Dwight L Moody Quotes

Character is what you are in the dark.

The Bible will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from the Bible.

Faith makes all things possible. Love makes them easy.

We can stand affliction better than we can prosperity, for in prosperity we forget God.

God never made a promise that was too good to be true.

No one can sum up all God is able to accomplish through one solitary life, wholly yielded, adjusted, and obedient to Him.

Falsehoods not only disagree with truth, but usually quarell among themselves.

There has never been a time in my life when I felt that I could take a gun and shoot down a fellow-being. In this respect I am a Quaker.

I have had more trouble with myself than with any other man I have ever met!

That, at least, is the vision of the church in the New Testament: a colony of heaven in a hostile world. Dwight L. Moody said, “Of one hundred men, one will read the Bible; the ninety-nine will read the Christian.

If I wanted to find out whether a man was a Christian, I wouldn’t go to his minister. I would go and ask his wife. We need more Christian life at home. If a man doesn’t treat his wife right, I don’t want to hear him talk about Christianity.

Sometimes, when your child talks, your friends cannot understand what he says; but the mother understands very well. So if our prayer comes right from the heart, God understands our language.

My experience is that those who pray most in their closets generally make short prayers in public.

God doesn’t seek for golden vessels, and does not ask for silver ones, but He must have clean ones.

Humility consists not in thinking poorly of ourselves but in not thinking of ourselves at all.

The great preacher Dwight Moody once quipped, “Some day you will read in the papers that D. L. Moody, of East Northfield, is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now.”1

If I could relive my life, I would devote my entire ministry to reaching children for God.

Each of us was meant to be an original, but most of us die merely a copy. Anyone who discovers who God made him or her to be would never want to be anyone else.

I was born of the flesh in 1837. I was born of the Spirit in 1856

Too often we knock at mercy’s door, and then run away, instead of waiting for an entrance and an answer.

I think we shall find a great many of our prayers that we thought unanswered answered when we get to heaven

I once read these words on a tombstone: “Born, died, kept.” Let us pray God to keep us in perfect peace, and assured of salvation.

The world does not understand theology and dogma, but it understands love and sympathy.

Notice that all those who have made a deep impression on the world, and have shone most brightly have been men who lived in a dark day.

Only a man who can govern himself is fit to govern other men.

If I wanted to find out whether a man was a Christian, I wouldn’t go to his minister. I would go and ask his wife.

If we have done wrong to some one, we should never ask God to forgive us until we are willing to make restitution.

Fiery trials make golden Christians; sanctified afflictions are spiritual promotions.

God in heaven will hear your prayers, and will answer them. He has never failed, if a man has been honest in his petitions and honest in his confessions. Let your faith beget patience.

drunkards need anyone to condemn them? There is no one in the wide world who can condemn them as they condemn themselves. What they need is sympathy − tenderness, gentleness, and kindness.

A man can preach the truth. He can be perfectly sound in doctrine, but if there is no love in his heart going out to those whom he addresses, and if he is doing it only professionally, the apostle says he is only sounding brass.

Character is what a man is in the dark

Unconfessed sin in the soul is like a bullet in the body.

It is the people who never open their Bibles and never study the Scriptures who become offended and discouraged and wonder why they are having such a hard time.

Prayer was appointed to convey The blessings God designs to give; Long as they live should Christians pray, For only while they pray they live.

But no one can be a true worker for God and a successful winner of souls without love.

I have often said that if I had to convict men of sin I would have given up the work long ago. That is the work of the Holy Ghost. What we have to do is to scatter the good seed of the Word, and expect that God will bless it to the saving of men’s souls.

Faith has no desire to have its own will, when that will is not in accordance with the mind of God; for such a desire would at bottom be the impulse of an unbelief which did not rely upon God’s judgment as our best guide. Faith knows that God’s will is the highest good, and that anything which is beneficial to us will be granted to our petitions.

When I pray, I talk to God, but when I read the Bible, God is talking to me; and it is really more important that God should speak to me than that I should speak to Him.

A great many men are kept out of the Kingdom of God because they are looking for somebody else's experience.

A man isn’t worth much in battle if he has any doubt about his weapon,

Faith is taking God at His Word;

The more you love the Scriptures, the stronger your faith will be. There is little backsliding when people love the Scriptures.

Do all the good you can; to all the people you can; in all the ways you can; and as long as ever you can.

