Andrew Murray

“ The hourly needs of the body, which are so often our greatest hindrance, become wonderful helps in lifting our entire life into communion with God, and in bringing God down into everything. It elevates the spirit above the temporal, and teaches us in every state always to be content, always to rejoice and to praise.
What a protest against the spirit of this world. There is nothing the Christian life suffers more from than the subtle and indescribable worldliness that comes from the cares or the possessions of this life. ”

“ Christ's poverty has ever been counted one of the proofs of His love. Love delights in giving, perfect love in giving all. The poverty of Christ is one of the expressions of that self-sacrificing love which held back nothing, and seeks to win us for itself by the most absolute self-abnegation on our behalf. Christ's poverty is His fitness for sympathizing and helping us in all the trials that come to us from our relation to this world and its goods. ”

“ Money giving a sure test of character.
In the world money is the standard of value. It is difficult to express all that money means. It is the symbol of labor and enterprise and cleverness. It is often the token of God's blessing on diligent effort. It is the equivalent of all that it can procure of the service of mind or body, of property or comfort or luxury, of influence and power. No wonder that the world loves it, seeks it above everything, and often worships it. ”

“ The Grace of God teaches to give joyfully.
"The abundance of their joy abounded unto the riches of their liberality." (v. 2.) In the Christian life joy is the index of health and whole-heartedness. It is not an experience for times and seasons: it is the abiding proof of the presence and enjoyment of the Saviour's love. No less than our spiritual exercises, it is meant to pervade our daily duties and our times of trial: "a joy that no man taketh from you." And so it inspires our giving, making the offering of our money a sacrifice of joy and thanksgiving. ”

“ Does it mean that, just as He needed in poverty of spirit and body to die to the world that He might open for us the way to the heavenly treasures, so we need to walk in His footsteps, and can only through His poverty working in us, through fellowship with His poverty, come to the perfect enjoyment of the riches He came to bring? In other words, is the poverty of Jesus something for Him alone, or something in which His disciples are to share? ”

“ Our nature has been so brought under the power of the spirit of this world, our fleshly mind, with its dispositions and habits of thought and feeling, is so subtle in its influence, that nothing can deliver us from the mighty spell that money exacts but a very full and abiding enjoyment of the Spirit's presence and working. [Pg 40] To be entirely dead to all worldly ways of thinking, the Holy Spirit alone can give us. And He can only give it as He fills us with the very presence and power of the life of God. ”

“ If God were to open our eyes to see the spiritual glory of our Lord in His poverty, in His entire renunciation of every thing of worldly comfort or self-pleasing; if we saw the Divine glory of which it is the expression; if we knew how infinitely beautiful it was to all the holy angels, how infinitely well-pleasing to the Father, we should then only in some little degree be able to say whether it was something we ought to desire and imitate. ”

“ Think of the church and its work in this world; of missions at home and abroad, and the thousand agencies for winning men from sin to God and Holiness. Is it indeed true that the coin of this world, by being cast into [Pg 19] God's treasury in the right spirit, can receive the stamp of the mint of heaven, and be accepted in exchange for heavenly blessings? It is true. The gifts of faith and love go not only into the Church's treasury, but into God's own treasury, and are paid out again in heavenly goods. ”

“ The soul that in simplicity yields to the leading of the Lord will find that the fellowship of His suffering brings even here the fellowship of His glory: "Though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich." ”

“ To be ever in eternal things, utterly loose even from earth's lawful things, is a wonderful, he almost appears to say, an indispensable help in witnessing to the absolute reality and sufficiency of the unseen heavenly riches.
We may be sure that as the Holy Spirit begins to work in power in His Church, there will again be seen His mighty operation in the possession of His people. Some will again by their giving make themselves poor, in the living faith of the incomprehensible worth of their heavenly heritage, and the fervent joy the Spirit gives them in it. ”

