0,49 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: e-artnow
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Absolute Surrender is a compelling collection of addresses by South African pastor Andrew Murray that delves into the profound themes of spiritual surrender, humility, and faith. Murray passionately argues that many Christians miss out on the transformative power and grace of God due to their lack of complete surrender. Through powerful examples and biblical insights, Murray explores the immense benefits and blessings that come with absolute surrender to Christ. Each chapter challenges believers to embrace a life fully yielded to Jesus, emphasizing the possibility of experiencing God's extraordinary work through such surrender. This book serves as a guide for Christians seeking a deeper, more intimate relationship with Christ through humility, faith, and absolute surrender.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
Ähnliche
Absolute Surrender
Table of Contents
Preface
At the request of those who have arranged for the publication of these addresses, I write a few words by way of introduction. I gladly avail myself of the opportunity to point out to those readers who may not have attended such Conventions as those at which they were delivered, what the special object is for which they were first spoken and are now published.
I know not that I can do this better than by pointing to the origin of the Keswick Convention. Canon Battersby had for more than twenty years been an earnest evangelical minister, known and esteemed for his piety. But that piety bore in his heart the mark which so much of the religion of God’s children has—the consciousness of not living well-pleasing to God. The painful sense of continual failure and defeat in the battle with sin, the frequent loss of the light and joy of God’s presence, made that perfect peace and abiding communion of which the Word speaks an impossibility. Before the great Oxford Convention of 1873, he had been deeply stirred by the tidings that there were those who could testify of victory over sin, and continuous walking in the light, as the rule of their Christian experience. He saw that there were promises in God’s Word to warrant this, but he knew not how to inherit them. At the Convention he heard an address on Faith as a resting on Christ’s Word, and saw that in that faith he might claim and receive the power of Christ to do in him what he had hitherto thought impossible. The Spirit of God, who gave him to see this, gave him also to accept it, and he was ready to testify at once of what God had done for him.
The Keswick Convention had its orgin in the desire to give this testimony in wider circles. With others he spoke of the old life they too had once lived, of the new life and joy God had now bestowed, and of the simple way in which through faith they had found the passage from the one to the other. The blessing that followed was great. Numbers who had longed for a better life than they had led, found the help they needed. In the power and joy of the Holy Spirit an atmosphere was created, of which the presence is felt to this day. The intensely personal tone in the call to confession and surrender of what was wrong in the past, the joyous testimony to the blessedness of what Christ actually had made possible, the simple and trustful appeal to come and by a single act of faith at once prove God’s faithfulness and power, brought to many a message and a blessing they had never found in the ordinary preaching.
And why have I written this? Simply to point out and press home upon my readers the three great thoughts which mark the Conventions for the Deepening of the Spiritual Life, and which these addresses attempt to illustrate.
Their first aim is always to discover the evil of that low spiritual state upon which so many look as the only possible Christian life. Nothing does more harm in the Church of Christ than the secret thought that obedience is impossible. Until believers see the error of this, and begin to look upon their life of continual failure as something sinful and unallowable, no preaching will profit much. The first lesson must be, that a walk after the flesh, that a life continually yielding to self-will, is contrary to what God absolutely requires and actually bestows.
The second aim of this teaching is to make clear that God has in very deed made a provision in Christ, the Almighty Saviour from sin, and in the Holy Spirit dwelling in us to make Christ with His saving power every moment real within us, by which the life of victory and rest and fellowship can be maintained. It is only as we see in God’s Word this life prepared for us, that we can have the courage to hope for it.
Then comes the third point, that the transition from the old life of stumbling and oft-interrupted fellowship can be by one step, and in one moment. And that only, but most certainly, because it is nothing but a new act of faith in Christ, trusting Him to work in us what we have failed to do ourselves.
I cannot too earnestly request the reader of this book to regard it all as a very simple personal appeal. Let him ask God to deal with him, and show him whether he is indeed walking in that path of absolute surrender and close fellowship to which he is called. If any child of God reads the book as a scholar, to know certain truths more clearly, or as a Christian simply desirous of being edified, he will very probably be disappointed. Let him read it as a sinner wanting deliverance from sin, and he will very probably be blessed.
