Only By Prayer and Faith

It may be well to enter some­what minute­ly upon the rea­sons which led me to estab­lish an orphan house. Through my pas­toral labors, through my cor­re­spon­dence, and through brethren who vis­it­ed Bris­tol, I had con­stant­ly cas­es brought before me, which proved that one of the espe­cial things which the chil­dren of God need­ed in our day, was, to have their faith strength­ened. I might vis­it a broth­er who worked four­teen or even six­teen hours a day at his trade, the nec­es­sary result of which was, that not only his body suf­fered, but his soul was lean, and he had no enjoy­ment in God. I might point out to him that he ought to work less, in order that his bod­i­ly health might not suf­fer, and that he might gath­er strength for his inner man, by read­ing the word of God, by med­i­ta­tion over it, and by prayer. The reply, how­ev­er, I gen­er­al­ly found to be some­thing like this: ​“But if I work less, I do not earn enough for the sup­port of my fam­i­ly. Even now, whilst I work so much, I have scarce­ly enough.” There was no trust in God, no real belief in the truth of that word, ​“Seek ye first the king­dom of God, and his right­eous­ness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” I might reply some­thing like this: ​“My dear broth­er, it is not your work which sup­ports your fam­i­ly, but the Lord; and he who has fed you and your fam­i­ly when you could not work at all, on account of ill­ness, would sure­ly pro­vide for you and yours; if, for the sake of obtain­ing food for your inner man, you were to work only for so many hours a day as would allow you prop­er time for retire­ment. And is it not the case now that you begin the work of the day after hav­ing had only a few hur­ried moments for prayer; and when you leave off your work in the evening, and mean then to read a lit­tle of the word of God, are you not too much worn out in body and mind to enjoy it, and do you not often[113] fall asleep whilst read­ing the Scrip­tures, or whilst on your knees in prayer?” The broth­er would allow it was so; he would allow that my advice was good; but still I read in his coun­te­nance, even if he should not have actu­al­ly said so, ​“How should I get on, if I were to car­ry out your advice?” I longed, there­fore, to have some­thing to point the broth­er to, as a vis­i­ble proof that our God and Father is the same faith­ful God that he ever was, — as will­ing as ever to prove him­self the liv­ing God, in our day as for­mer­ly, to all who put their trust in him.

Again, some­times I found chil­dren of God tried in mind by the prospect of old age, when they might be unable to work any longer, and there­fore were harassed by the fear of hav­ing to go into the poor­house. If in such a case I point­ed out to them how their heav­en­ly Father has always helped those who put their trust in him, they might not say that times have changed; but yet it was evi­dent enough that God was not looked upon by them as the liv­ing God. I longed to set some­thing before the chil­dren of God where­by they might see that he does not for­sake, even in our day, those who rely upon him.

Anoth­er class of per­sons were brethren in busi­ness, who suf­fered in their souls, and brought guilt on their con­sciences, by car­ry­ing on their busi­ness almost in the same way as uncon­vert­ed per­sons do. The com­pe­ti­tion in trade, the bad times, the over-peo­pled coun­try, were giv­en as rea­sons why, if the busi­ness were car­ried on sim­ply accord­ing to the word of God, it could not be expect­ed to do well. Such a broth­er, per­haps, would express the wish that he might be dif­fer­ent­ly sit­u­at­ed, but very rarely did I see that there was a stand made for God, that there was the holy deter­mi­na­tion to trust in the liv­ing God, and to depend on him, in order that a good con­science might be main­tained. To this class, like­wise, I desired to show by a vis­i­ble proof that God is unchange­ably the same.[114]

Then there was anoth­er class of per­sons, indi­vid­u­als who were in pro­fes­sions in which they could not con­tin­ue with a good con­science, or per­sons who were in an unscrip­tur­al posi­tion with ref­er­ence to spir­i­tu­al things; but both class­es feared, on account of the con­se­quences, to give up the pro­fes­sion in which they could not abide with God, or to leave their posi­tion, lest they should be thrown out of employ­ment. My spir­it longed to be instru­men­tal in strength­en­ing their faith, by giv­ing them not only instances from the word of God of his will­ing­ness and abil­i­ty to help all those who rely upon him, but to show them by proofs that he is the same in our day. I well knew that the word of God ought to be enough; but I con­sid­ered that I ought to lend a help­ing hand to my brethren, if by any means, by this vis­i­ble proof to the unchange­able faith­ful­ness of the Lord, I might strength­en their hands in God; for I remem­bered what a great bless­ing my own soul had received through the Lord’s deal­ings with his ser­vant A. H. Franke, who, in depen­dence upon the liv­ing God alone, estab­lished an immense orphan house, which I had seen many times with my own eyes. I there­fore judged myself bound to be the ser­vant of the church of Christ in the par­tic­u­lar point on which I had obtained mer­cy; name­ly, in being able to take God by his word, and to rely upon it.

All these exer­cis­es of my soul, which result­ed from the fact that so many believ­ers with whom I became acquaint­ed were harassed and dis­tressed in mind, or brought guilt on their con­sciences on account of not trust­ing in the Lord, were used by God to awak­en in my heart the desire of set­ting before the church at large, and before the world, a proof that he has not in the least changed; and this seemed to me best done by the estab­lish­ing of an orphan house. It need­ed to be some­thing which could be seen, even by the nat­ur­al eye. Now, if I, a poor man,[115] sim­ply by prayer and faith, obtained, with­out ask­ing any indi­vid­ual, the means for estab­lish­ing and car­ry­ing on an orphan house, there would be some­thing which, with the Lord’s bless­ing, might be instru­men­tal in strength­en­ing the faith of the chil­dren of God, besides being a tes­ti­mo­ny to the con­sciences of the uncon­vert­ed of the real­i­ty of the things of God.

This, then, was the pri­ma­ry rea­son for estab­lish­ing the orphan house. I cer­tain­ly did from my heart desire to be used by God to ben­e­fit the bod­ies of poor chil­dren, bereaved of both par­ents, and seek in oth­er respects, with the help of God, to do them good for this life. I also par­tic­u­lar­ly longed to be used by God in get­ting the dear orphans trained up in the fear of God; but still, the first and pri­ma­ry object of the work was, and still is, that God might be mag­ni­fied by the fact that the orphans under my care are pro­vid­ed with all they need, only by prayer and faith, with­out any one being asked by me or my fel­low-labor­ers, where­by it may be seen that God is faith­ful still, and hears prayer still. That I was not mis­tak­en, has been abun­dant­ly proved since Novem­ber, 1835, both by the con­ver­sion of many sin­ners who have read the accounts which have been pub­lished in con­nec­tion with this work, and also by the abun­dance of fruit that has fol­lowed in the hearts of the saints, for which, from my inmost soul, I desire to be grate­ful to God, and the hon­or and glo­ry of which not only is due to him alone, but which I, by his help, am enabled to ascribe to him.

For a whim­si­cal, veg­etable-ori­ent­ed telling of an instance of God’s pro­vi­sion to George Müller’s orphan­age, please click on this video link.