Acts 4:29 And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word.
No other battle in the Civil War would result in the casualties and losses as the Battle of Stones River near Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Death would come to 1,677 on the Union side and 1,294 on the Confederate side. As the Union forces seized control on this January day in 1863, one voice could be heard through dark and smoke-filled air. The man’s name may be familiar to many Christians, for he would become one of the greatest evangelists the world has ever seen—Dwight Lyman Moody. During the heat of battle, Moody would run in and out of the explosions and seek out a wounded soul desperate for help. Over the gruesome noise of nineteenth century warfare, each soldier would hear the same battle cry from the lips of Moody, “Are you a Christian?”
“The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy” (John l0:l0a). Satan has waged war against mankind ever since his fall from Heaven. The death toll from sin mounts as Satan’s war against Christ and the Gospel intensifies. Every day we meet the wounded who are perishing without hope. “Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience…That at that time ye were without Christ…having no hope, and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:2, 12).
Will we, like the apostles in Acts 4 and D. L. Moody in the Civil War, ask God for boldness to proclaim God’s message of hope to the lost and dying around us? When the cannons of life are stilled and the weapons laid to eternal rest, may it not be said of our generation, “I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul” (Psalm 142:4). May we boldly seek out the perishing and proclaim the message of the Gospel.
This devotional is taken from “Revival Today”, by Dr. John Goetsch, Striving Together Publications, 2018.