With the humble prayer that God may by His Spirit bless the written page, as it has pleased Him to bless the spoken word when we were gathered in His presence, I commit the book and its readers to His holy care.
ANDREW MURRAY.
WIMBLEDON, 2nd Dec. 1895.
Be Filled with the Spirit
The words from which I wish to speak are well known: you will find them in Acts ii 4, “ They were all filled with the Holy Ghost”; and in Ephesians v. 18, “ Be filled with the Spirit.” The one text is a narrative ; it tells us what actually happened. The other text is a command; it tells us what we ought to be. In case there should be any doubt in our minds about it being actually a command, we find it linked to another command, “ Be not drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit.”
Now, I am sure there is not one here who, if I asked him, Do you try to obey that command, “ Be not drunk with wine”? would not answer at once, “Of course, as a Christian, I obey that command.” But now, as to the other—“ Be filled with the Spirit,” have you obeyed that command? Is that the life you are living? If not, the question comes at once, Why not? And then comes another question, Are you willing to take up that command to-night, and to say: By God’s help I am going to obey. I will not give myself any rest until I have obeyed that command, until I am filled with the Spirit ?
I want at the very commencement to say that it is here a simple question of listening to a command of God’s Holy Spirit, in His Word. We do not want to occupy or interest you with what we have got to say about this filling of the Holy Spirit, because that may lead you away into notions and conceptions which are really of no value towards the realisation of the one special object we are now aiming at; but we want to begin at once by saying God has this message to every Christian in this place: My child, I want you to be filled with the Spirit. Let your answer be: Father, I want it too; I am ready; I yield myself to obey my God; let me be filled with Thy Spirit to-night.
And Jest anyone should have a wrong impression as to what it is to be filled with the Spirit, just let me say that it does not mean a state of high excitement, or of absolute perfection, or a state in which there will be no growth. No. Being filled with the Spirit is simply this—having my whole nature yielded to His power. When the whole soul is yielded to the Holy Spirit, God Himself will fill it.
Now the question I want to ask is, What is needed in order to be filled with the Spirit? The question is of the utmost importance, and if we try to find the answers that have to be given, it may help to search us. We prayed, in the hymn we have just sung, that God might search us, and those answers will help each of us to look into our heart and life, and say: Am I in that condition in which God can fill me with the Spirit? I think the answers we shall find may also help to encourage us. There may be souls here who may say honestly,as we go on step by step: Thank God, I am ready for that; and they may perhaps see that they are kept back from this full blessing just by some ignorance, or prejudice, or unbelief, or wrong thoughts of what the blessing is.
Now, I do not see how we can better find the answer to our question than by looking at the way in which Christ prepared the disciples for the Day of Pentecost. You know what is done in heathen countries where the missionary preaches. Converts come to him, and he forms a baptismal class, and there are cases in which he keeps these young converts for a year, or longer at times, in the baptismal class, to educate and train and test them, and to prepare them for the Christian life. And, brethren, Jesus had His disciples three years in His baptismal class, and they kad to go through a time of training and preparation. It was not a magic thing, an arbitrary thing, the Holy Spirit coming down upon them. They were prepared for it. John the Baptist told them what was to come. He not only preached the Lamb of God who was to shed His blood, but he preached—and he tells us that it was by special revelation from God—that He on whom he saw the Holy Spirit descend would baptize with the Holy Ghost.
And now, wherein consisted the training of those disciples? Wherein consisted their preparation for the baptism of the Holy Spirit?
I ask you, first, to remember that they were men ‘who had forsaken all to follow Jesus. You know the Lord Jesus went to one and said, Forsake your net; and to another, Leave that place in the receipt of custom, and come and follow Me. And they did it, and they could afterwards say by the mouth of Peter, “Lord, we have forsaken all and followed thee” — their homes, their families, their good name. Men mocked and laughed at them, men called them the disciples of Jesus, and when He was despised and hated they were hated too. They identified themselves with Him, they gave themselves up entirély to do His bidding. There is the first step in the way to the baptism of the Holy Spirit. We must forsake all to follow Christ.
