The Haystack Prayer Meeting

Samuel Mills was born in Connecticut on April 21^st, 1783.  Coming to faith at the age of seventeen, a part of the Great Awakening, he committed himself to missions work in a day when the idea of an American church sending missionaries was unheard of.  Missions-minded churches were few and far between, and missions societies dedicated to sending missionaries were nonexistent.

Attending Williams College in Massachusetts, Samuel was in the habit of spending Wednesday and Saturday afternoons in prayer.  Returning from one of these prayer meetings, Samuel and four of his friends were caught in a sudden downpour.  Taking shelter in a nearby haystack, they discussed a booklet by missionary William Carey, An Inquiry into the Obligation of Christians to Use means for the Conversion of the Heathen.  The five students committed themselves to the cause of world evangelism, inspired by Samuel’s words to them, “We can do this if we will.”

The five continued to meet and pray.  Others joined them in prayer, seeking direction from God on how they could meet the needs of evangelism in Asia.  In 1810, their members formed the American Board for Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM).  Within two years, they sent their first five missionaries to the subcontinent of India.  Many church historians mark this as the beginning of the American Protestant missionary movement.

During its first fifty years, the ABCFM sent out more than 1,200 foreign missionaries, mostly students from New England.  They were deeply involved in Bible translation, establishing schools and hospitals in remote areas, and training local converts to continue the work of evangelism among their own people.

Samuel Mills was very active in the service of Christ through ABCFM.  Besides foreign missions, he preached everywhere in the young United States, from the Mississippi Valley to working with the destitute in New York City.  A trip to New Orleans revealed to him there were many families in the South who had no access to a Bible.  He started a Bible publisher and distribution ministry which was one of the precursors to the American Bible Society.  Finally, active in the effort to repatriate slaves to Africa, he helped found the American Colonization Society.  Returning from a short trip to Africa to scout settlement sites, he died at sea in 1818 at the young age of 35.

The significance of the impromptu Haystack Prayer meeting cannot be understated.  First, it was the seedbed of the North American foreign missions movement.  Many missions organizations today trace their roots to the ABCFM, including InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, the Student Volunteer Movement-2, and the Luke 18 Project.  Secondly, it reminds us of our need for prayer – this entire movement began with the prayers of five young men seeking shelter from a storm.  Third, it shows the human cost of missions.  Samuel Mills’ words “We can do this if we will” shows us what these young men experienced: that God working through his tireless servants can do great things.

Footnote: a ‘haystack’ in this day consisted of a small platform of stone or wood upon which cut hay was stacked ten to twelve feet high.  It was neatly combed on the outside so rain would sheet off.  It was kept hollow on the inside to prevent rot and fermentation.  This would have been the perfect size for five young met to sit closely together and have an intimate discussion.

Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader (Fourth Edition); Winter, Ralph, Ed, 2009.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haystack_Prayer_Meeting

https://www.gotquestions.org/Haystack-Prayer-Meeting.html

https://missionexus.org/missiologically-aware/haystack-prayer-meeting-matters-today/

https://www.globalministries.org/the_history_of_the_haystack_pray_10_10_2014_112/

https://www.globalministries.org/haystack_samuel_j_mills_10_10_2014_116/

 

 

Robert Sheffey

Born in 1820 in the little town of Ivanhoe in far southwestern Virginia, which today has a population of about 550, Robert Sheffey was known as an odd preacher.  His contemporaries were in agreement that he “couldn’t preach a lick” but his influence and spiritual power were known far and wide.

Born to people of relative upper class his parents encouraged him, like his siblings, to enter a professional career but his salvation experience at age nineteen revectored his life and he sought God’s will for his life.  At age 24 he married a young woman named Elizabeth.  He tried his hand at farming, clerking at a local store, and even teaching children, but God directed his heart into the proclamation of His Word through preaching as a Methodist circuit-rider. 

Widowed after ten years of marriage, Robert Sheffey developed some eccentricities.  Many stories speak of his concern over animals.  He regularly righted turned-over beetles or turtles and even halted funeral processions to gently move insects out of the road to keep them from being crushed by wagon wheels.  One story has him stopping by a puddle and collecting all the tadpoles, transferring them to a creek where they would have a better chance at survival.  He took special care of his horse, often dismounting and walking beside the horse when going up a grade.

