Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations By Dwight L. Moody
T TRUST. "I Am Trusting Jesus"--A Young Lady's Trust. The other Sunday, when I was speaking on "Trust," a person came to me next day and said, "I want to tell you how I was saved. You remember you told about that lady who sought Christ three years and could not find Him, and when you told that, it was I. I was in that same condition and through your story I got light." I don't think I have ever told it but what somebody got light and life. I will tell it again, for I would go up and down the world telling it if I could get a convert. One night I was preaching, and happening to cast my eyes down during the sermon, I saw two eyes just riveted upon me. Every word that fell from my lips she just seemed to catch with her own lips, and I was very anxious to go down where she was. After the Sermon I went to the pew and said, "My friend, are you a Christian?" "Oh, no," said she, "I wish I was. I have been seeking Christ three years and I cannot find Him." Said I; "Oh, there is a great mistake about that." Says she, "'Do you think I am not in earnest? Do you think, sir, I have not been seeking Christ?" Said I, "I suppose you think you have, but Christ has been seeking you these twenty years, and it would not take an anxious sinner and an anxious Saviour three years to meet, and if you had been really seeking Him you would have found Him long before this." "What would you do, then?" Said I, "Do nothing, only believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved." "Oh," said she, "I have heard that till my head swims. Everybody says, believe! believe! believe! and I am none the wiser. I don't know what you mean by it." "Very well," said I, "I will drop the word; but just trust the Lord Jesus Christ to save." "If I say I trust Him, will He save me?" "No, you may do a thousand things; but if you really trust Him, He will save you." "Well," said she, "I trust Him, but I don't feel any different." "Ah," said I, "I have found your difficulty. You have been hunting for feeling all these three years. You have not been looking for Christ." Says she, "Christians tell how much joy they have got." "But," said I, "you want Christian experience before you get one. Instead of trusting God, you are looking for Christian experience." Then I said: "Right here in this pew, just commit yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ, and trust Him, and you will be saved," and I held her right to that word "trust," which is the same as the word "believe" in the Old Testament. "You know what it is to trust a friend. Cannot you trust God as a friend?" She looked at me for five minutes, it seemed, and then said slowly: "Mr. Moody, I trust the Lord Jesus Christ this night to save my soul." Turning to the pastor of the church she took him by the hand and repeated the declaration. Turning to an elder in the church she said again the solemn words, and near the door, meeting another officer of the church, she repeated for the fourth time, "I am trusting Jesus," and went off home. The next night when I was preaching I saw her right in front of me, "Eternity" written in her eyes, her face lighted up, and when I asked inquirers to go into the other room she was the first to go in. I wondered at it, for I could see by her face that she was in the joy of the Lord. But when I got in I found her with her arms around a young lady's neck, and I heard her say, "It is only just trusting. I stumbled over it three years and found it all in trusting;" and the three weeks I was there she led more souls to Christ than anybody else. If I got a difficult case I would send it to her. Oh, my friends, won't you trust Him? Let us put our trust in Him. Mrs. Moody Teaching her Child. There was a time when our little boy did not like to go to church, and would get up in the morning and say to his mother, "What day is to-morrow?" "Tuesday." "Next day?" "Wednesday." "Next day?" "Thursday;" and so on, till he came to the answer, "Sunday." "Dear me," he said. I said to the mother, "We cannot have our boy grow up to hate Sunday in this way; that will never do. That is the way I used to feel when I was a boy. I used to look upon Sunday with a certain amount of dread. Very few kind words were associated with the day. I don't know that the minister ever put his hand on my head. I don't know that the minister even noticed me, unless it was when I was asleep in the gallery, and he woke me up. This kind of thing won't do; we must make the Sunday the most attractive day of the week; not a day to be dreaded; but a day of pleasure." Well the mother took the work up with this boy. Bless those mothers in their work with the children. Sometimes I feel as if I would rather be the mother of John Wesley or Martin Luther or John Knox than have all the glories in the world. Those mothers who are faithful with the children God has given them will not go unrewarded. My wife went to work and took those Bible stories and put those blessed truths in a light that the child could comprehend, and soon the feeling of dread for the Sabbath with the boy was the other way, "What day's to-morrow?" he would ask, "Sunday." "I am glad." And if we make those Bible truths interesting--break them up in some shape so that these children can get at them, then they will begin to enjoy them.