Ep. 043 - Trusting God's Provision: The Life and Legacy of George Mueller

Episode Transcript

Spencer
We're excited today to talk about the life of George Mueller, who built orphanages in England and is well known for some of the approach that he had to managing money and being a steward. But really looking at his broader life, we are inspired by his meticulous obedience and coming back and every decision to the reality that God was his provider.

Spencer
So we're excited to share some of what we've seen and what we can learn from his life. Welcome to the Second Half Stewardship Podcast. We believe that God owns it all, and our response as Christians is to live generous lives. I'm Spencer Hall, a certified financial planner.

Austin
And I am Austin McLaughlin. As former full time missionaries in the United States and overseas, Spencer and I approach managing our personal finances through the lens of biblical stewardship.

Spencer
Journey with us as we explore how to be generous stewards of our money, time, relationships, gifts, and experiences.

Austin
So, Spencer, in our last episode we walked through the life of CT Studd. Today we're going to look at the life of George Mueller, and in our next episode, we're going to look at John Wesley. Three heroes of the faith that were born long before we were born. So why is it important for us to look back on some of these heroes of the faith?

Spencer
Well, first of all, it takes us out of our own context and out of our own culture. Our cultural moment has its own strengths and weaknesses. There's did as well, but it's very different. And so we can see how we can be faithful at different points. And we can also learn that just because we're being pressed culturally in some ways, doesn't mean that Christians always will be, and that we can find strength actually, that others were able to bear up under far more difficult burdens in other ways.

Spencer
So it's really coming back to that idea of Hebrews 12 that we are looking to lay off every hindrance, and we're looking back also in Hebrews 11, to those heroes of the faith and what we can glean from them.

Austin
Yeah, yeah. That verse, therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin that cling so closely. Yeah, yeah, it's such a beautiful thing. So let's, let's dive into George Mueller. So could you talk us through just his early life. Where was he born? What was his life like?

Spencer
Well, one of the things that a lot of folks don't realize about Mueller, and I certainly didn't, prior to getting in and studying his life, was his conversion was amazing. he is not one of these guys that he was already a good guy, and he just needed a little bit of the nudge of the Holy Spirit, maybe to do some really good work.

Spencer
He was terrible. He was a fraud. He was born into this family where his father was a tax collector, upper class, and and such. But when he's very young, he already is stealing from his dad. So by the age of ten, he had stolen so many times. And he had this whole compartment in his shoe where he would keep the money so that when he was searched, he could say, well, I didn't have the money.

Spencer
He had done this so many times now. He also did it so many times, though, that his father was on to him and realized, okay, well, I can't prove that he has the money, but I know that he has the money. So it was that kind of situation. You fast forward a few years in his life. He's 16 and he goes out and he, he, he stays at all of these different places, these different hotels, and he stiffs them and he moves on to the next place.

Spencer
So the point that he gets thrown in prison and has to be bailed out by his father, he's overnight, many days, and he has to be bailed out by his father, but he still does not have life reform at that moment. So he's out drinking. He's out, you know, defrauding different people. He's taking money from his father.

Spencer
So at one point, his father goes away. This is after, you know, his father bails him out of jail. His father goes away and leaves George in charge somehow. And he's still using the money inappropriately, that he's that he's pulling in from the creditors that should be paying their taxes to, you know, the Prussian government. It just kind of amazing, you know, the level of, depravity of this young man.

Spencer
he, he is caught through these different things. His father, disciplined him severely. He goes off to school, but even then, going off to school, another one of the things you think, okay, well, maybe he's reformed this time. No, not at all. The Holy Spirit has not entered his life. Not changed him. He goes off to school, but it's a different one than what his father was sending him to.

Spencer
So his father wants to send them to one university. He says, oh, that's going to be too strict. I want to go to this other place. So he goes to the other place, does not know his father, and then he comes back. after the first semester and his father realizes it and, you know, it all comes to light.

Spencer
So his father actually allows him to stay at that university. So he has all of these different markers along the way where we say, this kid was a kid that was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. was defrauding his dad and his dad's, many of his father's, you know, business partners or people that would need to pay taxes to the government.

Spencer
All kinds of different, just bad things. He was also, you know, he confessed later on in his life that he went on holiday one time, 43 days there, traveling through the Alps, doing different things when he's in college with friends. And the only way that he was able to sustain his share of the expenses was he kept the purse, and he used his friend's money to pay for his own expenses.

Spencer
So he called himself a Judas of sorts, who liked to dip into the common purse and pay for his own needs. there. So all kinds of different things, whether it's with his father, with his friends, with money. You know, he had, he he drank a lot of alcohol, in those days, apparently, as well. And, did all kinds of different things.

