George Müller Quotes on Prayer, Faith, Anxiety and Giving
George Müller wrote thousands of pages, mostly journal entries about money that came in for the orphans and the prayers behind it. Mixed into those entries are short, plain sentences about faith that Christians have been quoting for nearly two hundred years. Many versions online are paraphrased or made up. The quotations below are copied exactly from the books in TheWay Library, with the chapter where you can find each one.
The sources are Müller's own journal, in the Autobiography of George Müller and the shorter edition The Life of Trust, and A. T. Pierson's biography George Müller of Bristol. Pierson's Appendix N, "The Wise Sayings of George Müller," gathers many of Müller's sayings from his reports, and several below come from there.
On faith and anxiety
The saying most often quoted from Müller is about worry. Pierson gives it in this form:
Where Faith begins, anxiety ends; Where anxiety begins, Faith ends.
George Müller of Bristol, Appendix N
Müller explained what he meant in another passage:
It is the very time for faith to work, when sight ceases. The greater the difficulties, the easier for faith.
George Müller of Bristol, Appendix N
And on why God lets faith be tested:
The Lord gives faith, for the very purpose of trying it for the glory of His own name, and for the good of him who has it.
George Müller of Bristol, Appendix N
He was honest about the pull of our own nature:
The natural mind is ever prone to reason, when we ought to believe; to be at work, when we ought to be quiet; to go our own way, when we ought steadily to walk on in God's ways, however trying to nature.
George Müller of Bristol, Appendix N
On trusting God for the orphans
Müller told a group of friends why the care of two thousand children did not keep him awake at night:
The children I have years ago cast upon the Lord. The whole work is His, and it becomes me to be without carefulness.
George Müller of Bristol, Appendix N
In the hardest weeks of 1838, with no money in hand, he wrote in his journal:
Whence it is to come, need not be my care. But I believe God will, in due time, send help. His hour is not yet come.
The Life of Trust, chapter 6
When a gift of £1,000 finally came for the first Ashley Down house, after thirty-five days of prayer:
But when I received it I was as calm, as quiet, as if I had only received one shilling. For my heart was looking out for answers.
Autobiography of George Müller, chapter XI
The purpose of the whole orphan work, in his words:
The first and primary object of the work was, and still is, 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 any one being asked by me or my fellow-laborers, whereby it may be seen that God is FAITHFUL STILL, and HEARS PRAYER STILL.
The Life of Trust, chapter VII
For the full story behind these lines, read George Müller on prayer and faith.
On prayer
On praying and working together:
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.
George Müller of Bristol, Appendix N
On what to do when you don't feel like praying:
The way to obtain a spirit of prayer is to continue praying; for the less we read the word of God, the less we desire to read it, and the less we pray, the less we desire to pray.
George Müller of Bristol, Appendix N
On waiting a long time for an answer:
Should you, however, not at once obtain answers to your prayers, be not discouraged; but continue patiently, believingly, perseveringly to wait upon God.
George Müller of Bristol, Appendix N
On busy Christian workers:
Let none think that public prayer will make up for closet communion.
George Müller of Bristol, Appendix N
On two people he had prayed for daily for over sixty years, who had not yet turned to God:
I have not a doubt that I shall meet them both in heaven; for my Heavenly Father would not lay upon my heart a burden of prayer for them for over threescore years, if He had not concerning them purposes of mercy.
George Müller of Bristol, chapter 15
Pierson adds that one of the two did come to faith before he died.
On the Bible and the morning hour
The lesson Müller learned in 1841 changed how he started every day:
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 Life of Trust, chapter XIII
On Scripture as the rule for life:
The word of God is our only standard, and the Holy Spirit our only teacher.
George Müller of Bristol, Appendix N
On finding God's will, from near the end of his life:
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 God by the teaching of the Holy Ghost, through the instrumentality of the word of God, but I have been ALWAYS directed rightly.
George Müller of Bristol, Appendix N
On money and giving
Müller would not borrow, even from friends:
As regards borrowing money, I have considered that there is no ground to go away from the door of the Lord to that of a believer, so long as He is willing to supply our need.
George Müller of Bristol, Appendix N
On raising money for God's work:
To ask unbelievers for means is not God's way; to press even believers to give, is not God's way.
George Müller of Bristol, Appendix N
On his own giving, which totaled more than eighty thousand pounds over his life:
My aim never was, how much I could obtain, but rather how much I could give.
George Müller of Bristol, chapter 15
On stewardship:
If we are indeed acting as stewards and not as owners, He will make us stewards over more.
George Müller of Bristol, Appendix N
On loss and God's goodness
Müller buried a young son, his father-in-law, his first wife and his second wife. This sentence comes from a man who knew grief:
Our Heavenly Father never takes any earthly thing from His children except He means to give them something better instead.
George Müller of Bristol, Appendix N
On his life's purpose
Pierson calls this sentence the pivot of Müller's whole life:
I have joyfully dedicated my whole life to the object of exemplifying how much may be accomplished by prayer and faith.
George Müller of Bristol, chapter 15
And his conversion, in one line:
But that evening was the turning-point in my life.
The Life of Trust, chapter II
Reading the quotes in context
Short sayings are easy to pass around, but Müller's words carry more weight when you see the day-by-day need behind them. Read Pierson's whole collection in Appendix N of George Müller of Bristol, then turn to Müller's own record in the Autobiography of George Müller, starting with chapter V, the beginning of the orphan work.
For his life story, see who was George Müller. For the orphan houses, see the George Müller orphanage. And for help choosing what to read, see our guide to George Müller's books.