“ Too often Christian liberty is spoken of as our freedom from too great restraint in sacrificing our own will, or the enjoyment of the world. Its real meaning is the very opposite. True love asks to be as free as possible from self and the world to bring its all to God. ”

“ It was of the innermost circle that He had gathered around Himself that Christ asked a poverty as absolute as His own. It is in the innermost circle of God's children, among those who make the highest profession of insight into the riches of grace and their entire surrender to it, that we must find the witnesses that His Spirit can still inspire and strengthen to bear His poverty. He has done it, and is doing it. In many a missionary and Salvation Army officer, in many a humble unknown worker, His Spirit is working out this trait of His blessed likeness. ”

“ Money will become the bond of union that binds the Christians of Jerusalem and of Corinth into one. They are one as much as Israel was one people. As in their ingathering of the manna the feeble and the strong were to bring all into one store, that all might share alike, so in the body of Christ. ”

“ Is the right to possess and enjoy the riches of earth as it is now everywhere practiced in the Church part of what Christ has secured for us? Or, is it possible that the lack of faith in the beauty and blessedness of the poor life of Christ Jesus is part of the cause of our spiritual poverty; our lack of Christ's poverty the cause of our lack of His riches? Is there not a needs-be that we not only think of the one side, "For your sakes He became poor" ”

“ To waken and shake out of this sleep more than preaching is needed, more than the ordinary Christian liberality, which quite comports with the full enjoyment of all that abundance can supply: there is needed the demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that God enables men, and makes it to them an indescribable blessedness, like their Lord, to give up everything of the earth that they may more fully possess, and prove, and proclaim, the sufficiency of the heavenly riches and the satisfaction they give. ”

“ How much we need to pray that the Holy Spirit may so master our purses and our possessions, that the grace of our giving shall, in some truly recognizable degree, be the reflection of our Lord's. And how we [Pg 55] need to bring our giving to the cross, and to seek Christ's death to the world and its possessions as the power for ours. So will we make others rich through our poverty, and our life be somewhat like St. Paul's: "poor, yet making many rich." ”

“ And some who are not called to give all, will yet give with an unknown liberality, because they begin to see the privilege of giving all, and long to come as near as they can. And we shall have a Church, giving willingly and abundantly, and yet not for a moment trusting in its money, but honoring those most who have the grace and the strength to be followers of Jesus Christ in His poverty. ”

“ And—did we but know it—how our money might develop and strengthen our love, as it called us to the careful and sympathizing consideration of the needs of those around us. Every call for money, and every response we give, might be the stirring of a new love, and the aid to a fuller surrender to its blessed claims. ”

“ What a Godlike privilege and blessedness to have the power of relieving the needy and making glad the heart of the poor by gold or silver! What a blessed religion that makes the money we give away a source of greater pleasure than that which we spend on ourselves! ”

“ We all know what a gulf in the Christian life there often is between the willing and the doing. This prevails in the matter of giving, too. How many long for a time when they may be better off and able to give more. And meantime that wish, the fancied willingness to give more, deceives them, and [Pg 56] is made to do duty for present liberality. How many who have the means, and intend doing something liberal, yet hesitate, and the large donation during life, or the legacy in the will, is never carried out. ”

“ Not a gift for any part of God's work, great or small, but He notices it, and puts its value on it for the blessing, if any, that it is to bring in time or eternity. And He is willing, even here on earth in the waiting heart, to let us know what He thinks of our giving. Giving money is a part of our religious life, is watched over by Christ, and must be regulated by His word. ”

“ Our whole life of faith may be strengthened by the way we deal with money. Many men have to be engaged continually in making money—by nature the heart is dragged down and bound to earth in dealing with what is the very life of the world. ”

“ Christ separated for Himself a band of men who were to live with Him in closest fellowship, in entire conformity to His life, under his immediate training. These three conditions were indispensable for their receiving the Holy Spirit, for being true witnesses to Him and the life which He had lived and would impart to men. With them, as with Him, the surrender of all property and the acceptance of a state of poverty was manifestly a condition and a means without which the full possession of the heavenly riches in such power as to convince men of their worth could not come. ”

