Andrew Murray on the Spirit-Filled Christian
⏱ 10 min read
You suspect your religion has gone empty. The practices are still in place — the church on Sunday, the prayer in the morning, the verse on the lock screen — and underneath the practices, something has thinned. You would not say it out loud at small group. But you know. Andrew Murray, in The Spirit of Christ, wrote the most patient extended account in English devotional literature of the difference between the full interior and the empty one, and the slow walk below through three of his passages is for the Christian woman whose religion has been faithful and has gone, quietly, hollow. The Everspring Prayer Journal for Women carries this kind of slow Spirit-shaped reading into a daily companion if you would like a place to take the practice after the article. For now — read slowly.
Murray wrote The Spirit of Christ not for the new convert but for the long-faithful — the men and women who had been in the church for decades, who had served, who had taught, who had given, and who had begun to suspect their inward life had quietly run dry beneath the outward fidelity. His answer to what is a Spirit-filled Christian is not the kind of answer modern Christian publishing tends to give. He does not name a dramatic experience to chase. He names a daily inward atmosphere to settle into — the atmosphere of a soul that has learned to rest in the hidden but divine and most real presence of the One who has been there all along. The slow three-passage walk below is the doorway in.
The first passage — the heart as His resting-place
Murray, in the chapters that turn from doctrine to interior practice, said the sentence that names what filled actually looks like in an ordinary Christian week.
“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 once. Then read it again, slowly.
Notice the inversion Murray performs. The Christian woman whose religion has gone empty has, almost always, been operating from the assumption that the Spirit-filled life is her resting in Him — and the resting has, for years, been the work she has been trying to do. Murray inverts the picture. May my heart be Thy resting-place. The first move toward the filled interior is not your resting in Him. It is the offering of your heart as the place He rests in.
This small shift is the whole architecture of Murray’s answer to what is a Spirit-filled Christian. The empty interior is the interior that has been treated as a container the Christian is responsible for filling through her own discipline. The filled interior is the interior that has been offered as a dwelling — and the One who indwells does the filling Himself, as quietly and continuously as breath. Thou doest all in me. That is the line that distinguishes the two religions Murray is naming. The empty religion is the religion of I am doing the inward work. The filled religion is the religion of Thou doest all in me, and the soul’s job is the daily small offering of the heart as His resting-place.
In the stillness and confidence of a restful faith. Murray pairs the two words deliberately. Stillness is the outward condition — the body un-rushed, the mind un-cluttered, the morning given enough air to breathe in. Confidence is the inward condition — the quiet certainty that He is doing the work, and you are not required to manufacture the filling. The two together produce the restful faith the filled life is lived from. The empty religion is restless even when it is praying. The filled religion is restful even when it is busy. The difference is not the activity. The difference is whether the heart, underneath the activity, has been offered as His resting-place.
The second passage — the hidden but divine and most real presence
A few chapters later, Murray names what filled feels like from the inside. (If the wider context of Murray’s interior teaching would help here, what Andrew Murray meant by the deeper Christian life walks the frame the Spirit-filled life sits inside, and why Andrew Murray said the Holy Spirit is the Christian’s secret walks the Spirit-as-actual-presence companion to this passage.)
“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.”
— Andrew Murray, Holy in Christ
This is the inward atmosphere of the Spirit-filled life in Murray’s hand. Notice the images he reaches for. Like the air that surrounds me. Like the light that shines on me. These are not images of dramatic visitation. They are images of ordinary continuous presence — the kind of presence you do not have to summon, because it does not stop being present. The air does not arrive in moments. The light does not switch on for the religious hours. The Christian woman whose religion has gone empty has, very often, been waiting for the Spirit to arrive — and Murray is gently telling her the Spirit is the air she has been breathing the whole time. The filled life begins the day the waiting for arrival gives way to the quiet acknowledgement of the surrounding presence.
His hidden but Divine and most real presence. The two words hidden and real are doing the heavy lifting. The Spirit’s presence is hidden — meaning, it does not announce itself with the loudness the empty religion has been waiting for. It is real — meaning, the hiddenness is not absence. The Christian who has been measuring presence by loudness has been mismeasuring presence. The filled interior has, almost always, been the quiet interior, because the Spirit’s signature is hiddenness, not noise. What is a Spirit-filled Christian in Murray’s reading? It is a Christian who has learned to recognise the hidden but most real presence as the daily atmosphere of the interior, instead of waiting for a dramatic event that, even when it comes, was never the substance of the filled life to begin with.
