2 Corinthians 10:4 says “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds.”
In the same month and year as God would use Billy Sunday in his first revival crusade in Iowa, God was at work in the heart of a broken and battered life a couple hundred miles east in the city of Chicago. The life of Mel Trotter was soiled and spoiled by drunkenness and depravity, and when his two-year-old little girl died, he vowed he would never touch liquor again. But two hours later, he sold his daughter’s shoes to buy another drink. Later, as he walked to a bridge near Lake Michigan where he intended to end his life, God stood in the way, much as He had done in the life of Saul of Tarsus in Acts 9. Entering the Pacific Garden Mission that night, Mel Trotter found Christ as His Saviour, and his life was radically transformed.
No bondage of sin can match the miracle working power of the Gospel. God has turned murderers into missionaries, sailors into saints, and pirates into preachers. Moses, David, and Paul were all men who committed murder at one point in their lives. Yet, God transformed them and made them some of His finest servants. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). The devil loves to convince people they are too far into sin to ever be saved. But no one has stooped so low that God’s grace cannot reach him. “But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Romans 5:20b). God’s saving grace can reach you today.
Christian, God has power over the habits that have enslaved you. The strongholds of your sinful past are no greater than the walls of Jericho, the giant named Goliath, or the raging tempest on the Sea of Galilee. As a child of God, the Holy Spirit now dwells within you, and “…greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4b). Mel Trotter’s past was no match for God’s power. A few steps from suicide, God turned his life around and used him to preach the Gospel. Let the same God pull down a stronghold of sin in your life today.
This devotional is taken from “Revival Today” by Dr. John Goetsch, Striving Together Publications, 2018.
