Echoes of Murray

Solomon said, "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." (Ecc. 1:9)

Reading the little biography of Andrew Murray, I recognize a man that God's Spirit had filled to overflowing. And journeying in that place of joy, he wrote, and wrote some more. And now we are blessed in the reading.

Thank you Ann for sharing your journey with us. May God continue to fill you and surround you with the joy of His Presence. You wrote and we read. You were blessed and became the blessing.

*The italicized quotes are from Murray's book Humility.

Chapter Nine:
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"How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it!" G.K. Chesterton

"The word humility itself comes from the Latin root humus - the kind of earth that grows good crops. God give the earth to the humus-people, the humble ones. Humility is that good humus that grows gratitude that yields abundant joy."

"Humility is not so much a grace or virtue along with others; [humility] is the root of all, because it alone takes the right attitude before God, and allows him as God to do all."

"I used to think that God's gifts were on shelves one above the other, and that the taller we grew in Christian character the easier we should reach them. I found now that God's gifts are on shelves one beneath the other, and that it is not a question of growing taller but of stooping lower, and that we have to go down, always down, to get His best gifts." F.B. Meyer

"When our own heart is set upon this (humility)...no place will be too low, and no stooping too deep, and no service too mean or too long continued, if we may but share and prove the fellowship of him who spake, 'I am among you as he that serveth.' [Luke 22:27]"

"Receiving God's gifts is a gentle, simple movement of stooping lower."

"Brethren, here is the path to the higher life. Down, lower down!"

"[I]n that place of of humble thanks, God exalts and gives more gifts and more of Himself, which humbles and lays the soul down lower. And good God responds with greater gifts of grace and even more of Himself."

"God wished to reveal himself in and through created beings by communicating to them as much of his own goodness and glory as they were capable of receiving...[and] the relation of the creature to God could only be one of unceasing, absolute, universal dependence."

"He must increase and I must decrease - not because that is burden but so that my joy might increase with more of Him!"

"[T]he first and chief mark of the relation of the creature, the secret of his blessedness, is the humility and nothingness which leaves God free to be all."

"The river of joy flows down to the lowest place."

"Just as water ever seeks and fills the lowest place, so the moment God finds the creature abased and empty, his glory and power flow in to exalt and to bless."

"God holds us in the untamed moments too."

"Lament is a cry of belief in a good God, a God who has his ear to our hearts, a God who transfigures the ugly into beautiful. Complaint is the howl of unbelief in any benevolent God in this moment, a distrust in the love-beat of the the Father's heart."

"Joy is God and God is joy and joy doesn't negate all other emotions - joy trancends all other emotions."

"His humility is our salvation. His salvation is our humility."

"Pride, mine - that beast that pulls on the mask of anger - this is what snaps this hand shut, crushes joy."

"In Heaven and earth, pride, self-exaltation, is the gate and the birth, and the curse, of Hell."

"The theology is putting on skin."

"Fullness of joy is discovered only in the emptying of will."

"This is the true self-denial to which our Saviour calls us... self has nothing good in it, except as an empty vessel which God must fill..."
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Pride is a behemoth in me. I need to live in the words above, soak them in, apply, put them on, marinate in them. I need to live in this subject of humility for a lifetime.

I behold my sin, and I behold a Savior greater.