Are you shepherding God’s sheep?
You will find insights into God’s plan for His Church and
practical ways of communicating and implementing those insights.
Parents, are you wanting material
for a series of penetrating devotions? The chapters are full
of clear, biblical teaching that point you to Christ and a
Christ-like life.
Do you, as part of a sending
church, want to know how to serve missionaries? Learn of the
simple, but powerful part God designed for you to have in
missions.
Do you want to be a missionary
or do more for God? Andrew Murray’s passion for God and His
work would be wise, spiritual guidance for your life and calling.
Andrew Murray’s book reveals
a grand vision of Christ and His church. He writes from a
heart seasoned by missionary and pastoral experience. I believe
most of you will be stirred by the high calling of the Christian
life articulated by Murray. His desire is that the Church
would see that the key to missions is really you and I.
Overview
by Analogy
Imagine that you want to have
a key made at the local hardware store. You will take the
original key (the key that works) and use that as a template
for making another key. The blank key is put next to the original
and then ground down in all the right places until it matches
the original. If all goes well, you should have another key
that works just as well as the original.
Allow
me to use the key-duplicating process as an analogy for The
Key to the Missionary Problem (minus the grinding). Murray
stated in no uncertain terms that the New York Missions Conference
of 1900 was using the wrong “key.” The conference, attended
by international evangelicals, was trying to unlock the “door”
of mission fervor by the wrong means. Murray hoped to show
the Church at-large what God’s ordained “key” is for unlocking
such fervor. The book sets these two “keys” side by side in
order to compare and contrast why one “key” works while the
other does not. The final product demonstrates that the right
“key” works because it is designed by God for doing missions.
Such a “key” gets its shape from our relationship to Christ
as His Church. The “key” is found in you and me, specifically
in our devotion to and faith in our Lord Jesus and His kingdom.
Consider what Andrew Murray
says about the aim of this book: “I feel very deeply that,
to the friends of missions striving to see the whole perspective
of the purpose of God and His kingdom, this is the most important
question: How can we lead the whole Church to make herself
available to the Lord for the work to which He has destined
her and depends on her?” (p.10)
Not one to talk in abstract,
theoretical terms, Murray instead presents concrete, practical
illustrations from life. He points his readers to well-known
examples of groups and individuals that demonstrate the vibrant
Christian life God has called His people to live. As you read
you will see how the right “key” has been used by the Moravians,
the Keswick Convention, Hudson Taylor, and the Early Church.
Each of these examples form a part of the “original key” on
which all Christians should pattern their lives. Please do
not get lost in the analogy—the “key” is to be you and me
as we learn from these real-life models.
Murray also does an excellent
job of explaining how to “copy and use this key,” or should
I say, how to be the “key”—a living reality of zeal
for God. Those familiar with Murray’s devotional writings
will recognize his clear, sincerely spiritual style. Much
of what he says about Christian living would be great for
a series of sermons, small group Bible studies, or even family
devotions. The publisher has also included both Murray’s message
to pastors and his suggested format for a week of prayer as
a means of applying all he has said in the book. Again, the
“key” concerns God’s purposes for you and me.
Some
Excerpts
Concerning the Moravians:
“If the example of the Moravian
Brethren is to stir us to jealousy, we must learn from them
what it is to believe that we only exist to win the souls
for Jesus He died to save. Then we must train our members
to the thought that everyone must be ready for His
service. We must learn the lesson of much prayer and of a
definite surrender to have our whole lives under the leading
of the Holy Spirit.” (p. 51)
Concerning the Keswick
Convention:
“Christ becomes more distinctly
the center of all thought and all work; at the same time the
source, the subject, the strength of all our witness. With
this, the claim of Christ and His service upon our devotion
and loyalty and entire surrender becomes clearer. It is seen
that entire consecration, which at conversion was hardly understood,
is both our simple duty and our highest privilege. And work
for Christ, or rather a life wholly given up to live for Him
and for the souls He loves, becomes the unceasing aim of the
liberated soul.” (p. 62)
Concerning Hudson Taylor:
“Strong desire, personal interest
and effort, faith in God’s power of working in answer to our
prayer: these are the conditions of that prevailing prayer
in which every believer can have a share. We need, in our
missionary meetings and sermons, to aim at cultivating this.
We need to encourage the most insignificant believer to know
that he can do much for God’s cause…. Let it be seen, in our
ministers and leaders, in our churches and societies, that
faith in God’s working, and continual prayer to secure that
working, is the chief element in our hopes.” (pp. 79-80)
Concerning the Early
Church:
“We must confess that the overwhelming
majority of our church members are very far from Pentecost.
What is to be done to get all our leaders in churches
and boards, in societies and committees, to take up the watchword:
Back to Pentecost: Without this the work cannot be done.
We must gather our pastors, congregation and all who feel
that God’s work is not being done as it should be, into one
holy bond of union until the watchword has echoed through
the Church: Back to Pentecost: God’s power for God’s work;
without this the work cannot be done.” (p. 89)
Concerning you and me:
“Above all, we need to turn
away from the world with its spirit and wisdom, and return
to closer fellowship with Jesus Christ, from whom alone come
light and love. Every believer ordained to be first and
foremost a soul-winner. Simple though it sounds, it will
cost much to many before it has mastered them.”(p.95)
Final
Suggestions
Let me offer some suggestions
for reading this slim, easy-to-follow book.
If you want to get right to
the heart of the book, begin with chapter seven and read through
to the end. The crux of Murray’s vision, along with application,
is to be found in these chapters.
When reading the first two chapters,
remember that everything being said concerns life as it was
in 1900. The world had not yet gone through two world wars,
atomic bombs, mass media explosion, etc. However, the Western
world was under the influence of the philosophy/spirit called
“modernism” or “modernity.” You will encounter much of that
spirit as you read the excerpts from the Conference. It would
be good to ask yourself if that same spirit is still influencing
our churches even though we have entered into a “post-modern”
age. Are we being guided by God’s Spirit?
Finally, do not be put off if
the book’s first chapters are not what you expected. Though
the book begins with material that may seem irrelevant, I
think you will be pleased with the transition into a biblically
sound, soul-stirring work. May Andrew Murray’s book give us
all a clearer vision of God’s purposes for us as the Body
of Christ, God’s key to the missionary problem.
This book is available through
Home Fires Publishers:
Why
You Should Read This Book
Allow
me to use the key-duplicating process as an analogy for The
Key to the Missionary Problem (minus the grinding). Murray
stated in no uncertain terms that the New York Missions Conference
of 1900 was using the wrong “key.” The conference, attended
by international evangelicals, was trying to unlock the “door”
of mission fervor by the wrong means. Murray hoped to show
the Church at-large what God’s ordained “key” is for unlocking
such fervor. The book sets these two “keys” side by side in
order to compare and contrast why one “key” works while the
other does not. The final product demonstrates that the right
“key” works because it is designed by God for doing missions.
Such a “key” gets its shape from our relationship to Christ
as His Church. The “key” is found in you and me, specifically
in our devotion to and faith in our Lord Jesus and His kingdom.
