George Müller: The Man Who Prayed for Breakfast

When George Müller was a boy in Germany, he was not good at all. He lied, and he stole, even from his own father, and he ended up in prison before he was sixteen. He seemed the last person on earth to become a hero of faith.

But George met Jesus, and everything turned around. He moved to the city of Bristol, in England, and there he saw something that broke his heart: children with no mothers or fathers, sleeping in the streets, hungry and alone. George decided to build a home for them.

Then he decided something even more surprising. He would run the home in a way that would show everyone how real God is. He would never ask a single person for money. He would not send out letters begging, or hint that he was short. He would tell God alone what he needed, and wait.

One famous morning, the children sat down at the long tables with their plates and cups in front of them — and there was no food in the house at all, and no money to buy any. George stood up and thanked God for the breakfast they were about to eat, though there was nothing there to eat.

As he finished praying, there was a knock at the door. A baker stood outside. He could not sleep in the night, he said, and felt he must get up and bake bread for the children, and here it was, still warm. The knock came again. It was the milkman: his cart had broken down right outside, and he did not want the milk to spoil — would the children like it? The children ate breakfast that morning after all.

Things like that did not happen only once. Over his long life George Müller cared for more than ten thousand orphans, and built great houses to keep them warm and fed and taught. And through all of it, he asked no one but God.

George Müller wanted the whole world to see one simple thing: that God hears, and God provides. He proved it not with clever words, but with ten thousand children who went to bed each night with full stomachs because a bad boy from Germany had learned to pray.