| George Mueller: Prayer Warrior continued...
George Muller in England
Again God was gently leading Muller into
a life of trust. His old trouble struck again and for
weeks he despaired of life. "I longed exceedingly to
depart and be with Christ," he says. "O Lord," he prayed
while on his sickbed, "do with me as seemeth best"--a
prayer which was slowly answered. For God permitted
his servant to linger in sickness that his soul might
learn a new lesson in trust.
A few days later he went to Teignmouth to recuperate.
Here the Ebenezer chapel was reopened and Mr. Muller
had the privilege of living for ten days with the preacher.
It was during this brief stay that God taught him the
true meaning of the Bible. "God began to show me," he
writes, "that His Word alone is our standard of judgment;
that it can be explained only by the Holy Spirit; and
that in our day, as well as in former times, He is the
teacher of the people."...He delineates how he tested
the Bible truth by experience. "The Lord enabled me
to put to the test of experience, by laying aside commentaries,
and almost every other book, and simply reading the
Word of God and studying it. The result of this was
that the first evening I shut myself into my room to
give myself to prayer and meditation over the Scriptures,
I learned more in a few hours than I had done during
a period of several months previously." He goes on to
add, "But the particular difference was that I received
real strength for my soul in doing so." [i.e. study
like this, expositorily, and teach the same way--it's
powerful.]
...For henceforth through meditation upon the Bible
and prayer he was to commit his ways unto the Lord.
Near the end of his life he affirmed that he had read
the Bible through approximately two hundred times, one
hundred of which were on his knees. This is the
keynote of the marvelous life of trust. He found God's
promises in the Bible and experienced the truth of them
in his everyday life. He learned to believe what he
read and to act accordingly. He mined religious truth,
not from books of human fabrication, but from God through
divine inspiration, and what he read he lived.
"Tell not man, but God your needs"
God is now ready to thrust Muller forth
into his vineyard a full-fledged apostle of trust. Yet
there is another lesson he is to experience before God
can use him to the fullest extent. He must learn to
tell not man but God his needs and to believe God
will supply them. Around the bend in his career this
lesson is next in God's book of life for Muller to master...
While waiting to be sent out into God's work by man,
Mr. Muller was led by the Spirit to feel that waiting
for appointment was wrong: that instead he should receive
orders only from the Holy Spirit as Paul and Barnabas
were sent forth. He wrote the Society while spending
the Christmas vacation with some friends at Devon, and
frankly stated his views. He offered to labor without
salary, with the provision that they permit him
to work wherever the Lord might direct.
His faith began to look beyond man to God for spiritual
direction as well as for physical needs. This was a
forward step in his soul pilgrimage. It was a lesson
of trust that the young disciple must experience before
God was ready to use him. He had previously been convinced
though a stranger in England he need have no anxiety
for his temporal needs--"as long as I sought to serve
the Lord...as long as I sought the kingdom of God and
his righteousness, these my temporal wants would be
added unto me."..."Ask, and it shall be given you;
seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened
unto you" (Matthew 7:7). "And whatsoever ye shall
ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may
be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask anything in
my name, I will do it." (John 14:13,14). "Therefore
I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what
ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your
body, what ye shall put on. Is not life more than meat,
and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air;
for they sow not...yet your heavenly Father feedeth
them. Are ye not much better than they?" Matthew
25:25-26.
God set his seal upon the work in converting sinners.
"Twelve weeks I stood in the position, whilst the Lord
graciously supplied my temporal wants, through two brethren,
unasked for."...
On baptism and lay participation in services
"I saw that believers only are the proper
subjects for baptism, and that immersion is the only
true Scriptural mode in which it ought to be attended
to."...From reading Ephesians 4 and Romans 12 he also
reached the conclusion that there should be given a
place in their meetings for brethren to speak freely,
either to testify, exhort, or teach, as the Holy Spirit
led them.
God was gradually leading Mr. Muller to trust the Scriptures
for guidance in matters of conscience...
