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 The Devotional Life of George Muller

"It has pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, the benefit of which I
have not lost, for more than fourteen years. The point is this: I saw
more clearly than ever that the first great and primary business to
which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the
Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not how much I might
serve the Lord, or how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my
soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished.


For I might seek to set the truth before the unconverted, I might seek
to benefit believers, I might seek to relieve the distressed, I might
in other ways seek to behave myself as it becomes a child of God in
this world; and yet, not being happy in the Lord, and not being
nourished and strengthened in my inner man day by day, all this might
not be attended to in a right spirit. Before this time my practice had
been, at least for ten years previously, as an habitual thing, to give
myself to prayer, after having dressed myself in the morning. Now, I
saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the
reading of the Word of God, and to meditation on it, that thus my heart
might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that
thus, by means of the Word of God, while meditating on it, my heart
might be brought into experiential communion with the Lord.

I began therefore to meditate on the New Testament from the beginning,
early in the morning. The first thing I did, after having asked in a few
words the Lord’s blessing upon his precious Word, was, to begin to
meditate on the Word of God, searching as it were into every verse, to
get blessing out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the
Word, not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon, but
for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul.


The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very
few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or
to intercession, or to supplication; so that, though I did not, as it
were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost
immediately more or less into prayer. When thus I have been for a while
making confession or intercession, or supplication, or have given
thanks, I go to the next words or verse, turning all, as I go on, into
prayer for myself or others, as the Word may lead to it, but still
continually keeping before me that food for my own soul is the object
of my meditation.


The result of this is, that there is always a good deal of confession,
thanksgiving, supplication, or intercession mingled with my meditation,
and then my inner man almost invariably is even sensibly nourished and
strengthened, and that by breakfast time, with rare exceptions, I am in
a peaceful if not happy state of heart. Thus also the Lord is pleased to
communicate unto me that which, either very soon after or at a later
time, I have found to become food for other believers, though it was not
for the sake of the public ministry of the Word that I gave myself to
meditation, but for the profit of my own inner man.

The difference, then, between my former practice and my present one is
this: Formerly, when I rose, I began to pray as soon as possible, and
generally spent all my time till breakfast in prayer, or almost all the
time. At all events I almost invariably began with prayer, except when I
felt my soul to be more than usually barren, in which case I read the
Word of God for food, or for refreshment, or for a revival and renewal
of my inner man, before I gave myself to prayer. But what was the
result? I often spent a quarter of an hour, or half an hour, or even an
hour, on my knees, before being conscious to myself of having derived
comfort, encouragement, humbling of soul, etc., and often, after having
suffered much from wandering of mind for the first ten minutes, or a
quarter of an hour, or even half an hour, I only then began really to
pray. I scarcely ever suffer now in this way.


For my heart, first being nourished by the truth, being brought into
experiential fellowship with God, I then speak to my Father and to my
Friend (vile though I am, and unworthy of it) about the things that He
has brought before me in His precious Word. It often now astonishes me
that I did not sooner see this point. In no book did I ever read about
it. No public ministry ever brought the matter before me. No private
intercourse with a brother stirred me up to this matter. And yet, now,
since God has taught me this point, it is as plain to me as anything,
that the first thing the child of God has to do morning by morning is,
to obtain food for his inner man. As the outward man is not fit for
work for any length of time except we take food, and as this is one of
the first things we do in the morning, so it should be with the inner
man. We should take food for that, as every one must allow.


Now, what is the food for the inner man? Not prayer, but the Word of
God; and here again, not the simple reading of the Word of God, so that
it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe,
but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our
hearts. When we pray, we speak to God. Now, prayer, in order to be
continued for any length of time in any other than a formal manner,
requires, generally speaking, a measure of strength or godly desire,
and the season, therefore, when this exercise of the soul can be most
effectually performed is after the inner man has been nourished by
meditation on the Word of God, where we find our Father speaking to us,
to encourage us, to comfort us, to instruct us, to humble us, to
reprove us. We may therefore profitably meditate, with God’s blessing,
though we are ever so weak spiritually; nay, the weaker we are, the
more we need meditation for the strengthening of our inner man.


Thus there is far less to be feared from wandering of mind than if we
give ourselves to prayer without having had time previously for
meditation. I dwell so particularly on this point because of the immense
spiritual profit and refreshment I am conscious of having derived from
it myself, and I affectionately and solemnly beseech all my fellow
believers to ponder this matter. By the blessing of God, I ascribe to
this mode the help and strength which I have had from God to pass in
peace through deeper trials, in various ways, than I had ever had
before; and after having now above fourteen years tried this way, I can
most fully, in the fear of God, commend it. In addition to this I
generally read, after family prayer, larger portions of the Word of God,
when I still pursue my practice of reading regularly onward in the Holy
Scriptures, sometimes in the New Testament, and sometimes in the Old,
and for more than twenty-six years I have proved the blessedness of it.
I take, also, either then or at other parts of the day, time more
especially for prayer.

How different, when the soul is refreshed and made happy early in the
morning, from what it is when without spiritual preparation, the
service, the trials, and the temptations of the day come upon one."

--George Muller, May 9 1841.


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