I wake up hungry every morning. So do you.

We may or may not awake with empty stomachs, but deeper down, our souls growl ferociously. However much we try to satisfy that hunger elsewhere, and however many live in denial, God made our souls to hunger for him, and feed on him.

We want when we awake — and want and want and want. Some turn immediately to breakfast. Others dive right into an electronic device or screen. Some roll over and try to wrestle a little more joy from sleep. Yet the hunger remains. And that is no accident. God made us to start each new day with this ache — as a call to turn afresh to him.

Great Discovery of 1841

In his much-acclaimed autobiography, George Mueller (1805–1898), who cared for more than ten thousand orphans in England throughout his ministry, tells of a life-changing discovery he made in the first half of 1841.

In a journal entry dated May 7, he captures the insight he stumbled into that spring. The entry is one long paragraph of 1,500 words that rewards careful and multiple readings.

Over the years, I have read it again and again and seem to profit from it more each time. Mueller’s life-changing insight has proved significant in my own life. As I again reread this journal entry in recent days, I noticed several distinct aspects of this one lesson, which could be identified and sequenced to benefit readers today.

In short, Mueller’s great discovery was that “the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day [is] to have my soul happy in the Lord.” What a find! Just about any other duty would land as burdensome, but “get happy”? That is a deeply refreshing task.

Mueller restates the point as “the first thing to be concerned about was . . . how I might get my soul into a happy state.” The discovery is set against the backdrop of other things that are not his, and your, first calling: “not how much I might serve the Lord,” not setting the truth before the unconverted, not benefiting believers, not relieving the distressed, not behaving in the world as fits a child of God. None of these real, critical callings is “first and primary.” None of these is “the first thing.” Most important is not pouring out but first filling up. First thing first: get your soul happy in God. Find happiness in him. Obey your hunger for God and feast.

But then we ask, How? How does hunger lead to happiness?

Feed on God

Mueller answers that hunger becomes happiness as we satisfy our empty souls on God — which implies a certain kind of approach to God. We come to get, not to give. Many human satisfactions come from various deeds and achievements. Others come through reception of goods or honor. Still others come through the intake of food and drink. Among these other desires, God made our souls to long for such consumption — to receive God as food, to take and chew and savor. And to receive him as drink, slake our thirst, and revel in the satisfaction.

So, Mueller clarifies his lesson: “The first thing the child of God has to do morning by morning is to obtain food for his inner man.” He draws on the language of both nourishment and refreshment (as well as being “strengthened”). He approaches God, he says, “for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul,” and as he lingers in God’s presence, he tries to “continually keep before me that food for my own soul is the object of my meditation.”

Next, we might ask, Where? Where do you turn to find such food for your soul?

In His Word

Mueller’s answer — simple, and unsurprising, yet profound and transformative — is the word of God. To make sure we don’t miss it, he asks the question for us and answers it: “What is the food for the inner man? Not prayer, but the word of God.”

“Hunger becomes happiness through satisfying our empty souls on God.”

Now we pick up a vital part of the lesson. Mueller says that for years his practice was to awake and go straight into prayer. It might take him ten minutes or even half an hour to find enough focus to really pray. He then might spend “even an hour, on my knees” before receiving any “comfort, encouragement, humbling of soul, etc.” He had the goal right: get my soul happy in God. He had the direction right: come to feed on God. But he had the posture wrong. Or he had the order wrong. The lesson he needed to learn was come first to hear, then to speak. That is, first hear God’s word, then pray in response.

In God’s word, “we find our Father speaking to us, to encourage us, to comfort us, to instruct us, to humble us, to reprove us.” God’s word nourishes and strengthens the soul. His word leads, provides, warns, steadies. Then in prayer, we speak to God in response to what he’s said to us in his word.

Through Meditation

At this point, we might assume we know how to take in God’s word: just read it. After all, that’s what you do with a written text, right?

Mueller has one more clarifying word, and it might be his most important for us today: “not the simple reading of the word of God . . . but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts.” In other words, he feeds his soul on God’s word through what he and many other great saints have called “meditation.”

This meditation is a crucial aspect of the lesson, and for us, almost two centuries later, it increasingly has become a lost art.

Mueller’s first mention of “meditation” clarifies what kind of reading he means: “The most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the word of God, and to meditation on it.” He then makes plain that meditation concerns the heart. Mere reading might fill the head, but meditation aims to comfort, encourage, warn, reprove, instruct, and feed the heart.

He doubles back to explain what he means again. “Meditate on the word of God” includes “searching as it were into every verse, to get blessing out of it . . . for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul.” Having chewed on one bite and savored it, “I go on to the next words or verse, turning all, as I go on, into prayer for myself or others, as the word may lead to it, but still continuously keeping before me that food for my own soul is the object of my meditation.”

He comes back once more to say he means “not the simple reading of the word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts.” This series of three verbs may be the most help he gives us as to how we might meditate ourselves and not simply read.

Mueller would have us slow down, pause, and reread so that we might consider what we read, ponder over it, and apply it to our hearts — that is, not only or mainly to our practical lives but first and foremost to our inner person, to our hearts.

Such a deliberate, affectional reception of God’s word naturally leads us into prayer.

Then Prayer

Now, don’t think Mueller, in this life-changing lesson, is eschewing or marginalizing prayer. Rather, by putting prayer in its proper place (in response to God’s word), he helps prayer flourish.

Having heard from God in his word, and considered it, pondered over it, and applied it to my heart, “I speak to my Father and to my Friend . . . about the things that he has brought before me in his precious word.” Meditation soon leads to a response — in fact, “it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer.” The time when prayer “can be most effectively performed is after the inner man has been nourished by meditation on the word of God.” Now, having heard our Father’s voice all the way down into our souls, we find ourselves able “really to pray,” and so to actually commune with God.

Communion with Jesus

You’ll find in Mueller’s May 7, 1841, journal entry that “meditation and prayer” is for him synonymous with the phrase “communion with God.” To commune with God is not only to address him in prayer, nor is it simply to hear from him in his word. Communion involves both his speaking and ours. This is a Father-child relationship. God speaks first in his word, and we receive his words with the hunger, delight, and unhurried pace that fits the word of our Father and divine Friend. Then we speak humbly yet boldly in response, adoring our God, confessing our sins, thanking him for his grace and mercy, and petitioning him for ourselves, our loved ones, and even those who seem like enemies.

This hearing from God and responding to him Mueller calls “experimental [that is, experiential] communion with the Lord.” With “my heart being nourished by the truth,” he is “brought into experimental fellowship with God” in meditation and prayer. And not only with God the Father but “the Lord” Jesus, the risen, reigning Christ, seated on heaven’s throne, dwelling in us by his Spirit, and drawing near to commune with us through his word and our prayer.

Afterword

Several times, Mueller emphasizes that such communion with God is never a means to ministry and feeding others, yet God often appoints leftovers. Such early-morning meals, deeply savored in the soul, may “soon after or at a later time” prove to be “food for other believers,” but this is not the goal. Fodder for ministry is not the first and primary business each day, but food for our own souls. The point, and prayer, is soul-satisfying communion with the risen Christ.

Such a hungry and hedonistic approach to each new day was life-changing for Mueller. And it gave him the help and strength, he says, “to pass in peace through deeper trials, in various ways, than I had ever had before.” This approach has been significant for me too. Perhaps it will be so for you as well. As Mueller exults, “How different when the soul is refreshed and made happy early in the morning!”