He was about to take an important step in his life,
the selection of a companion. The guidance of God in
this action was sought diligently through prayer and
Bible reading. Friends had told him when he first landed
in England of Mr. Groves, the Exeter dentist, who had
given up an excellent salary to be a missionary. In
the course of his preaching he met Mary Groves, the
missionary's sister, and after a short courtship, much
prayer and meditation upon the matter, they were married
on October 7 in a simple ceremony at the home of a friend.
And for more than forty years God blessed this union.
Stepping out in faith
Shortly before his marriage the thought of
a stated salary worried Mr. Muller, for he felt that
his should be a life of trust in God and not in the
promise of the brethren. He found three reasons why
he should give up a fixed remuneration.
- A salary implies a fixed sum, generally made up
of pew rents. But according to James 2:1-6, "pew rents
are against the mind of the Lord."
- A fixed pew rent may at times become a burden to
the follower of Christ and Mr. Muller did not wish
to lay the smallest straw in the way of the church's
spiritual progress.
- The whole system of pew rents and salary are liable
to become a snare to the minister, in that he works
for hire rather than for spiritual reasons.
At the end of October, within a month after
his marriage, he announced to the Teignmouth congregation
that henceforth he would receive no regular salary,
and would trust wholly in the Lord for his needs. He
asked that a box be placed in the chapel where whoever
desired to help him might leave his offering. Henceforth
he was to ask no one, "not even my beloved brethren
and sisters, to help me...For unconsciously I had been
led to trust in an arm of flesh, going to man instead
of going to the Lord at once." [This is similar
to the Agape box found in Calvary Chapel's around
the world.]
One morning when their money had been reduced to eight
shillings (about $2.00, a shilling equaling approximately
25c), Muller asked the Lord for money. For four hours
the preacher waited but still no reply. Then a lady
came to the house.
"Do you want any money?" she asked.
Faith was tested, yet remained triumphant, and the minister
replied, "I told the brethren, dear sister, when I gave
up my salary, that I would for the future tell the Lord
only about my wants." "But," she replied, reaching for
her purse, "He told me to give you some money," laying
in his hand two guineas...
[Some other rules Mr. Muller made:]
- "I would just observe that we never contract debts,
which we believe to be unscriptural (according to
Romans 13:8), and therefore we have no bills...but
all we buy we pay for in ready money. Thus we always
know how much we have and how much we have a right
to give away." [I.E. NO CREDIT CARDS (!!!) and no
major expenditures on credit.]
- Mr. Muller held that to lay up stores or hoard money
was inconsistent with a life of faith. In such cases
he thought God would send them to their hoardings
before answering their prayers. Experience confirmed
them in the conviction that a life of trust forbids
laying up treasures against unforeseen needs, since
with God "no emergency is unforeseen and no want
unprovided for." Hence his trust was in God and
not in his hoardings.
- A third rule was greatly blessed throughout Muller's
career of trust. When money was given him for a specific
need, or purpose, he regarded it as sacred to that
trust, and would not use or borrow it even temporarily
for any other purpose. Though reduced to dire
needs, he would not use any money set aside for other
purposes except for that specific thing...
And how, you might ask, did God supply his
needs for that first year of trust? Let the twenty-six-year-old
minister answer, "Now the truth is whilst...we have
not had even as much as a single penny left, or so as
to have the last bread on the table, and not as much
money as was needed to buy another loaf, yet never have
we had to sit down to a meal without our good Lord having
provided nourishing food for us. I am bound to state
this, and I do it with pleasure...If I had to choose
this day again as to the way of living, the Lord giving
me grace, I would not choose differently."
At the end of 1831 when George summed up what he had
received in answer to prayer it amounted to more than
one hundred and thirty-one pounds, three fourths of
which came from friends not connected with his church.
The congregation had promised their minister $275, and
through a life of trust he had received approximately
$660 for the year.
"In this my freedom, I am," Mr. Muller states, "at least
able to say to myself...My Lord is not limited; He can
supply...And thus this way of living, as far from leading
to anxiety, as regards possible future want, is
rather the means of keeping from it...This way
of living has often been the means of receiving the
work of grace in my heart...and a fresh answer to prayer
obtained in this way has been the means of quickening
my soul and filling me with much joy."
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