Torrey's conversion

 

 

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

 

 

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