George Müller's Ten Thousand

In 1836, George Müller opened a rented house on Wilson Street in Bristol, England, with room for thirty orphans. He had no salary, no fundraising committee, no wealthy patron. He simply prayed and asked God to provide. His vision was modest — care for a few dozen children who had nowhere else to turn.

God had something far larger in mind.

Over the next six decades, Müller cared for more than ten thousand orphans. He built five large houses on Ashley Down, feeding and educating children on donations he never once solicited. He recorded over fifty thousand specific answers to prayer in his journals — meals arriving minutes before they were needed, funds showing up on the exact morning rent was due. A milk cart broke down directly outside the orphanage one morning, and the driver offered all his perishable goods to the children rather than let them spoil.

Müller had asked God for bread. God gave him a movement that reshaped how an entire nation thought about caring for vulnerable children. His journals became one of the most powerful testimonies to answered prayer in modern church history.

Paul's words to the Ephesians capture exactly what Müller experienced: God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. Müller asked for thirty beds. God built five houses and filled every one. When we bring our small, sincere prayers to the Almighty, He answers according to a scale we never dared to picture.