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Absolute Surrender by Andrew Murray (1828-1917) is a Christian classic on living in the authority of God's Spirit and His Power in our life, visible daily. The section on Kept by the Power of God outlines the ingredients for experiencing this on a daily basis. Murray is a Spiritually anointed inspirational writer. Here are excerpts from this powerful guide to living in Spirit's power... Kept by the Power of God.
We have two wonderful, blessed truths about the keeping by which a believer is kept unto salvation. One truth is, Kept by the power of God; and the other truth is, Kept through faith. We should look at the two sides... at God’s side and His almighty power, offered to us to be our Keeper every moment of the day; and at the human side, we having nothing to do but in faith to let God do His keeping work. We see there is a double keeping... the inheritance kept for me in Heaven, and I on earth kept for the inheritance there.
Keeping Includes All
Think, first of all, that this keeping is all-inclusive.
He knows you are not able to keep yourself. But God says: “My child, there is no work you are to do, and no business in which you are engaged, and not a cent which you are to spend, but I, your Father, will take that up into my keeping.”
God not only cares for the spiritual, but for the temporal also. The greater part of the life of many people must be spent, sometimes eight or nine or ten hours a day, amid the temptations and distractions of business; but God will care for you there. The keeping of God includes all. Now, I bring you the message that in prosperity as in adversity, in the sunshine as in the dark, your God is ready to keep you all the time. The meaning is, that if you will entrust yourself entirely and absolutely to the omnipotence of God, He will delight to keep you.
Keeping Requires Power
Second, if you want to understand this keeping, remember that it is not only an all-inclusive keeping, but it is an almighty keeping. Have you ever thought that in every action of grace in your heart you have the whole omnipotence of God engaged to bless you?
What is Almighty God not going to do for the child that trusts Him? The Bible says: “Above all that we can ask or think." It is Omnipotence you must learn to know and trust, and then you will live as a Christian ought to live. How little we have learned to study God, and to understand that a godly life is a life full of God, a life that loves God and waits on Him, and trusts Him, and allows Him to bless it! We cannot do the will of God except by the power of God. God gives us the first experience of His power to prepare us to long for more, and to come and claim all that He can do. God help us to trust Him every day.
Keeping Is Continuous
Another thought. This keeping is not only all-inclusive and omnipotent, but also continuous and unbroken. God comes to us as the Almighty One, and without any condition He offers to be my Keeper, and His keeping means that day by day, moment by moment, God is going to keep us. Our whole spiritual life is to be God’s doing... "It is God that works in us to will and to do of his good pleasure. ” When once we get faith to expect that from God, God will do all for us. Every morning God will meet you as you wake. If you trust your waking to God, God will meet you in the morning as you wake with His divine sunshine and love, and He will give you the consciousness that through the day you have got God to take charge of you continuously with His almighty power. And God will meet you the next day and every day; and never mind if in the practice of fellowship there comes failure sometimes. If you maintain your position and say: “Lord, I am going to expect You to do Your utmost, and I am going to trust You day by day to keep me absolutely,” your faith will grow stronger and stronger, and you will know the keeping power of God in unbrokenness.
And now the other side—Believing. “Kept by the power of God through faith.” How must we look at this faith?
Faith Implies Helplessness
First of all, this faith means utter impotence and helplessness before God. At the bottom of all faith there is a feeling of helplessness. And so faith always means helplessness. In many cases it means: I can do it with a great deal of trouble, but another can do it better. But in most cases it is utter helplessness; another must do it for me. And that is the secret of the spiritual life. A man must learn to say: “I give up everything; I have tried and longed and thought and prayed, but failure has come. God has blessed me and helped me, but still, in the long run, there has been so much of sin and sadness.” What a change comes when a man is thus broken down into utter helplessness and self-despair, and says: “I can do nothing!” It is possible that you might exalt yourself, and therefore I have sent you this trial to keep you weak and humble.”
It is when we sink down in utter helplessness that the everlasting God will reveal Himself in His power, and that our hearts will learn to trust God alone.
But how am I to get that trust?”
My answer is: “By the death of self. The great hindrance to trust is self-effort. So long as you have got your own wisdom and thoughts and strength, you cannot fully trust God. But when God breaks you down, when everything begins to grow dim before your eyes, and you see that you understand nothing, then God is coming near, and if you will bow down in nothingness and wait upon God, He will become all.”
As long as we are something, God cannot be all, and His omnipotence cannot do its full work. That is the beginning of faith... utter despair of self, a ceasing from man and everything on earth, and finding our hope in God alone.
Faith Is Rest
And then, next, we must understand that faith is rest.
In the beginning of the faith-life, faith is struggling; but as long as faith is struggling, faith has not attained its strength. But when faith in its struggling gets to the end of itself, and just throws itself upon God and rests on Him, then comes joy and victory.
Oh, friends, that is faith! When God comes to me with the promise of His keeping, and I have nothing on earth to trust in, I say to God: “Your word is enough; kept by the power of God.” That is faith, that is rest.
My God, let my life be a proof of what the omnipotent God can do. Let these be the two dispositions of our souls every day... deep helplessness, and simple, childlike rest.
Faith Needs Fellowship
That brings me to just one more thought in regard to faith... faith implies fellowship with God. No goodness or power can be received separate from God, and if you want to get into this life of godliness, you must take time for fellowship with God.
Leave your heart, and look into the face of Christ, and listen to what He tells you about how He will keep you. Look up into the face of your loving Father, and take time every day with Him, and begin a new life with the deep emptiness and poverty of a man who has got nothing, and who wants to get everything from Him... with the deep restfulness of a man who rests on the living God, the omnipotent Jehovah... and try God, and prove Him if He will not open the windows of Heaven and pour out a blessing that there shall not be room to receive it.
Shall we not say: “All that that omnipotence can do, I am going to trust my God for”? Are not the two sides of this heavenly life wonderful? God’s omnipotence covers me, and my will in its littleness rests in that omnipotence, and rejoices in it!
This is from Absolute Surrender which is online at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.http://www.ccel.org/ccel/
Click on the chapter, Kept by the Power of God, for the complete chapter above.
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