His concern for the lostness of people was even more prevalent.  He often gave his socks those in need, many times pulling them off of his own feet.  He gave his coat to those shivering on cold days.  He even once gave his own horse to a stranger whose horse had died while pulling a heavily loaded wagon.

As noted before his rhetorical skills were somewhat lacking, but nobody could dispute the work of God as he preached.  Sometimes, he would step up to the pulpit and prostrate himself on the floor in prayer, leaving the congregation in awkward silence.  Despite the oddities, his altar was usually full of the penitent and many lives were changed.

His powerful prayers, however, evoked the most awe.  He publicly prayed against liquor stills and those who ran them.  One local minister recounted his prayers against three stills on a creek near to where they were meeting.  The owner of the first, a man of good health, suddenly dropped dead.  The second caught fire.  The third was obliterated when a large tree fell on it.  Men were said to have left the area rather than become the subject of his prayers.

Sheffey held several weeks of meetings in his hometown of Ivanhoe.  When the citizens rejected his message, preferring the life of sin that was characteristic of many prosperous mining towns, Sheffey publicly shook the dust off his feet and left the town.  One resident later remarked, “Whether you believe in it or not, after that happened, we lost everything.”  The fortunes of the town took a sharp downturn.  Entire buildings and houses disappeared into sinkholes.  The town was never the same.

Robert Sheffey died in 1902.  His stories were collected and placed into a book that was published in 1974.  A movie was made about his life entitled ‘Sheffey’, which was re-released in 2020, the 200^th year after his birth.

Christian History e-mail, 04 July 2021

https://today.bju.edu/perspective/rescuing-bugs-cursing-towns-eccentricities-robert-sheffey/

https://iblp.org/robert-sheffey-the-power-of-prayer/

Father Daniel Nash - mighty in prayer

Father Daniel Nash

Before there was a Billy Graham, or a Billy Sunday, or a D.L. Moody, there was Charles Finney.  Rev Finney is often credited as one of the chief catalysts of the Second Great Awakening in the United States, in the 1790s to the early 1800s.  He preached a Gospel of personal conversion and called out sin – often naming people by name.  He had a great ability in his preaching to show love while at the same time calling out specific sins.  His revival services were used by God to impact entire communities for the Gospel, and many thousands were led to Christ.

Enter Finney’s friend, Father Daniel Nash.  Father Nash was an Episcopal priest, 17 years older than Finney, who had been run out of his little parish.  Charles Finney was at a prayer meeting when he first heard Father Nash speak.  Nash was still broken from his rejection, but his eyes darted back and forth among the crowd as he spoke.  However, it struck Finney that, instead of preaching, Father Nash was actually praying.  Finney later wrote, “He was full of the power of prayer.”  The two met and they both strongly felt that God was leading them into an evangelistic ministry.  They agreed that their calling was to go to the places where there were few or no churches, and refused to reach out to established churches unless the churches first reached out to them.

Their established practice was like this.  They would pray about where God would lead them to preach next.  When they felt established about a place, Father Nash would quietly slip into town, rent a boarding-house or basement of a home or even a grove of trees, and find two or three people to covenant with him in prayer for God to move within the community.  Father Nash would pray with this small group, and Nash would send word to Finney when he felt impressed that the time was right, often 3 or 4 weeks later.  During the meetings, Nash and his recruited partners would remain fervent in prayer throughout the revival – and God blessed with great success.  One person wrote of Nash, “With all due credit to Mr. Finney for what was done, it was the praying men who held the ropes.  The tears they shed, the groans the uttered are written in the book of the chronicles of the things of God.”

In one New York town, after the revival, it was observed, “The whole community was stirred.  Religion was the topic of conversation in the house, in the shop, in the office and on the street.  Practically everyone in the city was converted.  The only theater in the city was converted into a livery stable, the only circus into a soap and candle factory, and the grog shops (bars and taverns) were closed.”

Finney was in awe of his friend and his prayer life.  He felt that the real work of the revival was done by Nash in prayer, bringing the Holy Spirit to fall on people.  At that point, he had little to do but point them to the Lamb of God.

