Prayer and Doing What God is Doing

In James 5, Elijah is mentioned.  He was a man who saw a situation, prayed and obeyed God.  His prayer was in the middle of doing what God is doing.  The story of Elijah in James 5 is from the Old Testament of Elijah in 1 Kings chapter 17 and 18.

God is concerned that His people can experience definite answers to prayers if they will be as obedient as Elijah was.   Elijah had frustrations, wonderings, doubts and feelings just as we do, yet he was obedient to God’s word.  That obedience gave God an opportunity to answer his prayers.

In the gospel of John 15:7, Jesus says:  “If you live in me and what I say lives in you, then ask for anything you want, and it will be yours.”, in the KJV it says:  If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.  So look at the sections in this verse.  First it says to abide or live in God, this is the obedience.  Second it says to let His word live or abide in us.  Third it says what you pray will be answered.  So what a promise when we just choose to obey God.

Pray this Prayer…

No wonder that Paul, in the chapter in which he has spoken to the Ephesians of their being ‘chosen to be holy,’ prays for the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God to be given to believers, that they might know ‘the hope of their calling’ (i. 17, 18). Let all of us, who feel that we have too little realized that we are called to Holiness, pray this prayer. It is just what we need. Let us ask God to show us how, as He who hath called us is Himself holy, so we are to be holy too; our calling is a holy calling a calling before and above everything, to Holiness. Let us ask Him to show us what Holiness is, His Holiness first, and then our Holiness; to show us how He has set His heart upon it as the one thing He wants to see in us, as being His own image and likeness; to show us too the unutterable blessedness and glory of sharing with Christ in His Holiness. Oh! that God by His Spirit would teach us what it means that we are called to be holy as He is holy. We can easily conceive what a mighty influence it would exert.

From Holy in Christ by Andrew Murray

O my God, Prayer

O my God! Thou hast redeemed me for Thyself, that Thou mightest have me wholly as Thine own, possessing, filling my inmost being with Thy own likeness, Thy perfect will, and the glory of Thy Holiness. And Thou seekest to train me, in the power of a free and loving will, to take Thy will and make it my own, that in the very centre of my being I may have Thine own perfection dwelling in me. And in Thy words Thou revealest Thy will, that as I accept and keep them I may master their Divine contents, and will all that Thou willest.

O my God! let me live day by day in such fellowship with Thee, that I may indeed in everything hear Thy voice, the living voice of the living God speaking to me. Let the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Thy Holiness, be to me Thy voice guiding me in the path of simple, childlike obedience. I do bless Thee that I have seen that Christ, in whom I am holy, was the obedient one, that in obedience He sanctified Himself to become my sanctification, and that abiding in Him, Thy obedient, holy Child, is abiding in Thy will as once done by Him, and now to be done by me. O my God! I will indeed obey Thy will: make Thou me one of Thy holy nation, a peculiar treasure above all people. Amen.

from Holy in Christ by Andrew Murray

Obedience in the Christian Life

It is nothing less than the surrender to such a life of simple and entire obedience that is implied in becoming a Christian. There are, alas! too many Christians who, from the want either of proper instruction, or of proper attention to the teaching of God’s word, have never realized the place of supreme importance that obedience takes in the Christian life. They know not that Christ, and redemption, and faith all lead to it, because through it alone is the way to the fellowship of the Love, and the Likeness, and the Glory of God. We have all, possibly, suffered from it ourselves: in our prayers and efforts after the perfect peace and the rest of faith, after the abiding joy and the increasing power of the Christian life, there has been a secret something hindering the blessing, or causing the speedy loss of what had been apprehended. A wrong impression as to the absolute necessity of obedience was probably the cause. It cannot too earnestly be insisted on that the freeness and mighty power of grace has this for its object from our conversion onwards, the restoring us to the active obedience and harmony with God’s will from which we had fallen through the first sin in Paradise. Obedience leads to God and His Holiness. It is in obedience that the will is moulded, and the character fashioned, and an inner man built up which God can clothe and adorn with the beauty of holiness.

Such obedience is the pathway of holiness. Its every act is a link to the living God, a surrender of the being for God’s will, for God Himself to take possession. In the process of assimilation, slow but sure, by which the will of God, as the meat of our souls, is taken up into our inmost being, our spiritual nature is strengthened, is spiritualized, growing up into an holy temple in which God can reveal Himself and take up His abode.

1. ‘He became obedient unto death.’ ‘Though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.’ ‘I come to do Thy will.’ ‘In which will we are sanctified.’ Christ’s example teaches us that obedience is the only path to the Holiness or the glory of God. Be this your consecration: a surrender in everything to seek and do the will of God.

from Holy in Christ by Andrew Murray

The Assembly for Prayer

A lack of interest exists in many places, so that the assembly for prayer is despised, and put down as a second-rate affair: ‘only a prayer meeting.’ Is this a right view of the throne of grace? Will this bring blessing? In certain churches; there is no union, and consequently no agreement in prayer: ‘their heart is divided; now shall they be found wanting;’ and wanting they are in their assemblies for prayer. In such a case, a feeble prayer meeting is an effect as well as a cause of disunion; and till this is altered, we may expect to see more and more of ‘the divisions of Reuben.’ Prayer is a grand cement; and lack of prayer is like withdrawing the force of gravitation from a mass of matter, and scattering it into so many separate atoms. Some churches are feeble all round; the members are a race of invalids, a body of infirm pensioners who can hardly hobble about in the ways of godliness. They have no life, no energy, or enterprise for Christ; and do you wonder at it when their meetings for prayer are so scantily attended?

from Only A Prayer-meeting by Charles Spurgeon

Faith Welcomes God into our Life

Faith is that meekness of soul which waits in stillness to hear, to understand, to accept what God says; to receive, to retain, to possess what God gives or works. By faith we allow, we welcome God Himself, the Living Person, to enter in to make His abode with us, to become our very life. However well we think we know it, we always have to learn the truth afresh, for a deeper and fuller application of it, that in the Christian life faith is the first thing, the one thing that pleases God, and brings blessing to us. And because Holiness is God’s highest glory, and the highest blessing He has for us, it is especially in the life of holiness that we need to live by faith alone.

from Holy in Christ by Andrew Murray

 

Called according to His Purpose

THE call of God is the manifestation in time of the purpose of eternity; ‘Whom He predestined, them He also called.’ Believers are ‘the called according to His purpose.’ In His call He reveals to us what His thoughts and His will concerning us are, and what the life to which He invites us. In His call He makes clear to us what the hope of our calling is; as we spiritually apprehend and enter into this, our life on earth will be the reflection of His purpose in eternity.

1. Let me press it upon every reader of this little book, that if it is to help him in the pursuit of Holiness, he must begin with God Himself. You must go to Him who calls you. It is only in the personal revelation of God to you, as He speaks, I am holy, that the command, Be ye holy, can have life or power.

from Holy in Christ by Andrew Murray