The More Abundant Life

The More Abundant Life

By Andrew Murray,
Living a Prayerful Life
(Excerpts)

Our Lord spoke this word concerning the more abundant life when He said that He had come to give His life for His sheep: 

"I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."  (John 10:10). 

A man may have life, and still through lack of nourishment or through illness there may be no abundance of life or power. 

This was the distinction between the Old Testament and the New. 

In the former there was life under the law but not the abundance of grace of the New Testament. 

Christ had given life to His disciples, but they could receive the abundant life only through His resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

All true Christians have received life from Christ. The majority, however, know nothing about the more abundant life that He is willing to bestow. 

It is of utmost importance for us to understand this more abundant life, because for a true life of prayer it is necessary that we walk in an ever-increasing experience of that overflowing life.

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What is it that particularly constitutes this abundant life? 

We cannot too often repeat it or in different ways too often explain it: 

the abundant life is nothing less than Jesus having full mastery over our entire being through the power of the Holy Spirit. 

As the Spirit makes known in us the fullness of Christ and the abundant life that He gives, it will be done chiefly in three aspects:

1. As the Crucified One. 

Not merely as the One who died for us to atone for our sins, but as He who has taken us up with himself on the cross to die with Him, and who now works out in us the power of His cross and death. 

You have true fellowship with Christ when you can say: 

‘‘I have been crucified with Christ. 

He, the Crucified One, lives in me.’’ 

The feelings, the disposition that was in Him, His lowliness and obedience even to death on the cross—these were what He referred to when He said of the Holy Spirit: 

‘‘He shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you’’—not as an instruction, but as childlike participation of the same life that was in Him.

Do you desire the Holy Spirit to take full possession of you so as to cause the crucified Christ to dwell in you? 

This is exactly the purpose for which He has been given, and this He will surely accomplish in all who yield themselves to Him.

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2. As the Risen One. 

The Scripture frequently mentions the resurrection in connection with the wonder-working power of God by which Christ was raised from the dead and from which comes the assurance of ‘‘his incomparably great power toward us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead’’ (Ephesians 1:19–20). 

Do not pass over these words too quickly. Read them again. No matter how powerless and weak you feel, recognize the truth that the omnipotence of God is working in you; 

and if you believe, will give you daily a share in the resurrection of His Son.

Yes, the Holy Spirit can fill you with the joy and victory of the resurrection of Christ as the power of your daily life right in the midst of the trials and temptations of this world. 

Let the cross humble you to the death of self. 

God will work out the heavenly life in you through His Spirit. 

How little we have understood that it is entirely the work of the Holy Spirit to make us partakers of the crucified and risen Christ and to conform us to His life and death!

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3. As the Glorified One. 

The glorified Christ is He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. 

When the Lord Jesus himself was baptized with the Spirit, it was because He had humbled himself and offered himself to take part in John’s baptism of repentance—a baptism for sinners—in the Jordan River. 

Even so, when He took upon himself the work of redemption, He received the Holy Spirit to fit Him for His work from that hour until on the cross ‘‘He offered himself without spot to God.’’ 

Do you want this glorified Christ to baptize you with the Holy Spirit? 

Then offer yourself to Him for His service to further His great work of making known to sinners the love of the Father.

God help us to understand what a great thing it is to receive the Holy Spirit with power from the glorified Jesus! 

It means a willingness—a longing of the soul—to work for Him and if need be to suffer for Him. 

You have known and loved your Lord, you have worked for Him and have had blessing in that work, but the Lord has more than that to bestow. 

By the power of the Holy Spirit, He can so work in us, in our brothers and sisters around us, and in the ministers of the church so as to fill our hearts with adoring wonder and praise.

Have you grasped this truth? 

The abundant life is neither more nor less than the full life of Christ as the Crucified One, the Risen One, and the Glorified One, who baptizes with the Holy Spirit and reveals himself in our hearts and lives as Lord of all within us.

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Do not live limited by your human imagination of what is possible. 

Live in the Word—in the love and infinite faithfulness of the Lord Jesus. 

Even though it goes slowly, with many a faltering step, the faith that always
thanks Him—not for experiences but for the promises on which it can rely—goes on from strength to strength, ever increasing in the blessed assurance that God himself will perfect His work in us.