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Show MY MOST INSPIRING MOMENT By BILLY GRAHAM Author of "My Answer." "The Secret to Happiness," and "Peace with God" Wanted. Nobody gone back to the farm and Christianity would have lost one of its most eloquent spokesmen my life to the 16, AT Lord. At 18, I told God I wanted to carry His word to all the world. But as I worked about the campus of the I SURRENDERED Florida Bible Institute that summer, I felt that maybe God did not want me to preach. mind is full of doubts and ridden by immaturity, and mine was about as immature as they come. I felt a compulsion to preach, but I was painfully aware of my inadequacy. I stammered and my knees shook whenever I got on my feet. I ran out of words after a few minutes. Other students could speak for hours on almost any Biblical subject. My yearning, coupled with my lack of ability, puzzled me. I think I must have been a little like the farm boy who said he had seen a sign in the heavens that spelled the letters, "P.C.," which he took to mean "Preach Christ." So he left his plow, enrolled in a Bible school, and began to preach. But after several terrible sermons, he came back home and reported that he must have misinterpreted those letters in the sky. Instead of meaning "Preach Christ," they must have meant "Plow Corn." So the questions I asked myself that spring and summer were: Does God want me to preach? Will I ever be any good at it? My background was favorable. I had been raised on a farm in a Christian family. My mother had been active in the Presbyterian Church for years. She talked often before religious groups. And she prayed every day that I would grow up to become a preacher. When I was in high school, she had given me books about the Bible. I left them behind when I went away to college, but she sent them after me. My father, I believed, took a dimmer view of my becoming a minister. By my youthful standards, he was a rather stern man. He was frugal and (although the greatest teller of jokes I ever heard). He had gone through third grade and then quit school to help out on the farm. His code of honor was inflexible, and he enforced it harshly. He must have whipped me hundreds of times with his old leather belt. When Prohibition was repealed, he went into town and bought a bottle of beer. To dispel its mystery, he opened it on the kitchen table and made my sister and me taste it. I made a face, spit it out, and never thereafter could stand the taste of anything alcoholic. A teen-ag- e hard-worki- ng ILLUSTRATION BY NEIL BOYLE He loved farming and dairying, and he trained both of his sons to follow in hfs footsteps. That he might once have dreamed of any other way of life was, to me, utterly fanatic. I learned later mat 1 was wrong. In 1908, when Frank Graham was a youth, he had attended an evangelistic meeting in a plank meetinghouse at the edge of Charlotte, N.C., driving his horse and buggy from his farm three miles away. A friend had warned him of the spirit of revival that prevailed, saying, "If you don't want to get religion, don't go in there." When the invitation was given that night, he went forward. The preacher and several others tried to show him the way to salvation, but he could not grasp it. Perhaps their explanation was not too clear. Finally, he left with a heavy heart. The same thing happened 10 nights straight, until he was thoroughly miserable and could hardly eat, drink, or sleep. On the 10th night, he went again, his soul in turmoil. His life had been upright and moral; he had never used a swear word; he was a respectable young man. Never-theles- s, he had a guilt complex and felt that he had a deeper moral responsibility to God. On the way to the meeting that 10th night, the light broke through. Later, he told a friend how his burdened mind and soul were suddenly illuminated by the understanding that his sins had been borne by Christ at Calvary. Driving along in his buggy, he calmly put all his trust in Jesus, who had risen from the dead and who was his living Saviour. His burden rolled away, and joy overflowed his heart. The Preacher's Prediction I've been told that my father's countenance, when he drove up to the church that night, was so changed that everyone noticed it The preacher, a Brother Coburn, saw it, too. Immediately, he called Frank Graham to the front. Putting his arm around Father's shoulders, he made a prediction: "Some day this young man is going to preach Christ." But God had other plans. My father met and courted my mother, and they had four children, of whom I was the oldest. Through the years, the farm barely provided a living. I finally went away to a Bible school and worked part time to help pay expenses. Many Southern families, working worn-osoil, lived through the same struggle. But now it was my turn to face the world and discover myself. I was a Bible student, and I wanted to become an evangelist. I had declared myself openly and ardently to everyone, but no ut invitation came from any Florida congregation. So I began to stalk an old gentleman, the Reverend Corwin, who visited our campus regularly to choose students to preach at a mission he ran in the Spanish section of Tampa. My pursuit was fruitless. Always he chose another. Gradually, it came to me that a divine purpose might be behind his rejection. I reasoned that perhaps God had some other destiny in mind. One day, as I was cutting grass along the bank of the Hillsboro River that bounded our campus, I looked up to see the Reverend Corwin in the distance. I dropped behind a bush and prayed hard, asking God for just one chance to preach His Gospel. Then I got back on my feet and walked out into the clear. As if it were yesterday, I remember how the old gentleman looked hard in my direction and then changed his course toward me. I waited for him as rooted to the earth as any tree. The Turning Point In my heart I had resolved to seek God's guidance toward some other vocation if I were again passed over. At the dairy farm back home they could use another fast milker. A job selling awaited me. The mission brushes door-to-do- or crying for helpers. Now the Reverend Corwin came plodding down d the slope, his wise old eyes taking in my clothing and my gangjing figure, measuring me for the Lord's wo'rk. Then he spoke the most inspiring words I'd ever heard. He said: "Mr. Graham, would you mind coming to our mission to preach for us?" field was work-staine- When God called Amos, he was plowing a field. He, too, was a farmer. I felt a great sense of but a still, small voice said, "Be not afraid." Next day, I preached to an audience of un-worthin- ess, Spanish children. That meeting with the Reverend Corwin which confirmed my calling to God's service as an evangelist was my most inspiring. Since then, I have never doubted that I was to accept the same burden given to Jeremiah by the Lord when He said, "I have put My words in thy mouth." I was called of God to preach, and my father was never called, and we shall never know why. But when he passed on to Heaven not long ago, I think he was content. "I once thought I was going to preach, too," he told a friend, "but God knew better. He put me out to milk cows and plow corn for He knew I'd have a son who would come along and do the preaching for the family." Family Weekly, March 29, 196h |