George Mueller
George Mueller was a man who only had one child who lived to adulthood, but was the father to over 10,000 children.
George Mueller was born in Germany in 1805 and lived to 1898 – almost the entire 19th Century. As a young man, he was a bit of a rabble-rouser. At age 10, he regularly stole money from his father. At age 14, he was gambling and drinking with his friends while his mother lay dying. At age 16, he spent a short time in jail for theft.
George’s father hoped he would take a lucrative position in the clergy, in the state-sponsored church. He studied Divinity at the University of Halle, where a fellow student invited him to a prayer meeting. Seeing people on their knees in prayer had a profound impact on him, and he received Christ shortly after. He immediately ceased his sinful habits and got serious about the ministry.
George moved to England and began to pastor a church in Bristol, where he ended up spending most of his life. He was a man who was always serious about prayer – something we often fail to get serious about. Early in his ministry, George felt God’s leading in his life to be an example of prayer and complete dependence – so much so that he even refused to accept a salary from his church, instead expecting God to provide for his daily needs. He once said, “I have joyfully dedicated my whole life to the object of exemplifying how much may be accomplished by prayer and faith.” At age 28, God drew his heart toward the many orphaned children in his city. At the time, there was total orphanage space in all of England for only about 3,600 orphans – much of that was substandard.
George felt led to begin a work with the orphans. He ‘made a deal with God’ that if this work were to happen, God would supply all. He held to a very firm principle that his needs would never be advertised. Within a few weeks of his making this commitment, God had provided everything needed to begin construction of an orphanage: land, materials, workers, money, building approval. All without George’s voicing a need at all.
George’s personal journals have been published. Reading through them, you find that George kept careful records of God’s provision. Nearly every page is a record of God’s providing to meet a need that he had.
Examples of answered prayer:
When his first orphanage was operational, there came a point where there was literally no food left, and no money to purchase more. Over 300 children went to bed after eating the last of the food. George was insistent that God would provide. In the morning, still no food. The staff asked him about it as he prepared for his morning prayer walk. He again insisted that God would provide. During his prayer, he lifted his needs to God, and asked for himself and his staff for strength through this time of testing. When he returned, the children were dressed, ready to begin their school lessons after breakfast. George instructed the staff to sit the children down to breakfast. George led the children in their morning prayers, where he prayed for the children, for their city and country, and thanked God for the food they were about to receive. As he was praying, a knock came on the door. A baker showed up explaining that he could not sleep that night. He felt as if he should bake bread and bring it to the orphanage in the morning. Some of the staff helped him haul in the great quantity of bread he had made during the night. As they were bringing in the bread another man came up to the door. A milkman, pulling a horse-drawn milk wagon, explained that his milk wagon had snapped an axle in front of the orphanage. The milk would spoil by the time he could get it fixed – could the orphanage use the milk? By the time George finished his prayers, the bread and milk were waiting for the children.
Another time, the boiler in one of his orphanages stopped working. Funds to fix the boiler arrived just in time, but there were other problems. The boiler was bricked up, and needed to be fixed quickly as winter was nearing. George prayed for two things: that the weather would let up and that the workmen would have a mind to work through the night. The night before work began, the bitter north wind turned to a mild south wind. That evening, the workmen decided on their own to keep working through the night. The work was done in 30 hours.
George considered it a joy to pray for every need he had. I mentioned he never took a salary. He relied every day, for the needs of the orphanages and for his personal needs, on God’s provision day-by-day. Sometimes during his prayer walks he would be approached by people offering him money. Other times, funds would arrive by mail or by someone dropping by the orphanages.
Even with the busy schedule of managing orphanages (there ended up being five of them) George still found the time to preach at least three times per week. In addition, he spent hours in prayer every day and made the time to read the Bible through four times per year. He did work in England during some of D. L. Moody’s visits, preached for Charles Spurgeon, and inspired the missions work of Hudson Taylor.
In 1875, at age 70, George began missions work. He traveled extensively for 17 years, going to places as diverse as the United States, Canada, Egypt, India, Singapore, Australia, and all over Europe. He traveled over 200,000 miles during this time, never once asking for provision. God continued to faithfully provide.
Once, while crossing the Atlantic and heading for Quebec, the ship ran into a thick fog. The captain announced that the ship was going to slow down for safety. Mueller had a meeting to attend the following evening, so he asked to use the ship’s chart room to pray for the fog to lift. The captain mocked him, but walked with him to open the door. George knelt and prayed for lifting of the fog. The captain started to pray, but George interrupted him. He said, “Captain, I have known my Lord for more than fifty years and there is not one instance that I have failed to have an audience with the King. Get up, Captain, for you will find that the fog has gone." When the two men went back to the bridge, they found the fog had completely lifted. That Captain became a Christian.
After 17 years of missions travel, George returned to Bristol – age 87. He continued to preach, teach, lead prayer meetings, and administer the orphanages. Fittingly, he led a prayer meeting the day before he died, March 9, 1898, at age 92.
In the course of his life, George Mueller was the father to more than 10,000 orphans. He traveled over 200,000 miles as a missionary preaching around the world – beginning at age 70. He built 5 large orphan houses, preached at least 10,000 times, and read the Bible completely through at least 200 times. He founded a missions organization that fully supported dozens of missionaries in the field, as well as supplied copies of the Scripture and printed thousands of tracts.
All this – because of the passion of one man to prove that God could be trusted. He writes in his journals over and over that the primary reason for the orphan-houses was to “display that God can be trusted and to encourage believers to take Him at His word.” George made good on his commitment to never once advertise his needs to the world. God met those needs – and George was careful to record these daily in his journal.
There are many resources about George Mueller and his teaching on YouTube or on georgemuller.org. Recommended, and available many places, is his short lecture on “How to Ascertain the Will of God.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkK_nlKUWoo
http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/church-history-for-kids/george-mueller-orphanages-built-by-prayer-11634869.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_M%C3%BCller
http://www.desiringgod.org/messages/george-muellers-strategy-for-showing-god
http://www.georgemuller.org/
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