Home > Work > The Ministry of Intercession (Murray): A Plea for More Prayer (Murray Updated Classics Book 1)
1 " Unless we are willing to pay the price, to sacrifice time and attention and seemingly legitimate or necessary tasks for the sake of the spiritual gifts, we need not look for much power from above in our work. "
― Andrew Murray , The Ministry of Intercession (Murray): A Plea for More Prayer (Murray Updated Classics Book 1)
2 " If it is God who has been withholding His presence, exposing the sin, calling for its destruction and a return to obedience, surely we can count upon His grace to strengthen us for the life He asks of us. It is not a question of what you can do. It is a question of whether you will with your whole heart give God what is due Him and allow His will to be done in your life. "
3 " But the chief truth He reiterated was ever this: to pray in faith. And He defined that faith, not only as a trust in God’s goodness or power, but as the definite assurance that we have received the very thing we ask. And then, in view of the delay in the answer, He insisted on perseverance and urgency. We must be followers of those “who through faith and patience inherit the promises”—the faith that accepts the promise, and knows it has what it has asked—the patience that obtains the promise and inherits the blessing. "
4 " It is only through death to the world that we can be freed from its spirit. "
5 " the distraction of business, "
6 " it was as if everything conspired to keep him from prayer. "
7 " order for all your work, my friend: First "
8 " I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night; ye that make mention of the LORD, do not keep silent and give him no rest, until he establishes, and until he makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth. – Isaiah 62:6-7 "
9 " If once believers [p 138 ] were to awake to the glory of the work of intercession, and to see that in it, and the definite pleading for definite gifts on definite spheres and persons, lie our highest fellowship with our glorified Lord, and our only real power to bless men, it would be seen that there can be no truer fellowship with God than these definite petitions and their answers, by which we become the channel of His grace and life to men. "
10 " I am at the head of a station, with a large outlying district to care for. I see the importance of much prayer, and yet my life hardly leaves room for it. Are we to submit? Or tell us how we can attain to what we desire. "
11 " The light that shows us our sin and condemns us for it, will show us the way out of it, into the life of liberty that is well-pleasing to God. "
12 " And we – you, my reader, and I – may have the privilege of offering ourselves to God to labor in prayer and bring down these blessings to this earth. "
13 " Here on earth the influence of one who asks a favor for others depends entirely on his character, and the relationship he bears to him with whom he is interceding. "
14 " The power of the church truly to bless, rests on intercession – asking and receiving heavenly gifts to carry to other men. Because this is so, it is no wonder that where – owing to lack of teaching or spiritual insight, trust in our own diligence and effort, the influence of the world and the flesh, and that we work more than we pray – the presence and power of God are not seen in our work as we would wish. "
15 " Nothing will so test and stimulate the Christian life as the honest attempt to be an intercessor. "
16 " The measure of believing and continued prayer will be the measure of the Spirit’s working in the church. Direct, definite, and determined prayer is what we need. "
17 " The first truth is that Christ actually meant prayer to be the great power by which His church should do its work, and that the neglect of prayer is the great reason the church has not greater power over the masses in Christian and in heathen countries. "
18 " As much as prayer must be to the Father, and through the Son, it must be by the Spirit. And the Spirit can pray in no other way in us, than as He lives in us. It is only as we give ourselves to the Spirit living and praying in us, that the glory of the prayer-hearing God, and the ever-blessed and most effectual mediation of the Son, can be known by us in their power. "
19 " Christ meant prayer to be the great power by which His church should do its work, and the neglect of prayer is the reason the church lacks greater power. "
20 " The attempt to pray constantly for ourselves must be a failure; it is in intercession for others that our faith and love and perseverance will be aroused, and that power of the Spirit be found which can fit us for saving men. "