A great many people are trying to make peace, but that has already been done. God has not left it for us to do; all we have to do is enter into it.

If I take care if my character, my reputation will take care of itself.

It is a great thing for a boy or girl to know how to handle the Bible. What is an army good for if the soldiers don’t know how to handle their weapons?

Every temptation you overcome makes you stronger to overcome others, while every temptation that defeats you makes you weaker.

This earth, if we are Christians, is not our home; it is up yonder. God has sent us into the world to shine for Him—to light up this dark world.

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my way. (Psalm 119:105)

When I pray, I talk to God, but when I read the Bible, God is talking to me;

As some one has said, God kissed away his soul, and took him home to Himself. “God buried him”—the greatest honor ever paid to mortal man.

If we love the Lord Jesus Christ the burden of our hearts will be that God may bring us closer together, so that we may love one another and rise above all party feeling.

Nothing will silence infidels so quickly as Christians everywhere being united.

The only true, happy Christian is one that is growing, constantly growing in the love and favor of God, growing in all those delightful graces of the Spirit.

There are natives in Central Africa who never dreamed that they were dark-skinned until they saw the face of a white man.

Conscience is a divinely implanted ability in man, telling him that he ought to do right.

To do that, we must be clear and right before God. “For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.

If you cannot come as a saint, come as a sinner. Only come!

Let others praise you. Don’t praise yourself. If we want God to lift us up, let us get down. The lower we get, the higher God will lift us.

If you have so much business to attend to that you have no time to pray, you have more business than God ever intended you to have.

When the church, the pulpit, and the pew get united, and God’s people are all of one mind, Christianity is like a red-hot ball rolling over the earth, and all the hosts of death and hell cannot stand before it.

If you are strong-headed, read about Moses and Peter. If you lack courage, look at Elijah. If there is no song in your heart, listen to David. If you are a politician, read Daniel. If you are morally corrupt, read Isaiah. If your heart is cold, read of the beloved disciple, John. If your faith is low, read Paul. If you are getting lazy, learn from James. If you are losing sight of the future, read in Revelation of the Promised Land.

If a man neglects his Bible, he may pray and ask God to use him in His work, but God cannot use him, for there is not much for the Holy Spirit to work upon. We must have the Word itself, which is sharper than any two-edged sword.

As I said before, love is the key that will unlock every human heart. No man or woman in all this land is so low and so degraded that you can’t reach them with love, gentleness, and kindness. It may take years, but it can be done.

I expect to pass through this world but once. If, therefore, if there be any kindness I can show or any good thing I can do to any fellow human being let me do it now; let me not defer nor neglect it, for I will not pass this way again.

I would not give much for a man’s Christianity if he is saved himself and is not willing to try and save others. It seems to me the basest ingratitude if we do not reach out the hand to others who are down in the same pit from which we were delivered.

A man who steals my pocketbook loses much more than I do. I can afford to let him have my pocketbook more than he can afford to take it. Consider how much he loses. Perhaps he will get a few dollars, or he may steal my coat, but he does not get much. See how much he has lost. Take an inventory of what that man loses if he loses heaven. Think of it. No thief shall inherit the kingdom of God.

If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” Now in the fourth chapter of James, in the third verse, we find some spoken of whose prayers were not answered: “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss.” There are a great many prayers not answered because there is not the right motive; we have not complied with the Word of God; we ask amiss.

About 1,500 gathered for two hours of lively, focused prayer. Later, I asked Pastor Jim Cymbala why so many were attending the Brooklyn Tab prayer meetings when many other churches have cancelled their prayer meetings for lack of interest. He answered, “You would also have a full church on prayer meeting night if your people actually believed that God answers prayer!” If we actually believed God answers prayer!

No, not despairingly Come I to Thee; No, not distrustingly Bend I the knee; Sin hath gone over me, Yet is this still my plea, Jesus hath died. Ah, mine iniquity Crimson has been; Infinite, infinite, Sin upon sin; Sin of not loving Thee, Sin of not trusting Thee. Infinite sin. Lord, I confess to Thee Sadly my sin; All I am, tell I Thee, All I have been. Purge Thou my sin away, Wash Thou my soul this day; Lord, make me clean!