Finney’s revivals led to an estimated 100,000 conversions.  Even more remarkably, it is estimated that 80% of those who professed faith were solid Christians, active in their churches many years later.  By way of comparison, the same number for D.L. Moody is estimated at about 50% and such revivals today trend at about a 20% rate of faithfulness to the Gospel over the course of their life.  What made Finney so unique?  He had a personal prayer warrior. 

In 1831, as Father Nash was on his deathbed, his main regret seemed to be that his pain made it difficult to focus on his prayer as he had done for so many years.  He was found dead in his room, with an open map, as he had been praying for the countries of the world.

Today, if you drive in upstate New York, almost to the Canadian border, in a neglected cemetery along a dusty road, you will find the grave of Father Daniel Nash.  It reads simply, “Daniel Nash, Laborer with Finney, Mighty in Prayer, Nov 17, 1775 – Dec 20, 1831.”

Less than six months after the death of his friend, Charles Finney left the evangelistic trail and accepted a pastorate in New York City, and later became the professor of Systematic Theology at the newly formed Oberlin College in Ohio.

https://www.hopefaithprayer.com/prayer-warrior-charles-finney/

https://dwoj.org/daniel-nash-the-great-charles-finneys-intercessor/

https://www.wayoflife.org/reports/daniel_nash_prince_of_prayer.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Grandison_Finney#Abolitionism

 

 

 

 

 

The 100-Year Prayer Meeting

The one-hundred year prayer meeting

A hundred years before Martin Luther, a young Catholic priest named John Hus was burned at the stake for teaching against various Roman Catholic practices including Papal indulgences and the idea of Purgatory.  Hus’s followers remained underground, but faithful, and about fifty years after his death organized themselves into a church in Bohemia called “Unity of the Brethren.”  This group kept its identity separate, but closely aligned themselves with Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation.  In effect, they were the first Protestants.

Later, in the 18th Century, a young God-fearing Count named Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf allocated a part of his estate for the resettlement of about 300 refugees of this group from Moravia, establishing a village they named Herrnhut.  At age 27, the charismatic Zinzendorf was nominated leader of this group.  Zinzendorf put an end to the infighting currently plaguing the group by calling the growing community to prayer and corporate study of the Scriptures.

On August 12, 1727, the Moravians conducted an all-night prayer vigil.  They had groups of two or three people in a designated place in the village praying every hour throughout the night.  This evolved into a daily practice that consisted without interruption for over 110 years!  They took their inspiration from the passage in Leviticus 6:13, that the sacred fire was never permitted to go out on the altar.

During this season of prayer, their hearts began to burn for the lost in the world.  This little community sent out missionaries around the globe with the purpose of evangelizing the lost and planting like-minded communities based on the model at Herrnhut. Within the first fifteen years, this community of 300 people sent out seventy missionaries who went and lived among unreached people groups, learned their language and culture, and introduced them to Jesus Christ.  One small group of men voluntarily sold themselves into slavery so they could reach Natives in the West Indes who had been enslaved on sugar plantations.  In the American colonies, they established communities in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.  All were planted to be centers for the outreach of the Gospel among the Natives.  One group of Moravian families, en route to Georgia to plant another colony, was caught in a severe storm which made the experienced sailors on the ship panic.  As the families sat in the ship’s hold, rocking violently back and forth, they joined their hearts in calm prayer.  Watching them was a young Anglican minister, himself on a mission to evangelize the Natives, wrought with fear but amazed at the calm courage of the Moravians.  After the storm subsided the young minister, John Wesley, wrote in his diary, “I have come to America to convert the indians, but, Oh, who will convert me?”  This eventually led to his conversion on Aldersgate Street soon after.

During these 100+ years of prayer, the little church established many ‘daughter’ churches and over 30 successful communities around the world based on the Herrnhut model, sent hundreds of missionaries around the world, and formed hundreds of revival communities around Europe.  It is said that the Great Awakening of the 1800s in England and America, as well as the great Protestant missionary movements to follow, were lit by the fires in the Moravian prayer room.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-1/prayer-meeting-that-lasted-100-years.html

https://www.moravian.org/2018/07/a-brief-history-of-the-moravian-church/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Moravian_Church

https://revivalandreformation.org/resources/all/the-moravian-100-year-prayer-movement

Brother Lawrence

Brother Lawrence

Nicholas Herman was born around 1611 in Lorraine, France.  His parents being poor, Nicholas joined the army and participated in the Thirty Years’ War.  During his time as a soldier, in the dead of winter, Nicholas received supernatural insight from an ordinary sight, setting him on a spiritual journey that would last the rest of his life.

