Billy Graham Tribute

A couple weeks back, I watched a documentary on Billy Graham's life that Mom and Dad recorded.  SO GOOD!!  I had never actually heard him preach before that, but I loved learning about his heart for God and people, and the way God was with him and blessed his integrity and anointed his preaching!  They played several sermon clips, and in all of them, he was speaking with bold confidence and very directly teaching about Jesus Christ and the gospel.  Not trying to be cool or funny, and not watering anything down to avoid offense.  It's one of many things lately that is making my heart loooong for more solid gospel truth and less playing to the crowd that permeates so many of our modern churches.  We seem to have lost sight of the fact that God's Word all by itself is alive and powerful and fully complete, needing no alterations or enhancements from us.

Anyway, I love that he taught the Word of God with boldness and always gave an invitation for people to accept Christ as Savior.  It is so obvious that God called him and the Holy Spirit used him powerfully to draw people to Christ!  *My Dad is one of the many people who accepted Christ at the end of one of Billy Graham's sermons, watching him on TV in the summer of 1969 when he was 16 years old!! ❤  Mom and Dad also saw him preach live sometime in the early '80s. =)

One of the things I LOVED and admired most was his fight against racism!  There were literally churches that would not support him or allow him to preach because he insisted on no segregation - it's so crazy.  In 1953, he was preparing to speak at a huge crusade in Tennesee when he saw that they had roped off a separate area in the back for "colored people." He immediately insisted that they remove the ropes and signs, and when they refused to do so, he went back and did it himself.  I loved that -- it struck me as exactly what Jesus would have done in that situation.  I feel like he was mostly gentle and kind, but he was quite serious about confronting sin.  And he absolutely confronted racism and prejudice as sin in many of his sermons.  He was friends with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who joined him at his crusade in NYC in 1957.  He actually posted bail for him when he was arrested at a demonstration in 1960.  In so many ways, he made a sincere effort to fight for unity and racial reconciliation within the church at a time when that was an unpopular move.

In addition to being an international evangelist and civil rights advocate, he met with Queen Elizabeth several times and he was known as "the pastor to the presidents." He met and counseled and prayed with the thirteen U.S. Presidents from Harry Truman in 1945 to Donald Trump in 2018.  He was humble and determined to love and value every person he met, and God granted him a high level of influence with people in political power.  I love that!

So I am thankful to have learned more about Billy Graham and his life and legacy!  I am thankful for his courage and willingness to confront sin.  I am thankful that God used him to bring thousands of people to Christ throughout his 99-year lifetime, and especially thankful that my Dad was one of them!!

"Be on guard. Stand firm in the faith. 

Be courageous. Be strong.

Let all that you do be done in love." 

~I Corinthians 16:13-14 ❤