Sometimes,
ofttimes, God's messenger is home influence. Did you ever hear Mr. Torrey,
the evangelist, tell what an awful unbeliever he was when he was a young man
-- how he went to the deepest depths of infidelity and scorned everything,
the Bible, Christ, God, heaven, hell, immortality, everything like that? And
his dear mother yearned after him and loved him, and pleaded with him and
prayed for him, and after a while he said to his mother: "I am tired of
it all and I am going to leave and not bother you any more, and you will not
see me any more; I am tired of it all." |
She
followed him to the door, and followed him to the gate, pleading and praying and
loving and weeping, and then at last she said as her final word: "Son
when you come to the darkest hour of all and everything seems lost and gone,
if you will honestly call on your mother's God you will get help." He
went his way in his darksome and terrible infidelity. |
Deeper
down he went, day in and out, month in and out. The months went by, and he
was four hundred and twenty-seven miles from his mother's home in a hotel in
a certain town, unable to sleep, wearied with his sins and wearied with life,
and he at last rose up in the early morning and said: "I will get out of
this bed and I will take the gun there from my valise and I will put it to my
temple and I will end this farce called human life." As he got out of
bed to do that dreadful thing, the last words that his mother had said came
back to him: "Son when your darkest hour of all comes and everything
seems lost, call in sincerity on your mother's God and you will get
help." |
Torrey
said he fell beside his bed and said: "Oh, God of my mother, if there is
such a Being, I want light, and if Thou wilt give it, no matter how, I will
follow it." He had light within a few moments, and hastened back home.
To follow the story just a moment more, he said that when he got back home,
thinking he would surprise his mother and come upon her unexpectedly she came
down the walk to the gate laughing and crying with uncontrollable joy and
said: "Oh my boy I know why you are coming back, and I know what you
have to tell. You have found the Lord. God has told me so." |
Oh, the
power of a mother's prayer! Oh, the power of a father's prayer, the power of
a brother's prayer, a sister's prayer! Oh, the power of a wife's prayer, when
she links herself with God! Many a time, God's good angel to bring one back
from the darksome and downward way, is somebody's prayer who says:
"Lord, spare this soul a little longer. Give this soul a little more
respite, a little more time." Prayer, how mighty it is before God when
it is sincerely offered. -- |
George W.
Truett |
|
From:
2700-PLUS SERMON ILLUSTRATIONS By Duane V. Maxey |