George Müller of Bristol, and His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God — John Shaqi
George Müller of Bristol, and His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing GodPierson, Arthur T. (Arthur Tappan)
Religion
George Müller of Bristol, and His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God
Pierson, Arthur T. (Arthur Tappan)
Müller, George, 1805-1898; Orphanages -- Great Britain; Prayer
During his wanderings as a backslider, Beta had both joined and aided
George Muller in his evil courses, but, on coming back from the Swiss
tour, his sense of sin had so revived as to constrain him to make a full
confession to his father; and, through a Christian friend, one Dr.
Richter, a former student at Halle, he had been made acquainted with the
Mr. Wagner at whose dwelling the meetings were held. The two young men
therefore went together, and the former backslider was used of God to
"convert a sinner from the error of his way and save a soul from death
and hide a multitude of sins."
That Saturday evening was the turning-point in George Muller's history
and destiny. He found himself in strange company, amid novel
surroundings, and breathing a new atmosphere. His awkwardness made him
feel so uncertain of his welcome that he made some apology for being
there. But he never forgot brother Wagner's gracious answer: "Come as
often as you please! house and heart are open to you." He little knew
then what he afterward learned from blessed experience, what joy fills
and thrills the hearts of praying saints when an evil-doer turns his
feet, however timidly, toward a place of prayer!
All present sat down and sang a hymn. Then a brother--who afterward went
to Africa under the London Missionary Society--fell on his knees and
prayed for God's blessing on the meeting. That _kneeling before God in
prayer_ made upon Muller an impression never lost. He was in his
twenty-first year, and yet he had _never before seen any one on his
knees praying,_ and of course had never himself knelt before God,--the
Prussian habit being to stand in public prayer.
A chapter was read from the word of God, and--all meetings where the
Scriptures were expounded, unless by an ordained clergyman, being under
the ban as irregular--a printed sermon was read. When, after another
hymn, the master of the house prayed, George Muller was inwardly saying:
"I am much more learned than this illiterate man, but I could not pray
as well as he." Strange to say, a new joy was already springing up in
his soul for which he could have given as little explanation as for his
unaccountable desire to go to that meeting. But so it was; and on the
way home he could not forbear saying to Beta: "All we saw on our journey
to Switzerland, and all our former pleasures, are as nothing compared to
this evening."
Whether or not, on reaching his own room, he himself knelt to pray he
could not recall, but he never forgot that a new and strange peace and
rest somehow found him as he lay in bed that night. Was it God's wings
that folded over him, after all his vain flight away from the true nest
where the divine Eagle flutters over His young?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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