He looked at a simple tree, stripped clean of leaves and fruit, waiting for the springtime to blossom again.  This sight caused him to grasp for the first time how wonderfully extravagant God’s grace was.  Like the tree, he was dead, but God had life waiting for him and, when the seasons changed, it would bring forth fruitfulness. 

Later, a battle injury sidelined him from military service, and left him in permanent pain from a damaged Sciatic nerve.  He spent some time as a civil servant and some time living a monastic life in the desert.  Eventually, he applied for and was allowed to join the Discalced (“without shoes”) Carmelite monastery in Paris and assumed the name “Brother Lawrence.”  In the monastery, he was assigned to work in the kitchen, a task he did not like.  Through these chores, he learned the lesson of Colossians 3:17, “Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.”  Lawrence determined that “It is not the greatness of the work which matters to God, but the love with which it is done.”  To him, his personal love for God made every detail of his life to have great value.

Lawrence worked for the monastery for 15 years cooking, then was moved to a position where he repaired the sandals of over 100 other monks.  He resolved to put himself in a position where he made his love for God the end motivation for every one of his actions, most specifically the “common business” tasks of living – whether they be turning eggs in a frying pan, repairing sandals, or being tasked to go to the town and fetch a shipment of wine for the community.  He once said, “It is enough for me to pick up but a straw from the ground for the love of God.”

Most of what we know about Brother Lawrence comes from a series of interviews from Abbe de Beaufort, the personal envoy of Cardinal de Noaille of France.  The Cardinal had heard of the simple monk performing menial tasks with great devotion and profound wisdom and in 1666 sent Beaufort to interview him and see if the rumors were true.  Lawrence had trepidation about being interviewed in this way – both out of his reluctance to be in any spotlight and in wanting to know for certain that Beaufort’s intentions were genuine and not political in nature.  When Lawrence was comfortable, he granted the envoy four interviews, or “conversations,” where he described his way of life and how he came to understand it.  Beaufort described Lawrence, then in his late 50’s, as “rough in appearance but gentle in grace.”  The gently monk had a habit of continually conversing with God, throughout the day.  Lawrence told him he felt as close to God in the business of the kitchen as when he knelt in prayer.

When Brother Lawrence died peacefully and in blissful obscurity at age 80, his friends found copies of 16 letters he had written to others about the spiritual life.  They published these, along with envoy Beaufort’s recollections of his four interviews, form the sum total of Brother Lawrence’s writings, a small book today entitled “The Practice of the Presence of God.”  The entire book can be read in under an hour.

A great deal of wisdom about loving God can be found in these short pages.  In one of his letters, Lawrence writes, “Men invent means and methods of coming at God’s love, they learn rules and set up devices to remind them of that love, and it seems like a world of trouble to bring oneself into the consciousness of God’s presence.  Yet it might be so simple.  It is not quicker and easier to just do our common business wholly for the love of Him?”

“The most holy and necessary practice in our spiritual life is the presence of God.  That means finding constant pleasure in His divine company, speaking humbly and lovingly with Him in all seasons, at every moment, without limiting the conversation in any way.”

“I have abandoned all particular forms of devotion, all prayer techniques.  My only prayer practice is attention.  I carry on a habitual, silent, and secret conversation with God that fills me with overwhelming joy.”

“There is no greater lifestyle and no greater happiness than that of having a continual conversation with God.”

“Prayer is nothing else than a sense of God’s presence.”

“In order to know God, we must often think of Him; and when we come to love Him, we shall then also think of Him often, for our heart will be with our treasure.”

Packer, J.I., 131 Christians Everyone Should Know, Holman Reference, 2000.

