Abide in Christ
 by Andrew Murray 

 
     
The following excerpts are from four chapters (4, 12, 17, 21) of Abide in Christ, with bold-emphasis added by me.

      4.  Abide in Christ: As the branch in the Vine

      "I am the Vine, ye are the branches."  John 15:5
      The connection between the vine and the branch is a living one.  No external, temporary union will suffice; no work of man can effect it: the branch, whether an original or an engrafted one, is such only by the Creator's own work, in virtue of which the life, the sap, the fatness, and the fruitfulness of the vine communicate themselves to the branch.  And just so it is with the believer, too.  His union with his Lord is no work of human wisdom or human will, but an act of God, by which the closest and most complete life-union is effected between the Son of God and the believer.

      12. Abide in Christ: God Himself will establish you in Him

      As you now, at this moment, abandon all anxiety about your growth and progress to the God who has undertaken to establish you in the Vine, and feel what a joy it is to know that God alone has charge, ask and trust Him by the Holy Spirit ever to remind you of this your blessed relation to Him.  He will do it;  and with each new morning your faith may grow stronger and brighter:  I have a God to see that each day I become more firmly united to Christ.  ...  Expect it confidently, ask it fervently.  Count on God to do His work.  And learn in faith to sing the song, the notes of which each new experience will make deeper and sweeter: "Now to Him, that is of power to establish you, be glory for ever.  Amen.  "Yes, glory to God, who has undertaken to establish us in Christ! "

      17.  Abide in Christ: Through the Holy Spirit

      The Holy Spirit is indeed the mighty power of God.  And He comes to us from the heart of Christ, the bearer of Christ's life, the revealer and communicator of Christ Himself within us.  In the expression, the fellowship of the Spirit," we are taught what His highest work is.  He is the bond of fellowship between the Father and the Son: by Him they are one.  He is the bond of fellowship between all believers: by Him they are one.  Above all, He is the bond of fellowship between Christ and believers; He is the life-sap through which Vine and branch grow into real and living oneness: by Him we are one.  And we can be assured of it, that if we do but believe in His presence and working, if we do but watch not to grieve Him, because we know that He is in us, if we wait and pray to be filled with Him, He will teach us how to abide.  First guiding our will to a whole-hearted cleaving to Christ, then quickening our faith into ever larger confidence and expectation, then breathing into our hearts a peace and joy that pass understanding, He teaches us to abide.  .....
      If we would have the Spirit guide us into the abiding life, our first need is quiet restful faith.  ...  Believe that as surely as you have part in Christ, you have His Spirit, too.  Believe that He will do His work with power, if only you do not hinder Him.  Believe that He is working, even when you cannot discern it.  Believe that He will work mightily if you ask this from the Father.  It is impossible to live the life of full abiding without being full of the Holy Spirit.  Believe that the fullness of the Spirit is indeed your daily portion.  .....
      Oh, if we did but know the graciousness of our Holy Comforter, and the blessedness of wholly yielding ourselves to His leading, we should indeed experience the divine comfort of having such a teacher to secure our biding in Christ.  The Holy Spirit was given for this one purpose — that the glorious redemption and life in Christ might with divine power be conveyed and communicated to us.  We have the Holy Spirit to make the living Christ, in all His saving power, and in the completeness of His victory over sin, ever present within us.  It is this that constitutes Him the Comforter: with Him we need never mourn an absent Christ.  Let us therefore, as often as we read, or meditate, or pray in connection with this abiding in Christ, reckon upon it as a settled thing that we have the Spirit of God Himself within us, teaching, and guiding, and working.  Let us rejoice in the confidence that we must succeed in our desires, because the Holy Spirit is working all the while with secret but divine power in the soul that does not hinder Him by its unbelief.  .....
      Faith trusts the working of the Spirit unseen in the deep recesses of the inner life.

