Season of Lent

Good evening everyone, as we discussed last week we’re on a season of Lent - Lent, in case you don’t know, refers to the 40 weekdays leading up to Easter. Lent is also the time in which Christians make greater effort to grow deeper in their relationship with Jesus. Now, that can be done in many ways, but tonight I want to focus on one way. Now, I’m going to share a story and I want to see if you can identify how this person grew closer to Jesus.

I want to introduce you to these two, their names are George and Mary Müller and they lived in England in the 19th century. Now this couple didn’t have much - not because they were lazy or unlucky, but because they had an unwavering trust in God that shaped how they lived their entire lives. You see, George and Mary were hard workers - maybe even the hardest workers you’d ever meet! But anytime they were paid, or given money or gifts, they gave away everything they didn’t need at that very moment. In fact, one of the first things they did when they got married was to sell everything they didn’t need and give that money to the poor.

Anyways, time went on as George and Mary continued to serve their community however they could until around 1835 George told Mary he’s had enough! You see, just a few years earlier England was hit with a pandemic that killed over 50,000 people - and alot of those people were parents whose children were now orphans. In those times, most orphans were seen as criminals, leeches and burdens. This is because England had very few orphanages at the time, and all of them were already full before the pandemic which meant that the rest of the orphans really only had two choices - live on the street or work in a factory. Living on the street often meant stealing or begging for your meals. You had to find corners and alleyways to sleep at night. Living in the workhouses meant that you worked 12-16 hours a day, you weren’t given good food but you had no choice, and you slept shoulder to shoulder in a cramped room with up to 50 other orphans.

George and Mary saw all this going on. They saw James 1:27 and Matthew 25:35-40 and realized that God was calling them to action. People asked: “How?” “With what money?”

To which George and Mary responded, “God will provide”

And God did just that, through hard work and generous gifts from other Christians,George and Mary opened their home to orphans in 1836. They would feed them and give them an education to open up their future. It wasn’t long until their house was filled with 30 girls. They continued to grow, taking in not only girls but boys and younger children. Eventually they furnished and rented the three houses nextdoor so that they could house and care for 130 orphans.

But it didn’t stop there. As George and Mary’s orphanages continued to grow, they would have to find bigger spaces. They would need to provide more meals. And each time, God provided. By 1870, they were taking care of almost 1800 kids and managing 5 homes. By the end of George’s 92 years of life, the Muller family managed to care for 10,024 orphans - and the only person he ever asked money from was God - through prayer. There’s a famous story about a time when George awoke to the news that one of the orphanages, which housed 300 children, had no food. Muller instructed the housemother to seat all the children in the dining room. He thanked God for food, and they waited for God to provide, as He always did. Within minutes, a baker knocked at the door. “Mr. Muller,” he confessed, “last night, I could not sleep. Somehow, I knew that you would need bread this morning. I got up and baked three batches for you. I will bring it in.” The next knock revealed a milkman whose cart had broken down in front of the orphanage. The milk would spoil by the time the cart was fixed, the milkman explained, so would the children like some free milk?