Prayer Power: Learning to Pray Like George MüllerSample

Faith in Action

Abiding in the Lord is faith in action; talking and walking with God. It’s the immediate reach to God when times get tough.

George Müller defined faith as “the temper of the mind in the creature which responds to every revealed perfection of the Creator.” Only to the degree that we abide in God, in sync with Him in all things, can we expect the promise of answered prayer to be fulfilled.

This wasn’t an abstract idea to Müller, who said he had received fifty thousand answers to prayer over his lifetime. He prayed about big and small things. He prayed in times of plenty and in days of crisis.

Toward the end of November 1857, Müller was informed that the boiler in his first orphanage had leaked considerably. It would never make it through the frigid winter of Bristol, England.

“I felt deeply concerned for the children,” Müller lamented, “especially the younger infants, not wanting them to suffer because of a lack of heat. But how were we to obtain warmth?” He thought of several solutions, but none of them were satisfactory. “At last, I determined to fall entirely into the hands of God, who is very merciful and of tender compassion. I decided to have the brick chamber opened in order to see the extent of the damage and whether the boiler might be repaired to carry us through the winter.”

The boiler fire would have to be put out before the work could begin. Unfortunately, a second crisis arose to aggravate the first: a bleak north wind set in. So Müller asked the Lord if “He would be pleased to change the north wind into a south wind” and give each workman “a mind to work.”

Just before the work was scheduled to begin, the wind shifted to blow from the south, exactly as Müller had prayed. The weather was so mild that no fire was needed. And when the workers learned about Müller’s concern for the children, they volunteered to work through the night.

“Here, then,” reported Müller, “is one of our difficulties that was overcome by prayer and faith.”

The reach of faith was met by the powerful hand of God.

Müller had learned to trust God even in the darkest of days. He shows us that a crisis in circumstances doesn’t have to be a crisis of faith.