"Auntie" Sarah Cooke: Her prayers changed Moody's ministry

"Few persons in Chicago were better known in certain religious circles than she, for she was continuously going to the missions, street meetings, conventions, camps, conferences, lectures and every kind of religious gathering within her reach. She was the living personification of aggressive evangelism, instant in season and out of season, ever exhorting sinners to flee the wrath of God and urging believers to plunge in the fountain of cleansing."

So quotes a memorial article (Moody Monthly, September 1921) for "Auntie Cooke." She arrived in Chicago in 1868-in her words, "a perfect stranger"-but it didn't take her long to become involved in God's work, helping the YMCA on Madison Street. She attended Moody's church when he was young. Cooke described him years later as a " 'diamond in the rough'-most truly, with the one desire to do good burning through everything, his very earnestness moving people, but withal such a lack in his teachings of the divine unction and power."

During a St. Charles camp meeting in 1871, she felt burdened for Moody-he needed an anointing of power from the Holy Spirit. She and her friend, Mrs. Hawxhurst, who usually sat on the front row, told Moody they were praying for him to be baptized with the Holy Ghost and fire. Moody was unsure this was a need; nevertheless, he asked the two ladies to meet with him in Farwell Hall every Friday afternoon to discuss this matter and pray. Apparently his hunger increased. Cooke reports that on the Friday before the Great Chicago Fire, "Mr. Moody's agony was so great that he rolled on the floor and in the midst of many tears and groans cried to God to be baptized with the Holy Ghost and fire."

Following the fire, Moody went to New York shortly thereafter to raise funds for the rebuilding of the church and YMCA building. In New York, while walking down Wall Street, the young preacher finally received the spiritual blessing they had prayed for. Moody felt such a sense of the Holy Spirit's filling that he cried, "Hold, Lord, it is enough!"

"I went to preaching again," Moody testified. "The sermons were not different; I did not present any new truths, and yet hundreds were converted. I would not now be placed back where I was before that blessed experience if you should give me all the world."

Auntie Cooke continued in vigorous service and died in Chicago in 1921.