His favorite instrument of speech was the Story, as was the case also with His Master. He did not push the mind; he illuminated the heart. He was shrewd enough to see that not one man in a thousand ever changed his opinion because of reason or logic… With his naïve stories he slipped around behind the stubborn intellect, flanked the line of doubts and occupied the heart. He was a great general. When you capture a man’s heart, his intellect comes in the next day and surrenders.

Individualism, relationalism, and antistructuralism have built renowned and racially homogenous ministries, but these have been cold comfort to those members of the body of Christ who exist outside the boundaries of racial whiteness. If white Christians are to reckon with racial discipleship, we must also look critically at the deeply held assumptions that have thus far hindered our attempts to address racial segregation and injustice. While it’s been over a hundred years since Ida B. Wells and Dwight L. Moody overlapped in Chicago, the dynamic they illustrate continues today. In the current cultural moment, black Christians are fighting for more equitable criminal justice policies, immigrant churches are advocating for policies that don’t separate asylum-seeking parents from their children, and Native American believers are lamenting as ancient tribal lands are being polluted by oil pipelines. At the same time, there are prominent white Christians publicly debating whether justice, from a biblical vantage point, can ever be social. Some of these leaders wonder whether justice can even be considered Christian when not limited to an individual. As disheartening as this divide is between white Christianity and many Christians of color, white Christianity’s tools help us to see why we haven’t been able to move past it.

Behold, we go up to Jerusalem. Matt. xx. 18. Never had there been such a going up to Jerusalem as that which Jesus here proposes to His disciples. He goes up voluntarily. The act was not enforced by any external compulsion. Jerusalem might at this time have been avoided. It was deliberately sought. It was a going up to a triumph to be reached through defeat, a coronation to be attained through ignominy and humiliation. O believer, in your walk through the world today, be strengthened, be comforted, be inspired, by the spectacle of the Captain of your salvation thus going up to Jerusalem! And remember, in all those apparently downward passages of your life, where sorrow, and it may be death, lie before you, that all such descents, made or endured in the Spirit of Jesus, are really upgoing steps, leading you to the mount of God and the resurrection glory.

What people have I read about, and what have I learned about them? What places have I read about, and what have I learned about them? If the place is not mentioned, can I find out where it is? Do I know its position on the map? Does the passage refer to any particular time in the history of the children of Israel, or of some leading character? Can I tell from memory what I have just been reading? Are there any parallel passages or texts that throw light on this passage? Have I read anything about God the Father, or about Jesus Christ, or about the Holy Spirit? What have I read about myself, about man’s sinful nature, or about the spiritual new nature? Is there any duty for me to observe? Any example to follow? Any promise to lay hold of? Any exhortation for my guidance? Any prayer that I may pray? How is this Scripture profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness? Does the passage of Scripture contain the gospel? Is there a main verse of the chapter or passage? Can I repeat it from memory?

A man stood up in one of our meetings and said he hoped to get enough out of the series of meetings to last him all his life. I told him he might as well try to eat enough breakfast at one time to last him his lifetime. That is a mistake that people are making; they are running to religious meetings and thinking the meetings are going to do the work. But if these don’t bring you into closer contact with the Word of God, the whole impression will be gone in three months. The more you love the Scriptures, the stronger your faith will be. There is little backsliding when people love the Scriptures.

God drives His plowshare through cities, and they are upheaved like furrows in the field.

LEARN OF ME, for I am meek and lowly in heart” (Matthew 11:29). There is no harder lesson to learn than the lesson of humility. It is not taught in the schools of men, only in the schools of Christ. It is the rarest of all the gifts. Very rarely do we find a man or woman who is following closely the footsteps of the Master in meekness and in humility. I believe that it is the hardest lesson that Jesus Christ had to teach His disciples while He was here upon earth. It almost looked at first as though He had failed to teach it to the twelve men who had been with Him almost constantly for three years.

