Why Andrew Murray Said the Holy Spirit Is the Christian’s Secret
⏱ 12 min read
You believe in the Holy Spirit. You say so in the creed every Sunday. You have known about Him for as long as you have known about the Father and the Son. And you have, if you are honest, never knowingly experienced Him — never had the moment you could point to and say that was Him, not me. The doctrine has been settled for decades. The Person has been a stranger. The unspoken question that has been sitting underneath your Christian life for years is whether the Spirit is, finally, anything more than a theological category — and you have not asked the question aloud because the asking feels like a small admission you do not yet want to make. Andrew Murray, who wrote The Spirit of Christ after thirty years of pastoral observation, gave the slow answer your unspoken question has been waiting for. What is the role of the Holy Spirit, in Murray’s reading? Not to be a doctrine you assent to. To be the hidden, abiding, divine Presence who has been with you the whole time, awaiting the small turn of attention that lets you become consciously aware of what He has been quietly doing. The Everspring Prayer Journal for Women carries this kind of slow turning of attention into a daily companion, if you would like a place to take the practice after the article. For now — read slowly.
Murray opened The Spirit of Christ with a chapter on the new Spirit promised in Ezekiel and given at Pentecost — the Spirit who would no longer come occasionally upon prophets and kings, but who would, in the new covenant, dwell in the ordinary believer. The chapter is not abstract. Murray watched, for forty years of South African ministry, faithful Christians live their whole lives without knowingly engaging the Person who had taken up residence inside them at conversion. The book is the slow correction of that pattern. The role of the Holy Spirit is actual presence. The Christian’s secret is learning to recognise Him.
The first passage — the hidden Presence as actual as light
Murray, in Holy in Christ, gave the sentence that names the Spirit’s mode of presence with a precision the doctrine-trained Christian most needs to hear.
“Like the air that surrounds me, like the light that shines on me, here is my Lord Jesus with me in His hidden but Divine and most real presence. My faith must in quiet rest and trust bow before the Father, of whom and by whose Mighty Grace I am in Christ: He will reveal it to me with ever-growing clearness and power. He does it as I believe, and in believing open my whole soul to receive what is implied in it: the sense of sinfulness and unholiness must become the strength of my trust and dependence. In such faith I abide in Christ. But because it is of faith, therefore it is of the Holy Spirit. Of God are ye in Christ.”
— Andrew Murray, Holy in Christ
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
The line worth keeping near the page is like the air that surrounds me, like the light that shines on me, here is my Lord Jesus with me in His hidden but Divine and most real presence. This is Murray’s working definition of the Spirit’s mode of presence. Two analogies. Like the air. You do not see it. You do not feel it most of the time. It is in the room, in the lungs, between every two objects in your line of sight, and you stop noticing it the moment you stop attending to it. The Spirit is like that. Hidden but Divine and most real. The hiddenness is not absence. The hiddenness is the mode of a Presence so continuously close that it has become, like the air, the medium you have been breathing without noticing.
Like the light that shines on me. Light is not normally visible by itself. You see the things the light is illuminating — the table, the page, the face of the person across from you. The light is the unseen condition of every act of seeing. The Spirit is like that, too. You will not, most often, see Him directly. You will see the things He is illuminating: the verse that suddenly makes sense after a year of reading it without understanding, the small turning of your will toward a kindness you would not naturally have chosen, the unexpected peace in the chest when the medical result is hard. The Spirit is in the seeing of those things. He is the light by which you saw them. You do not need to see Him to know He is the one doing the lighting.
This answers the unspoken question. You have, in fact, experienced Him. You have not recognised the experience because you have been looking for Him directly, the way you might look for an object in the room — and He has been the air, the light, the medium of every encounter. The role of the Holy Spirit is to be the indwelling Presence inside which the Christian life is actually happening, not the dramatic interruption you have been waiting for. The drama is rare. The Presence is constant. The dramatic interruption was never the proof. The constant medium is.
(For the way other contemplatives have named the same hidden Presence, the bridge article what Brother Lawrence meant by practicing the presence of God walks the kitchen-floor recognition of the same indwelling, and union with Christ — what Teresa of Ávila actually taught is the Carmelite vocabulary for the same Person.)
The somatic — for the body that has been breathing Him without knowing
Pause here. The Spirit’s likeness to the air that surrounds me is not metaphor only. The breath has been the small bodily proof, every minute of your Christian life, of a Presence given and received without your noticing. The body has been the receiver of what the mind has been trying to think its way toward.
Sit somewhere quiet. Both feet flat against the floor. Place one hand lightly on the chest, where the heart is, and let the other rest in your lap. Take one slow inhale. Notice the air coming in. Do not analyse it. Receive it. On the exhale, let the breath go all the way out, slower than the inhale, until the next inhale arrives on its own — given to you, not produced by you. Repeat once.
The breath is a small parable. The air is in the room. The lungs are receiving it. The reception is happening, every minute, whether you attend to it or not. The Spirit is like that, in His own way — given, present, working, received by faith, mostly missed by attention. The small minute of attention you are giving to the breath is the small minute of attention the Christian life has been asking you to give to the Spirit. He has been in the room the whole time. The attention is the practice. The Presence is His.
The second passage — the heart as the resting-place
Murray, in Holy in Christ, named the role of the Holy Spirit in language the surface Christian needs to hear, because the surface Christian has been treating the indwelling as a doctrine rather than as a Person who has moved in.
“It is where Thou enterest to rest, to refresh and reveal Thyself, that Thou makest holy. O my God! may my heart be Thy resting-place. I would, in the stillness and confidence of a restful faith, rest in Thee, believing that Thou doest all in me. Let such fellowship with Thee, and Thy love, and Thy will be to me the secret of a life of holiness.”
