Franklin Graham, US, Evangelist
March 31. Franklin Graham. Franklin—the son of American evangelist Billy Graham—is a well- known evangelist, missionary, and author. He serves as president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and of Samaritan’s Purse, an international Christian relief organization.
Franklin has conducted evangelistic Festivals (formerly called Crusades) across the US and in forty-nine other countries. He meets with world leaders and encourages people to engage in civic opportunities in their own locales.
His own heart is with people affected by war, poverty, and natural disasters. He says, “I have been called to the slums of the streets and the ditches of the world.”
On this date in 2019, Franklin’s organization, Samaritan’s Purse, finished their seventh annual Operation Heal Our Patriots—a retreat held at an Alaskan wilderness lodge and designed to minister spiritually, emotionally, and physically to wounded veterans and their spouses.
Here’s today’s story.
The fight for identity is real; be your own man.
Franklin Graham wanted to create his own path through life—aside from his famous father and, therefore, aside from Jesus.
He was a mischievous boy, but that turned into pure rebellion, and he enjoyed testing the limits. “My mother was going to insist that I got up in time to get to school at a proper time,” Graham said. “So I started locking my door so she couldn’t come in, and she started sliding firecrackers under the door.”
And with the rebellion came consequences. “Instead of getting my esteem from achieving within the system, I got my thrills and identity from challenging the system,” Graham said. This behavior led him to be expelled from high school and kicked out of college. His childish defiance
had turned into a lifestyle that was a far cry from his dad’s reputation as a global gospel preacher.
Growing up in a faith-filled house, Franklin had always believed God existed. He just wanted to run his own life. He thought that drinking heavily, smoking, and anything else that brought him pleasure would be much more fulfilling, but the further he ran, the emptier he felt. “I realized for the first time that sin had control over my life. Franklin Graham was not in charge, but sin was. And there was absolutely nothing I could do in my own power to overcome it.”
But, on his birthday in 1974, he had just finished a trip to Switzerland with his father when his dad sat him down, looked him in the eye, and said, “I want you to know that your mother and I sense there is a struggle for the soul of your life. And there is no halfway. Either you’re going to have to accept Jesus Christ and what he says and obey him and follow him, or you’ll have to reject him. There is no middle ground.”
Those few words stuck with twenty-two-year-old Franklin as he traveled across Europe, bottle of scotch in hand, his mind replaying the conversation with his father over and over again.
He was running hard from the one thing he knew that could bring him back to the man he was made to be.
A few weeks later, one night in Jerusalem, instead of his normal nightly routine at the bars, Franklin stayed in his hotel room reading through the Gospel of John. “When I came to the third chapter, I read not that Jesus told Nicodemus he had to be born again, but I also grasped that Franklin Graham had to be born again as well.”
That night, Franklin found what he was so desperately searching for—belonging and rest. His days of running were over. That one conversation had changed his life forever. “I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. My years of running and rebellion had ended … It was finished.”
“For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17 NLT).
When somebody challenges you with the truth—especially somebody close to you—are you willing to listen and accept it? The fight for identity is real; be your own man.
“Operation Heal Our Patriots.” Samaritan’s Purse International Relief. Accessed September 5, 2020. https://www.samaritanspurse.org/what-we-do/about-operation-heal-our-patriots/. “Profile: Franklin Graham, Evangelist.” Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Accessed September 5, 2020. https://billygraham.org/about/biographies/franklin-graham/. “Franklin Graham: The prodigal son comes home.” CNN. Accessed October 14, 2020. http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/people/shows/graham/profile.html. “Franklin Graham on the Emptiness of Running from God.” Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Published April 20, 2016. http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/people/shows/graham/profile.html. “Franklin Graham: The hell-raising evangelist’s son.” CBS news. Published April 20, 2012. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/franklin-graham-the-hell-raising-evangelists-son/.
Story read by Daniel Carpenter Story written by Abigail Schultz, https://www.instagram.com/abigail_faith65