Prevailing prayer
“Neither the length nor eloquence of your prayers causes God to answer. God responds to faith.” Rick Warren1
I first read about George Müller (sometimes spelled Mueller) in the book George Mueller: Young Rebel in Bristol as a teenager. He was a mighty man of faith and prayer.
He was born in 1805 in what was then Prussia and died in 1898 in Bristol, England. He lived a sinful life, but in seminary, he found Jesus. Moving to England, Müller sought to show the world that God was still capable of providing for every need. He never asked for money, but God always answered, often in miraculous ways. He started several orphanages in Bristol without money, eventually building five orphan houses (which still stand) with up to 2,000 children for which he provided everything—food, clothing, housing, etc. He eventually cared for over 10,000 orphans.
Dependence on prayer
Müller once said, “They that trust in the Lord shall never be confounded. . . . in leaning upon God, the living God alone, we are beyond disappointment and beyond being forsaken because of death, or want of means, or want of love. . . . How precious to have learned in any measure, to be content to stand with God alone in the world, and to know that surely no good thing shall be withheld from us, while we walk uprightly!”2 After meditating on Psalm 65, Müller got into the habit of writing down definite prayer petitions. “Towards the end of his life, he calculated that he had read the Bible through nearly 200 times and could find distinct answers to definite prayers in some 50,000 episodes in his life!”3
Here are Müller’s five conditions for prevailing (modern English: effective) prayer:4
1. Entire dependence upon the merits and mediation of the Lord Jesus Christ, as the only ground of any claim for blessing. (See John 14:13–14; 15:16, etc.)
2. Separation from all known sin. If we regard iniquity in our hearts, the Lord will not hear us, for it would be sanctioning sin. (Psalm 66:18.)
3. Faith in God’s word of promise as confirmed by His oath. Not to believe Him is to make Him both a liar and a perjurer. (Hebrews 11:6; 6:13-20.)
4. Asking in accordance with His will. Our motives must be godly: we must not seek any gift of God to consume it upon our lusts. (1 John 5:14; James 4:3.)
5. Importunity [boldness] in supplication. There must be waiting on God and waiting for God, as the husbandman has long patience to wait for the harvest. (James 5:7; Luke 18:1-8.)
Müller maintained that if these conditions are not met, God would dishonor Himself by answering such prayers and, in doing so, would bring spiritual harm to the supplicant. Prayer is by no means an easy activity. These are crucial principles to grasp in order to prevail in prayer.5
1. https://prayer-coach.com/prayer-quotes-rick-warren/ #13
2. George Müller, A Narrative of Some of the Lord’s Dealings with George Müller. Part 2 (J. Nisbet & Co.,1841), 18–19.
3. Peter Barnes, “Prevailing prayer,” Australian Presbyterian (Nov. 2006), 32.
4. George Müller, Answers to Prayer: From George Müller’s Narratives, Compiled by A. E. C. Brooks (The Moody Press 1897), Appendix A.
5. Barnes, 32.