I only recently discovered the writings of Andrew Murray, but I’m making up for lost time and reading a lot more of his brilliant insights. Here are 23 quotes from The Inner Chamber and The Inner Life. You can read my full book review by clicking here.
“Personal devotional time is to serve as a means to an end. And that end is—to secure the presence of Christ for the whole day.”
“Christian! there is a terrible danger to which you stand exposed in your inner chamber. You are in danger of substituting Prayer and Bible Study for living fellowship with God, the living interchange of giving Him your love, your heart, and your life, and receiving from Him His love, His life, and His Spirit. Your needs and their expression, your desire to pray humbly and earnestly and believingly, may so occupy you, that the light of His countenance and the joy of His love cannot enter you. Your Bible Study may so interest you, and so waken pleasing religious sentiment, that—yes—the very Word of God may become a substitute for God Himself, the greatest hindrance to fellowship because it keeps the soul occupied instead of leading it to God.”
“What strength would be imparted by the consciousness: God has taken charge of me; He is going with me Himself; I am going to do His will all day in His strength; I am ready for all that may come. Yes, what a nobility would come into life, if secret prayer were not only an asking for some new sense of comfort, or light, or strength, but the giving away of life just for one day into the sure and safe keeping of a mighty and faithful God.”
“Many are so occupied with the much or the little they have to say in their prayers, that the Voice of One speaking off the mercy seat is never heard, because it is not expected or waited for.”
“Prayer seeks God: the Word reveals God. In prayer man asks God: in the Word God answers man. In prayer man rises to heaven to dwell with God: in the Word God comes to dwell with man. In prayer man gives himself to God: in the Word God gives Himself to man.”
“And where a man gives himself up wholly to the presence of the Holy Spirit, not only as a power working in him, but as God dwelling in him (John 14:16, 20, 23; 1 John 4) he may become, in the deepest meaning of the word, a man of God!”
“God will refuse to unlock the real meaning and blessing of His Word to any but those whose will is definitely set upon doing it.”
“Keeping Christ’s commandments is the indispensable condition of all true spiritual blessing.”
“The knowledge of the intellect cannot quicken. ‘Though I understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and have not love, I am nothing.’ It is in our daily Bible reading that this danger meets us; it is there it must be met and conquered. We need the intellect to hear and understand God’s Word in its human meaning. But we need to know that the possession of the truth by the intellect cannot profit but as the Holy Spirit makes it life and truth in the heart. We need to yield our heart, and wait on God in quiet submission and faith to work in us by that Spirit. As this becomes a holy habit, we shall learn the art of intellect and heart working in perfect harmony, and each movement of the mind being ever accompanied by the corresponding movement of the heart, waiting on and listening for the teaching of the Spirit.”
“Let a deep sense of our ignorance, a deep distrust of our own power of understanding the things of God even, mark our Bible study. Then, the deeper our despair of entering aright into the thoughts of God, the greater the confidence of expectancy may be. God wants to make His Word true in us.”
“The first and chief mark of being a child of God, of being like Jesus Christ, is an absolute dependence upon God for every blessing, and specially for any real knowledge of spiritual things.”
“Beware of trying to assume this state of mind only when you want to study Scripture. It must be the permanent habit of your mind, the state of your heart. Then alone can you enjoy the continual guidance of the Holy Spirit.”
“The written Word is powerless, except as it helps us to the Living Word.”
“I, nevertheless, urge all Bible students, thoughtfully and prayerfully to enquire whether the very first question to be settled in the inner chamber is not this: Is my heart in the state in which my Teacher desires it to be?”
“The fact of being occupied with, and possessing good wholesome corn, will not nourish a man. The fact of being deeply interested in the knowledge of God’s Word will not of itself nourish the soul.”
“It is not the amount of truth I gather from God’s Word; it is not the interest or success of my Bible study; it is not the increased clearness of view or largeness of grasp I am obtaining, that secure the health and growth of the spiritual life. By no means. All this often leaves the nature very much unsanctified and unspiritual with very little of the holiness or humility of Christ Jesus: something else is needed. Jesus said: My meat is TO DO the will of Him that sent me. Taking a small portion of God’s Word, some definite command or duty of the new life, quietly receiving it into the will and the love of the heart, yielding the whole being to its rule, and vowing, in the power of the Lord Jesus, to perform it: this, and then GOING TO DO IT, this is eating the Word, taking it so into our inmost being, that it becomes a constituent part of our very life.”
“Above all, realize that the world is needing you and depending on you to be its light. Christ is waiting for you as a member of His body, day by day, to do His saving work through you. Neither He, nor the world, nor you, can afford to lose a single day.”
“What can the daily Bible study and prayer profit, unless we set our heart on what God has set His on: the new man being renewed day by day after the image of Him that created him.”
“By nature we are of this world. When renewed by grace we are still in the world, subject to the subtle all-pervading influence from which we cannot withdraw ourselves. And what is more, the world is still in us, as the leaven of the nature which nothing can purge out but the mighty power of the Holy Spirit, filling us with the life of heaven.”
“No diligence or success in Bible study will really profit us unless it makes us humbler, holier men.”
“The Word, separate from God and His direct operation, cannot avail. The Word is an instrument: God Himself must use it. God is the alone Holy One. He alone can make holy. The unspeakable value of God’s Word is that it is God’s means of holiness. The terrible mistake of many is that they forget that God alone can use it or make it effectual. It is not enough that I have access to the dispensary of a physician. I need him to prescribe. Without him my use of his medicines might be fatal. It was so with the scribes. They made their boast of God’s law; they delighted in their study of Scripture and yet remained unsanctified. The Word did not sanctify them, because they did not seek for this in the Word, and did not yield to God to do it for them.”
“Do not spend your chief time in prayer in reiterating your petition, but in humbly, quietly, confidently claiming your place in Christ, your perfect union with Him, your access to God in Him.”
“Praying and working go together.”
I shared these helpful memory devices this morning, and perhaps they will be helpful to you as well. Some of the terms theologians use can be somewhat confusing, perhaps just because the words look so big! But the nice thing about the big words, they come from much smaller root words.
Craig T. Owens 