George Muller of Bristol Part 34

16; Rom. x. 9, 10; Acts x. 43; 1 John v. 1.

CONDITIONS OF PRAYER.

Go for yourself, with all your temporal and spiritual wants, to the Lord. Bring also the necessities of your friends and relatives to the Lord. Only make the trial, and you will perceive how able and willing He is to help you. Should you, however, not at once obtain answers to your prayers, be not discouraged; but continue patiently, believingly, perseveringly to wait upon G.o.d: and as a.s.suredly as that which you ask would be for your real good, and therefore for the honour of the Lord; and as a.s.suredly as you ask it solely on the ground of the worthiness of our Lord Jesus, so a.s.suredly you will at last obtain the blessing. I myself have had to wait upon G.o.d concerning certain matters for years, before I obtained answers to my prayers; but at last they came. At this very time, I have still to renew my requests daily before G.o.d, respecting a certain blessing for which I have besought Him for eleven years and a half, and which I have as yet obtained only in part, but concerning which I have no doubt that the full blessing will be granted in the end.... The great point is that we ask only for that which it would be for the glory of G.o.d to give to us; for that, and that alone, can be for our real good. But it is not enough that the thing for which we ask G.o.d be for His honour and glory, but we must secondly ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus, viz., expect it only on the ground of His merits and worthiness. Thirdly, we should believe that G.o.d is able and willing to give us what we ask Him for. Fourthly, we should continue in prayer till the blessing is granted; without fixing to G.o.d a time when, or the circ.u.mstances under which, He should give the answer. Patience should be in exercise, in connection with our prayer. Fifthly, we should, at the same time, look out for and expect an answer till it comes. If we pray in this way, we shall not only have answers, thousands of answers to our prayers; but our own souls will be greatly refreshed and invigorated in connection with these answers.

If the obtaining of your requests were not for your real good, or were not tending to the honour of G.o.d, you might pray for a long time, without obtaining what you desire. The glory of G.o.d should be always before the children of G.o.d, in what they desire at His hands; and their own spiritual profit, being so intimately connected with the honour of G.o.d, should never be lost sight of, in their pet.i.tions. But now, suppose we are believers in the Lord Jesus, and make our requests unto G.o.d, depending alone on the Lord Jesus as the ground of having them granted; suppose, also, that, so far as we are able honestly and uprightly to judge, the obtaining of our requests would be for our real spiritual good and for the honour of G.o.d; we yet need, lastly, to _continue_ in prayer, until the blessing is granted unto us. It is not enough to begin to pray, nor to pray aright; nor is it enough to continue _for a time_ to pray; but we must patiently, believingly continue in prayer, until we obtain an answer; and further, we have not only to _continue_ in prayer unto the end, but we have also _to believe_ that G.o.d does hear us, and will answer our prayers. Most frequently we fail in not continuing in prayer until the blessing is obtained and _in not expecting_ the blessing.

FAITH, PRAYER, AND THE WORD OF G.o.d.

_Prayer and faith, the universal remedies against every want and every difficulty;_ and the nourishment of prayer and faith, G.o.d's holy word, helped me over all the difficulties.--I never remember, in all my Christian course, a period now (in March 1895) of sixty-nine years and four months, that I ever SINCERELY and PATIENTLY sought to know the will of G.o.d by _the teaching of the Holy Ghost,_ through the instrumentality of the _word of G.o.d,_ but I have been ALWAYS directed rightly. But if _honesty of heart_ and _uprightness before G.o.d_ were lacking, or if I did not _patiently_ wait upon G.o.d for instruction, or if I preferred _the counsel of my fellow men_ to the declarations of _the word of the living G.o.d,_ I made great mistakes.

SECRET PRAYER.

Let none expect to have the mastery over his inward corruption in any degree, without going in his weakness again and again to the Lord for strength. Nor will prayer with others, or conversing with the brethren, make up for secret prayer.

SNARES OF SATAN AS TO PRAYER.

It is a common temptation of Satan to make us give up the reading of the Word and prayer when our enjoyment is gone; as if it were of no use to read the Scriptures when we do not enjoy them, and as if it were of no use to pray when we have no spirit of prayer; whilst the truth is, in order to enjoy the Word, we ought to continue to read it, and the way to obtain a spirit of prayer is to continue praying; for the less we read the word of G.o.d, the less we desire to read it, and the less we pray, the less we desire to pray.

WORK AND PRAYER.

Often the work of the Lord itself may be a temptation to keep us from that communion with Him which is so essential to the benefit of our own souls.... Let none think that public prayer will make up for closet communion.

Here is the great secret of success. Work with all your might; but trust not in the least in your work. Pray with all your might for the blessing of G.o.d; but work, at the same time, with all diligence, with all patience, with all perseverance. Pray then, and work. Work and pray. And still again pray, and then work. And so on all the days of your life.

The result will surely be, abundant blessing. Whether you _see_ much fruit or little fruit, such kind of service will be blessed.... Speak also for the Lord, as if everything depended on your exertions; yet trust not the least in your exertions, but in the Lord, who alone can cause your efforts to be made effectual, to the benefit of your fellow men or fellow believers. Remember, also, that G.o.d delights to bestow blessing, but, generally, as the result of earnest, believing prayer.

