Prevailing Prayer: What Hinders It?Moody, Dwight Lyman
Religion
Prevailing Prayer: What Hinders It?
Moody, Dwight Lyman
Christian life; Prayer -- Christianity
“I knew how I should be in the morning, thinking, ‘what a fool I was
last night!’ when I would wake up moderately fresh, and go off to
drink again, as I had often done. But again I thought, ‘God can do the
impossible. He will do that which I cannot do myself.’ And I prayed to
the Lord to let me wake up in much the same condition as that in which
I went to bed, feeling the weight of my sins and my misery. Then I
went to sleep. The first thing in the morning, as soon as I remembered
where I was, I thought, ‘Has the conviction left me?’ No; I was more
miserable than before, and--it seemed strange, though it was natural--I
got up, and thanked the Lord because He had kept me anxious about my
soul.
“Have you ever felt like that? Perhaps after some meeting or
conversation with some Christian, or reading the Word of God, you have
gone to your room miserable and ‘almost persuaded.’
“I went on for eight or nine days seeking the Lord. On the Saturday
morning I had to go and tell the clerks. That was hard. I did it with
the tears running down my cheeks. A man does not like to cry before
other men. Anyway, I told them I wanted to become, and meant to
become, a Christian. The Lord helped me with that promise, ‘With God
all things are possible.’
“A sceptic dropped his head, and said nothing. Another fellow, with
whom I played billiards, said, ‘I wish I had the pluck to say so
myself!’ My words were received in a different way from what I thought
they would be. But the very man who had told me that I was killing
myself with drink, spent an hour and a half trying to get me to drink,
saying, that I ‘had the blues, and was out of sorts; and that a glass
of brandy or whisky would do me good.’ He tried to get me to drink; and
I turned upon him at last, and said, ‘You remember what you said to me;
I am trying to get away from drink, and not to touch it again.’ When I
think of that I am reminded of the words of God Himself: ‘The tender
mercies of the wicked are cruel.’
“And now the Lord drew me on until the little thread became a cable,
by which my soul could swing. He drew me nearer; until I found that He
was my Savior. Truly He is ‘able to save to the uttermost all that come
unto God by Him.’
“I must not forget to tell you that I went down before God in my
misery, my helplessness, and my sin, and owned to Him that it was
impossible that I should be saved; that it was impossible for me to
keep clear of drink; but from that night to this moment, I have never
had the slightest desire for drink.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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