Born in the small town of Northfield, Massachusetts, to a humble family of bricklayers and farmers, Dwight Lyman Moody’s prospects were anything but promising. His father passed away when he was only four years old, and out of necessity, Dwight’s mother sent her children away from home to help provide for the family. Once, he was fed only cornmeal and milk for 19 consecutive days, but his mother sent him right back to the family he was staying with to teach him to persevere.

At 17 years of age, this adventurous young man left Massachusetts to work for his uncle, a shoe salesman, in Boston. It was in Boston that Dwight heard and responded to the wonderful gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Little did the Sunday school teacher who spoke with Dwight about the condition of his soul know what a great fire that spark of truth would light in his soul.

Two years later, Dwight left Boston for Chicago. He loved the Lord and also wanted to make a lot of money. His intentions were noble, humanly speaking. He had a widowed mother to take care of, and no doubt believed that with money, he could do a lot of good.

Dwight was shrewd in business, and in Christian work. One of the first things he did after landing a shoe-salesman job was to rent a pew and persuade street boys to attend church. One pew became four, and soon the congregation was complaining about dirty boys filling their church. Eventually, those four pews became 1,500 boys in a Sunday school, in a public hall rented by Dwight and his friends. And that, in turn, grew into the Illinois Street Church, today known as The Moody Church.

It wasn’t long before Dwight Moody left the shoe sales business, and he abandoned his goal to make one hundred thousand dollars in order to serve Christ full time. Moody started a school for boys, and later for girls as well, was significantly involved in the early YMCA movement, and in his lifetime preached to millions of individuals in the U.S. and abroad. His name will be forever remembered as a humble but driven man of God, doing all he could for the sake of the glorious gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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