How to Grow in Faith — Murray on the Daily Practice
⏱ 14 min read
The question lands differently for the long believer than for the new one. The new believer wants the foundation. The long believer has the foundation; what she wants is the growing. And the growing is the thing the books rarely teach well, because the books are mostly written for the foundation stage — for the first three years, for the conversion-and-discipline season, for the woman who is learning the vocabulary. Once the vocabulary is learned, the books quiet. And the long believer, ten years in, is left with the small private question: am I actually growing, or am I just staying the same in a fluent way?
The question how to grow in faith is the question of a Christian woman who has been faithful for a long time and is asking it with adult honesty. She has read the books. She has done the studies. She has been in the small groups. And she is asking, in the quiet, what growth — actual measurable inner growth — even looks like on the other side of the basic disciplines. The asking is not a beginner’s asking. It is the asking of a believer who knows the disciplines and wants to know what those disciplines are actually for, on the long arc of a life.
This is the slow version of the answer. Andrew Murray, the South African pastor whose books on the inner life of the Christian — Abide in Christ, The New Life, Holy in Christ, Waiting on God — formed one of the most patient pastoral libraries of the nineteenth century, will be our older voice. Three passages, slowly read. The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women carries this kind of slow reading into a daily companion, if you would like a place to take the practice after the article. For now — read slowly.
Murray’s central conviction, taken across the whole of his pastoral library, was that faith grows the way a plant grows — by light, water, and time. You do not grow a plant by pulling on its stem. You do not grow faith by pulling on the belief itself. You provide the conditions, daily, and the growth happens — quietly, slowly, on a timescale longer than you expected, by the work of the One who actually does the growing.
(If the deeper question has been the daily practice itself — the daily 100-day commitment to faith over fear — 100 days of faith over fear is the practical companion to this slower article. If you have been looking for a structured daily reflection — the older Ignatian shape — what is the examen prayer walks the five-step daily practice. And if discerning His will has been part of the asking — what direction the growing is supposed to take — how to find God’s will walks Murray’s older grammar of it.)
The thing growth in faith is not
It is not the accumulation of more belief. That is the first thing to settle.
The modern Christian woman, especially the one who came up through Bible-study culture, has often inherited a quiet assumption: that growing in faith means knowing more — more verses, more doctrine, more theology, more answers. The assumption is gentle and well-meant and not entirely wrong; knowledge does serve growth. But Murray, gently, would set the assumption down. Growth in faith is not the accumulation of more. It is the slow deepening of trust — the deepening of the same simple faith you have always had, into the same God you have always known, until the trust holds weight it could not hold ten years ago.
The image Murray reaches for, across his books, is the tree. The mature tree does not have more leaves than the sapling. It has deeper roots. The leaves above ground may look similar. The growth is happening below the visible. The roots are reaching into soil the sapling could not yet reach. The trust is bearing weight the sapling could not yet bear. The faith that grows in the long believer is the same faith, sunk deeper into the same God — and the deepening is what makes the growing real.
The first passage: the stillness and confidence of a restful faith
“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 phrase at the centre. The stillness and confidence of a restful faith. Murray is naming the shape of mature faith. Not louder. Not larger. Restful. The faith of the long believer is not the faith of the new convert — the faith full of striving, full of fervent doing, full of the trying to prove itself. The faith of the long believer is at rest. It has been leaned on for years. It has held. It has been tested by the loss, the diagnosis, the disappointment, the silence — and it has held. And the holding has taught the soul something. The soul has begun to rest in the faith, instead of exerting the faith.
This is the line worth keeping near the page. Restful faith. The growing of faith, in Murray’s grammar, is the slow transition from striving faith to restful faith. The striving was right for its season. The striving built the muscle. The striving is what carried you through the first ten years. But the next twenty are not asking for more striving. They are asking for the slow settling of the striving into rest — the quiet daily leaning of the same faith on the same God, until the leaning becomes so habitual that it no longer requires the felt effort it used to require.
