

Teach Me to Pray - Week #8

Andrew Murray's greatest concern in this book is that we learn to pray effectively; in other words, that we receive answers to our prayers. His contention throughout the book is that God the Father means for us to receive answers to our prayers, and that mere saying of prayers without genuine expectation of God's hearing and answering us is not true biblical praying.

Chapter five of his book is entitled, "The Certainty of an Answer to Prayer," and he builds on Jesus' words in Matthew 7:7,8 "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." Murray says of this: "In all this repetition, we can see that He wants to implant in our minds the truth that we may - and must - confidently expect an answer to our prayer. Next to the revelation of the Father's love, there is no more important lesson in the whole school of prayer than this: Everyone that asks receives."

The author presents the thought that the word "ask" refers to the gifts we are praying for. The word "seek" goes further and speaks of looking for God the Giver. The word "knock" takes it even further to not only asking and looking for the gift and/or the Giver in a given moment, but to be "admitted to dwell with Him and in Him" always.

Murray reminds us again of the danger of praying without faith: "...how easily we are inclined to rest in prayer as a religious duty without expecting an answer." The Lord knows how prone we fallen humans are to go through the motions, contenting ourselves with having fulfilled our religious duty with the hopes that we've satisfied God. But the Lord makes clear that real prayer is prayer that expects an answer from a listening Father God; ultimately what prayer is about is relating with a real Person.

"Persevere; let the Word and the Spirit teach you to pray in the right way and do not let go of the confidence he seeks to impart that everyone who asks receives an answer...Let every learner in the school of Christ believe the Master's promise to answer in all simplicity. Let us beware of weakening the Word with our human wisdom...If questions and difficulties arise, let us not seek to have them settled before we accept the Word..."

I have found that one of the greatest stumbling blocks to maturing quickly in God for the western church is this issue of simplicity in receiving God's truth. Because of our strong bent towards having to understand with our minds what God is saying before we take hold of it, our maturing in Him is greatly hindered. There is a wonderful childlike simplicity in the things of God that is able to receive easily the Word of God from the Spirit without having everything figured out first.

The repeated promises of God related to prayer are an example. Rather than simply accept His word on this, we tend to want to approach it "with our human wisdom" and come up with interpretations to it that allow for the fact that we don't receive answers to our prayers.

This isn't to discourage us but to help us face the reality of our great and desperate need to learn to pray. It takes discipline and time to take hold of God and pray according to His will and then to persevere in faith in the waiting time.

Murray says that perseverance in faith is needed to receive the answer and that there are also times in which because we have asked wrongly, God refuses (example of Moses wanting to enter Canaan); but God answers, and we can then change our prayer. In other words, we shouldn't be content without an answer. "We must seek for grace to pray in such a way that the answer comes. It is far easier for the flesh to submit without the answer than to yield itself to be searched and purified by the Spirit until it has learned to pray the prayer of faith."

He concludes the chapter by saying, "In prayer and its answer the interchange of love between the Father and His child takes place...In every situation let us hold to the joyful assurance that man's prayer on earth and God's answer from heaven are meant for each other. Trust Jesus to teach you to pray so that the answer comes. He will do it if we believe His words: 'Ask and it will be given to you.'"

Lord Jesus, we believe Your promise that those who ask receive; help our unbelief. Thank You for Your patience in teaching us to pray. Give us simplicity of heart to take You at Your word, knowing that You will help us understand as we step out in faith believing that You not only want to hear and answer, but You have the power to answer. Thank you for Your Holy Spirit who helps us! Amen.

Teach Me to Pray - Week #7

Chapter four of Teach Me to Pray is "The Model Prayer", in which Murray gives an overview of the prayer of Jesus that we have come to know as "The Lord's Prayer."

He begins the chapter by saying, "...He (the teacher) not only tells the child what to do and how to do it but also shows him that it really can be done. In condescension to our weakness, our heavenly teacher has given us the very words to use as we draw near to our Father...It is a form of prayer that becomes the model and inspiration for all other prayer and yet always draws us back to itself as the deepest utterance of our souls before our God."

Some highlights from this chapter are the following observations by the author:
1. "'Our Father in heaven'...The invocation places us at once in the center of the wonderful revelation that the Son came to make the Father our Father...The words are key to the whole prayer; in fact, to all prayer...The knowledge of God's Father-love is the first and simplest - but also the last and highest - lesson in the school of prayer...In the infinite tenderness and pity and patience of the infinite Father, in His loving readiness to hear and to help, the life of prayer has its joy. Let us take time for the Spirit to make these words spirit and truth to us...: 'Our Father in heaven...' Here we are indeed within the veil, in the secret place of power where prayer always prevails." Once again Andrew Murray emphasizes the importance of a revelation of the tender Father heart of God if we are to experience effective prayer.

2. "'Hallowed be Your name.' While we ordinarily first bring our own needs to God in prayer, and then think of what belongs to God and His interests, the Master reverses the order...Your name, Your kingdom, Your will...In true worship the Father must be first, must be all."

3. "'Hallowed be Your name.'What name? The name Father...But how is the name to be hallowed? By God. (Ez. 36:23)...The Spirit of the Father is the Holy Spirit. Only when we yield ourselves to be led by Him, will His name be hallowed in our prayers and in our lives."

4. "'Your kingdom come.' The Father is a king and has a kingdom...The coming of the kingdom is the one great event on which the revelation of the Father's glory, the blessedness of His children, and the salvation of the world depends. The coming of the kingdom waits on our prayers."

5. "'Your will be done.' ...Surrender to and prayer for a life of heaven-like obedience is the spirit of childlike prayer."

6. "'Give us this day our daily bread.' ...A master provides food for his servants, a general for his soldiers, a father for his child. Will not the Father in heaven provide for the child who has in prayer given himself up to His interests?"

7. "'And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.' ...We are children, but we are also sinners. We owe our right of access to the Father's presence to the precious blood of Christ...Let us be careful that the prayer of forgiveness does not become a mere formality. Only what is truly confessed is truly forgiven. Let us in faith accept the forgiveness that is promised as a spiritual reality and an actual transaction between God and us...Such forgiveness as a living experience is impossible without a forgiving spirit toward others...When I pray, I must be able to say that I know of no one whom I do not sincerely love."

8. "'And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.' ...The prayer for bread and pardon must be accompanied by the total surrender to live in holy obedience to the Father's will and by believing prayer to be kept in everything from the power of the Evil One by the power of the indwelling Spirit."

Murray ends the chapter with the admonition to let this prayer of Jesus guide us to the true child-life in which the Father is all to and for the child.

I would like to suggest that the "Lord's Prayer" is a concise version of the Psalms. Some Bible students have said that the Psalms was Jesus' prayer book by which He learned to pray. If that is so, then it would make sense that the model prayer He gives us in Matthew 6 would contain in summary form all that the Psalms has in prayer. I include this thought as an encouragement to go to the Psalms (as well as this model prayer) for language in prayer. In the journey into prayer, the Psalms provide us with prayers that are filled with worship of God and that cover the gamut of human experience.

Lord, thank You that you help us to pray; thank You that You know so well our need for practical help in prayer and have given us a whole book of prayers in the Scriptures! Teach us to pray, "Our Father..." Jesus, reveal the Father-love of God to us more and more so that we gain His viewpoint and thereby make our personal requests in the context of His greatness and His kingdom..."Blessed Lord, we are your students. We trust you. Teach us to pray. Amen."