      21.  Abide in Christ: So you will have power in prayer

      "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you."  John 15:7
      Prayer is both one of the means and one of the fruits of union to Christ.  ...
      Prayer is one of the chief channels of influence by which, through us as fellow-workers with God, the blessings of Christ's redemption are to be dispensed to the world.  ...
      The soul who is truly abiding in Christ realizes increasingly how it is in the real spiritual unity with Christ that we are accepted and heard.  The union with the Son of God is a life union: we are in very deed one with Him — our prayer ascends as His prayer.  It is because we abide in Him that we can ask what we will.  ...
      Abiding in Christ, and having His words abiding in us, teach us to pray in accordance with the will of God.  With the abiding in Christ our self-will is kept down, the thoughts and wishes of nature are brought into captivity to the thoughts and wishes of Christ;  likemindedness to Christ grows upon us — all our working and willing become transformed into harmony with His.  ...  Everything is yielded to the power of His life in us, that it may exercise its sanctifying influence even on ordinary wishes and desires.  His holy Spirit breathes through our whole being; and without our being conscious how, our desires, as the breathings of the divine life, are in conformity with the divine will, and are fulfilled.  Abiding in Christ renews and sanctifies what we will, and it is given us.  ...
      Abiding in Christ teaches the believer in prayer only to seek the glory of God. ...  Abiding in Christ, the soul learns not only to desire, but spiritually to discern what will be for God's glory;  and one of the first conditions of acceptable prayer is fulfilled in it when, as the fruit of its union with Christ, the whole mind is brought into harmony with that of the Son as He said: "Father, glorify thy name."
      Abiding in Christ, we can fully avail ourselves of the name of Christ.  Asking in the name of another means that that other authorized me and sent me to ask, and wants to be considered as asking himself: he wants the favor done to him.  ...  The promise, "Whatsoever ye ask in my name," may not be severed from the command, "Whatsoever ye do, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus."   If the name of Christ is to be wholly at my disposal, so that I may have the full command of it for all I will, it must be because I first put myself wholly at His disposal, so that He has free and full command of me.  It is the abiding in Christ that gives the right and power to use His name with confidence.  To Christ the Father refuses nothing.  Abiding in Christ, I come to the Father as one with Him.  His righteousness is in me, His Spirit is in me;  the Father sees the Son in me, and gives me my petition.  It is not — as so many think — by a sort of imputation that the Father looks upon us as if we were in Christ, though we are not in Him.   No; the Father wants to see us living in Him: thus shall our prayer really have power to prevail.   Abiding in Christ not only renews the will to pray, ...
      Abiding in Christ also works in us the faith that alone can obtain an answer. ...
      Abiding in Christ, further, keeps us in the place where an answer can be bestowed. ...  Abiding in Christ is the place for receiving answers.  Out of Him the answer would be dangerous — we would consume it on our own lusts (James 4:3).  Many of the richest answers — say for spiritual grace, or for power to work and to bless — can only come in the shape of a larger experience of what God makes Christ to us.  The fullness is IN HIM; abiding in Him is the condition of power in prayer, because the answer is treasured up and bestowed in Him.
      Believer, abide in Christ, for there is the school of prayer — mighty, effectual, answer-bringing prayer.  Abide in Him, and you shall learn what to so many is a mystery: That the secret of the prayer of faith is the life of faith the life that abides in Christ alone. 

 




 
OTHER PAGES:
If you like this page, you may also like the following related pages.

For other ideas about "abiding in Christ" as described by Jesus in John 15:
God Commands and Helps - Transformation by Abiding in Christ by me (Craig Rusbult),
and — I.O.U. - Soon, maybe May 23, I'll be searching for web-resources about John 15.


The excerpts in this page are from an edition of "Abide in Christ" that was published by Whitaker House in 1979, and written by Andrew Murray about a century earlier.  You can get the whole 31-chapter book (and other books by Murray, and by other authors) through your local bookstore, or at the website of Whitaker House if you type "murray" in the SEARCH-window for "Author/Artist" after you click here.  Or you can get his books (kindle or printed) from Amazon.

also, Wise Advice from Mother Teresa: "... It was never between you and them anyway."

and my links-page about EDUCATION FOR LIVING A CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW

This page, with excerpts selected by Craig Rusbult, has a URL of
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/views/abide.htm

SiteMap for the Website