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About the Book
"Living A Prayerful Life" by Andrew Murray explores the importance of prayer in the life of a believer. Murray encourages readers to cultivate a deep and consistent prayer life, highlighting the power and benefits of prayer in fostering a closer relationship with God and transforming one's own heart and mind. The book offers practical guidance on how to deepen one's prayer life and experience the fullness of God's presence through prayer.
Warren Wiersbe
Dr. Warren Wiersbe once described Heaven as “not only a destination, but also a motivation. When you and I are truly motivated by the promise of eternity with God in heaven, it makes a difference in our lives.”
For Wiersbe, the promise of eternity became the motivation for his long ministry as a pastor, author, and radio speaker. Beloved for his biblical insight and practical teaching, he was called “one of the greatest Bible expositors of our generation” by the late Billy Graham.
Warren W. Wiersbe died on May 2, 2019, in Lincoln, Nebraska, just a few weeks shy of his 90th birthday.
“He was a longtime, cherished friend of Moody Bible Institute, a faithful servant of the Word, and a pastor to younger pastors like me,” said Dr. Mark Jobe, president of Moody Bible Institute. “We are lifting up pastor Wiersbe’s family in prayer at this time and rejoicing in the blessed hope that believers share together.”
Wiersbe grew up in East Chicago, Indiana, a town known for its steel mills and hard-working blue-collar families. In his autobiography, he connected some of his earliest childhood memories to Moody Bible Institute; his home church pastor was a 1937 graduate, Dr. William H. Taylor. After volunteering to usher at a 1945 Youth for Christ rally, Wiersbe found himself listening with rapt attention to Billy Graham’s sermon, and responded with a personal prayer of dedication.
In a precocious turn of events, the young Wiersbe was already a published author, having written a book of card tricks for the L. L. Ireland Magic Co. of Chicago. He quickly learned to liven up Sunday school lessons with magic tricks as object lessons (“not the cards!” he would say). After his high school graduation in 1947 (he was valedictorian), he spent a year at Indiana University before transferring to Northern Baptist Seminary in Chicago, where he earned a bachelor of theology degree. His future wife, Betty, worked in the school library, and Wiersbe was a frequent visitor.
While in seminary he became pastor of Central Baptist Church in East Chicago, serving until 1957. During those years he became a popular YFC speaker, which led to a full-time position with Youth for Christ International in Wheaton. He published his first article for Moody Monthly magazine in 1956, about Bible study methods, and seemed to outline his ongoing writing philosophy. “This is more of a personal testimony,” he said, “because I want to share these blessings with you, rather than write some scholarly essay, which I am sure I could not do anyway.”
At a 1957 YFC convention in Winona Lake, Indiana, Wiersbe preached a sermon that was broadcast live over WMBI, his first connection to Moody Radio. “I wish every preacher could have at least six months’ experience as a radio preacher,” he said later (because they would preach shorter).
While working with Youth for Christ, Wiersbe got a call from Pete Gunther at Moody Publishers, asking about possible book projects. First came Byways of Blessing (1961), an adult devotional; then two more books in 1962, A Guidebook for Teens and Teens Triumphant. He would eventually publish 14 titles with Moody, including William Culbertson: A Man of God (1974), Live Like a King (1976), The Annotated Pilgrim’s Progress (1980), and Ministering to the Mourning (2006), written with his son, David Wiersbe.
In 1961, D. B. Eastep invited Wiersbe to join the staff of Calvary Baptist Church in Covington, Kentucky. forming a succession plan that was hastened by Eastep’s sudden death in 1962. Warren and Betty Wiersbe remained at the church for 10 years, until they were surprised by a phone call from The Moody Church. The pastor, Dr. George Sweeting, had just resigned to become president of Moody Bible Institute. Would Wiersbe fill the pulpit, and pray about becoming a candidate?
He was already well known to the Chicago church—and to the MBI community. He continued to write for Moody Monthly and had just started a new column, “Insights for the Pastor.” The monthly feature continued to run during the years Wiersbe served at The Moody Church. Wiersbe would become one of the magazine’s most prolific writers—200 articles during a 40-year span. Meanwhile he also started work on the BE series of exegetical commentaries, books that soon found a place on the shelf of every evangelical pastor.
His ministry to pastors continued as he spoke at Moody Founder’s Week, Pastors’ Conference, and numerous campus events. He also inherited George Sweeting’s role as host of the popular Songs in the Night radio broadcast, produced by Moody Radio’s Bob Neff and distributed on Moody’s growing network of radio stations.
Later in life he would move to Lincoln, Nebraska, where he served as host of the Back to the Bible radio broadcast. He also taught courses on preaching at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and Grand Rapids Baptist Seminary. He kept writing, eventually publishing more than 150 books and losing track of how many (“I can’t remember them all, and I didn’t save copies of everything,” he said.)
Throughout his ministry, Warren Wiersbe described himself as a bridge builder, a reference to his homiletical method of moving “from the world of the Bible to the world of today so that we could get to the other side of glory in Jesus.” As explained by his grandson, Dan Jacobson, “His preferred tools were words, his blueprints were the Scriptures, and his workspace was a self-assembled library.”
Several of Wiersbe’s extended family are Moody alums, including a son, David Wiersbe ’76; grandson Dan Jacobsen ’09 and his wife, Kristin (Shirk) Jacobsen ’09; and great-nephew Ryan Smith, a current student.
