Taking God at His Word

  • Elliot Grudem
  • Sep 17, 2009

I’ve spent a good part of the last week thinking about George Müller.

Müller was a pastor in Nineteenth Century England. He is best known for two things: his work with orphans and his strange way of raising money to support those orphanages. Müller never asked for money. He simply made his needs and ministry known and prayed like crazy that God would make people generous.

In his lifetime he built five large orphan houses and cared for over 10,000 orphans. He and the orphans never went hungry. Time and again, his crazy prayers were answered.

“And all this by faith!” was the fundamental on which he based his life and ministry.

 “And All this by Faith!”

When Müller was 64, his wife whom he loved dearly, contracted rheumatic fever. Her death was a near certainty.

He preached the following at her funeral (emphasis mine):

The last portion of scripture which I read to my precious wife was this: “The Lord God is a sun and shield, the Lord will give grace and glory, no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.”

Now, if we have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have received grace, we are partakers of grace, and to all such he will give glory also. I said to myself, with regard to the latter part, “no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly”—I am in myself a poor worthless sinner, but I have been saved by the blood of Christ; and I do not live in sin, I walk uprightly before God.

Therefore, if it is really good for me, my darling wife will be raised up again; sick as she is. God will restore her again. But if she is not restored again, then it would not be a good thing for me. And so my heart was at rest. I was satisfied with God.

All of this springs… from taking God at his word, believing what he says.

As I continue think about Müller I wonder: “What would it look like for me to live in such a way that I take God at his word? What would be different if I always believed what God says?”