Dwight L Moody died at an earlier age of 62, but it is believed that he had preached to over 100 million people. No one would have guessed he would be used by God in such a way. He was born into abject poverty and only had four years of formal schooling. At the age of 10, he had to move out of his home and find work as a farm hand. Moody worked at grinding farm labor until he was seventeen. Wanting to do something more with his life, he moved to Boston. His Christian uncle Holton owned a shoe store so he made a deal with Moody. He would work and live with him, if he would faithfully attend Sunday school and church each week.
Young Moody kept his promise. Dwight heard the gospel story from his Sunday school teacher, Edward Kimball, who one Saturday stopped by Holton’s shoe store where he found Dwight alone. Moody never forgot the day Kimball came behind the counter “and put his hand upon my shoulder, and talked to me about Christ and my soul. I had not felt I had a soul till then.”
Moody stood astounded by the presence of this man who had known him only a few weeks yet wept over his sins. Years later Moody said, “I don’t remember what he said, but I can feel the power of that man’s hand on my shoulder tonight.” After a few months of attending Kimballs Sunday school, Dwight accepted Christ as His Savior. Moody later admitted that he then had a conflict with his own will. Moody said, “I had a terrible battle to surrender my will, and to take God’s will.” “There will be no peace in any soul until it is willing to obey the voice of God.”
In 1856, D. L. Moody moved to Chicago, just in time for a revival. He was in Chicago to make money by selling shoes, but Moody and many other business men found themselves going to prayer meetings at each lunchtime and church services most evenings. Moody began to desire and seek a closer walk with God. He began to work in child evangelism and he would stay up late to go down to the docks of Lake Michigan and witness to sailors who lived, worked, and drank to excess. During one of these nights witnessing to sailors, he met another Christian man doing the same thing. He was twice his age, but he took Moody under his wing and taught him how to study the Bible. He showing him a concordance and a Bible dictonary, and explained how to use them.
At the beginning of the Civil War in April 1861, Moody increased his evangelistic work for the poorest street children. No one really knew how to help tame and teach destitute children on the streets of Chicago, but God had prepared Moody because he had been a fatherless and homeless child himself. As his ministries grew, his business grew. He became very successful, but gradually turned to full time ministry. When people asked how he could give up such a lucrative business, he would say, “I am working for Jesus Christ.”
As the years progressed, Moody took on new ministries, married his wife who he met in children ministries, and started preaching in various venues. He refused to fight in the American Civil War, but would go and preach to the soldiers at Camp Douglas. These ministries prepared him for many evangelistic meetings all over the world.
After meeting and recruiting his song leader, Ira Sankey, he quickly became a world-renowned revivalist preacher. When asked how he did it, Moody is recorded as saying, “I know perfectly well that, wherever I go and preach, there are many better preachers… than I am; all that I can say about it is that the Lord uses me.”
Moody was criticized as uncouth and as having bad grammar, but he was a man of prayer and God used him.
Moody once said, “There are many of us that are willing to do great things for the Lord, but few of us are willing to do little things.” He started in the “little” ministries on the docks witnessing to sailors at night and ended up preaching to over 100 million people by the end of his life.
Of all this, Moody stated, “There is no greater honour than to be the instrument in God’s hands of leading one person out of the kingdom of Satan into the glorious light of Heaven.”