Andrew Murray (1828 - 1917) was born in South Africa and then shortly thereafter sent to Scotland, where he was raised and educated. He was ordained as a minister in the Calvinistic Dutch Reformed Church in 1848 and served in that capacity until 1906. He is the author of some two hundred and fifty works, most all of them dealing with the intimate life of the Christian in Christ Jesus through the Holy Spirit. Murray's writings are filled with practical exhortation and should be seriously pondered by all who wish to walk intimately with their Lord, even the Lord Jesus Christ.

"Our prayers must not be a vague appeal to God's mercy, and indefinite cry for blessing, but the distinct expression of definite need." Prayer Must Be Definite

"As long as in prayer we just pour out our hearts in a multitude of petitions, without taking time to see whether every petition is sent with the purpose and expectation of getting an answer, not many will reach the mark... We should learn so to pray that God would see and we would know what we really expect." Prayer Must Be Definite

"With our expression of need and sin, of love and faith and consecration, there must be the pointed statement of what we ask and expect to receive; it is in the answer that the Father loves to give us the token of His approval and acceptance." Prayer Must Be Definite

"Dost thou indeed so will to have it that though He delay it long, thou dost not hold thy peace till He hear thee? Alas! how many prayers are wishes, sent up for a short time and then forgotten, or sent up year after year as a matter of duty, while we rest content with the prayer without the answer." Prayer Must Be Definite

"The prayer of faith, finding God's will in some promise of the Word, pleads for it until it come." Prayer Must Be Definite

"True humility is ever in company with strong faith, which only seeks to know what is according to the will of God, and then boldly claims the fulfillment of the promise, Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." Prayer Must Be Definite

"Jesus solemnly gives to all His disciples a general and unlimited power of the free use of His Name at all times for all they desire." The All-Prevailing Plea

"The name and power of asking go together: when the Name of Jesus has become the power that rules my life, its power in prayer with God will be seen too." The All-Prevailing Plea

"Blessed Lord! Teach me to live and act, to walk and speak, so to do all in the Name of Jesus, that my prayer cannot be anything else but in that blessed Name too." The All-Prevailing Plea

"Our lives must be as holy as our prayers." The Believer's Call To Commitment

"Let everyone who is willing to live entirely for God and desires in everything to please Him be of good courage: God wants us to know His will and has promised by the Spirit to reveal it to us." The Believer's Call To Commitment

"The Holy spirit's work is to impart to men that grace which enables them to accept and to live out what the Father and the Son have provided." The Believer's Call To Commitment

"All the work of God and of Christ in redemption culminated in this one thing -- the Holy Spirit was to communicate the salvation that had been provided and to maintain it in unbroken effectiveness, moment by moment, in the hearts of God's children." The Believer's Call To Commitment

"No true spiritual progress can be made until with purpose of heart we determine that in everything we shall live in immediate and unceasing dependence upon the power of the Holy Spirit... It is only the soul who lives in entire surrender to and dependence on the blessed Spirit in whom God can effectually carry on His mighty work and accomplish all His blessed purposes." The Believer's Call To Commitment

"God could attain His object and satisfy the love of His own heart only by bringing us into complete union with Christ himself, so that in Him we can be as near to God as Christ is. Oh, the mystery of the love of God!" The Believer's Call To Commitment

"In every blessing we have the whole of the blessed Trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit." The Believer's Call To Commitment

"In the Christian life everything depends on knowing the presence of the Holy Spirit and understanding His blessed work." The Believer's Call To Commitment

"Apart from the Holy Spirit, nothing we do is acceptable to God." The Believer's Call To Commitment`

"The indwelling of the Holy Spirit means that in the entirety of our life, nothing is to be thought of, or trusted to, or sought after, but the immediate and continual dependence on His blessed working." The Believer's Call To Commitment

"Just as a child needs education, the believer who has the indwelling Spirit needs divine illumination from day to day to know God and the spiritual life He bestows." The Believer's Call To Commitment

"The great need of the believer is to wait upon God for the Holy Spirit to show the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe." The Believer's Call To Commitment

"The life we are to live is to be a supernatural one; it is to be the resurrection life; the heavenly life of Christ in glory maintained in us by the same working of the strength of His might by which He raised Christ from the cross to the throne. The very same almighty power by which Christ was raised from the dead as the conqueror of sin and death is the power that works in our hearts to give us the victory over every sin." The Believer's Call To Commitment

