By Tim Richards
I recently had the privilege of attending the 2022 Legacy Grandparenting Summit. This two-day event challenged each grandparent who attended, to be more intentional about passing their faith on to their grandchildren.
One of the featured speakers shared a story about her grandfather, William, who had been a dairy farmer in North Carolina. He was part of a group of business men from his hometown who helped start the Charlotte Rescue Mission in 1938. The ministry served the homeless as the Great Depression dragged on. It still serves those living on the streets of Charlotte today.
However, William and his associates did more. They began praying God would raise up an evangelist who would be used to touch the hearts and souls of Americans. None of the business leaders had any idea how dramatically God was going to answer their prayers.
Billy Graham was born in 1918. Graham preached at his first crusade in 1947; only nine years after the Charlotte Rescue Mission first opened its doors. His ministry of preaching crusades would last six decades. His final crusade meeting was in 2005.
In 58 years of ministry, estimates are that Graham preached to live audiences of 210 million people in more than 185 countries and territories.
At a revival meeting in Seoul, South Korea, Graham once preached to more than one million people in a single service. Remarkably, according to detailed records kept by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, during his lifetime, 3.2 million people responded to the famous evangelist’s message inviting them to accept Christ as their personal Savior.
Little did the business leaders know when they began praying for a gifted preacher to share the good news about Jesus in America that God would answer their prayers in a way far greater than any of them would have dared to pray.
However, God has promised when committed Christians pray he will answer their prayers, even if it is not exactly the way they imagine. The Apostle James recorded this remarkable promise, “…The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.” (James 5:16, NLT)
The business leaders did not know when they began praying that God would raise up a great preacher from their home town. They could not have imagined he would be the son of one of them.
The featured speaker I spoke about at the beginning of today’s column was, Anne Graham Lotz; her grandfather was, William Franklin Graham Sr. Billy Graham’s father had no idea the answer to his prayer for a great preacher would be answered in the form of his oldest son, Billy.