I am not now speaking about forsaking sim; that you have to do when you are converted. But there is something that has a far wider meaning. Many Christians think that they receive Jesus as someone who can save them and help them, but virtually they deny Him as Master. They think they have a right to have their own will in a thousand things. They speak very much what they like, they do very much what they like, they use their property and possessions as they like; they are their own masters, and they have never dreamed of saying: Jesus, I just forsake all to follow Thee.
And yet this is the demand of Christ. Christ hath such infinite riches and glory that He deserves it, and Christ is such a heavenly, spiritual, divine gift that unless we give up everything, our hearts cannot be filled with Him. And so Jesus comes and says: Forsake all and follow Me.
I was at Johannesburg last year at the Convention. Hear just one simple story of what has been done there in God’s kingdom. I had some services, and on an afternoon when there was a gathering of believers to testify of what God had done for them, one poor woman rose and told how, some six months before, she had received such a wonderful blessing through the inflowing of God’s Spirit. At a consecration meeting which she had attended in a very poor neigh-bourhood, the minister who was giving an address asked who were ready to give themselves up entirely for Jesus. He used the words, “Suppose He wanted you to go to China, or to give up your wife and children, would you be willing to do it?” And she said earnestly, “I did want to say, I will give up everything to Jesus, but I could not. When he asked those to rise who were willing, I was in a great state, but still I could not remain sitting, and I rose ‘and said: Yes, I will give up everything. Yet I felt as if I could not give up my husband and children. I went home, but I could not sleep; I could not rest, for there was the struggle; must I give up everything? Yet I wanted to do it for the sake of Jesus. It was past midnight, and I said: Lord, yes, for Thee everything! And the joy and the power of the Spirit flowed into my heart.” She testified, and her minister testified of her too, that she walked in the joy of the Lord.
Dear friends, you have, perhaps, never said it, because you never thought it was needed; but say it to-night. Are you willing to say: O Christ, let me be filled with the Holy Spirit; I will give up anything and everything; accept of my surrender ?
Each of us must examine himself. Some have never thought it a necessity to do it. Some have never understood what it meant when Jesus said that except a man hate father and mother, and wife and children, and houses and lands, and forsake them for His sake and the gospel’s, he is not worthy of Him. Is not this the reason of your feeble life, the reason that the Holy Spirit does not fill your being?—you have never forsaken all to follow Christ.
A second thought. They were not only men who had forsaken all to follow Jesus, but they were intensely attached to Him. Jesus had said, “If ye love Me, keep My commandments, and I will pray the Father, and He will send the Comforter.” And they did love Him intensely. They had seen Him crucified, but their hearts could not be separated from Him. They had no hope or joy or comfort on earth without Him; and, oh, friends, it is this that is so often wanting in our religion. We trust Jesus and His work on Calvary ; we trust Him as our only Saviour; that is well, and may be sufficient to bring salvation. But the thought that religion consists in an intense, close, personal attachment to Jesus, and fellowship with Him every day; the thought that religion means that Jesus, the unseen One, shall be my Friend and Guide and Keeper all the day, my Leader and Master whom I obey—alas! how much religion is there in which such a thought is never found!
If you ask what the “ Keswick teaching” is, that, I think, is one of its strong elements. Some two or three years ago a young lady missionary came out to South Africa, and she spoke so much of the blessing she had received at Keswick. She told me how, from a child, she had loved the Lord Jesus, and been educated in a circle of godly friends, and a godly home, but what a difference it had made to her when she found what it is to receive the deeper blessing. I said to her, “You have now from your childhood lived in a bright, godly atmosphere; do tell me what you think is the difference between the life you then lived and the life you entered upon afterwards.” Her answer was simple and ready and bright; “It is just this,” she said, “the personal fellowship with Jesus.” Oh, friends, there must be a beginning of that. Some people would forsake everything for the sake of their religion. For a false religion multitudes have given up all. Some people would forsake all for the sake of their church. Some people would forsake all for the sake of their fellow-men. But that is not what is wanted. We want to forsake all for the sake of Jesus, to let Him come into our life and take possession of our heart. Is your life one of tender personal attachment to Jesus, and of joy in Him? I do not ask whether your attainment in this matter be perfect, but I do ask, can you say honestly: It is what I am striving after, it is what I have given myself up to, it is what I long for above everything. Jesus Christ must have me every day and all the day ?