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5657/pg5657.html

George Mueller - How to Ascertain the Will of God

How to Ascertain the Will of God

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, 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.  George resolved to live a life of prayer and complete dependence upon God.  God led him to begin a ministry to orphans in England – a ministry he entirely relied on God to make provision for, never once voicing a need for the orphanages or for himself to anyone except God.  Over the course of his life, this remarkable man of faith became the foster father for over 10,000 orphans.  By way of comparison, when he began his ministry the total number of spaces for orphans in all of England totaled around 3,600 – much of that substandard.

At age 70, George began traveling the world as a missionary, a task he kept up with for 17 years, continuing to live every step of his life on faith.  He died at age 92, fittingly, after leading a prayer meeting at his church.

Late in his life, George Mueller was asked to write about how a Christian could determine the will of God in his or her life.  After reflection and prayer, the below is what he wrote:

1. I SEEK AT THE BEGINNING to get my heart into such a state that it has no will of its own in regard to a given matter.  Nine-tenths of the trouble with people is just here.  Nine-tenths of the difficulties are overcome when our hearts are ready to do the Lord's will, whatever it may be.  When one is truly in this state, it is usually but a little way to the knowledge of what His will is.

2. HAVING DONE THIS, I do not leave the result to feeling of simple impression.  If I do so, I make myself liable to great delusions.  

3. I SEEK THE WILL of the Spirit of God through, or in connection with, the Word of God.  The Spirit and the Word must be combined.  If I look to the Spirit alone without the Word I lay myself open to great delusions also.  If the Holy Ghost guides us at all, He will do it according to the Scriptures and never contrary to them.

4. NEXT I TAKE into account providential circumstances.  These often plainly indicate God's will in connection with His Word and Spirit.

5. I ASK GOD in prayer to reveal His will to me aright.

6. THUS, THROUGH PRAYER to God, the study of the Word, and reflection, I come to deliberate judgment according to the best of my ability and knowledge, and if my mind is thus at peace, and continues so after two or three more petitions, I proceed accordingly.

In trivial matters, and in transactions involving most important issues, I have found this method always effective.

https://www.georgemuller.org/devotional/how-i-ascertain-the-will-of-god

Ignatius Loyola

Ignatius of Loyola

Ignatius, born Inigo Lopez de Loyola, was born to a noble family in Spain in 1491.  As a boy, he was sent to a Spanish court to become a page – the first step to becoming a court official.  He embraced the life of royalty and fell in love with the practice of chivalry and war, hoping at some point in the future to win glory for himself.

As a young man, he was involved in a battle with the French for the town of Pamplona, Spain.  During the battle, a cannonball the size of an orange hit him.  After the battle, he was helped back to Loyola by the French soldiers who greatly respected his courage.  He had surgeries to reset his knee and to remove a protruding bone.  During his seven-week convalescence, he read spiritual books, including one by a monk which captured his attention describing the life of a monk as one of “holy chivalry.”  By the time he was released, he had decided to commit his life to holy living and doing penance for his sins.

Inigo walked to a small town in Northeastern Spain where he lived in a cave for about a year, subsisting as a beggar, flogging himself, attending Mass daily, and praying for seven hours per day.  It was in this town he wrote the beginning of his book Spiritual Exercises: a little book designed to help lay people develop the discipline of spiritual contemplation.  He studied in Barcelona where he attracted a number of followers and worked with them to help people walk closer to Christ.  As a yet-unordained person, he fell under suspicion of the established church during the Spanish Inquisition and was arrested at least twice.  Due to these persecutions, he and his companions moved to study for years in Paris, then later to Venice.  In Paris, he changed his name to Ignatius.

From Venice, in 1540, Ignatius and his followers received the Pope’s approval to begin a religious order which they called “The Society of Jesus” – or “Jesuits.”  The Jesuits began a ministry less focused on the trappings of spiritual life and more on ministry.  This caught on, and Jesuit orders soon sprung up in many of the major cities of Europe, in newly-opened areas of the world such as China, as well as many of the settlements in the New World, including areas of Quebec, Michigan, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Arizona, Mexico, and many areas of South America, often specifically reaching out to the Indians.

Ignatius is known for his work Spiritual Exercises.  The book is meant to lead a person through four weeks of meditation and prayer.  It has been in constant use by Jesuits up to this day, nearly 500 years, and is often used by lay people of all spiritual traditions.

The object of the first week is purifying one’s soul: examining your conscience and meditating on your sins, and on Hell.