Spencer
So I think one of the things that I was struck by is the Lord's work in this man's life. the the conversion, the invitation, the change. It was supernatural. And when we think maybe some person, they'll never get it right. They'll never change. They'll never reform. We can look to George Mueller and say, well, maybe actually our perspective needs to change entirely because the Lord's work can not only change a person where they, move in and begin to participating with God for the life of the world, as we like to say at church.

Spencer
But that they could be an amazing, amazing person that has all kinds of different impact and tens of thousands of other lives, which is what happened for Mueller

Austin
Yeah. Well, and I think the reality here too, that we have to struggle with is like, this is 1800s, this is early 1800s. The world is in a lot of ways in a tremendous amount of turmoil. And George is just partaking in it. Yeah. He's not trying to be anything different. He's just living in this world. And I think what's beautiful too, as we look towards his conversion, is that, you know, we might say, oh, that's just modernity.

Austin
Like we have rogue children in modernity. No, this is throughout history. We go back to, the prodigal son. It's mentioned in Scripture. It's like there there has never been a time where a prodigal son did not exist. And so let's dive into his conversion story and see how the Lord met him. So you want to walk us through that?

Spencer
Yeah. So he's basically at university. He is going to study, to be a pastor, to be a priest. And there's 900, colleagues that he's studying with. And he said maybe 1% of them were walking with the Lord. And so his father has sent him here because at that in that day, you know, being clergy was a good, consistent income.

Spencer
And his father had this idea that, okay, I can just send him here and he'll have a decent life if he can just complete his studies. Well, he gets there and he's on the same path, basically. And one day with a friend, he goes and he's invited to a person's home to come and hear the Bible and to pray.

Spencer
And this meeting, because of the openness of faith and heart, changes him. The Lord begins to work in his heart. He sees authentic faith. He sees, a difference in these believers. And he also experiences a difference just by the way that they're praying and they're engaging the Lord. So over time, the Lord uses this. Now, it's not overnight that everything changes on a dime, but a very significant change in the first year.

Spencer
And then over the next couple of years, very significant levels of continued engagement from Mueller.

Austin
Yeah. Well, and that's something we saw last week in our last episode with CT Studd was that he engaged in a prayer time with his friends. And God use that time to then send him out to the mission field. We're going to see that in the next episode with Wesley. But he was praying with groups of individuals, and the Lord captivated his heart to go and continue to dive into Scripture.

Austin
And so the Lord constantly, especially in these moments, it's through prayer, through gathering together with brothers and sisters in Christ that that God really starts to transform lives. And so I think that's one thing that we need to hold fast to as God calls us to pray, because he transforms us as we're engaging in prayer. So Mueller's praying.

Austin
He experiences intimacy with the Lord. He is in what's modern day Germany, ..... or in the 1800s. It was Prussia at the time. So what? What happens next? Because you mentioned he goes on to England, right. England and Germany or Prussia. At the time, there was constant conflict between Germany and France and England and Germany. It just European conflict.

Austin
So how does the Lord draw him over to Bristol?

Spencer
So eventually, he's studying the Bible and he feels drawn to being a missionary. So he goes to London, to try to engage with one of the missions groups at the time. And that's how he gets to England. Now, he does not speak English as his first language, and preaching in that environment was very difficult. He had to pick up the language.

Spencer
He had to pick up the idioms, all kinds of different things. So it was a challenge he faced, a headwind there, for sure. he also didn't land in Bristol, you know, his where his the ultimate orphanages and kind of the center of his work would be, he was, in other places, for several years.

Spencer
So it's interesting that journey along the way. Now, one of the things that he got into after a couple of years was much more significant Bible study, it's amazing. But in the time that he was a believer, he read the Bible over 200 times cover to cover. So, you know, you think about that. And he read it 2 or 3 times a year, and significant prayer.

Spencer
And so you could see that he's being nourished by God's Word, and he's being very consistent as he wakes up and he gets into that, he finds words to preach. He also preached on average three times a week in his adult life. Yeah. You know, you think about the number of times he preached over 10,000 times. so he, he, he had these disciplines that really nourished him and started to form the core of, you know, a lot of the ways that he looked at stewardship, which he is much more known for.

Spencer
But these were the foundations of how he got there.

Austin
Yeah. So prayer, studying the word of God, and then he's preaching. And then as he's preaching, he started to realize things that are around him. Right? He has eyes open. And so he starts to see orphans. And so how does God lead him next?

Spencer
Yeah. So he's seeing in society. First he's at Teignmouth with, one of his, kind of preaching partners, brother Craig. and they're there and they're having fruitful ministry. and, they're, they're engaging, but they're also seeing that there's a lot of children who are uneducated who are very interested in hearing the gospel. so he's there and he's starting to notice that at that time, he also came across, August Francke as, life work, who he was one that in 1696 had established orphan houses in Holly, and was a fellow Prussian.

