SUPPORTING YOUR FAMILY
Ecclesiastes 2:24-25 A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find
satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from
the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?
I
might visit a brother who worked fourteen or even sixteen hours a day at his
trade, the necessary result of which was that not only his body suffered, but
his soul was lean, and he had no enjoyment of the things of God. Under such
circumstances I might point out to him that he ought to work less, in order
that his bodily health might not suffer, and that he might gather strength for
his inner man by reading the Word of God, by meditation over it, and by prayer.
The reply, however, I generally found
to be something like this: ‘But if I work less, I do not earn enough for the
support of my family. Even now, whilst I work so much, I have scarcely enough.
The wages are so low that I must work hard in order to obtain what I need.’
I
might reply something like this: ‘My dear brother, it is not your work which
supports your family, but the Lord; and He who has fed you and your family when
you could not work at all, on account of illness, would surely provide for you
and yours, if, for the sake of obtaining food for your inner man, you were to
work only for so many hours a day as would allow you proper time for
retirement. And is it not the case now that you begin the work of the day after
having had only a few hurried moments for prayer; and when you leave off your
work in the evening, and mean to read a little of the Word of God, are you not
too worn out in body and mind to enjoy it, and do you not often fall asleep
while reading the Scriptures or while on your knees in prayer.
My
spirit longed to be instrumental in strengthening their faith by giving them
not only instances from the Word of God of His willingness and ability to help
all those who rely upon Him, but to show them by proofs that He is the same in
our day.
I
therefore judged myself bound to be the servant of the Church of Christ in the
particular point on which I had obtained mercy: namely, in being able to take
God by his Word and to rely upon it.
Spiritual Secrets
of George Muller by Roger
Steer, pg.14.
