MY STORY - In Honor of Billy Graham’s Homegoing

I was fourteen years old.  I’d had a rough life up to that point.  Divorce had shattered my family, and my dad had kept things stirred up with custody battles.  Mom was depressed, and so my sister and I often felt as if we were the parents.  Life at school wasn’t much better for me.  Except for academic success, the school scene was empty and lonely.

Then came a moment of decision and change that I had never anticipated.  I was at a movie created by the Rev. Billy Graham’s organization, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA).   Titled “The Restless Ones,” it showed the empty lives of a group of teenagers and how everything turned around when they decided to follow Christ.  I was a church-goer, but I didn’t know that I was supposed to personally make a decision.  After the movie, the BGEA-trained counselors gave an altar-call, and –shaking all over—I went forward to give my life to Christ.

After that, I was spiritually sensitive to understand the Bible, to know how to pray, and to have wisdom for decision-making.  I prayed about how to deal with my difficult parent situation, how to act in relationships, and where to go to college.  God directed me – often in very specific ways – again and again.  He also gave me courage to move across the country at age eighteen, and later to marry and start a family.  When I became a parent, I sought God for how to raise my children, and I led them in the sinner’s prayer, as I had been led by the Rev. Billy Graham all those years ago. 

Today my family are all members of Christ’s own family because of the ministry of the Rev. Billy Graham.  This day heaven is overflowing with people who have the same testimony as I do – we are in God’s kingdom because of this man’s obedience to the gospel.

Thank you, Billy Graham.  Thank you, Lord Jesus, for giving us such a servant of yours to show us the way.

If you want to get right with God and know that you are some day going to heaven, you can pray right now, right where you are:  “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”  I John 1:9