Believing that Thou doest all in me. Read that line again. Murray is saying that the mature faith is the faith that has come to believe, in the bones, that God does the work. Not that you do nothing — the daily practice is real and required — but that the transforming work, the inner growth, the deepening of trust, is His to do. You provide the conditions. He does the growing. The mature faith is the faith that has stopped trying to do God’s part. It has settled into doing its own part — the daily showing-up, the small obediences, the keeping of the appointment in the chair — and has handed back to Him the work that was always His.
This is how faith actually grows. Not by trying harder. By resting more deeply into the One who is doing the growing.
The somatic that goes with the resting
Pause here. Murray’s vocabulary has a body to it, and the body is where the resting-faith most needs to be felt before it can be understood.
Sit somewhere quiet. Press your back gently against whatever is supporting you — the chair, the cushion, the wall. Notice the small weight-shift. The body of the woman who has been striving in her faith is often a body that does not quite let its back rest on the support. It is holding itself up by a small ongoing effort, even when it is sitting in a chair built to support it. Let the spine settle back. Let the small ongoing effort to hold yourself up stop. Take one slow inhale, and on the exhale, let the back press more fully into the support. Stay there for thirty seconds.
That small somatic settling is the body’s equivalent of restful faith. The body is learning what the faith is being asked to learn — that there is a support that has been there the whole time, and that you are allowed to rest your full weight on it. The mature faith is the body’s full weight on the support. The striving faith is the body that keeps holding itself up while pretending to lean. The growing of faith, in part, is the slow training of the body to actually rest on what has been holding it all along.
The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women is built around this kind of small daily settling. One page each day, a short scripture passage, room for the slow inner work the Word is doing, no demand to perform. The workbook is not the growing — He is — but the daily small practice keeps the back against the support. The faith grows in that posture, by His work in you, over time.
The second passage: the air that surrounds me, the light that shines on me
“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.”
— Andrew Murray, Holy in Christ
This is the passage that turns the metaphor of growth literal. Read it twice.
Notice the two images Murray reaches for. The air that surrounds me. The light that shines on me. These are the conditions a plant grows in. Air. Light. Not exertion. Not effort. The plant does not work to receive the air. The plant does not strain to receive the light. The plant is in the air and the light by the simple fact of being where the air and the light are. The growing happens because the conditions are present and the plant is in them.
Murray is making a precise pastoral move here. The Lord Jesus is, in His hidden but most real presence, the air and the light the believer is already in. The growing of faith is not the produced work of straining toward Him. The growing is what happens because you are already in His presence — the air around you, the light on you, His Spirit constantly surrounding the believer the way the atmosphere surrounds the plant. Your part is to be in it. To stay in it. To not run out of the room where the light is and into rooms where it is not.
For the modern Christian woman, this is the passage that quiets the chronic worry that she has not been doing enough to grow. She has been in the light. She has been in the air. The growing has been happening, quietly, at the rate at which He is making it happen — and her part has been less the producing of growth and more the patient staying-in-the-light over years. The daily disciplines are not the growing. The daily disciplines are the staying in the light. They keep you in the conditions where the growing happens.
He will reveal it to me with ever-growing clearness and power. Read the verb. Ever-growing. Murray is naming what mature faith experiences — the slow, ongoing, never-quite-finished revealing of Christ, year over year, with ever-growing clearness. The growth is real. The growth is happening. The growth is not a flat plateau the long believer has been mistaking for itself. The growth is the deepening clearness, the deepening power, the deepening sense of who He is — and the long believer is in the middle of it, often without recognising that the present-tense plateau is, in fact, the slow-motion of ever-growing clearness.
How do you grow in faith? You stay in the light. You stay in the air. You let Him reveal Himself, with ever-growing clearness, at the rate He chooses — and you keep the daily appointment that keeps you in the conditions where the revealing happens.
