If you have ever wondered how a person actually comes to God — not the theory of it, but the plain steps a real soul takes from fear to peace — this little book was written for you. The Way to God and How to Find It is D. L. Moody at his most direct: a working evangelist emptying his pockets of everything he has learned about how sinners find the Saviour. There is no cleverness in it, and that is the point. Moody wanted the way home to be so clearly marked that a child, a doubter, or a dying man could walk it. This study guide maps that way for you, chapter by chapter, so you can read the book with the whole road in view.
What the book is, and what Moody was after
Dwight L. Moody was a Chicago shoe salesman turned evangelist who preached to millions on both sides of the Atlantic in the late nineteenth century. He was not a trained theologian, and he never pretended to be. His gift was to take the great gospel truths — the love of God, the new birth, repentance, faith, assurance — and set them down in words a labourer could grasp before he finished his lunch. Moody gathered the substance of this book from years spent in what he called the inquiry-room: the after-meeting where anxious people came, one by one, asking the oldest question in the world. Acts 16:30 puts it exactly: “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
His aim, then, is not to impress but to guide. He is the friend who has sat with a thousand troubled souls and knows the excuses, the fears, and the false starts by heart. So the book reads less like a treatise and more like a hand on your shoulder, turning you page by page toward Christ. Moody is convinced the trouble is rarely that people cannot understand the gospel; it is that they will not believe God loves them. That conviction shapes the whole book.
“The trouble is that men think God hates them; and so they are all the time running away from Him.”
D. L. Moody
How the book is organized: a plain map of the way
Moody builds the way to God as a sequence, and it helps enormously to see the shape before you begin. The nine chapters move from God’s heart toward us, to our response, to the settled peace that follows.
He opens with the love of God (“Love That Passeth Knowledge”), because he is sure that nothing moves a sinner until he believes he is loved. Ephesians 3:19 supplies his text — to know “the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.” Only then does he turn to the gateway (“The Gateway into the Kingdom”), the new birth of John 3:3: “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Moody calls this doctrine the A B C of the Christian religion and the foundation of every other hope.
Next he sorts every inquirer into the two classes — those who feel no need of a Saviour, and those crying out under conviction of sin. Here he leans on Romans 3:10, “There is none righteous, no, not one,” and Romans 3:23, “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” Then come the words of counsel, a chapter of tender first aid for the anxious, matching each objection to a verse: “I have no strength” meets Romans 5:6; “I cannot see” meets John 8:12.
From there Moody establishes a divine Saviour (Matthew 16:16, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”), presses the necessity of repentance and restitution (Acts 17:30, “God commandeth all men everywhere to repent”), and offers the assurance of salvation that so many converts lack, grounded in 1 John 5:13, “that ye may know that ye have eternal life.” He crowns the sequence with Christ all and in all (Colossians 3:11), and closes with a chapter on backsliding and the road back, resting on Hosea 14:4, “I will heal their backsliding; I will love them freely.”
The central themes
Four threads run through the whole book, and holding them together is the best way to read it.
Love comes first. Moody refuses to begin with wrath. He tells of a Chicago church that hung the words “God is Love” in gas-jets over the pulpit, and of a prodigal who could not shake the sentence until it drew him weeping into the meeting. For Moody, the love of God is not the reward at the end of the way; it is the doorway at the beginning.
The new birth is non-negotiable. He will not let religion, morality, or church membership stand in for it. A man may reform his conduct, he argues, and still be unchanged at the root; what is needed is a new life given by the Spirit, not a better version of the old one. This is why he warns so sharply against leaning on another person’s experience instead of going straight to the Word of God.
Repentance and faith are two sides of one turning. Moody is careful that repentance is not mere sorrow or a bad feeling, but a real turning from sin — and, where possible, restitution for wrong done. Yet he never lets it become a work we perform to earn favour. Faith simply receives what Christ has already done. He loves to remind the anxious that eternal life is a gift, and asks how long it takes to accept a gift: there is a moment when it is not yours, and the next when it is.
Assurance is the believer’s birthright. Moody grieves that so many of God’s people live in doubt, and insists that a Christian unsure of his own salvation is in no state to help anyone else. He wants readers to know, and to rest. And in his final chapter he adds a fourth, quieter theme: recovery. Backsliding is real, he admits, but so is the road back, and he brings the wanderer to Hosea 14:4 with the same tenderness he showed the seeker in chapter one. The love that opened the way also reopens it.
“It is because we have no strength that we need Christ. He has come to give strength to the weak.”
D. L. Moody
Who should read it
This book was made for the person who wants to become a Christian but does not know how — and it has served exactly that reader for well over a century. If you are seeking, Moody meets your objections one at a time and hands you a verse to hold. Romans 6:23 becomes his answer to the man who thinks salvation must be slow: “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
It is equally a handbook for anyone who helps others find faith — a parent, a friend, a small-group leader, a new believer eager to explain the gospel but unsure where to start. Moody is essentially teaching you how he did personal work, and the method still holds. And it is a bracing re-read for the settled Christian who has grown fuzzy on the basics or slipped into the coldness Moody names in his final chapter. Because the book is short and utterly unadorned, it also suits readers who find longer classics daunting; you can finish it in a couple of evenings and come away with the whole gospel in order.
How to read it today
Read it slowly, and with a Bible open beside you. Moody preaches with Scripture in nearly every paragraph, and the book rewards you most when you actually turn to the passages rather than skimming past them. Treat each chapter as one link in a chain: love, new birth, conviction, counsel, the person of Christ, repentance, assurance, fullness, and recovery. If you lose the order, you lose half the argument.
The Victorian voice can feel dated — the “inquiry-room,” the long extracts, the chapter-and-verse citations in old style — but the counsel underneath is timeless, so read for the substance and let the period colour be. Where Moody answers an objection, pause and ask whether it is your own; he is remarkably good at naming the excuse you did not know you were making. Keep a note of the verses he attaches to each fear, because that pairing of need and promise is the book’s most practical gift. It also helps to read the book aloud, or at least to hear it in your mind as spoken; these chapters began as addresses to a crowd, and Moody’s plainness lands harder when you let it be preached to you rather than merely studied.
If the book stirs a hunger for more, read it alongside a companion classic. Charles Spurgeon’s All of Grace makes the same appeal — how a sinner is saved by grace through faith — with Spurgeon’s warmth and a fuller treatment of faith and regeneration. Moody hands you the map; Spurgeon walks a little further down the road with you. Read together, they cover the ground the anxious heart most needs.
“Christ is all to us that we make Him to be.”
D. L. Moody
For reflection
Use these questions on your own or with a group, one per sitting if you like, keeping the relevant chapter open beside you.
- Moody says our deepest trouble is thinking God hates us. Where does that fear still shape the way you approach God, and how does John 3:16 — “God so loved the world” — answer it?
- He calls the new birth the A B C of the Christian faith, not merely reform or religion. In your own words, what is the difference between turning over a new leaf and being born again?
- Which of Moody’s two classes describes you today — the one who feels no need, or the one crying out under conviction — and what would honest repentance look like in your case?
- Moody insists eternal life is a gift to be received, not a wage to be earned (Romans 6:23). Is there some work or worthiness you are still trying to bring to God before you will trust Him?
- If assurance is the believer’s birthright, do you rest in the knowledge of your own salvation? What in this book most helps you toward the settled peace of 1 John 5:13?
Moody would tell you not to close the book here but to act on it. The way to God is not a puzzle to be solved but a Person to be trusted, and he has spent nine chapters clearing the path to Him. Read The Way to God with your Bible open, take the next honest step it shows you, and you will have used it exactly as its author intended.