— Andrew Murray, Holy in Christ
Read it twice. Slowly.
The line worth keeping near the page is may my heart be Thy resting-place. This reverses the language you have been carrying. You have been thinking of the Christian life as the soul resting in God — and Murray, here, lets the picture rotate one quarter-turn. He prays that God may rest in the soul. The heart, in Murray’s vocabulary, is not only the soul’s resting-place in God. It is God’s resting-place in the soul. The Spirit has come to dwell. The dwelling is mutual. The Christian’s secret is learning to be the kind of interior in which He is allowed to rest.
Believing that Thou doest all in me. This is the sentence the doer-Christian needs to hear. The role of the Holy Spirit is to do all in you. Not to assist your efforts. Not to top up your striving. To do all. The Christian’s part is to be still, to believe, and to receive — and the believing itself is, Murray says elsewhere, of the Holy Spirit. He is not even leaving you to manufacture the faith. The faith is His gift. The receiving is the Spirit’s work. The fellowship is the Spirit’s making. Let such fellowship with Thee, and Thy love, and Thy will be to me the secret of a life of holiness. The secret is the fellowship. The holiness is the fruit. The Doer is the Spirit.
This is the role of the Holy Spirit, in Murray’s slow reading. Not a junior partner. Not a power-source you tap into for a difficult day. The Doer of all in you, when you let your heart be His resting-place. The Everspring Prayer Journal for Women is built around this kind of small daily letting — one short passage, a verse, a place for the honest sentence — so the heart can settle into being the room He has been waiting to rest in.
(The sibling articles in this deeper-life cluster sit at what Andrew Murray meant by the deeper Christian life, the two covenants Andrew Murray distinguished, and Andrew Murray on the inner chamber and the outer life.)
The third passage — the divine Presence given unceasingly within
Murray, in Waiting on God, gave the sentence that closes the circle on the role of the Holy Spirit and on the secret He carries for the believer.
“Enter deep into thy relation of dependence as creature on God, to receive from Him every moment what He gives. Enter deeper still into His covenant of redemption, with His promise to restore more gloriously than ever what thou hadst lost, and by His Son and Spirit to give within you unceasingly, His actual divine Presence and Power. And thus wait upon your God continually and only.”
— Andrew Murray, Waiting on God
Read it once at speed. Then read it again, slowly.
By His Son and Spirit to give within you unceasingly, His actual divine Presence and Power. This is the role of the Holy Spirit in one phrase. The Spirit is the giver-within of the actual divine Presence and Power. Not a Presence at the church, not a Presence at the conference, not a Presence at the rare emotional moment. His actual divine Presence and Power. And the verb is unceasingly. The giving is happening this minute. The giving was happening last Tuesday afternoon. The giving was happening during the long stretch of the year you assumed He had gone quiet. The giving has not stopped. The receiving has been intermittent.
The Christian’s secret, in Murray’s vocabulary, is the slow turning of the receiving from intermittent to continuous. Wait upon your God continually and only. The waiting is not a posture for crises. The waiting is the ordinary continuous shape of a soul that has, finally, recognised what the role of the Holy Spirit is. He is the unceasing inward Giver. Your part is the continuous receptive waiting. The secret is not a doctrine you have not yet learned. The secret is a Presence you have not yet, sustainedly, attended to.
This is why Murray called the Holy Spirit the Christian’s secret. Not because the Spirit is hidden from the believer who looks rightly. Because the Spirit is the hidden inward Giver of everything the believer has been trying to manufacture from the outside. The peace you have been chasing — He has been unceasingly giving. The holiness you have been pursuing — He has been unceasingly working. The presence of Christ you have been longing to feel — He has been unceasingly mediating. The secret is the recognition. The recognition becomes the slow practice. The slow practice becomes the conscious experience of the Person who has, the whole time, been like the air, like the light — most real, most divine, most quietly inside the room you have been living your Christian life in.
What the slow practice will do over a year
If you walk the question what is the role of the Holy Spirit with Murray’s three passages as your quiet companion for the next year, what changes is not the doctrine. The doctrine has been right. What changes is the attention. You start, slowly, to notice the air. The breath, the kindness you did not produce, the verse that suddenly illuminated, the small turning of the will, the peace under the hard news — all of it becomes traceable, by faith, to the Doer who has been unceasingly within. The Person stops being a category. The category becomes a Presence. The Presence becomes the quiet centre of an ordinary day. The Christian’s secret stops being secret, not because He revealed Himself in a thunderclap, but because the attention finally turned the right way.
Murray would say — and The Spirit of Christ says, in its closing chapters — that the indwelling never finishes deepening. The slow recognition is the practice. The Presence is His.
Get Seven Days of Stillness — free
A free gift from Hayley Louisa Mark. A short devotional companion drawn from the 140-Day series — seven passages, seven contemplative practices, sent to your inbox over the coming week.
No noise. No spam. Unsubscribe whenever you wish.
A daily home for the slow turning of attention
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Prayer Journal for Women. Each evening, a short passage and room for the honest sentence — a small daily room in which the attention can quietly turn toward the hidden but Divine and most real presence the Spirit has been keeping inside you the whole time.
We plan, in time, to reprint The Spirit of Christ through Everspring Press in a slow modern edition for the believer whose creed has been settled for years, and whose conscious experience of the Person of the Spirit is, slowly, ready to begin.
The Everspring Prayer Journal for Women carries Murray’s slow vocabulary — the hidden but divine Presence like air and light, the heart as God’s resting-place, the actual divine Presence and Power given unceasingly within — into a daily companion for the believer who has known the doctrine for years, and is ready, slowly, for the recognition the doctrine has been pointing at the whole time.
