In 1861, a wild gambler named Harry Moorhouse walked into a revival meeting in Manchester looking for a fight — and met Jesus instead. Years later, he tracked down the famous evangelist D. L. Moody and asked to preach at his Chicago church.
Moody wasn't impressed. He didn't know if the young Englishman could preach, so he brushed him off — and when Moorhouse showed up anyway, Moody handed him off to his deacons and left town for the weekend.
When Moody returned, he asked his wife how things had gone.
"The people liked him very much," she said.
"Did you like him?"
"Yes — very much. He preached two sermons from John 3:16. I think you'll like him, but he preaches a little differently than you do."
"How so?"
"He tells sinners that God loves them."
Moody's jaw tightened. "Well," he said, "he's wrong."
That night, Moody went to hear Moorhouse himself — determined not to like him. But as Moorhouse preached again from John 3:16, something began to soften in Moody's heart. He couldn't hold back the tears. For seven nights, Moorhouse returned to the same text, the same theme: God loves sinners.
On the final night, Moorhouse closed with this: "My friends, for a whole week I have been trying to tell you how much God loves you, but I cannot do it with this poor stammering tongue. If I could borrow Jacob’s ladder, and climb up into Heaven, and ask Gabriel, who stands in the presence of the Almighty, if he could tell me how much love the Father has for the world, all he could say would be, ‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.’”
Those seven nights changed D. L. Moody forever. He later said: "I have never forgotten those nights. I have preached a different gospel since.”
As we make our way to Jerusalem we must never forget what sits at the heart of our Lenten journey: the love of God. In a season devoted to self-examination and repentance it’s far too easy to slip into a mindset of guilt and shame, forgetting these key words from the book of Romans:
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”—Romans 5:8 (NIV)
It is God’s love that compelled Jesus to go to the cross. It is always God’s love at the center of our own journey of repentance and transformation. We forget this at our peril.
Always God’s love.
What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul
Read the rest of the lyrics here.
Questions for Reflection
1) The consistent and repeated theme of Lent is to repentance and self-examination, a journey that can easily turn into self-condemnation and shame. Do you ever struggle with that? Spend some time in prayer, asking God to send assurance of his deep and abiding love for you and to protect you from any distorted understandings that can sneak into our times of reflection.
2) In today’s song the meditation on God’s love in the first verse leads to expressions of worship in the second verse and eternal hope in the third. Spend some time reflecting on this progression, allowing the Holy Spirit to guide you into worship and hope as well.
3) Read and reflect on this verse. Acknowledge that as a well-known verse we can often lose sight of its beauty and power. Let it lead you into prayerful worship and gratitude:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”—John 3:16 (NIV)