Courageous Christians by Joyce Vollmer Brown

Author:Joyce Vollmer Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Published: 2010-11-24T00:00:00+00:00

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While growing up, Dwight L. Moody seemed a highly unlikely choice to become the greatest traveling preacher of the nineteenth century. He was a poor, uneducated farm boy. His father died when he was four, and Dwight quit school after the fifth grade.

He wasn't interested in farming. He left his home in his teens and headed to Boston where he sold shoes in his uncle's store. Although he came from a Christian home, Dwight wasn't interested in religion, either. He attended church but only because his uncle made him go.

One day Dwight's Sunday school teacher came to the shoe store. The man told him that Christ loved him and wanted his love in return. He urged Dwight to give his heart to Christ. He did, and his life was never the same.

Dwight Moody was so excited about his faith that he couldn't keep it to himself. As he studied the Bible and grew spiritually, he started telling what he had learned at his church's weekly prayer meetings. Unfortunately, some of the educated people there didn't like his poor grammar, folksy stories, and loud way of talking. Realizing that he didn't “fit in” in Boston, he moved to Chicago.

There he became so successful selling shoes that he set a goal to make $100,000. That was a fortune in the 1850s. In the meantime, he used his free time to go to the poorest part of town and invite children to his Sunday school class at a nearby mission. Like a happy uncle, he gave them rides on his pony and handed out candy and inexpensive gifts. His love drew boys and girls like a magnet, and his Sunday school grew from twelve students to fifteen hundred. Along the way he added more and more teachers and found bigger and bigger buildings to hold classes.

His life goal changed when one of his Sunday school teachers told him he was moving away because he was dying. Before the man left, he wanted Dwight to go with him to visit each of the girls from his class to ask them to accept Jesus. Every girl they called on that night asked Christ into her life. After that, Dwight no longer cared about selling shoes or making money. He wanted to spend all of his time being a missionary to Chicago.

He served the Lord with energy and enthusiasm. He told people on the streets about God. He led prayer meetings for the newly organized YMCA. He raised money to build the world's first YMCA building. The Sunday school he started grew into a church that later became known as Moody Memorial Church. During the Civil War, he was a chaplain to the soldiers. He also married a lovely Christian woman named Emma Revell.

When Emma became ill, a doctor suggested that he take her to England. While they were there, he went to a prayer meeting where a speaker said,“The world has yet to see what God can do with one man wholly committed to Him.

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