The third passage: blessed rest in the union with Him
“Let this truth, accepted under the teaching of the Spirit in faith, remove every vestige of fear, as if abiding in Christ were a burden and a work. In the light of His life in the Father, let it henceforth be to you a blessed rest in the union with Him, an overflowing fountain of joy and strength. To abide in His love, His mighty, saving, keeping, satisfying love, even as He abode in the Father’s love — surely the very greatness of our calling teaches us that it never can be a work we have to perform; it must be with us as with Him, the result of the spontaneous outflowing of a life from within, and the mighty inworking of the love from above.”
— Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ
This is the most pastoral of the three passages. Read it slowly.
Murray is doing one quiet thing here. He is removing the vestige of fear — the small chronic anxiety that abiding, that growing in faith, is a burden and a work the believer has to perform. It never can be a work we have to perform. Read that line again. Murray is saying, with old-pastor authority, that the growth you have been trying to produce by effort has never been yours to produce. It is the result of the spontaneous outflowing of a life from within, and the mighty inworking of the love from above. The life and the love are not yours to manufacture. They flow. Your part is to be the vessel they flow through.
For the long believer, this is the line that ends a decade of low-grade anxiety. You have been wondering whether you were growing enough. You have been worrying that the growth had stalled. Murray is telling you, with the calm of a man who pastored congregations for fifty years, that the growth is not a thing you produce. It is a thing that spontaneously outflows from a life rooted in Christ — and the rooting is what you have been doing, faithfully, the whole time. The growth has been happening underneath the worry about growth. The growth is the spontaneous fruit of the abiding. Your part is to abide. His part is to grow you.
An overflowing fountain of joy and strength. That is the line worth keeping near the page. The mature faith is not a depleted faith hanging on by its fingernails. The mature faith is, in Murray’s grammar, an overflowing fountain — a faith that has gone deep enough into the source that it has begun to overflow into the lives around it. The overflowing is the proof of the growth. The strength that surfaces in the long believer at the moment of the diagnosis, the loss, the unexpected call from the doctor — that is the overflowing fountain. The growth has been happening. The overflowing is what reveals it.
How do you grow in faith? Murray’s full answer, taken across these three passages: abide. Stay in the light. Stay in the air. Let the resting faith deepen into restful faith. Trust that He does all in you. Keep the daily appointment. And the growth — the overflowing fountain of joy and strength — will be there when the day comes that requires it.
What growth in faith will actually feel like over a year
The growing will not feel like growing in the moment. By the third month of the daily small showing-up, the back will rest more fully against the chair. By the sixth month, the small fears that used to surface at three in the morning will surface less frequently — and when they do surface, they will land in a soul that has grown roots into a deeper soil than it had last year. By the ninth month, a difficult conversation that would have unsettled you last spring will pass through without unsettling you in the same way, and you will notice the not-unsettling and recognise it as a quiet sign that something has been growing while you were not watching. By the end of the year, the restful faith Murray was pointing at will have settled in the body as much as in the mind, and the abiding will have become the natural shape of your day rather than a discipline you have to remember to keep.
The growth of faith over a long believer’s life is not measured by larger feelings. It is measured by the deeper holding — the way the same faith holds heavier weight than it used to. The roots are reaching further. The fountain is overflowing more steadily. The light is shining on you with ever-growing clearness, exactly as Murray promised. The growing is happening. Your part is to stay in the light long enough to receive it.
(For the wider context this sits inside, how to develop a quiet time with God walks the foundational daily practice in Brother Lawrence’s gentler grammar. And how to pray morning and evening carries the two-bookends-of-the-day shape into a practical pair of rhythms.)
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A daily home for the practice
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Bible Study Workbook for Women. Each day, a short scripture passage and room for the slow inner work — the small daily anchor that keeps the back against the support, in the air, in the light, while He does the growing.
The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women carries Murray’s slow vocabulary — restful faith, the air that surrounds me, the overflowing fountain — into a daily companion built for the long believer whose faith is, at last, ready to deepen its roots into the soil it has been resting on the whole time.
