Saturday, November 10, 2012

November 11, 2012

"Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will." Romans 12:1-2
 
D. L. Moody is a great example of what can happen when a man commits to partner with God. One plus one may equal two in the realm of mathematics. But when one man with His God it doesn’t double, it multiplies. And not only does it multiply but it compounds!

Moody was born in a very poor New England family in 1837. They were already poor when his father died at the age of 41 their creditors came and took all they had except the clothes on their backs. They even took the fire wood stacked behind the house. When their mother took them to church and S.S., they were so poor she didn’t want to wear out their shoes and socks so she would have them go barefoot and carry their shoes and socks until they got within sight of the church when they would put them on and go into church.
 
When he was old enough, Moody landed a job as a shoe salesman and became one of the top shoe salesman on the East Coast. He became friends with a fellow shoe salesman by the name of Edward Kimball. Kimball was a Christian who often witnessed to Moody. One day, Kimball led Moody to the Lord in a back room of the shoe store.
 
Soon after becoming converted, Moody came across a quote by Henry Varley that challenged him and profoundly changed his life. The quote was, “The world is yet to see what God will do with, for, through, in and by a man fully consecrated to Him.” Moody decided he wanted to be that man, so after being denied membership in his local church who considered him too unpolished, he recruited 18 rowdies off the street and began teaching a Bible class with them. Two years later that class had grown to 1,500!
 
During his lifetime this rough, raw and unpolished man shared the gospel with 100,000,000 people!
 
In the case of D.L. Moody ONE + one equaled 100 million when he partnered with God. But that was not the full extent of the partnership with God. What began with a shoe salesman who dared to partner with God and share his faith with a co-worker in the back of a shoe store didn't end there:
 
·         Sunday School teacher Edward Kimball lead Dwight L. Moody to Christ;

·         J. Wilbur Chapman was converted at a D. L. Moody evangelistic meeting;re

·         Billy Sunday was converted at a Chapman meeting;

·         Mordecai Ham was converted at Billy Sunday meeting;

·         and Billy Graham was converted at a Ham meeting.

 
On December 22, 1899, the evangelist D. L. Moody lay dying. His first job had been as a shoe clerk in Boston, gathering eighteen ragged boys off the street to organize a Sunday school class. In two years the class had grown to fifteen hundred. In his lifetime Moody was to take two continents in his hands and shake them for God. As he died, he left this epitaph written on the flyleaf of his Bible, “If God be your partner, make your plans big."
 
What big thing could you partner with God  for if you were fully consecrated to Him?