The Children For Christ by Andrew Murray

your evil influence, through the faith of others the blessing may reach
them, but you have no reason to expect it, except as you yield yourselves
to be the channel for its conveyance. If nothing else has yet roused us,
would that parental love might lead us to see that for our children's sake
nothing less is needed than for us to be filled with the Holy Ghost.
To you is the promise, and to your children. The promise! would God
that all parents understood what is implied in the promise. Too many
look upon a promise of God as a mere word or thought —something
that is without power until they from their side do what is needed to
make it effectual. They do not know that the word of God has in it a
living, mighty energy, a Divine seed-life, and that if they will but hide
and keep it in their hearts, it will beget the faith through which the
blessed fulfillment comes. I come this day to every parent who reads
this with a wonderful message. The promise, the promise of the Holy
Spirit in His fulness and His power, is to you and to your children. A
promise means that God in His infinite power has bound Himself to do
what He has said, and that He will most certainly do it for us as soon as
we claim it in faith. And the promise here means that the Holy Spirit,
with His quickening, sanctifying, and gladdening grace, is ours, waiting
to come and to be, in our home, in our family life, all that we need to
make it holy and happy. And however far our home life may yet be from
God's ideal, and however impossible it appear to us that in our
circumstances and with our difficulties we shall ever succeed in making
it very different, if we will but claim and hold fast the promise in the
prayer of faith, God Himself will fulfill it. A promise needs two things:
the receiver must believe and claim it; the giver must fulfill it and make
it true. Let our posture be that of simple, trustful faith in God for
ourselves and our children, counting on the promise : God is faithful,
who will also do it.
227