The camera targeted the head coach clapping on the sideline in a high profile college football game this past weekend. Then the picture shifted to the quarterback on the field. Though a different age and size and role, the quarterback clapped exactly the way his coach did. So often the spirit of a player and a team reflects the spirit of their coach.
Jesus commented on the connection between a teacher and student. “A student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.” (Luke 6:40) But what about the parent and child? Heredity aside, is not the aim of a good father to produce his own spirit in his children? Is not the desire of a good mother to nurture a gentle, loving spirit in her children?
Andrew Murray was a South African pastor who died almost a century ago. His writings and sermons have blessed countless believers over the years. He compared the human goals parents have for their children with the eternal goals the Heavenly Father has for us. “If there is one thing on earth we can be sure of it is this, that the Father desires to have us filled with His Spirit, that He delights to give us His Spirit.” Here’s a passage from one of Andrew Murray’s classic books, With Christ in the School of Prayer:
The best gift a good and wise father can bestow on a child on earth is his own spirit. This is the great object of a father in education — to reproduce in his child his own disposition and character. If the child is to know and understand his father; if, as he grows up, he is to enter into all his will and plans; if he is to have his highest joy in the father, and the father in him — he must be of one mind and spirit with him. And so it is impossible to conceive of God bestowing any higher gift on His child than this, His own Spirit. God is what He is through His Spirit; the Spirit is the very life of God. Just think what it means — God giving His own Spirit to His child on earth.
Or was not this the glory of Jesus as a Son upon earth, that the Spirit of the Father was in Him? At His baptism in Jordan the two things were united — the voice, proclaiming Him the Beloved Son, and the Spirit, descending upon Him. And so the apostle says of us, ‘Because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.’ A king seeks in the whole education of his son to call forth in him a kingly spirit. Our Father in Heaven desires to educate us as His children for the holy, heavenly life in which He dwells, and for this gives us, from the depths of His heart, His own Spirit. It was this which was the whole aim of Jesus when, after having made atonement with His own blood, He entered for us into God’s presence, that He might obtain for us, and send down to dwell in us, the Holy Spirit. As the Spirit of the Father, and of the Son, the whole life and love of the Father and the Son are in Him; and, coming down into us, He lifts us up into their fellowship… The Father can bestow no higher or more wonderful gift than this: His own Holy Spirit, the Spirit of sonship.
“If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Luke 11:13
(Quotes taken from With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray. ©2007 Hendrickson Publishers, Inc.)