The Children For Christ by Andrew Murray

promised child, teaches me that this grace is a gift of high value, and
cannot be attained but by a close walk with God, and wholehearted
surrender to His teachings and leadings. The faith which was sufficient
to justify Abraham was not sufficient to receive the blessing for his
seed; it had to be further strengthened and purified: faith must ever be
in proportion to the extent of the promise. And believing parents will
experience that there is nothing that so mightily quickens the growth of
their faith as the reaching out after this blessing for their children. They
will feel in it the mightiest stimulus to a life of entire devotion and
unmixed faith, that they may have not only enough for themselves, but
to impart to children, in harmony with that law of the kingdom:
`According to your faith be it unto you.’
But with this solemn lesson Abraham’s story gives us the comforting
assurance that God will give the grace to attain what we need. With
what patience and long-suffering did He lead Abraham and Sarah until
they were fitted to accomplish His purposes, and it could be said of
them, `Abraham believed that he might become the father of many
nations;’ and, ‘through faith Sarah received strength to conceive seed
and was delivered of a child.’ Even now still will that God, who has
undertaken to sanctify His people soul and body, and to fill them with
His Spirit, Himself train them for the holy calling of believing parents.
He will teach us how the birth of our children can become the highest
exercise of a faith that gives glory to God, and the truest means of
advancing our spiritual life and the interests of His kingdom.
With us, too, the promise of God and the power of faith are the
wondrous links by which the natural seed becomes the heir of the
spiritual blessing, and the parental relationship one of the best schools
for the life of faith. It is especially in a believing fatherhood that we can
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