During his long ministry and writing career, Warren Wiersbe covered pretty much every topic, including the inevitability of death. These words from Ministering to the Mourning offer a fitting tribute to his own ministry:
We who are in Christ know that if He returns before our time comes to die, we shall be privileged to follow Him home. God’s people are always encouraged by that blessed hope. Yet we must still live each day soberly, realizing that we are mortal and that death may come to us at any time. We pray, “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).
God Can Meet Us in the Ashes
Strict practitioners would not have approved of my methods, but on one long ago mid-winter Wednesday, I smeared ashes on the foreheads of my two preschoolers and myself. An offering of the hardwood that had heated our home the day before, these ashes were not “ceremonially correct” in any way. At the time, I did not know that traditional Ash Wednesday ashes come from the remains of Palm Sunday palms. I did not even know about the forty days of Lent to follow. However, I did know about sin — my own and my children’s. We were in “time out” season with one of our sons. At our wits’ end, we had exhausted Dr. Dobson, Elisabeth Elliot, and every parenting resource available in the nineties. “Why is it so hard to be good?” our little Dobson-buster would ask. His younger brother’s eyes would fill with tears whenever they were caught in collaborative naughtiness. In this parenting pressure cooker, maternal apologies had become a daily occurrence. I was hoping to model repentance — while at the same time atoning for sharp words and a short fuse. “I was wrong; please forgive me” were the words through which my sons were learning that their mother had not outgrown the struggle against sin. Ash Wednesday gives Christians an opportunity to grow in our understanding of where to take that struggle. Reclaiming Lent for Christ Historically, our earliest Protestant ancestors revolted against the idea of Lenten practices, and with good reason. In the pre-Reformation mind, penitence, ashes, and self-denial had become ends in themselves. Gradually, however, a biblical understanding of lament has re-entered Christian orthodoxy, anchored in an embrace of our fallen-ness. Ashes on the forehead rightly represent our need to “repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5–6), and our identity as “a people of unclean lips [who] dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5). Jesus pronounced a blessing upon those who recognize their poverty of spirit and mourn the effects of sin on their life and in the world (Matthew 5:3–4). Grounded in gospel truth that prompts genuine penitence without crippling guilt and deep conviction without devastating shame, Ash Wednesday invites the believer to a renewed awe of our great salvation. While there is no merit in the wearing of ashes, a season of mourning leading up to Easter may actually enhance our celebration of Resurrection Sunday. A Wednesday to Teach In my challenging season of parenting, Ash Wednesday became a visual aid, a teaching tool to reassure my young sons that our sin does not signal the end of God’s love for us. In our home, hymns around the breakfast table always matched the season, and one year, we learned all four verses of a “cross hymn” in the weeks leading up to Easter. Rich hymns of the faith offer deep gospel truth that requires explanation (but not dilution) for little singers: When I survey the wondrous cross On which the Prince of Glory died, All the vain things that charm me most I sacrifice them to His blood. The vain-ness of the “vain things” Isaac Watts wrote about becomes abundantly clear when we remember that nothing lasts forever. “Remember that you are dust” is the lyric of Ash Wednesday. God made us from dust, and our bodies do not live forever. This is a dying world we inhabit: everything from goldfish to grandfathers eventually stops living. And we mourn the loss. Without becoming morbid or frightening, we can prepare our children for the inevitability of death by putting it in the context of the gospel. Thomas á Kempis prescribed a regular pondering of and preparation for death as a route to happiness. Author Gary Thomas suggests that we present-day believers ought to join á Kempis in allowing the reality of death to act “like a filter, helping us to hold on to the essential and let go of the trivial.” For believers, the “essential” is the eternal, and the eternal comes to us through the cross. The paradox of death leading to rebirth only appears to be a contradiction. All of Christ’s gifts are given to us through death — his death. And it will only be through a different death — our death — that we will finally receive the fullness of life that Jesus died to impart. A Wednesday to Remember My sons and I stood before a mirror together, the three of us with our smudged foreheads. We talked about our struggle to obey God and our sadness over sin — the sin that causes mayhem in our home, hurt feelings between brothers, and, worst of all, separation from a God who loves us. When a little boy is struggling with disobedience, even as a preschooler, he already feels the grit and grind of life on a fallen planet. He may not be able to comprehend sin’s cosmic scale: “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope. . .” (Romans 8:20). But he is already well-acquainted with the collective groaning, and can love the truth about the hope of our future deliverance from the struggle: “. . . that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). Reading selected, age-appropriate portions of the crucifixion story from Luke 22 and thinking about Jesus’s willingness to endure the weight of all the sins of the entire world on his body provides a focus for the wearing of our ashes as a symbol of our grief — mourning that we have sinned and caused division from God and sadness over the suffering Jesus endured when he died in our place. A Wednesday to Rejoice If good behavior is all I have to bring to Jesus, he cannot help me. The warm welcome of the gospel on a frigid day in early spring takes into account a little boy’s hopelessness in the face of temptation. Our sin does not signal the end of our relationship with God. It’s a beginning, for it turns out that weakness is a powerful claim upon divine mercy. Learning to hate sin at a young age, to war against it, and to receive God’s forgiveness is a celebratory milestone. There is a reason to rejoice because of Christ’s obedience to all that God commanded. Then, his love in paying the penalty for our failure to obey gives us a reason for hope, even against the backdrop of my own parenting fiascos and my sons’ serial naughtiness. God knows well the stuff we are made of. “He remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14). As a loving heavenly Father, he longs to supply every need for righteous living — in fact it is only his righteousness that will suffice. This orientation provides a solid foundation for a lifelong relationship built on the assurance that God’s purposes will not be thwarted by my sin. He delights to meet me and my children in the ashes. Article by Michele Morin
