The Life of Trust

It is George Müller's own account of a life lived on the bare promises of God. Written by himself, it tells how a converted spendthrift student came to Bristol and, asking help from no human being, built orphan houses that sheltered thousands of children — meeting every need by prayer alone. Much of the book is his running journal, recording specific needs and the specific ways they were met.

A German-born Christian who settled in England and spent his long life caring for orphans in Bristol. In his youth he had been dishonest and worldly; converted as a student, he became a man of extraordinary faith. By the end of his life his orphanages had cared for more than ten thousand children, all supported without appeals for money — only prayer.

He did it deliberately, as a witness. Müller wanted to demonstrate to a doubting age that God still hears and answers prayer, and that a believer may trust him for daily bread as literally as for salvation. By making it a fixed rule never to ask any person for funds, and never to go into debt, he ensured that every provision was visibly an answer to prayer and not to fundraising.

Very concrete ones. Müller records mornings when there was no food in the house and hundreds of children to feed, and how bread and milk arrived in time; sums needed for building, given by unknown donors; needs named only to God and met to the day. The book's power is in its plainness — a dated ledger of asking and receiving, kept honestly over decades.

Both. It is a narrative of Müller's life and work, but it is written to build the reader's faith, and it is full of reflection on the promises of God and the discipline of prayer. Müller intended it not as a monument to himself but as evidence for others — proof that the life of trust is possible and that God can be taken at his word.

That they are meant to be believed and acted upon, not merely admired. He treated Scripture's promises as a bank on which faith may draw, and his whole enterprise was an experiment in taking them literally. The book returns again and again to the faithfulness of God — that the one who promises to supply every need can be relied on in the smallest particulars.

Chiefly that prayer is real and that God is trustworthy in matters of daily provision, not only in spiritual ones. Müller's life has strengthened the faith of countless believers and shaped modern faith missions. His example presses the ordinary reader to pray more honestly and to trust God for concrete needs rather than only general ones.

At the account of his early life and conversion, which makes the later faith all the more striking, then into the founding of the orphan work and the journal of its daily provision. The journal entries can be read a few at a time as devotional reading; taken together they are one of the most remarkable records of answered prayer ever kept.