I'll never forget where I was sitting in the Orlando airport in Florida several years ago when I heard an unusual announcement on the public-address system. A male voice said: “George Mueller. George Mueller. Please contact a service desk for a message.”
George Mueller? I suppose there really was a man by that name in the airport at that moment. But I couldn't help but think about the George Mueller of history, a courageous Christian leader from England who died in 1898. I had his biography but hadn't read it in a while.
In that moment I felt as though the Holy Spirit were tapping me on the shoulder. God used that announcement to remind me to go back and read Mueller's story again.
He lived a life that we need to remember today.
Mueller is best known for his work with orphans. During his lifetime he fed and cared for more than 10,000 orphans—yet he never once asked anyone for money. He trusted God for the funds to feed those children. He also exercised enough faith to establish 117 Christian schools during his lifetime.
He was also an amazing preacher. At age 70 he embarked on a 17-year-long missionary journey that took him from England to other parts of Europe to Canada and the United States, then back to Europe, then back to the United States, then to Egypt, Russia, India, China, Japan, Australia and then back to Europe. At a time before airplanes, he traveled more than 200,000 miles and preached the gospel in English, French and German.
But Mueller's greatest legacy was what he did on his knees when no one else was listening. He expected God to answer his prayers. That is why he kept prayer journals, in which he recorded more than 50,000 answers to prayer. He claimed that 30,000 of those answers came in the same day or the same hour that he prayed them!
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