Conquering the Fear of Death
Friends, I encourage you to read about DL Moody. This little biography was a great start - short and concise, but very powerful. Start reading about him online. You'll find much gold there!
Dwight L. Moody's Profound Test of Faith on a Sinking Ship
I want to share one last little story from the book. On his way home from a very successful mission trip in England, Moody says he was congratulating himself on his good fortune, lying around at sea as the big ship went back to the States. Suddenly there was a big crash and the ship, it seemed, began to sink. The people were in the most utter panic and so Moody clasped a nearby pillar and steadied himself and began to read the 91st Psalm. And he said it became a new Psalm to him from that hour.
He said this: “I was passing through new experience. I had thought myself superior to the fear of death. I'd often preached on the subject and urged Christians to realize this victory of faith. But on the sinking ship, it was different. There was no cloud between my soul and my Savior. I knew my sins had been put away and that if I died there, it would only be to wake up in heaven. That was all settled long ago. But as my thoughts went out to my loved ones at home, my wife and children, friends, the schools and all the things so dear to me, and as I realized that perhaps the next hour would separate me forever from all these, so far as the world was concerned, I confess it almost broke me down. It was the darkest hour of my life.”
And so he says, “I couldn't endure it. I must have relief! And relief came in prayer. God heard my cry and enabled me to say from the depths of my soul, ‘Thy will be done.’ I went to bed and almost immediately fell asleep and never slept more soundly in all my life. Out of the depths, I cried unto the Lord and he heard me and delivered me from my fears. I can no more doubt that God gave answer to my prayer for relief then I can doubt my own existence.”
Embracing Faith and Overcoming the Fear of Death: Lessons from DL Moody
Turns out the ship was okay, and it didn't sink. But I wonder if you and I have a similar thing. We in our minds know that we are okay with God. If we were to die, it would be fine. And yet the thought of death and the thought of leaving behind our loved ones and the things that we've lived for on earth terrifies us. If that's the case I hope that we can pray, pray, pray. And that if that moment comes, we will be able to spend it in prayer and cry out to God from the depths and find the same assurance and deliverance of fear that Moody found.
Let me close by sharing perhaps his most famous quote, which is about death. Hear these words and may we have the same spirit. He said, “Someday you will read in the papers that DL 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. I shall have gone up higher, that is, gone out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal - a body that death cannot touch, that sin cannot taint a body, like unto his own glorious body. I was born of the flesh in 1837. I was born of the spirit in 1855. That which is born of the flesh may die, but that which is born of the spirit will live forever.”
That's the type of man he was made to be a type of people. We are to my friends. Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting this ministry. God bless you all.
