George Mueller, after having read the Bible through 100 times with increasing delight, made this statement:

“I look upon it as a lost day when I have not had a good time over the Word of God. Friends often say, ‘I have so much to do, so many people to see, I cannot find time for Scripture study.’ Perhaps there are not many who have more to do than I. For more than half a century I have never known one day when I had not more business than I could get through. For 4 years I have had annually about 30,000 letters, and most of these have passed through my own hands. Then, as pastor of a church with 1,200 believers, great has been my care. Besides, I have had charge of five immense orphanages; also, at my publishing depot, the printing and circulating of millions of tracts, books, and Bibles; but I have always made it a rule never to begin work until I have had a good season with God and His Word. The blessing I have received has been wonderful.”

Sam Pollard, a twenty-four year old missionary in China, was planning to have a 10-day meeting. He preceded this meeting with seven days of prayer and then a day of fasting and a night of prayer. At the end of that time, God promised Him thousands of souls. He wrote to a friend, “People may say I’m foolish, but I’ll have my thousands.

A Christian leader was very sick and not expected to live. Alone with the Lord, He cried, “What should I do, Lord?”

Ben Patterson, a campus pastor, speaks in Deepening Your Conversation With God of his habit of rising early to be in solitude. He says that in all honesty, he gets up not to achieve an elite level of spiritual athleticism; he gets up because it is so good and pleasant to do so. He can hardly call it a discipline anymore. "It is so delicious, so ineffably sweet to hear the Lord, the Good Shepherd speak, or even to hope that he might," he says. It isn't so much that God speaks directly during those times; rather, the stillness prepares Patterson to be alert to those whispers and nudges he might receive as he drives his car or walks across campus.

The psalmist tells us to "sing praises unto his name; for it is pleasant" (135:3). Sometimes it pleases God for us to sing our praises to Him. In 1750, Samuel Fairclough wrote this about God's response to our praises: "...his soul is ravished with the thoughts and contemplation of them." He takes infinite delight in our praises rather we speak or sing them.

The Francis Schaeffer family was looking for a home to rent, and Edith had discovered a chalet that would perfectly meet their needs. It was for sale, though, not for rent. For an hour she fervently prayed for God’s intervention while seeking to know she sincerely wanted God’s will.

Arthur and Wilda Matthews were missionaries in China when the country was overtaken by Communism. Other missionaries were allowed to leave, but they and their small daughter were left alone with barely enough money to survive. Their clothes grew ragged, and their food supply became so poor that even the Chinese felt pity.

One Saturday Rosalind sat in the Toronto Mission Union waiting to play the organ. A few days earlier she had met a rather shabbily dressed young man named Jonathan Goforth. Just as the meeting was about to begin, Jonathan Goforth was called out of the room. He had been sitting across the corner from her with several people between. When he rose, he placed his Bible on the chair.