I'LL BE THAT MAN!
Sometimes an easy conversation between friends can have ramifications far beyond what either person expects.
Such was the case in the summer of 1872 near Dublin, Ireland, when two prominent evangelists were discussing ministry. The two men were the British evangelist Henry Varley and the renowned American evangelist Dwight L. Moody.
As they were talking Varley made a throw away remark, but the Holy Spirit took that remark and burned it into the heart & mind of D.L. Moody. It was a remark that affected him for the rest of his life. This is how Moody recorded it in one of his diaries:
"'The world has yet to see what God can do with and for and through a man who is fully and wholly consecrated to Him.' ... A man! Varley meant any man. Varley didn't say he had to be educated, or brilliant, or anything else. Just a man. Well, by the Holy Spirit in me I'll be that man!"
[As quoted in John Pollock, Moody: The Biography (Chicago : Moody, 1963, 1983), 115].