Spencer
And so the Lord started to plant that seed in Muellers life, even though Lord wasn't calling to that to him at that moment, it just inspired by, this gentleman's life and his his impact there. So one of the things that's fascinating is you sense that Mueller is, is listening to the Lord very specifically over time. And he feels called to move away from that fruitful ministry and Teignmouth to Bristol.

Spencer
Now, you you know, you read his autobiography, you read other sources and you just say, man, this is really interesting because he had fruitful ministry there. He had friends. and yet the Lord moves his heart, but also moves his congregation's heart to say, no, I think I think you're you're being called to Bristol. We don't know why.

Spencer
So he and, again, his colleague, brother Craig, moved to Bristol and began to set up ministry there. Now that's really where the Lord started to push him towards ministry, towards kids, because he saw all of he saw a tremendous amount of children who had no access to education but were very interested in the gospel. And so this leads him ultimately in a lot of other things as well, to set up, a, an institution, the Scriptural Knowledge Institute, and to, really focus on these day schools and equipping teachers to be able to teach the scriptures well in the day schools and then also to adults.

Austin
So he's noticing these orphans. This is kind of in direct opposition of why his father wanted him to be a clergy member, because his father said, you can have a good salary, you can make a good life as just a clergyman. Yeah, but he's now seeing these orphans and their need. And I don't know about you, but I don't know a whole lot of orphans that can pay a clergy salary.

Austin
So how does that what happens next?

Spencer
Well, and even if we take just a quick step back, he was one when he became a pastor. The way that pastors were paid typically was there was these pew rents. So if you're a family, you rent a pew back then. But this gives a consistent level of income for the church and then the pastor salaries paid from that, Mueller said.

Spencer
This is not scriptural. He looked at James two and said, this is actually counter scriptural. So we will put a box there and you can put your tithes, you can put your offerings in there and whatever the Lord provides there, then a portion of that will come to me as a pastor, but I will not take a set salary.

Spencer
So he had already gone kind of against his father's, you know, impulse there, but now he's going full bore because he's saying, okay, well, my primary work is going to be among kids who, you know, whether they're orphans or whether they're come from families that just don't have anything to pay him. He's setting up these day schools, you know, the kids can hardly pay anything or nothing, or he needs to even bring the food, you know, to be able to provide for them.

Spencer
So he sets these up and then really, the Lord impacts him by showing him all of the kids that don't have any parents, to to shepherd them. So he puts on his heart to set up an orphanage. Now, the thing that is fascinating about this, you know, the need is certainly there. It's scriptural. But what Mueller said was inspiring to him is he wanted to be able to show people that God could be trusted.

Spencer
And I think this is the thing that we come back to is we think about stewardship. He wanted to show people that God is a provider for us who can be trusted. So, so different than the trajectory that many of us would take in something like this. But he came across so many people in his congregation or in society in general, who just would not, not trust God for daily provision.

Spencer
And so he wanted to show that it wasn't going to come from the orphans, it wasn't going to come from these poor kids. It was going to come from God alone, the sustenance, the needs, being met. And so he sets this up. And the three goals that he has in order of importance, one are to show that God is a provider who can be trusted.

Spencer
The second is to provide for the spiritual shepherding of the kids. And the third, the last is to be able to provide for the physical needs of the children. Now so many of us would go the opposite direction to say we got to meet their physical needs first, you know, and and Mueller was very concerned about these, but he still came at it from that perspective of no, God can provide for these kids.

Spencer
He absolutely can provide. But what I want is that God gets the glory, you know, when he does. So.

Austin
Yeah. And so as God provides through the years, one of the maybe striking things is that you didn't never take on debt. He, he wanted to avoid debt at all cost. So how did he come to this place of belief that he wants to? I mean, it comes back to that idea that he wants to trust God fully in times of provision.

Austin
But I think if I am sitting there and saying, oh gosh, my needs are being met, which therefore means that the children's needs aren't going to be met right? My first thought is, what do I need to do to make sure that their needs are provided for? Okay, I'll go take out a loan, make sure that they have bread and make sure that they have milk.

Austin
What did he do?

Spencer
He he looked at it very differently. He said, it's very clear in Scripture to him that the Lord says not to take out debt. And so he said, if the Lord does not provide, then I will shut down the orphanage. Now he fully believed that the Lord was calling him to this and would provide. But he said that he would turn children away, and he would send them home, send them out into the world.

Spencer
If the Lord did not provide for the orphanage, he would not take on debt. You know, for that. So is is a fascinating perspective that to him he saw these biblical principles, and he ordered them in such a way that he said, well, I know that God has all the money that we need. He he's the one that created the world.

