Dwight L. Moody (1837 – 1899)
Also known as "D L Moody", was an American evangelist and publisher.
My friends, does God invite you? If He does, why don't you accept the invitation? If you want to come, just come along, and don't be talking about feeling. Do you think Lazarus had any feeling when Christ called him out of the sepulchre?
If Jesus bore the cross, and died on it for me, ought I not to be willing to take it up for Him?
"I have come a hundred miles," said a minister, "to get some of Mr. Moody's spirit." " You don't want my spirit," was the reply. "What you want is the Spirit of God."
"He will reprove the world of sin" —not because men swear and lie and steal and get drunk and murder— "of sin because they believe not on me."
My friends, there is one spot on earth where the fear of Death, of Sin, and of Judgment, need never trouble us, the only safe spot on earth where the sinner can stand — Calvary.
Merely reading the Bible is no use at all without we study it thoroughly, and hunt it through, as it were, for some great truth.
No man ever sought Christ with a heart to find Him who did not find Him.
Verily I say unto you, he that heareth my word and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life." My friend, that is worth more than all the feeling you can have in a life-time.
I firmly believe that the moment our hearts are emptied of pride and selfishness and ambition and self-seeking and every thing that is contrary to God's law, the Holy Ghost will come and fill every corner of our hearts; but if we are full of pride and conceit and ambition and self-seeking and pleasure and the world, there is no room for the Spirit of God; and I believe many a man is praying to God to fill him when he is full already with something else.
From that time Mr. Moody ceased to urge people to begin their religious life by finding something to do for Christ; but insisted that, first of all, they should let Christ do something for them. If they would only believe, Christ would help them to be and to do.
Would you be free from the condemnation of the sins that are past, from the power of the temptations that are to come? Then take your stand on the Rock of Ages. Let death, let the grave, let the judgment come, the victory is Christ's and yours through Him.
Many of the Bible characters fell just in the things in which they were thought to be strongest. Moses failed in his humility, Abraham in his faith, Elijah in his courage, for one woman scared him away to that juniper-tree; and Peter, whose strong point was boldness, was so frightened by a maid, as to deny his Lord.
The last business of Christ's life was the saving of a poor penitent thief.
Christ died for the ungodly. And if you turn to Him at this moment with an honest heart, and receive Him simply as your Saviour and your God, I have the authority of His word for telling you that He will in no wise cast out.
The work of the Spirit is to impart life, to implant hope, to give liberty, to testify of Christ, to guide us into all truth, to teach us all things, to comfort the believer, and to convict the world of sin.
I never yet have known the Spirit of God to work where the Lord's people were divided.
When I read the life of such a man as Paul, how I blush to think how sickly and dwarfed Christianity is at the present time, and how many hundreds there are who never think of working for the Son of God and honoring Christ.
As a dead man cannot inherit an estate, no more can a dead soul inherit heaven. The soul must be resurrected in Christ.
My friends, look to Christ, and not to yourselves. That is what is the matter with a great many sinners; instead of looking to Christ, they are looking at the bite of sin.
Depend upon it, as long as the church is living so much like the world, we cannot expect our children to be brought into the fold.