Wholly Consecrated

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. ROMANS 12:1

Almost every account of Moody’s life includes a sentence he heard in Britain in 1867. The evangelist Henry Varley remarked, as the story is usually told, that the world had yet to see what God would do with and through a man fully consecrated to Him. Moody went away turning it over. It was not, he reflected, a great man that was needed, or a learned one, or an eloquent one. It was simply a man wholly given to God. And he resolved, by God’s grace, to be that man.

Whether the words were exactly as the story remembers them matters less than what they did. They gave Moody a lifelong conviction that the limit on God’s work is not God’s power, nor the size of the task, nor the gifts of the worker, but the degree to which the worker is surrendered.

For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. 2 CHRONICLES 16:9

Not great, but given

This was good news for a man like Moody. He knew he was not great or learned or eloquent. He had seen more gifted men achieve less. What he had to offer was himself, and Varley’s remark told him that this was what God wanted.

It is good news for most of us too. The Bible is full of people God used not because of their gifts but in spite of their lack of them. Moses said he was slow of speech. Gideon said he was the least in his father’s house. When the council saw that Peter and John were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus (Acts 4:13).

Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God. 2 CORINTHIANS 3:5

Moody had a phrase for it in The Way to God: “Real true faith is man’s weakness leaning on God’s strength.” The trouble, he adds, is that we have too much strength and confidence in ourselves.

Everything on the altar

What does consecration mean in practice? For Moody, it meant first the giving up of his own plans. In 1860 he left a promising business and the hope of a fortune to give his whole time to Christian work, with no salary and no guarantee. He did it again in smaller ways all his life.

It meant, second, giving up whatever stood between the soul and God. In The Way to God he tells of a friend who, after coming to Christ, wanted to consecrate himself and his wealth to God, but found that God would not seem to take it. His conscience kept reminding him of an old dishonest transaction with the government. Only when he had sent back what he had taken did he find peace and blessing. Consecration is not a grand gesture made over the top of unconfessed sin. It is the laying of everything on the altar, including the things we would rather keep hidden.

What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s. 1 CORINTHIANS 6:19–20

Confessing and following

Consecration also meant, for Moody, being openly on Christ’s side. In his sermon on the eight I wills of Christ he dwells on the promise to those who confess Him before men. He had known many Christians grope in darkness for years because they were ashamed to confess the Son of God. “Don’t be ashamed, Christians, to let your friends, and even your enemies, know that you are on God’s side.”

Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. MATTHEW 10:32

And it meant service. The next I will in that sermon is the call to Peter and Andrew: Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. Moody took it as a promise to every believer. “There is no Christian who cannot help to bring some one to the Saviour.” It is no use, he added, following this man or that man. Follow Christ, and Him only, and He will make the fisher.

And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. MATTHEW 4:19

This was Moody’s own practice. His biographers record that for a long period he made it his rule not to let a day pass without speaking to someone about Christ. He built a Bible institute to train ordinary men and women for the same work, and he believed that the church’s great need was not more ministers but more consecrated lay people.

Kept humble

Moody knew the danger that lurks in consecration: pride. The man who gives himself to God and sees God use him is always tempted to think himself remarkable. In the chapter on backsliding in The Way to God, Moody warns that most men who fall do so on the strongest side of their character, and that if anyone gets self-conceited, even in the pulpit, he will be sure to fall. He noted that Moses did not know his face shone. And he drew a picture from home: a little brook near his house that roared after a storm and fell silent in dry weather, and a deep river that he never once heard, flowing steadily all year round. “It is not those who make the most noise who have the most piety.”

He must increase, but I must decrease. JOHN 3:30

Weighing the ideal

Varley’s sentence has inspired many, and it is worth weighing honestly. It can be heard as a call to spiritual heroism, as though God were waiting for one exceptional individual. That is not how the New Testament usually speaks. God’s work is done through a body, not a solitary champion, and Moody’s own ministry depended on Sankey, on his wife, on praying women, on thousands of unnamed workers. Consecration can also be misunderstood as a single dramatic transaction after which everything is settled. For Moody it was more like a direction of life, renewed again and again.

It is fair, too, to notice that Moody drove himself very hard, and that his heart gave out in the middle of a campaign at sixty-two. Consecration does not require us to ignore the body God gave us or the rest He commands. The living sacrifice of Romans 12 is still living.

But when every qualification has been made, the core of it stands. God is not looking for the gifted. He is looking for the given.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. What would it mean for you to be fully consecrated to God? Name one thing you are still holding back.

2. Is there anything unconfessed or unrestored that makes your consecration feel hollow, as it did for Moody’s friend? Deal with it first.

3. Are you ashamed to let anyone know you are a Christian? This week, tell one person plainly whose side you are on.

4. Ask God to show you one person you can help toward the Saviour, and speak to them before the week is out.

5. Ask yourself whether you have confused consecration with overwork. Is there rest you are refusing?

A PRAYER

Lord, I am not great or learned or eloquent, and You do not ask me to be. You ask me to be Yours.

I lay on Your altar my plans, my money, my reputation and the things I would rather keep hidden.

Make me unashamed of You before my friends and my enemies, and make me a fisher of men.

Keep me humble when You use me, keep me resting when You bid me rest, and let my life be a living sacrifice to the end. Amen.