By Andrew Murray.
The Indwelling Spirit. Or the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer.
By Andrew Murray.
ANDREW MURRAY was born in South Africa in 1828. After receiving his education in Scotland and Holland, he returned to South Africa and spent many years as both pastor and missionary.
He was a staunch advocate of biblical Christianity, and is best known for his many devotional books.
From the preface of the book:
Throughout time there have been believers who have met God, known Him, and through faith have had the assurance that they were well-pleasing to God. When the Son of God came to earth, revealing the Father, His purpose was that fellowship with God and the assurance of His favor might become the abiding joy of every child of God. When He was exalted to the throne of glory after His resurrection, it was so that He might send the Holy Spirit to abide in us, that we might know true fellowship with God. It was to be one of the marks of the new covenant that each member of it should walk in personal communion with God.
No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more. (Jeremiah 31:34)
Personal fellowship and knowledge of God through the Holy Spirit was to be the result of pardon from sin. The Spirit of God’s own Son was sent into our hearts to do a work as divine as that of redemption. The Spirit replaces our life with the life of Christ, in power, making the Son of God consciously present with us. This was the distinctive blessing of the New Testament. The fellowship of God, the three-in-one, was to be within us, the Spirit revealing the Son, and through Him, the Father.
Few believers realize the walk with God that their Father has prepared for them. And fewer are willing to discuss what the cause of the failure might be. Some feel that their own life is not what it should be. Many can look back to a special season of spiritual revival when their whole life was on a higher plain. The experience of the joy and strength of the Savior’s presence was for a time very real. But it did not last. For many there has been a gradual decline, accompanied by vain efforts and subsequent failure. Some long to know where the problem lies.
There is little doubt as to the answer: They do not know or honor the indwelling Spirit as the strength of their life, the power of their faith to keep them looking to Jesus and trusting in Him. They do not know what it is to day by day wait in quiet confidence for the Holy Spirit to deliver them from the power of the flesh and to maintain the wonderful presence of the Father and the Son.
There are multitudes of God’s dear children who still experience a never- ending stumbling and rising in their spiritual lives. Their everyday surroundings are not favorable to the growth of the spiritual life. There may be times of longing to live according to the full will of God, but the prospect of actually walking well-pleasing to Him has hardly dawned on them. They are strangers to the best part of their birthright as God’s children, to the most precious gift of the Father’s love in Christ—the gift of the Holy Spirit, who desires to dwell in them and lead them.
I would count it an unspeakable privilege if God would use me to address to these, His beloved children, the question found in His Word: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16) and then to tell them what that glorious work is that the Spirit is able to do in and through them. I would like to show them what it is that has no doubt hindered the Spirit from doing His blessed work. I would explain how simple the path is by which each upright soul can enter into the joy of the full revelation of the presence of the indwelling Jesus.
I have humbly asked God that He would give through my simple words the quickening of His Holy Spirit so that through them the truth, love, and power of God might enter into the hearts of many of His children. I long that these words may bring in reality and experience the wondrous gift of love they describe—the life and joy of the Holy Spirit as He reveals to them the Lord Jesus, whom until now they may have known only from a far.
—Andrew Murray
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