Life
Group Family & Friends:
God
has put together a great mix of people in our life group. Authentic community is a way to
describe our team of believers. Real,
honest, caring, loving, trusting, giving, joyful, carrying other’s burdens,
growing, fun, etc. are all words that can describe our community. Even with these “accomplishments” in our
journey, we should always strive to go deeper to get more out of our time on
earth.
As
we discussed last night, the same can be said in our community with our Creator. We get real with Him, have joy in live, but
should always be intentional with going deeper in the relationship.
Our
area of focus during LG was on prayer.
In “Praying for the Right Things,” John MacArthur says that we tend to
be short-sighted and selfish in our prayers.
In
his book, Experiencing God, Henry
Blackaby says that we pray but then don’t tune in to see God working, putting
people or distractions in your day.
I
am a champion of both of those. I pray
for health, protection, thank you for this food, help me do this, keep me from
that, make my life easier, remove the distractions, etc.
In
The Prayer of George Muller (the story is at the end of this blog), George had
confidence before God, loved others, and trusted God to meet all needs.
My
challenge to you this week is to pray 5 times this week in a different way. Over exaggerate, be completely
different than your typical prayers, ask in order to receive, swim in the deep
end of the prayer pool, be over-the-top in selflessness. Then we can
share with each other during Life Group what we learned.
Be
intentional.
Travis
The Prayer of George
Muller
For
some of you the name George Muller is familiar.
Muller was of German stock, but lived in Bristol, England in the middle
of the 19th century. In
Muller’s day there were no laws protecting children from the labor houses and
factories. Living and working conditions
for street children were unimaginable.
Muller saw firsthand the needs of orphans in the city. He and his wife, Mary, took seriously the
admonition in James 1:27 which says:
Religion that God our Father accepts
as pure and faultless is this: to look
after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being
polluted by the world.
George
and Mary Muller decided that God was leading them to help provide for the
orphans and street children of Bristol.
They were convinced that God would provide for every need. Muller vowed to ask no man for money. He even went as far as to say that he would
not talk to people about the needs of his endeavor or even ask them to make it
a matter of prayer. Muller would ask God
and God alone for the resources to complete the work.
The
needs of the children were met at just the right time and sometimes at the last
moment. One morning as the children
gathered for breakfast they were unaware that there was no food left in the
orphanage. As they waited for their
morning meal George Muller calmly said, “Children, you know we must be in time
for school.” Lifting his hand he said,
“Dear Father, we thank Thee for what Thou art going to give us to eat.” As he finished praying there was a knock on
the door and a baker entered. Having
sensed God urging him to do so, the baker had been up all night baking bread
for the children.
Then
there was a second knock at the door. It
was the milk man who announced that his milk wagon had broken down just outside
the orphanage. He gave the orphanage his
cans of fresh milk so that his empty wagon could be repaired.
Many verses in Proverbs remind us that we need to constantly seek and listen to wise counsel to help us navigate through all areas of life. It is tempting to only seek counsel when the large problems present themselves but we should consistently surround ourselves and heed the advice of wise counsel. However, even though we know all of this to be true it is so easy for us to believe the lies that seeking counsel makes us look weak, ignorant...the lies that tell us we are the only ones dealing with this issue and that we are on our own. In other words, pride is the sin the so easily besets us and hinders us from following the wisdom of the Proverbs.
