More Active Posts
Front Page
A rule of prayer
 |
 2 Comments |
I’ve had reason of late to consider George Müller’s thoughts on prayer. Müller was a Prussian-born evangelist credited with caring for over 10,000 British orphans during his lifetime in the 19th century, and educating a good many additional children. Müller was known for never accepting government assistance, and for never requesting money of anyone. His earnest faith was that if he did God’s will, God would provide. As the story goes, there was a time in the early years of his orphanage when the food ran out. He had the children arranged around the dinner table regardless, in order to give thanks for the food God was going to provide. Soon there was a knock at the door; a bread truck had broken down outside, and the owner offered it to Müller rather than let it go to waste.
Rather than thanking God for what He will provide, I am usually asking Him not to take away what He has given. I wonder if I ever will come close to the assurance that seemed to inform Müller’s life. For some time I have been taken with his guidelines for prayer, which are at once so practical and so difficult to follow. The first thing he did, he explained, was to strip himself of his own will. That doesn’t mean that he adopted a stoic indifference to the outcome, but rather that he got himself to a place where he was willing to embrace the outcome, even if it’s not what he desired.
That, Müller implied, was more than half the battle. It certainly is for me. I am a want-filled creature, hopeful and fearful all at once, and prone to ignore God until something I want or something I fear is directly in my field of vision. How strange, when prayer is so frequently the consequence of our immediate wants, to begin by praying that our own wills be sublimated.
In his exhaustive Civil War trilogy, Shelby Foote writes how Jefferson Davis, upon learning that his young son had plummeted to his death from an upper window, closed himself into a room, and could be heard pacing the entire night, saying over and over: “Not my will, but thy will.” It was a prayer for the ability to submit, I’m sure, as much as a statement of faith. Maybe that’s all our statements of faith ever are, prayers that we might be, if only for a short while, faithful, and faith-filled.
 |
Topic: Front Page, Odds & Ends |  |
Email a friend |
 |
Keywords: prayer |  |
RSS 2.0 |
 |
Both comments and pings are currently closed. |  |
Share this: |
Soul searching
1. While I wouldn’t take away from Müller’s faith, his orphanage was well known among Brethren circles and his prayer requests were circulated. So folks knew what was going on and his needs. Not that he didn’t exercise faith, but the myth that his needs were made known to no one except God is tad overstated.
2. Can anyone really strip themselves of their one will? Not unless he is a vegetable. I would say the serenity prayer’s “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference” is closer to the mark of how one lives a yielded life in reality.
OUTDEEP,
Your post implies first that no one can really strip themselves of their own will unless he is a vegetable. Is this correct or are you simply pointing up that no one can do this by their own power? Note that Christ, a human being by all accounts, stripped Himself completely of His own will in His kenosis– His pouring out of Himself. Further, Christ calls us to “be perfect” as our Father in heaven is perfect. Scriptures also urge us to emulate Christ. Your post seems to imply, further, then, that God is making an impossible demand of us. I think Tony and Muller are correct that a renunciation of the will is needful for me to be joined closely with God– a renunciation that results in me abiding in His perfect Will. The more completely I can accomplish that, by His mercy, the more closely I can live with God.
– Jonny