DWIGHT L. MOODY
(Congregational)

February 9, 2017 // Story

 

DWIGHT L. MOODY
(Congregational)

[Two Accounts]

#Item 1

At the summer school for Bible study, held at Mount Hermon, Moody addressed the boys’

class and answered questions.

The subject of “Enduement of Power” was before the class; the necessity of it for service

was urged. Moody said, “No need to stop your work in order to wait for this enduement of power,
but do not be satisfied until you get it.

“Let it be the cry of your heart day and night … young men, you will get this blessing when

you seek it above all else. There will be no trouble about knowing when you have got it.

“We should not have to wait long for this baptism of the Spirit if we did not have to come

to the end of ourselves. This sometimes is a long road.

“If God were to indue us with power when we were full of conceit we should become vain

as peacocks, and there would be no living near us.” Mr. Moody then told his experience — a thing
which he is not greatly given to do.

“This blessing came upon me,” he said, “suddenly, like a flash of lightning. For months I

had been hungering and thirsting for power in service. I had come to that point that I think I would
have died if I had not got it. I remember I was walking the streets of New York. I had no more
heart in the business I was about than if I had not belonged to this world at all. Right there, on the
street, the power of God seemed to come upon me so wonderfully that I had to ask God to stay His
hand. I was filled with a sense of God’s goodness, and felt as though I could take the whole world
to my heart. I took the old sermon that I had preached before without any power; it was the same

 

old truth, but there was a new power. Many were impressed and converted. This happened years
after I was converted myself.

“It was in the fall of 1871. I had been very anxious to have a large Sunday school and a

large congregation, but there were few conversions. I remember I used to take a pride in having the
largest congregation in Chicago on a Sunday night. Two godly women used to come and hear me.
One of them came to me one night after I had preached very satisfactorily, as I thought. I fancied
she was going to congratulate me on my success; but she said, ‘We are praying for you.’ I wondered
if I had made some blunder, that they talked in that way.

“Next Sunday night they were there again, evidently in prayer while I was preaching. One

of them said, ‘We are still praying for you.’ I could not understand it, and said, ‘Praying for me!
Why don’t you pray for the people? I am all right. ‘Ah’ they said, ‘you are not all right; you have not
got power; there is something lacking, but God can qualify you.’ I did not like it at first, but I got to
thinking it over, and after a little time I began to feel a desire to have what they were praying for.

“They continued to pray for me, and the result was that at the end of three months God sent

this blessing on me. I want to tell you this: I would not for the whole world go back to where I was
before 1871. Since then I have never lost the assurance that I am walking in communion with God
and I have a joy in His service that sustains me and makes it easy work. I believe I was an older
man then than I am now I have been growing younger ever since. I used to be very tired when
preaching three times a week; now I can preach five times a day and never get tired at all. I have
done three times the work I did before, and it gets better and better every year. It is so easy to do a
thing when love prompts you. It would be better, it seems to me, to go and break stone than to take
to preaching in a professional spirit.”

Taken from “The Christian,” LONDON, ENGLAND, Aug., 26, 1886.

Source: “Forty Witnesses” by S. Oline Garrison

#Item 2

  1. MOODY’S PENTECOST

At this time Mr. D. L. Moody was a very active worker in the Young Men’s Christian

Association. Living quite near the rooms, I soon became deeply interested in their work. At their
Yoke-Fellows’ meetings, temperance, noon and other meetings, women of God were heartily
welcomed. Mr. Moody was an earnest, whole-souled worker; but ever to me there seemed such a
lack in his words. It seemed more the human, the natural energy and force of character of the man,
than anything spiritual. I felt he lacked what the apostles received on the day of Pentecost.

Dear Sister Hawxhurst and myself (almost always together) would after the evening

meetings talk with him about it. At first he seemed surprised, then convicted; then asked us to meet
with him on Friday afternoon for prayer. At every meeting he would get more in earnest, in an
agony of desire for this fullness of the Spirit while the travail of the soul for him, which came on
me once on the St. Charles camp-ground, I shall never forget.

 

He has often told, himself, as to when and how the mighty baptism fell on him in Wall

street, New York, and of its blessed results. Few have watched that life with a deeper interest than
I. The continual prayer of my heart has been, “Lord, keep him humble as a little child at Thy feet.”

After that wonderful work in England and Scotland, on his return to Chicago, when it was

announced that he would be in Farwell Hall, what a gathering to welcome him back again! Was he
the same? Had all this wonderful success and popularity not puffed him up or exalted him? No, he
was just the same simple-hearted man, and as intensely in earnest as ever. I thanked God and took
courage.

O what are any of us but the cloud on which the Sun of Righteousness can shed some of the

beams of His glory? All, all from Him; and to Him for every one of His workmen we would
ascribe the praise and the glory forever.

Source: “The Handmaiden of the Lord or Wayside Sketches”
by Mrs. Sarah A. Cooke

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HOW THEY ENTERED CANAAN
(A Collection of Holiness Experience Accounts)
Compiled by Duane V. Maxey

Vol. I — Named Accounts

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