“ The God who seeth the heart, judges of each gift by the ability to give. And His blessed Spirit gives the upright heart the blessed consciousness that the gift on earth has found approval and acceptance in heaven. God has been careful in His Word to teach us this in every possible way. All the world's judgments of the value of gifts are reversed in heaven; the [Pg 58] love that gives liberally according to what it hath is met by the Father's love from above. Let us seek to redeem our giving from all that is commonplace and little by taking hold of the blessed assurance: it is acceptable. ”

“ But the Holy Spirit, with the powers and treasures of the unseen world, had taken such possession of them, and so filled them, that money was as nothing. Let it perish rather than have anything to say in God's Church. Let it perish rather than for one moment encourage the thought that the rich man can acquire a place or a power which a poor man has not. ”

“ In His own life He had to prove that God and the riches of heaven can more than satisfy a man who has nothing on earth; that trust in God for the earthly life is not vain; that one only needs as much as it pleases God to give. In His person we have witness to the power which comes with the preaching of the Kingdom of Heaven when the Preacher Himself is the evidence of its sufficiency.
Christ's poverty was one of the marks of His entire separation from the world, the proof that He was of another world and another spirit. ”

“ Would you learn to keep the flesh crucified—refuse to spend a penny on its gratification. As much as money spent on self, may nourish and strengthen and comfort self, money sacrificed to God may help the soul in the victory that overcometh the world and the flesh. ”

“ Are there not many who say all their money is their Lord's, and that they hold it as His stewards, to dispose of it as He directs, and yet who, in the amount they spend on God's work, as compared with that on themselves, and in accumulating for the future, prove that Stewardship is but another name for ownership. ”

“ Blessed are all they who wait for Him, to receive His teaching, to know His mind, and show forth His holy likeness. It is as the first, the inner, circle proves the power of His presence, that the second and the third will feel the influence. Men of moderate means, who may feel no calling to the poor life, will come under the constraining power of the example and feel compelled to sacrifice far more of comfort and enjoyment in Christ's service than they ever did before. ”

“ What help and happiness is brought to tens of thousands of helpless ones by the timely gift of a little money from the hand of love. God has allowed the difference of rich and poor for this very purpose—that just as in the interchange of buying and selling mutual dependence upon each other is maintained among men—so in the [Pg 18] giving and receiving of charity there should be abundant scope for the blessedness of doing and receiving good. ”

“ At the time of the Reformation, poverty had become so desecrated as a part of the great system of evil it had to combat, that, in casting out those errors, it cast out a part of the truth with them. Since that time it is as if our Protestant theology has never ventured to enquire what the place and the meaning and the power is which Christ and the Apostle really gave poverty in their teaching and practice. ”

“ It is faith that can give a continual victory over this temptation. Every thought of the danger of money, every effort to resist it, every loving gift to God, helps our life of faith. We look at things in [Pg 16] the very light of God. We judge of them as out of eternity, and the money passing through our hands and devoted to God may be a daily education in faith and heavenly-mindedness.
Very specially may our money giving strengthen our life of love. Every grace needs to be exercised if it is to grow ”

“ The Christian life needs exercise; it is by practice that godliness grows. If in anything we find that our giving has not been up to this [Pg 57] Scripture model, not as liberal and joyful, not in as perfect accord with the spirit of our entire surrender to our Lord, or of His making himself poor for us, let us at once, in addition to the readiness to will, complete the doing also.
7. The Grace of God makes the gift acceptable according to what a man has. ”

“ The Holy Spirit testing the money. All the money that is given, even in a time when the Holy Spirit is moving mightily, is not given under His inspiration. But it is all given under His holy supervision, and He will from time to time, to each heart that honestly yields to Him, reveal what there may be wanting or wrong. ”