Lessons Learned from D. L. Moody, pt. 4

Embrace your modest talent and use it!

One of most encouraging things reading about D. L. Moody is his ordinariness. He was a man of modest talent but his great faith and passion for souls pushed him into greater places of influence and usefulness.

Early in his SS ministry, he received an opportunity to speak and afterwards one of the deacons assured him that he would, in his opinion, serve God best by keeping still! “Another critic, who commended his zeal in filling the pews he had hired in Plymouth Church, suggested that he should realize the limitations of his vocation and not attempt to speak in public. ‘You make too many mistakes in grammar,’ the man complained.” He paused and looked at the man searchingly, adding with his own irresistible manner: “Look here, friend, you’ve got grammar enough – what are you doing with it for the master?”[1]

It was true, Moody did not have much of an education under his belt. His speech was riddled with grammatical mistakes – “Moodyisms” as they were called. Sometimes the press would butcher him over it but he would continue in what he was called to do, and in the end they could not argue with his genuineness. Lord Shaftesbury, the Lord Chancellor of England said to him, “The simplicity of that man’s preaching, the clear manner in which he sets forth salvation by Christ, is to me the most striking and most delightful thing I ever knew in my life.”[2]

During one of the evangelistic campaigns in England, the Pall Mall Gazette wrote: “Moody and Sankey are not, it is true, graduates of any university. They are men of the people, speaking the language and using he methods not of the refined, but of the generality. Yet they have probably left a deeper impression of their individuality upon one great section of English men and English women that any other persons who could be named.”[3]

[1] William R. Moody, The Life of Dwight L. Moody, (Sword of the Lord Publishers: Murfreesboro, TN; 1900), p. 61.
[2] Ibid., 241.
[3] Ibid., 304.