The object of the second week is a focus on the Gospels and on Christ.

The object of the third week is freeing yourself from your will, to follow Christ.

The object of the fourth week is releasing the heart from worldly attachments.

Ignatius taught what was called “imaginative contemplation” in prayer and study.  In many traditions, ‘contemplation’ means to put all other thoughts aside and have an uninterrupted focus on what you are reading, freeing your mind of all thoughts and images.  Ignatian thought teaches ‘contemplation’ a bit differently: engage your imagination when you pray, insert yourself into the story.  When reading stories of Jesus, for example, use your imagination while reading to smell the smells, hear the sounds, feel the emotions, touch what is there.  In short, immerse yourself in what you are reading.

For nearly 500 years, Spiritual Exercises has been a guide for Christians to deepen their relationship with their Creator.

131 Christians Everyone Should Know, Packer, J.I., Holman Publishers, 2000.

https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-prayer/the-spiritual-exercises

http://sacred-texts.com/chr/seil/index.htm

https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/moversandshakers/ignatius-of-loyola.html

The Miracle at Andersonville

Andersonville – The Story of Providence Spring.
Andersonville. The name sends a shiver down the spine of students of the Civil War. Andersonville prison, in Macon County, Georgia, is the site of one of the most notorious events of the American Civil War. Andersonville was a Prisoner-of-War camp which housed, over its 14-month lifespan, over 45,000 Union prisoners-of-war – over four times the number for which it was designed.
The prison itself was a mostly open-air prison, encompassing 16.5 acres – and later enlarged to 26 acres. It is an easy walk to go completely around the prison. A light fence was erected about 20 feet inside the stockade wall, indicating a no-mans-land keeping prisoners away from the wall. Confederate sentries had orders to shoot without warning any prisoner entering the “dead zone.”
A small stream ran through the prison. At the point of entrance the water was used for drinking. The stream formed a small swamp in the interior of the prison, where prisoners did their best to keep clean. Bodily functions were taken care of at the point where the stream ran out of the camp.
The prison had inadequate water, inadequate food, and was incredibly unsanitary. Towns as far as 10 miles away complained because of the stench. Death was common – in the short history of the prison, nearly 13,000 prisoners (up to 100 per day, at times) died in captivity – mostly from scurvy, dysentery, and diarrhea. Bodies were stacked like cordwood in a small building on the site. Weekly, a detail of able-bodies prisoners dug a trench outside the prison and laid the bodies shoulder-to-shoulder in the mass grave. The cemetery that exists there today shows the gravestones literally side-by-side.
In the summer of 1864, with all the health problems rampant in the prison, the waters of the stream unexpectedly dried up. Thousands of parched prisoners, most too weak to move, became desperate. In their desperation, on August 3rd, 1864, many began to organize community prayer for water. They committed to not stop praying until God sent water. They took turns, praying hours per day, around the clock.
On August 8th, light showers began, and weakened prisoners lay out in the open with parched mouths open. Over the next five days, the rains grew more constant and grew in intensity. Gradually, the rain turned into a torrent and the filth was washed away. Most of the western wall was washed away in the storm. None of the prisoners had the strength to attempt escape.
At the end of five days of refreshing rain, the entire camp noticed a large cloud, a cloud they described as being very distinctive – like a giant mountain in the sky – that drifted over the camp. One prisoner, in his journal of the event later, called it a "monster of a cloud." Suddenly, there was a deafening roar, a sound like a cannon. The lightning struck inside the dead zone, literally knocking down some of the men near the strike. Immediately after, they heard a second sound, like another explosion, and a fountain of water immediately gushed from the blasted ground. The water poured out, and coursed its way into the stream. The water was cool and clean – and its flow was permanent, even to this day. The prisoners named the spring “Providence Spring.”
After the war, a small stone building was built around the spring, where it continues to flow. Inscriptions inside the building read “The prisoner’s cry of thirst rang up to heaven” and “God heard, and with his thunder cleft the earth, and poured his sweetest waters gushing here.”

Sources:
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/28460
https://civilwartalk.com/threads/fresh-spring-water-at-andersonville-prison.74329/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andersonville_National_Historic_Site

George Mueller - A Man Sold Out To Prayer

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/