Once more: these disciples were men who had been led to despair of themselves. At the beginning of their ‘three years’ class of instruction they had to give up all they possessed; but it was only at the end of that time that they began to give up themselves. They ‘had given up their nets, and their homes, and their friends, and that was right; but all the three years ‘how strong self was! How often Jesus spoke to them ‘about humility! But they could not understand Him. Time after time there was contention amongst them as to who should be chief. At the Supper table they were still talking about that—who will be first amongst us? They had not given up self. As was made manifest more than once, how little they lived in the Spirit of Jesus!
But Christ taught them and trained them. He revealed to them, time after time, what the sin of pride is, and what the glory of humility is, and when He died upon the Cross, they died a terrible death too. Think of Peter, the impetuous disciple, having denied his Lord. Do not you think that im all the sorrows of those three days, from the crucifixion day to the resurrection day, the deepest and the bitterest was this—shame at the thought of how he had treated his Lord? Then he learned to despair of himself. At the Supper table how self-confident he had been! “Although all shall be offended, yet will not I.” But Jesus took him down with Him into death and the grave, and then Peter felt that there was in him, indeed, no good thing. He had learned to despair of himself.
Some of you may say: I think I have given up all for Jesus; my property, my home, my friends, my position, and I think I do love Him, but somehow it won't come right. I do not get the blessing I need. Dear friends, are you willing that God, with His searchlight, should discover to you how much there is in you of self-will and self-trust. Take, for instance, your judgment of people; how you speak just what you like, and what you think right, and have not yet learned to study the humility and tenderness and gentleness of Jesus. That is self{ You work for Him. Yon try to do good, but all the time it is really your own working. You as a Christian are doing the work, and you look to God to help and bless. But that cannot be. God must first bring each one of us down into the place of death.
Do you know what the death of Jesus means? It means this—that Jesus said to His Father, in effect: Here is My life, so precious to Me, My life which has been sinless. I have yielded it to Thee in life, but now I am going to yield it to Thee in death. He went into the grave saying, “Into Thy hands I commit ”—I give away, I intrust, “My spirit.” And you know what happened. Because He gave up His life so entirely, and sank into the thick darkness of death and the grave, God raised Him up into a new life and a new glory and a new power. God raised Him from the grave to glory. It was the death that was the secret of the resurrection. And, believer, understand that if you want to be filled with the Spirit and the risen life of glory, you must first die to self. The apostles were men who had been brought to an utter self-despair, men who had lost all, and who were ready to receive all from God in heaven.
One thought more: these apostles were men who had accepted the promise of the Spirit from Jesus in faith. You know that on that last night Christ had spoken to them about the Holy Spirit more than once, and that when He was ready to ascend, He said again, “Ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.” If you had asked those disciples, What does that mean ? I am sure they could not have told you. They did not understand it, perhaps, so much as we do. They had no conception of what would come. But they took the word of Jesus, and if they had any need for talking or arguing during those ten days, I am sure they said: If while He was on earth He did such wonderful things for us, now that He is in glory He will do things infinitely more wonderful. And they waited for that.
Now, I want you to accept this promise by faith, and to say: That promise of the filling of the Holy Ghost is for me. I accept it at the hand of Jesus. You may not understand it; you may not feel as you would like to feel; you may feel yourself weak and sinful and far away from Jesus; but you may come to-night and say—and you have a right to say it— That promise is for me. Are you ready to do so? Are you ready in faith to trust the promise, and the word, and the love of Jesus ?
