George Mueller

Many years ago, I read the autobiography of George Mueller. The reading and ingesting of that book changed my life. I have read of few other individuals who exhibited such strong faith in obtaining God's provisions. As he opened orphanages to care for abandoned children, he vowed to never go into debt or to ask man to help meet the financial needs of these institutions.

Over and over, George Mueller went to the Lord in prayer and asked Him to provide for the financial needs of these orphanages. And over and over, the Lord provided. His life story is inspiring to me as we watch the economy falter and fail all about us. It is vital for us to keep our faith firmly planted in the Lord and His promises to care for His children. No paycheck or employer is our ultimate provider. God retains that position. I have watched Him meet the needs of my family many times over. He will not fail us as the world's economies shake and shudder.

A bit about George Mueller (excerpted from www.prayerfoundation.org ).....

George Müller was born in 1805 and died in 1898. He was well-known as an English Evangelist and Philanthropist; a man of faith and prayer. Without ever asking anyone other than God, he received over $7,200,000 dollars (in 1800's money) through prayer alone.

Mueller was born in Prussia in 1805, by age 10 George was inventing plans to embezzle the government monies his father had charge of. His school years were years of drunkenness and immorality. At age sixteen he was jailed for failing to pay his bills.

The University he attended had 900 Divinity students. George said that there were only about nine who truly feared God. He continued in sin until at age 20 he received Christ as his personal Lord and Saviour.

George married and became a Pastor, but refused his salary when he found out it was collected from "pew-rents." He decided to live on faith from that time forward.

Müller established Orphanages in Bristol, England, and founded the "Scriptural Knowledge Institution for Home and Abroad." His life was characterized by prayer, faith, and self-denial in the cause of Christ.

During his lifetime, he established 117 schools which educated more than 120,000 young persons, including orphans.

In 1875, at the age of 70, and until age 87, he had a 17-year ministry of world-wide Evangelistic tours, which also raised money for his orphanages and the thousands of children in them.
He would live for another six years. At the time of his death at age 93 in 1898, the Church that he pastored in Bristol had about 2,000 members.

Andrew Murray's comments about the life and practices of George Mueller are applicable for our surviving difficult financial times as a nation:

"This implicit surrender to God’s Word led him (Mueller) to certain views and conduct in regard to money, which mightily influenced his future life. They had their root in the conviction that money was a Divine stewardship, and that all money had therefore to be received and dispensed in direct fellowship with God Himself. This led him to the adoption of the following four great rules:

1. Not to receive any fixed salary, both because in the collecting of it there was often much that was at variance with the freewill offering with which God’s service is to be maintained, and in the receiving of it a danger of placing more dependence on human sources of income than in the living God Himself.
2. Never to ask any human being for help, however great the need might be, but to make his wants known to the God who has promised to care for His servants and to hear their prayer.
3. To take this command (Luke 12: 33) literally, ‘Sell that thou hast and give alms,’ and never to save up money, but to spend all God entrusted to him on God’s poor, on the work of His kingdom.
4. Also to take Romans 8: 8, ‘Owe no man anything,’ literally, and never to buy on credit, or be in debt for anything, but to trust God to provide.

This mode of living was not easy at first. But Muller testifies it was most blessed in bringing the soul to rest in God, and drawing it into closer union with Himself when inclined to backslide. ‘For it will not do, it is not possible, to live in sin, and at the same time, by communion with God, to draw down from heaven everything one needs for the life that now is.’"