Introductory Note:

I first met Andrew Murray through his book With Christ in the School of Prayer. It was a formative book for me, and while I may meander here and there in his other devotional writings it is to With Christ that I always return. It is the most sustained and carefully thought out discussion of prayer I have found. And it never fails to warm my heart.

All of Murray’s books deal with prayer in one form or another. This particular selection helps us to center on the glory of God through the prayer of adoration. Adoration is our most direct reply to God’s perpetual outpouring of love into our soul. It is the spontaneous yearning of the heart to worship, honor, magnify, and bless God. Adoration is the air in which prayer breathes, the sea in which prayer swims. In adoration we enter the rarefied air of selfless devotion. We ask for nothing but to cherish God. We seek nothing but his exaltation. We focus on nothing but his goodness.

God’s glory, you understand, is seen primarily in his goodness, and so for us to give glory to God means that we magnify his goodness. Now, to magnify something, you make it look larger, increasing it out of proportion. To talk about ourselves or our activities out of true proportion is dangerous indeed, but when we magnify God, we are on safe ground. We simply cannot say too much about God’s goodness and love. The most exaggerated things we can think of will still be far below what is actually the case. So we can freely and joyfully join with the psalmist who calls us to worship saying, “O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together” (Ps. 34:3). In this we do no more than give the glory to God that is due his name.

Richard J. Foster
Renovaré Founder

Excerpt from Spiritual Classics

We have been speaking especially of the adoration of God the Father and the need for sufficient time each day to worship Him in some of His glorious attributes. But we must remind ourselves that, in all our communion with the Father, the presence and the power of the Son and the Spirit are absolutely necessary.

We must understand how our communion with the Father is conditioned by the active and personal presence and working of the Lord Jesus. It takes time to become fully conscious of the need we have of Him in every approach to God. But we can have confidence in the work that He is doing in us and assurance of His intimate love and presence as we make intercession.

So too the Holy Spirit, working in the depth of our heart, is the One who is able to reveal the Son within us. Through Him alone we have the power to know what and how to pray. Through Him we have the assurance that our prayer has been accepted.

Dear Christian, it is in tarrying in the secret of God’s presence that you receive grace to abide in Christ and to be led by His Spirit. What food for thought — and worship!

New wonders of that glory

There is no more wonderful image in nature of the glory of God than we find in the starry heavens. Telescopes have long discovered the wonders of God’s universe. By means of photography, new wonders of that glory have been revealed. A photographic plate fixed below the telescope will reveal millions of stars which otherwise could never have been seen by the eye. Man must step to one side and allow the glory of the heavens to reveal itself. The stars, at first wholly invisible, will leave their image on the plate.

What a lesson for the soul that longs to see the glory of God in His Word. Let your heart be as a photographic plate that waits for God’s glory to be revealed. The plate must be prepared and clean; let your heart be prepared and purified by God’s Spirit. ​“God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God” (Matt. 5:8). The plate must be immovable; let your heart be still before God in prayer. The plate must be exposed for several hours to receive the full impression of the farthest stars; let your heart take time in silent waiting upon God and He will reveal His glory.

If you keep silent before God and give Him time, He will leave within you impressions that will be as the rays of His glory shining in you.

Murray, Andrew. ​“The Best of Andrew Murray on Prayer” In Spiritual Classics: Selected Readings on the Twelve Spiritual Disciplines. Edited by Richard J. Foster and Emilie Griffin. New York: HarperOne, 2000.

Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash

· Last Featured on Renovare.org September 2023