I am sure there are believers here who are struggling to find out what their want is, who possibly have given themselves up most heartily and fully to Jesus, who do love Him, who have sought to humble themselves in the dust. But the want is, that they have not learned simply to say: He has promised, and He will do it.
Let me say, for your encouragement to-night, that when you get a promise from God it is worth just as much as a fulfilment. A promise brings you into direct contact with God. Only honour Him by trusting the promise and obeying Him, and if there is any preparation that you still need, God knows about it; and if there is anything that is to be opened up to you He will do it, if you count upon Him to do it. Trust the promise, and say: This fulness of the Holy Spirit is for me.
And then, the last step with the disciples was this—On the strength of that promise they waited in united prayer. And that is what we are here for in unison with each other—to wait on God in prayer. They waited, they prayed with one accord; prayer and supplication went up to God mingled with praise.
They expected—and take you away this lesson—they expected God in heaven to do something. I wish I could tell you the importance of that! I find Christians—and I have found it in my own experience—who read, and understand, and think, and wish, and want to claim, and want to take, and want to get, and yet what they crave for eludes their grasp. And why? Because they do not wait for God to give it. Do not look to what we say, or to what you think and understand, with a view of getting a blessing out of that. Look to God, and expect God to do something. It is not enough to believe. I find many people mistake faith for the blessing that faith is intended to bring. By faith I am to “inherit the promises.” Oh, believe and trust God; then look to Him to give the blessing. Be ye “ filled with the Holy Ghost.”
The Blessedness of Being Filled With the Spirit
I wish to try and put before you what the blessedness is of a life filled with the Holy Spirit. I spoke two nights ago about the way in which the disciples were led to receive the blessing; but let us to-night look at the blessedness of being filled with the Spirit. It may please God to make our desire so strong, and to make us see so clearly, This is just what I need, I cannot live longer without it, that He may bring us to receive, this very night, more than we ever expected. He is a God who is willing and able to do above what we can ask or think.
I do not think I can put the blessedness of being filled with the Spirit more clearly before you than by just pointing to the wonderful change which Pentecost made in the lives of the disciples. I think that is one of the most wonderful object-lessons in the whole of Scripture—those twelve men under Christ’s training for three years, and yet remaining, apparently, at such a distance from the life they ought to live; and then all at once, by the blessed incoming of the Holy Spirit, being made just what God wanted them to be.
Look first at the change that Pentecost wrought in their relationship to Jesus. During His life on earth with them they could not have Him within them. There He was outside, separated from them—very near, very loving; and yet, if I may say so with deep reverence, what a failure Christ’s teaching of them was until the Holy Spirit came! Christ taught them humility, time after time. He said, “Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart.” He said, time after time, “ He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” Yet at the Holy Communion table there they were, still contending which of them should be chief. Christ did not conquer their pride, This was not for the want of divine teaching. Why was it, then? It was because of one thing: Christ was still outside of them, and He could not get into their heart to dwell there. It was impossible; the time had not come, and there they had the divine, almighty, blessed Redeemer along with them, but still outside. And how different they were from Him! To teach us that no outward instruction, even from Christ Himself, or His words in Holy Scripture, can bring us the true and full blessing, till the Holy Spirit works it in us.
But what a change took place on the day of Pentecost! “At that day ye shall know that I am in you.” What does that mean? Christ in us, just the same as we are in this tent? No, we are in the tent, but we can go out of it again, and we do not suffer anything by it. I live in a house, but I can leave that house and go elsewhere. The tent and the house and I are not vitally, organically connected. But the Lord Jesus came to be—I say it with reverence — part of those disciples, to fill their heart and thought and affection; and what Peter and James and John had, when they had Christ alongside of them, you and I have in a much larger measure, if we have the living Christ within us.
And how did that change come? By the Holy Spirit. “At that day” — when the Spirit comes — “ye shall know that I am in you”; for the Father will love you, and I will love you, and we will come and make our abode in you.
