You cannot experience joy, love, and all the fruit of the Spirit apart from Christ, and you cannot abide in Christ apart from prayer. Prayer as a priority. Prayer as passion. Prayer as one’s portion. Andrew Murray writes:
How greatly the power to spend a day aright, to abide all the day in Jesus, depends on the morning hour. If the first-fruits be holy, the lump is holy. During the day there come hours of intense occupation in the rush of business or the throng of men, when only the Father’s keeping can maintain the connection with Jesus unbroken. The morning manna fed all day; it is only when the believer in the morning secures his quiet time in secret to renew distinctly and effectually loving fellowship with his Saviour, that the abiding can be kept up all the day. But what cause for thanksgiving that it may be done! In the morning, with its freshness and quiet, the believer can look out upon the day. He can consider its duties and its temptations, and pass them through beforehand, as it were, with his Saviour, throwing all upon Him who has undertaken to be everything to him. Christ is his manna, his nourishment, his strength, his life: he can take the day’s portion for the day, Christ as his for all the needs the day may bring, and go on in the assurance that the day will be one of blessing and of growth…. And so, each day separately, all the day continually, day by day successively, we abide in Jesus. (Murray, Abide in Christ, 85-86)
Bob Hostetler, The Red Letter Life: 17 Words from Jesus to Inspire Simple, Practical, Purposeful Living (Uhrichsville, OH: Barbour, 2014).
No comments:
Post a Comment