"When the veil was rent in the tabernacle, the way was opened to all the priests. When Jesus entered heaven, the way was opened for every believer to enter into God's holy presence, not for a time, but to dwell there every day and all the day. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit from heaven to bring us into that holy presence and to enable us to live in it. The unbroken enjoyment of God's presence is possible to every believer who will forsake all to possess it." The Believer's Call To Commitment

"The first great work of the Holy Spirit is to unmask our unbelief." The Believer's Call To Commitment

"The presence and power of God is the highest of all the blessings with which He has blessed us in Christ Jesus." The Believer's Call To Commitment

"God would have us not only remember our union to Christ, but specially that it is not our own doing, but the work of God Himself... God does His work by moving us to do our work... It is of great consequence that the mind should be led to see that at the back of our turning, and believing, and accepting of Christ, there was God's almighty power doing its work, inspiring our will, taking possession of us, and carrying out its own purpose of love in planting us into Christ Jesus." God Himself Has United You To Him

"The calling in time is the manifestation of the purpose in eternity. Ere the world was, God had fixed the eye of His sovereign love on you in the election of grace, and chosen you in Christ." God Himself Has United You To Him

"The same love and delight with which the Father watched over the beloved Son Himself, watches over every member of His body, every one who is in Christ Jesus." God Himself Has United You To Him

"We have heard it before, but we need to hear it very definitely - the condition of God's blessing is absolute surrender of all into His hands. Praise God! If our hearts are willing for that, there is no end to what God will do for us, and to the blessing God will bestow." Absolute Surrender

"God is life, and love, and blessing, and power, and infinite beauty, and God delights to communicate Himself to every child who is prepared to receive Him; but ah! this one lack of absolute surrender is just the thing that hinders God." Absolute Surrender

"The Temple of Solomon was absolutely surrendered to God when it was dedicated to Him. And every one of us is a temple of God, in which God will dwell and work mightily on one condition - absolute surrender to Him. God claims it, God is worthy of it, and without it God cannot work His blessed work in us." Absolute Surrender

"God does not ask you to give the perfect surrender in your strength, or by the power of your will; God is willing to work it in you... And that is what we should seek for - to go on our faces before God, until our hearts learn to believe that the everlasting God Himself will come in to turn out what is wrong, to conquer what is evil, and to work what is well-pleasing in His blessed sight. God Himself will work it in you." Absolute Surrender

"Look at the men in the Old Testament, like Abraham. Do you think it was by accident that God found that man, the father of the faithful and the Friend of God, and that it was Abraham himself, apart from God, who had such faith and such obedience and such devotion? You know it is not so. God raised him up and prepared him as an instrument for His glory." Absolute Surrender

"If there is anything holding you back, or any sacrifice you are afraid of making, come to God now, and prove how gracious your God is, and be not afraid that He will command from you what He will not bestow." Absolute Surrender

"All these searchings and hungerings and longings that are in your heart, I tell you they are the drawings of the divine magnet, Christ Jesus." Absolute Surrender

"When you do yield yourself in absolute surrender, let it be in the faith that God does now accept of it." Absolute Surrender

"When God has begun the work of absolute surrender in you, and when God has accepted your surrender, then God holds Himself bound to care for it and to keep it." Absolute Surrender

"Say: Lord God, not a word upon my tongue but for Thy glory, not a movement of my temper but for Thy glory, not an affection of love or hate in my heart but for Thy glory, and according to Thy blessed will." Absolute Surrender

"God is willing to maintain our life. Only let our absolute surrender be one of simple, childlike, and unbounded trust." Absolute Surrender

"You must deny self once for all. Denying self must every moment be the power of your life, and then Christ will come in and take possession of you." Absolute Surrender

"How much Christian work is being done in the spirit of the flesh and in the power of self! How much work, day by day, in which human energy - our will and our thoughts about the work - is continually manifested, and in which there is but little of waiting upon God, and upon the power of the Holy Ghost!" Absolute Surrender

"Who is there who truly longs to be delivered from the power of the self-life, who truly acknowledges that it is the power of self and the flesh, and who is willing to cast all at the feet of Christ? There is deliverance." Absolute Surrender

"Death was the path to glory for Christ. For the joy set before Him He endured the cross. The cross was the birthplace of His everlasting glory. Do you love Christ? Do you long to be in Christ, and not like Him? Let death be to you the most desirable thing on earth - death to self, and fellowship with Christ." Absolute Surrender

"The Christian life has suffered loss, because believers have not been distinctly guided to see that nothing is more natural and beautiful and blessed than to be nothing, so that God may be all." Humility

"It is not sin that humbles us most, but grace." Humility