DWIGHT L. MOODY (Congregational)
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
- 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