Those who love Your law have great peace, and nothing causes

his native country and to go out, not knowing where he was to go. While others were busy building up Babylon, God called this man out of that nation of the Chaldeans. He lived down near the mouth of the Euphrates, maybe three hundred miles south of Babylon, when he was called to go into a land that he perhaps had never heard of before, and he was told to possess that land. In the twelfth chapter of Genesis we read of

five years old when he departed out of Haran. (Genesis 12:1-4) God had first told Abram to leave Ur of the Chaldees several years before this.[1] He went to Haran, which is about halfway between the valley of the Euphrates and the valley of the Jordan. God had called him into the land of the Canaanites, and he went halfway and stayed there. We do not know how long he stayed there, but it was probably about five years. I believe there are a great many Christians who

In the gospel of John, we read that at the tomb of Lazarus, our Lord said to His disciples, Take ye away the stone (John 11:39). Before the act of raising Lazarus could be performed, the disciples had their part to do. Christ could have removed the stone with a word and easily commanded it to roll away. It would have obeyed His voice, like the dead Lazarus did when He called him back to life. But the Lord wants His children to learn this lesson: They have something to do towards raising the spiritually dead. The disciples not only had to take away the stone, but after Christ raised Lazarus they were told to also loose him, and let him go (John 11:44). Consider this question: how often are people converted without God using some human instrument in some way? God could easily convert all men without us, but that isn’t His way. The stone I want to talk about is a stone that must be rolled away before any great work of God can be accomplished. It is the wretched stone of prejudice. Many people have a huge prejudice against revivals. They hate the very word. And I am sorry to say this feeling isn’t confined to the ungodly or people who couldn’t care less. The truth is, there happens to be quite a few Christians who seem to hold a strong dislike both toward the word revival and to the event itself.

Wealth to most men proves nothing more or less than a great rock upon which their eternity is wrecked.

is not by eloquent sermons that perishing souls are going to be reached; we need the power of God in order that the blessing may come down.

If we read the Word and do not pray, we may become puffed up with knowledge, without the love that builds others up. If we pray without reading the Word, we will be ignorant of the mind and will of God, and become mystical and fanatical, and liable to be blown around by every wind of doctrine.

Charles Finney, in his lectures to professing Christians, said, “One reason for the requirement, ‘Be not conformed to this world,’ is the immense, salutary, and instantaneous influence it would have, if everybody would do business on the principles of the gospel.” Finney suggested we turn the tables over and let Christians do business on gospel principles for one year.

Satan thought he accomplished a great deal when he shut Bunyan up for twelve years and six months, but what a blessing it was to the world.

Oh, he is a fanatic,” they say. “He has gone mad.” I wish the world were filled with such fanatics. I tell you that what we want today is a few fanatics like him – men who fear nothing but sin and love no one but God.

It is dishonoring to God to go on hoping and only hoping that we “will be” saved.

The fiercest attacks are made on the strongest forts.

For we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). The most immature Christians I know are those who want to walk by sight. They want to see how a thing is going to come out. That isn’t walking by faith at all. That’s walking by sight.

When you get angry next time and speak unkindly to a person and realize it, go and ask that person to forgive you. You won’t get mad with that person for the next twenty-four hours. You might do it in about forty-eight hours, but go the second time. After you’ve done that about half a dozen times, you’ll change your behavior, because apologizing makes the old flesh burn.

A wealthy farmer in New York, who was known for hoarding his wealth and being a very selfish man, was converted. Soon after his conversion, a poor man came to him and asked for help. He had lost everything and had no provisions. This young convert thought he would be generous and give him a ham from his smokehouse. He started toward the smokehouse, and on the way, the tempter said, “Give him the smallest one you have.” He struggled all the way to the smokehouse as to whether he would give a large or a small one. In order to overcome his selfishness, he took down the biggest ham he had and gave it to the man. The tempter said, “You’re a fool.” But he replied, “If you don’t keep silent, I’ll give him every ham I have in the smokehouse.” If you find that you are selfish, give something away. Determine to overcome that spirit of selfishness and to keep your body under, no matter what it may cost.

Daniel thought more of his principles than he did of earthly honor or the esteem of men. Right was right with him. He was going to do right that day and let the tomorrows take care of themselves. That firmness of purpose in the strength of God was the secret of his success. Right there, that very moment, he overcame. And from that hour, from that moment, he could go on conquering and to conquer, because he had started right.

Character is worth more than anything else in the whole wide world.

It was no trouble when God came on the scene.

if you really want to come back, God accepts the willing mind, God will hear your prayer, and answer.

If you find that you are selfish, give something. Determine to overcome that spirit of selfishness.

So let’s not be discouraged. Instead, let’s use all these wonderful opportunities and honor God by expecting great things. If we do, we won’t be disappointed.

If you will take your stand for God, even if you stand alone, it will not be very long before you will get other men to stand with you.