The Children For Christ by Andrew Murray

Dear fellow-parents! let us humble ourselves that our home life has not
more distinctly proved the truth and the glory of this promise. Let us
confess with shame how much there has been that was carnal and not
spiritual; of the spirit of the world, and not of the Spirit of God. Let us
open our hearts to take in the promise of God as something that has a
Divine quickening power, and that will itself beget in us the very state
of mind which God requires ere the fulfillment comes. Let us look upon
ourselves as the divinely-appointed ministers of the Holy Spirit, to
prepare and train our children under His influence from their youth up,
and let us yield ourselves wholly to His guidance and working. To train a
child aright means training him to be a temple of the Holy Spirit,
means living ourselves in the power of the Spirit. Let no sense of
shortcoming or feebleness discourage us: to you is the promise, and to
your children. Let us place our lives as parents under the leading of the
Holy Spirit. That will mean, placing our whole life under His leading:
because we can be to our children only what we. really are to God. Let
the spirit of praise and thanks unceasingly fill us, that God should have
bestowed the wondrous grace upon us to make our family life the
sphere for the special working of His Spirit; and let it be our unceasing
prayer and our confident expectation that, by the power of the Holy
Spirit from heaven, our home on earth shall be coming continually
nearer to the home in heaven, of which it is meant to be the image and
the preparation.
O Thou thrice holy God! how shall we bless Thee for the promise that
our home is to be Thy home, the abode of Thy Holy Spirit, and that in
the happy life of love between parents and children which You give us
on earth, the Spirit of Thy Divine love is to be the link that binds us
together. Glory to Thy name, 0 my God, for the promise of the Holy
Spirit to us and to our children!
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