Spencer
So I'm going to trust in that. And and whatever he gives us, we will steward well. If he does not give us something, then he's leading us in a different direction. That simple trust, that simple dependance and faith. And, you know, it's fascinating because as we look at it, you know, here's a quote from him. He said, it seemed to me best done by establishing an orphan house.

Spencer
It needed to be something which could be seen even by the natural eye. Now, if I, a poor man, 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.

Spencer
This, then, was the primary reason for establishing the orphan house, 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 asking anyone else or my fellow laborers, whereby it may be seen that God is faithful still, and hears prayer still. So that's the whole trajectory of his life.

Spencer
He still thinks God is faithful. God will provide. He wants to show that, and he he is willing to go through the difficulties along the way to prove that to people. one of the stories that is just amazing in that, you know, it has been told by many, is that he's he's brought into the dining room of the, of the orphanage.

Spencer
There's 300 kids, and the, head lady there tells him we don't have any milk, no bread for breakfast, nothing at all. And we don't have any money to provide for that. So Mueller, instead of panicking, instead of going and getting alone, says, okay, well, we're we're going to pray because I have faith that the Lord's going to provide.

Spencer
So they call the children together, pray, and they thank God for the meal that he's going to provide. Just then, the baker knocks on the door and says, I've been up all night because the Lord has been impressing on me that I need to bake bread for you. So he brings in the bread. They start to feed the kids with the bread, then right then the milkman.

Spencer
His cart breaks down in front of their orphanage and they bring in all of the milk because he says, okay, I'm supposed to give you this milk? It's enough for all of the kids. So those kinds of stories, you know, that's not the only one, but it's just amazing the way that the Lord provided for them over time and ultimately, they had 2000 different orphans, there, at any moment, he cared for 10,000 through that orphanage, through the course of his lifetime.

Spencer
Amazing.

Austin
Yeah. Okay, so as we close out, one of the things that we come back to often is God calls us each to specific areas to serve, to give, to, to participate with his kingdom work. So as we look at this, obviously there is this radical trust and belief that God has provider, that I think we can all latch on to.

Austin
You. But what are maybe some final thoughts on the life of Mueller as we think about, okay, how do we go forth with with these things? What what does it look like to live a transformed life like Mueller did in the ways that we trust the Lord?

Spencer
Well, one of the things that is so interesting about his life, and one of the keys is that he really embraced, I think, Galatians 2:20, I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in, the body I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Spencer
he said that one of the turning points and I quote here, there was a day when I died, utterly died, died to George Mueller, his opinions, preferences, tastes and will died to the world. Its approval or censure died to the approval or blame even of my brethren and friends. And since then I have shown myself only approved unto God.

Spencer
So, you know, there's this shift in his life where he says, the only one that I'm answering to is the Lord. Now, that's that's dangerous. You know, you if you if you are not in context of the scriptures, if you're not being, you know, push towards the Lord by brothers and sisters, that that certainly can be dangerous. But in the context of all of that, if you are laying your life before the Lord and you are surrendering it day to day, moment to moment, even to do the difficult things, to pray, to study the word to care for others, to to take your clothes off your back and give it to them.

Spencer
I think that is one of the keys of his life that maybe is underappreciated. Is all of those different opinions and preferences and other things, you know, that would come in from all different sides, he said. You know, I've surrendered my life unto the Lord, and so I'm going to do my best to follow him, to obey.

Spencer
And so when other people might say, well, you know, why aren't you, you know, taking on dad or why are you not expanding this or why aren't you doing this, that or the other? He says, because this is what the Lord has shown me he wants, and I just. I'm supposed to obey him faithfully. So you see his influence, not just on that orphanage at the time when he starts the orphanage, there were 3600 spots in all of England caring for orphans.

Spencer
the orphanages that, under his ministry, were built, housed 2000 orphans. And by the end of his life, there were spots for 100,000 orphans in England. So it's not just, you know, even his work, but it was his. What he was able to show to others because he he encouraged others to do that same work. He wasn't saying it has to be all my work or it has to be all, you know, under my organizational tent saying, hey, this is this is what the Lord is calling us to.

Spencer
So a beautiful influence that way to. Yeah.

Austin
Well, Spencer, thanks for walking us through the life of George Mueller. If you want to learn a little bit more about George Mueller, we'll link in the description a couple of the books that you can read to learn more about his life. And as always, we come back to God is Provider. So we just pray that you would engage him as your provider today and take steps towards maybe trusting the Lord more than trusting in your finances.

Austin
So with that, we'll see you next time. If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so that you don't miss the next episode.

Disclosure
This content was provided by Second Half Stewardship. We are in Knoxville, Tennessee and you can visit our website at www.seoncdhalfstewardship.com. The information in this recording is intended for general, educational and informational purposes only, and should not be construed as investment advisory, financial planning, legal, tax or other professional advice based on your specific situation. Please consult your professional advisor before taking any action based on its contents.