The Children for Christ by Andrew Murray

taught what sin is and what repentance is, what the giving up of
everything that is not according to the will of God. And it needs to be
pointed to Jesus, the Lamb of God, through faith in whom the full influx
of the Spirit is to come. So that, just as in the parent there is to be the
harmony of faith and work, so the child no less from its earliest youth
has to be trained for a God who asks to be trusted and obeyed. It is by
the obedience of faith that parent and child are prepared for the
fulfillment of the promise.
Learn one more lesson from John. The secret of the wondrous union
between faith and work in him you will find in his deep humility. His
preaching had been with mighty power. A great revival of religion was
taking place; all men were flocking to him; no prophet in Israel had ever
preached as he had done. And yet he says, `The latchet of whose shoes I
am not worthy to unloose.’ It is ever thus. The more the soul has
received of the vision and the fellowship and the power of the Holy
One, the deeper the sense of its utter nothingness and absolute
dependence. But then, also, the deeper its confidence in the truth and
power of Him whom it has seen, and the greater its courage for His
work, because it knows whence its help most surely comes. The thought
might rise, or we might even hear others say it, that the assured
confidence of the Spirit’s being given to our children may lead to pride,
or may slacken exertion in their behalf. He that understands what faith
is knows the answer. True faith and deep humility are inseparable,
because faith is the becoming nothing to let God be all. And so true faith
and faithful labor are no less inseparable, because faith yields itself to
God to use and to work through us. Let it be with the parent as with
John; there is nothing that makes us so strong to honor God as when we
are bound by the threefold cord of strong faith, earnest effort, and deep
humility.
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