Why God Used D. L. Moody, pt 1 – Surrender and Prayer
The first reason Torrey gives for D. L. Moody’s power and usefulness is that he was a “fully surrendered man”. Not that he was perfect, but that he had intentionally endeavoured to submit his entire life to Christ. He tells the story:
Henry Varley, a very intimate friend of Mr. Moody in the earlier days of his work, loved to tell how he once said to him: ‘It remains to be seen what God will do with a man who gives himself up wholly to Him.’ I am told that when Mr. Henry Varley said that, Mr. Moody said to himself: ‘Well, I will be that man.’…
If you and I are to be used in our sphere as D. L. Moody was used in his, we must put all that we have and all that we are in the hands of God, for Him to use as He will, to send us where He will, for God to do with us what He will, and we, on our part, to do everything God bids us do.”
Torrey concludes that
“There are thousands and tens of thousands of men and women in Christian work, brilliant men and women, rarely gifted men and women, men and women who are making great sacrifices, men and women who have put all conscious sin out of their lives, yet who, nevertheless, have stopped short of absolute surrender to God, and therefore have stopped sort of fullness of power.”
The second reason Torrey gives is that Moody was a man of prayer, even stating that he was “a far greater pray-er than he was a preacher.”
“Time and time again he was confronted by obstacles that seemed insurmountable, but he always knew the way to surmount and to overcome all difficulties. He knew the way to bring to pass anything that needed to be brought to pass. he knew and believed in the deepest depths of his soul that ‘nothing was too hard for the Lord’ and that prayer could do anything that God could do…
Often times Mr. Moody would write me when he was about to undertake some new work, saying: ‘I am beginning work in such and such a place on such and such a day; I wish you would get the students together for a day of fasting and prayer’…
Often we were gathered in the lecture room far into the night — sometimes till one, two, three, four or even five o’clock in the morning, crying to God, just because Mr. Moody urged us to wait upon God until we received His blessing. How many men and women I have known whose lives and characters have been transformed by those night of prayer and who have wrought mighty things in many lands because of those night of prayer!”
It is no wonder the Lord moved so powerfully in Moody’s ministry – and it is not surprising why we often see so little fruit in ours. Oh, that we today would recapture that same passion for prayer – that would lead us to forsake sleep, even food, for the sake of the work of God and the salvation of the lost!
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