Ministers of the Spirit

Ministers of the Spirit

By Andrew Murray,
Living a Prayerful Life

What is the meaning of the expression ‘‘The minister of the gospel is a minister of the Spirit’’?
(2 Corinthians 3:6–8.)

It means:

1. The preacher is entirely under the power and control of the Holy Spirit, so that he may be led and used by the Spirit as He wills.

2. Many pray for the Spirit that they may make use of Him and His power for their work.
This is an entirely wrong concept.
It is He who must use you.
Your relationship toward Him must be one of deep dependence and utter submission.
The Spirit must have you completely and always and in all things under His power.

3. There are many who think they must only preach the Word, and that the Spirit will make the Word fruitful.
They do not understand that it is the Spirit, in and through the preacher, who will bring the Word to the heart of the listeners.
I must not be satisfied with praying to God to bless through the operation of His Spirit the Word that I preach.
The Lord wants me to be filled with the Spirit; then I will speak as I should and my preaching will be in the manifestation of the Spirit and power.

4. We see this occurring on the day of Pentecost.
They were filled with the Spirit and began to speak, and spoke with power through the Spirit who was in them.

5. Thus we learn what the relationship of the minister toward the Spirit should be.
He must have a strong belief that the Spirit is in him, that the Spirit will teach him in his daily life, and that He will strengthen him to bear witness to the Lord Jesus in his preaching and visiting.
He must live in ceaseless prayer that he may be kept and strengthened by the power of the Spirit.

6. When the Lord promised the apostles that they would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them, and commanded them to wait for Him, it was as though He said:
‘‘Do not dare to preach without this power.
It is the indispensable preparation for your work.
Everything depends on it.’’

7. What is the lesson to be learned from the phrase ‘‘ministers of the Spirit’’?
How little we have understood this!
How little we have lived in it!
How little we have experienced the power of the Holy Spirit!
What must we do? There must be deep confession that we have indeed grieved the Spirit, because we have not lived daily in dependence upon Him.
There must be simple, childlike surrender to His leading, in the confidence that the Lord will work a change in us.
Then there must be daily fellowship with the Lord Jesus in ceaseless prayer.
He will bestow on us the Holy Spirit like rivers of living water.

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Little time in the Word together with little prayer is death to the spiritual life.
Much of the Word but little prayer yields a less than healthy spiritual life.
Time spent in prayer with little time in the Word yields life, but without steadfastness.
A full measure of the Word and much prayer each day produces a healthy and powerful life.

Think of the Lord Jesus.
In His youth and through to adulthood He treasured the Word in His heart.
He showed that the Word of God filled His heart when he was tempted in the wilderness, as well as at every opportunity that presented itself—until He cried out on the cross in death:
‘‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’’

In His prayer life He manifested two things.
First, He showed that the Word supplies us with material for prayer and encourages us to expect everything from God.
The second is that it is only by prayer that we may live such a life that every word of God might be fulfilled in us.

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How can we come to the point where the Word and prayer each have their undivided right over us?

There is only one answer.
Our lives must be wholly transformed.
We must get a new, healthy, heavenly life, in which hunger after God’s Word and thirst after God himself are expressed in prayer as naturally as the needs of our earthly life.

Every manifestation of the power of the flesh in us and the weakness of our spiritual life must drive us to the conviction that God, through the powerful operation of His Holy Spirit, will work out a new and strong life in us.

We must understand that the Holy Spirit is essentially the Spirit of the Word and the Spirit of prayer.
He will cause the Word to become joy and light in our souls.
He will also help us in prayer to know the mind and will of God and to find in it our delight.

If we wish to explain these things to God’s people that they may know the inheritance that is prepared for them, we must commit ourselves from this moment forward to the leading of the Holy Spirit.

We must through faith in what He will do in us appropriate the heavenly life of Christ as He lived it on earth, with certain expectation that the Spirit who filled Him with the Word and prayer will also accomplish that work in us.

Let us believe that the Spirit who is in us is the Spirit of the Lord Jesus and that He is in us to make us truly partakers of His life.
If we firmly believe this and set our hearts upon it, there will come a change in our involvement with the Word and prayer such as we could not have thought possible.

Believe it firmly and expect it.