Quiet Talks on PrayerGordon, S. D. (Samuel Dickey)
Religion
Quiet Talks on Prayer
Gordon, S. D. (Samuel Dickey)
Prayer -- Christianity
They went to the lower room. And the people came crowding, jamming in
below, filling all available space, seats, aisles and standing room. Mr.
Moody talked again a few minutes, and then asked those who would be
Christians to rise. This time he knew he had made his meaning clear. They
got up in clumps, in groups, by fifties! Mr. Moody said, "I turned and
said to the minister, 'What _does_ this mean?' He said, 'I'm sure I don't
know.'" Then the minister said to Mr. Moody, "What'll I do with these
people? I don't know what to do with them; this is something new." And he
said, "Well. I'd announce a meeting for to-morrow night, and Tuesday
night, and see what comes of it; I'm going across the channel to Dublin."
And he went, but he had barely stepped off the boat when a cablegram was
handed him from the minister saying, "Come back at once. Church packed."
So he went back, and stayed ten days. And the result of that ten days, as
I recall Mr. Moody's words, was that four hundred were added to that
church, and that every church near by felt the impulse of those ten days.
Then Mr. Moody dropped his head, as though thinking back, and said: "I had
no plans beyond this church. I supposed my life work was here. But the
result with me was that I was given a roving commission and have been
working under it ever since."
Now what was the explanation of that marvellous Sunday and days following?
It was not Mr. Moody's doing, though he was a leader whom God could and
did mightily use. It was not the minister's doing; for he was as greatly
surprised as the leader. There was some secret hidden beneath the surface
of those ten days. With his usual keenness Mr. Moody set himself to ferret
it out.
By and by this incident came to him. A member of the church, a woman, had
been taken sick some time before. Then she grew worse. Then the physician
told her that she would not recover. That is, she would not die at once,
so far as he could judge, but she would be shut in her home for years.
And she lay there trying to think what that meant: to be shut in for
years. And she thought of her life, and said, "How little I've done for
God: practically nothing: and now what can I do shut in here on my back."
And she said, "I can pray."
May I put this word in here as a parenthesis in the story--that God
oftentimes allows us to be shut in--He does not shut us in--He does not
need to--simply take His hand off partly--there is enough disobedience to
His law of our bodies all the time to shut us aside--no trouble on that
side of the problem--_with pain to Himself_, against His own first will
for us, He allows us to be shut in, because only so _can_ He get our
attention from other things to what He wants done; get us to see things,
and think things His way. I am compelled to think it is so.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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