He does it as I believe, and in believing open my whole soul to receive what is implied in it. The verbs are precise. The believing opens. The opening receives. The receiving is the soul’s actual filling, which the Spirit does without your assistance. Your part is the daily small believing-and-opening. His part is the doing. The empty religion has been doing your part and trying to do His. The filled religion is doing your part only — believing, opening — and letting Him do His.
A small somatic, here
Set the article down for a moment. Sit with your back held by the chair. Let one slow exhale go all the way out. As the breath turns over, acknowledge — once, quietly — that the air around you is also the hidden but most real presence of the One Murray has been writing about. You are not asked to feel it. You are asked, once, to acknowledge it. The body learns the Spirit’s nearness in this kind of small registration before the mind does. That is the filled interior beginning to be inwardly recognised.
The third passage — enter deeper into the covenant of redemption
The third passage names the daily practice. Murray, in Waiting on God, said the sentence that gives the filled life its long-term shape.
“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. ‘My soul, wait thou only upon God.’ No words can tell, no heart conceive, the riches of the glory of this mystery of the Father and of Christ. Our God, in the infinite tenderness and omnipotence of His love, waits to be our Life and Joy.”
— Andrew Murray, Waiting on God
The hinge phrase is to give within you unceasingly. The filling Murray is naming is not a one-time event. It is unceasing. The Spirit-filled life is not a state you achieve and then maintain through your own discipline. It is the daily slow waiting upon God that lets the unceasing giving be received as it is given. The empty interior is the interior that has stopped waiting — because the waiting felt unproductive, because the schedule did not permit, because the practical demands of the week crowded the small spaces the unceasing giving was meant to arrive into. The filled interior is the interior that has learned the daily small return to the waiting — and inside the waiting, the unceasing giving becomes the actual atmosphere of the inward life.
This is, in Murray’s hand, the answer to what is a Spirit-filled Christian. Not a Christian who has had an event. A Christian whose daily small posture is the waiting — the enter deep into thy relation of dependence — and whose inward life is, in that posture, continuously receiving what is being continuously given. The slow practice has the shape of a daily small chair. (If the contemplative tradition outside Murray has helped name this same posture for you in other vocabularies, what Brother Lawrence meant by practicing the presence of God is the kitchen-table cousin of this passage, and union with Christ — what Teresa of Ávila actually taught walks the union-side of the same indwelling.)
If the waiting has not had a daily small home in your week for years, the Prayer Journal for Women is built for exactly this — a short morning page that opens a small chair for the waiting before the day starts pulling, and a short evening page that returns to the same chair before sleep. The waiting is the practice. The journal is only the shape it sits inside.
What the slow walk does over a year
What changes, if you sit with Murray’s three passages — one a month for three months — and then let the practice of offer the heart as His resting-place, acknowledge the hidden but most real presence, wait upon God continually become the daily small shape of your interior life, is not a sudden filling. The change is quieter than that. The empty religion you have been carrying for years begins, in small ordinary mornings, to stop being empty. Not because anything dramatic arrived. Because the heart, offered daily as His resting-place, began to be inhabited as a resting-place is meant to be inhabited — quietly, continuously, with the hidden but most real presence becoming, slowly, the recognised atmosphere of the inward life.
The Spirit-filled Christian, in Murray’s reading, is not the Christian who has had the right experience. It is the Christian whose daily small practice has, year over year, opened the inward space the unceasing giving was always being given into — and who has, over time, learned to live from the filling instead of from the manufactured effort the empty religion was running on. Murray is gentle. The filled life is not earned. It is received. The receiving is small and daily. The filling is His. (We hope, in time, to bring The Spirit of Christ back into print through Everspring Press, so the slow reading has a clean, contemplative edition to live inside.)
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A daily home for the slow filling
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Prayer Journal for Women.
The Everspring Prayer Journal for Women carries Murray’s slow vocabulary — the heart as His resting-place, the hidden but most real presence, the unceasing giving received in the daily waiting — into a daily companion for the woman whose religion has gone quietly empty and is ready, in small mornings, to let the filling begin.