PREACHING.

It came immediately to my mind that such sort of preaching might do for illiterate country people, but that it would never do before a well-educated a.s.sembly in town. I thought, the truth ought to be preached at all hazards, but it ought to be given in a different form, suited to the hearers. Thus I remained unsettled in my mind as it regards the mode of preaching; and it is not surprising that I did not then see the truth concerning this matter, for I did not understand the work of the Spirit, and therefore saw not the powerlessness of human eloquence. Further, I did not keep in mind that if the most illiterate persons in the congregation can comprehend the discourse, the most educated will understand it too; but that the reverse does not hold true.

RESt.i.tUTION.

Rest.i.tution is the revealed will of G.o.d. If it is omitted, while we have it in our power to make it, guilt remains on the conscience, and spiritual progress is hindered. Even though it should be connected with difficulty, self-denial, and great loss, it is to be attended to. Should the persons who have been defrauded be dead, their heirs are to be found out, if this can be done, and rest.i.tution is to be made to them. But there may be cases when this cannot be done, and then _only_ the money should be given to the Lord for His work or His poor. One word more.

Sometimes the guilty person may not have grace enough, if the rightful owners are living, to make known to them the sin; under such circ.u.mstances, though not the best and most scriptural way, rather than have guilt remaining on the conscience, it is better to make rest.i.tution anonymously than not at all. About fifty years ago, I knew a man under concern about his soul, who had defrauded his master of two sacks of flour, and who was urged by me to confess this sin to his late employer, and to make rest.i.tution. He would not do it, however, and the result was that for twenty years he never obtained real peace of soul till the thing was done.

REWARDS.

Christians do not practically remember that while we are saved by grace, altogether by grace, so that in the matter of salvation works are altogether excluded; yet that so far as the rewards of grace are concerned, in the world to come, there is an intimate connection between the life of the Christian here and the enjoyment and the glory in the day of Christ's appearing.

SIN AND SALVATION.

Rumblings last our whole life. Jesus came not to save _painted_ but _real_ sinners; but He _has_ saved us, and will surely make it manifest.

SPIRIT OF G.o.d.

At Stuttgart, the dear brethren had been entirely uninstructed about the truths relating to the power and presence of the Holy Ghost in the church of G.o.d, and to our ministering one to another as fellow members in the body of Christ; and I had known enough of painful consequences when brethren began to meet professedly in dependence upon the Holy Spirit without knowing what was meant by it, and thus meetings had become opportunities _for unprofitable talking rather than for G.o.dly edifying...._ All these matters ought to be left to the ordering of the Holy Ghost, and that if it had been truly good for them, the Lord would have not only led me to speak _at that time,_ but also on _the very subject_ on which they desired that I should speak to them.

TRUTH--PROPORTION OF FAITH.

Whatever parts of truth are made too much of, though they were even the most precious truths connected with our being risen in Christ, or our heavenly calling, or prophecy, sooner or later those who lay an _undue_ stress upon _these parts_ of truth, and thus make them too prominent, will be losers in their own souls, and, if they be teachers, they will injure those whom they teach.

UNIVERSALISM.

In reference to universal salvation, I found that they had been led into this error because (1) They did not see the difference between the earthly calling of the Jews, and the heavenly calling of the believers in the Lord Jesus in the present dispensation, and therefore they said that, because the words "everlasting," etc., are applied to "the possession of the land of Canaan" and the "priesthood of Aaron,"

therefore, the punishment of the wicked cannot be without end, seeing that the possession of Canaan and the priesthood of Aaron are not without end. My endeavour, therefore, was to show the brethren the difference between the _earthly_ calling of Israel and our _heavenly_ one, and to prove from Scripture that, whenever the word "everlasting"

is used with reference to things purely not of the earth, but beyond time, it denotes a period without end. (2) They had laid exceeding great stress upon a few pa.s.sages where, in Luther's translation of the German Bible, the word h.e.l.l occurs, and where it ought to have been translated either "hades" in some pa.s.sages, or "grave" in others, and where they saw a _deliverance out of h.e.l.l,_ and a _being brought up out of h.e.l.l,_ instead of _"out of the grave."_

WORD OF G.o.d.

_The word of G.o.d is our only standard, and the Holy Spirit our only teacher._

Besides the Holy Scriptures, which should be always THE book, THE CHIEF book to us, not merely in theory, but also in practice, such like books seem to me the most useful for the growth of the inner man. Yet one has to be cautious in the choice, and to guard against reading too much.

WORK FOR G.o.d.

When He orders something to be done for the glory of His name, He is both able and willing to find the needed individuals for the work and the means required. Thus, when the Tabernacle in the Wilderness was to be erected, He not only fitted men for the work, but He also touched the hearts of the Israelites to bring the necessary materials and gold, silver, and precious stones; and all these things were not only brought, but in such abundance that a proclamation had to be made in the camp, that no more articles should be brought, because there were more than enough. And again, when G.o.d for the praise of His name would have the Temple to be built by Solomon, He provided such an amount of gold, silver, precious stones, bra.s.s, iron, etc., for it, that all the palaces or temples which have been built since have been most insignificant in comparison.