To get to the reason for George Muller’s spiritual success, we need to start early in his life: He lived a godless and reckless life when he was young. He was a liar and a thief.When his mother was dying, he was spending time out on the street drunk. He spent four weeks in jail at age 16 for stealing. His father, who was an unbeliever bailed him out.
George’s father sent him to the University of Halle to study divinity and prepare for the ministry because "that would be a good living". Neither he nor George had any spiritual aspirations.
When Mueller was 20 years old, he was invited to a Bible Study. Of that invitation to Bible study he said, "It was to me as if I had found something after which I had been seeking all my life long. I immediately wished to go." As a side note, we can never over-estimate the power of God to change someone's life through a simple invitation to Bible study, church or Sunday School. At the close of the meeting, they sang a hymn and someone prayed. Mueller thought, "I could not pray as well, though I am a much more educated man." After that evening of Bible study, Mueller stated: "I have not the least doubt, that on that evening, God began a work of grace in me. . . . That evening was the turning point in my life."
Six or seven weeks later and after much prayer, Mueller returned to see his father to seek his permission to become a missionary. His father was furious, disowning him. In the hopes of becoming a missionary, Muller went to England to work with the London Missionary Society, but because of his theology and ministry convictions his association with them ended.
In the meantime, in the summer of 1829, George became sick and ended up staying with another man of God while he recovered in the town of Teignmouth.
Two crucial discoveries while he was sick:
1) . the preciousness of reading and meditating on the word of God, and
2). the truth of the doctrines of grace.
He said 40 years later that his preaching had been fruitless from 1825 to 1829 in Germany. But then he had been taught the doctrine of Grace in England. Nornally, we might look at 'sickness' as being a disturbance or interruption in our plans, but as God's sovereignty goes, Mueller was right on schedule... In learning these doctrines of grace and God's sovereignty, Mueller states,
"…when it pleased God to reveal these truths to me, and my heart was brought to such a state that I could say, "I am not only content simply to be a hammer, an axe, or a saw, in God's hands; but I shall count it an honor to be taken up and used by Him in any way; and if sinners are converted through my instrumentality, from my inmost soul I will give Him all the glory"
God's sovereignty = Mueller's confidence. It was at this time that George Mueller sought to glorify God through a children's ministry, and the idea of the orphanage was born. Mueller and his wife prayed incessantly for wisdom and guidance. It became clear that this is what the Lord would have him do in ministry. When he studied the passage in Psalm 81:10, where it says, 'open your mouth wide and I will fill it', George realized that they had prayed long and hard about whether or not to start this kind of ministry, but not how to fund it or staff it. So now he set out to pray diligently for God to provide everything necessary to make it happen.
Because of his confidence in God to provide, he didn't take a regular salary, he didn't go into debt or take out loans and he didn't ask anyone directly for money at any time. God answered these prayers for provision exceedingly and abundantly more than Mueller could have thought or asked. In his biography on George Mueller, Delighted in God, Roger Steer details many, many accounts of how Mueller and the orphanage was well provided for. Answered prayer, after answered prayer are recorded in this very encouraging book.
What can we learn from a guy like Mueller? Part 3 next time will let George Mueller speak for himself as I post quotes from the book then.
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