Andrew Murray- the Secret Place Life
“He who dwells in the Secret Place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.”
Psalm 91: 1
As we continue to read this Psalm, we see this wonderful heart of the Secret Place dweller:
“…because he has set his love upon Me…”
Psalm 91: 14a
He has fixed and set his heart on the Lord. It is not a passing phase or the result of a momentary conviction, but a day-after-day pursuit. We come out of the desire of our hearts to know Him. How much do we want to know Him? What value do we place on our relationship with Him? When we see Him as everything and pursue Him with all our hearts, minds, and being, then the price of knowing Him fades in the delight that our soul shall truly be satisfied.
Andrew Murray wrote:
And then, let it be very clear, too, that we are waiting. Let that become so much our consciousness that the utterance comes spontaneously, “On Thee I do wait all the day; I wait on Thee.” This will indeed imply sacrifice and separation, a soul entirely given up to God as its all, its only joy.
Oh, in this hour, too many believers are more in love with the world and things of the world. But we must learn the secret that only in Him are we truly satisfied. He must become everything to us.
And yet, if it be true that God alone is goodness and joy and love; if it be true that our highest blessedness is in having as much of God as we can; if it be true that Christ has redeemed us wholly for God, and made a life of continual abiding in His presence possible, nothing less ought to satisfy than to be ever breathing this blessed atmosphere, “I wait on Thee.”
Everything we really need to live life to the full is found in Him! The world seeks the secret and has a plethora of ideas on how to experience peace and discover true satisfaction. The believer should be a walking declaration of such provision that he provides.
The call is to come aside and come away with Him. We must live in confident faith:
“But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is the rewarder of those who diligently see Him.”
Hebrews 11: 6
Listen to those words. You can hear Him speaking to Abraham and saying to him, “I am your great reward!’ We may applaud these great heroes of faith and then excuse ourselves. But we have been given access that came at great cost. Murray explained:
Our souls are so little accustomed to hold fellowship with God; the God on whom we wait so of ten appears to hide Himself. We who have to wait are often tempted to fear that we do not wait aright, that our faith is too feeble, that our desire is not as upright or as earnest as it should be, that our surrender is not complete. Amid all these causes of fear or doubt, how blessed to hear the voice of God, “Wait on the Lord! Be strong, and let thine heart take courage! YEA, WAIT THOU ON THE LORD!” Let nothing in heaven or earth or hell – let nothing keep thee from waiting on thy God in full assurance that it cannot be in vain.
Many write to me and say, “I tried it! But it failed as I FELT NOTHING!” Oh, it is not by feeling or self-qualifying. But by faith! Faith in Him, what he did, and who we are now in and through Him.
Then others write me and share how they fear being deceived and doing something wrong. Murray so beautifully said:
If you say that you are afraid of deceiving yourself with vain hope, because you do not see or feel any warrant in your present state for such special expectations, my answer is, it is God, who is the warrant for your expecting great things. Oh, do learn the lesson. You are not going to wait on yourself to see what you feel and what changes come to you. You are going to WAIT ON GOD, to know first, WHAT HE IS, and then, after that, what He will do.
Entrance into the Secret Place demands that we recognize Who He is to us and what He did for us. There is no other way!
“Then He adds, ‘Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.’ Now where there is remission of these, there is no longer an offering for sin. Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood od Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, and having a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful!”
Hebrews 10: 17-23
Then we must KNOW that he is FAITHFUL. Yes, if He has promised, He will surely do! Murray continued to explain the wondrous reward of waiting in faith:
The whole duty and blessedness of waiting on God has its root in this, that He is such a blessed Being, full, to overflowing, of goodness and power and life and joy, that we, however wretched, cannot for any time come into contact with Him, without that life and power secretly, silently beginning to enter into him and blessing him. God is Love! That is the one only and all-sufficient warrant of your expectation. Love seeketh out its own: God’s love is just His delight to impart Himself and His blessedness to His children.
So we come in faith, knowing our time invested in such pursuit is the greatest investment we can make, for it comes with the greatest reward. What do we need, and what do we seek? DO we seek what truly satisfies the need or what we think we need?
Listen to what Andrew further shared:
Come, and however feeble you feel, just wait in His presence. As a feeble, sickly invalid is brought out into the sunshine to let its warmth go through him, come with all that is dark and cold in you into the sunshine of God’s holy, omnipotent love, and sit and wait there, with the one thought: Here I am, in the sunshine of His love. As the sun does its work in the weak one who seeks its rays, God will do His work in you. Oh, do trust Him fully. “Wait on the Lord! Be strong, and let your heart take courage! Yea, wait thou on the Lord!”
Amen?
