Yesterday was a homecoming of the best kind. We learned the news that Billy Graham had taken his last breath on earth and his first breath in heaven.
His global impact is immeasurable. Only God knows, and heaven will reveal the fruit that one completely surrendered farmboy turned preacher sowed for the kingdom. He preached the gospel on every continent and in more than 184 countries, reaching almost a quarter of a billion people in the crusades alone.
To celebrate the impact of the words Billy Graham spoke and wrote in his 99 years and to honor his life, work, and ministry, I’ve curated 50+ of Billy Graham’s best quotes.
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Billy Graham Quotes
Anxiety is the natural result when our hopes are centered in anything short of God and His will for us. (Day by Day)
The Bible is the only book in the world that predicts the future. The Bible is more modern than tomorrow morning’s newspaper.
From one end of the Bible to the other, God assures us that He will never go back on His promises. (The Journey)
The Bible is the constant fountain for faith, conduct and inspiration from which we drink daily.
The words of this Book have a way of filling in the missing pieces, of bridging the gaps, of turning the tarnished colors of our life to jewel-like brilliance. Learn to take your every problem to the Bible. Within its pages you will find the correct answers. (Peace with God)
The Bible will always be the center of controversy.
The Bible opens with a tragedy and ends in a triumph.
Trials and difficulties may assail the life of a believer, but they also have the ability to remold his character and banish from his life those impurities which might impair growth and service.
“…we don’t own our children. God has given them to us in trust. . . however, God may transfer our children to His home at any time.
There is not a day that we do not have a chance to choose between the devil’s clever promises and God’s sure Word.
No church is perfect, but don’t let that discourage you. Someone has said that if you ever find one that is, it will stop being perfect the minute you join!
What makes us Christians shrug our shoulders when we ought to be flexing our muscles? What makes us apathetic in a day when there are loads to lift, a world to be won, and captives to be set free? Why are so many bored, when the times demand action? Christ told us that in the last days there would be an insipid attitude toward life.
Becoming a Christian is the work of a moment; being a Christian is the work of a lifetime.
Before three thousand people were brought into the church on the day of Pentecost, the disciples had spent fifty days in prayer, fasting and spiritual travail. (The Secret of Happiness)
The only one who can re-create us is the One who created us in the first place.
The ground is level at the foot of the cross.
The word departure literally means to pull up anchor and set sail. Everything that happens prior to death is a preparation for the final voyage. Death marks the beginning, not the end. It is our journey to God.
God has a plan and the devil has a plan and you will have to decide which plan you are going to fit into.
[Satan] will create a religion without a Redeemer.
He will build a church without a Christ.
He will call for worship without the Word of God.
Life is just a schoolroom with a glorious opportunity to prepare us for eternity. (Hope for the Troubled Heart)
You cannot pray for someone and hate them at the same time.
If God were to eradicate all evil from this planet, He would have to eradicate all evil men. Where would he start? “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23 NIV) God would rather transform the evil man than eradicate him. (Till Armageddon)
Do you want your faith to grow? Then let the Bible begin to saturate your mind and soul.
It does not matter how big your faith is but where your faith is.
If God can be fully proved by the human mind, then He is no greater than the mind that proves Him.
The will of God will never take us where the grace of God cannot sustain us.
Grief turns us inward but compassion turns us outward and that’s what we need when grief threatens to crush us.
Heaven doesn’t make this life less important; it makes it more important.
One of the joys of heaven. . . will be discovering the hidden ways that God in His sovereignty acted in our lives on earth to protect and guide us [that we might] bring glory to His name, in spite of our frailty. (Just As I Am)
What stirs God most is not physical suffering but sin. All too often we are more afraid of physical pain than of moral wrong.
It’s never a question of how much you and I have of the Spirit, but how much He has of us.
You cannot build a superstructure on a cracked foundation.
God’s love did not begin at the cross. It began in eternity before the world was established. Before the time clock of civilization began to move.
There’s one thing God’s love cannot do; it cannot forgive the unrepentant sinner.
There is going on in the world today a quiet, bloodless revolution. It has no fanfare, no newspaper coverage, no propaganda; yet it is changing the course of thousands of lives. It is restoring purpose and meaning to life as men of all races and nationalities are finding peace with God.
Peace – [the ability] to sleep in the storm. Tell me why the gardener trims and prunes his rosebushes, sometimes cutting away productive branches, and I will tell you why God’s people are afflicted. God’s hand never slips.
In a country where Christians were looked upon with suspicion and disfavor, a government leader said to me with a twinkle in his eye, “Christians seem to thrive under persecution. Perhaps we should prosper them and then they would disappear.” )
Have you ever said, “Well, all we can do now is pray?” . . . When we come to the end of ourselves, we come to the beginning of God.
Someone has said, “Prayer is the highest use to which speech can be put.” (Wisdom for Each Day)
[Jesus] prayed briefly when He was in a crowd; He prayed a little longer when He was with His disciples; and He prayed all night when He was alone. Today, many in the ministry tend to reverse that process.
I firmly believe God continues to answer the prayers of His people even after He has taken them to heaven. Never forget that God isn’t bound by time the way we are. We see only the present moment; God sees everything. We see only part of what He is doing; He sees it all.
Pride flees when we compare ourselves to God instead of [to] other people.
The closer the people of all races get to Christ and His cross, the closer they will get to one another.
The word repentance is sadly missing today from the average pulpit. It is a very unpopular word. The first sermon Jesus every preached was “Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
It is entirely possible to be deeply sorry because of the devastation which sin has wrought in our lives – and yet not repent.
There is a difference between sin and sins. Sin is the root; sins are the fruit.
Why did Jesus Christ leave heaven’s glory and enter this sin-infested world? For one reason: to make our eternal salvation possible.
Nothing can calm our souls more or better prepare us for life’s challenges than time spent alone with God.
He puts a little of heaven down in our souls.
We must learn to let the Word of God feed us and strengthen us in our faith in God its author, Christ its message, and the Holy Spirit its teacher.
God measures people by the small dimensions of humility and not by the bigness of their achievement or the size of their capabilities.
In His thirty-three years on earth, Jesus suffered with man; on the cross He suffered for man.
The book of Job does not set out to answer the problem of suffering, but to proclaim a God so great that no answer is needed.
The Bible and the history of the church both demonstrate that God’s way for the suffering of His people has not always been the way of escape, but the way of endurance.
Tears become telescopes to heaven, bringing eternity a little closer.
Jesus expects one hundred percent surrender, and when that is accomplished He rewards a thousandfold.
Surrendering to Christ is like signing your name to a blank check and letting the Lord put in the amount.
If our minds and hearts are not filled with God’s truth, something else will take its place.
The Spirit of God takes the Word of God and makes the child of God.
When those around you are filling their minds with the bad news about man in their daily papers, steep yourself in the good news about God in His precious Word.
It is strange that the world accepts enthusiasm in every realm but the spiritual.
Do not expect me to fall in with the evil customs and ways of the world. I am in Rome, but I will not do as Rome does. I am an alien, a stranger, and a foreigner. My citizenship is in heaven.
Satan will contest every hour you spend in Bible reading or prayer.
I have walked down jungle trails in Africa where I met fellow Christians; and immediately we were brothers even though we were separated by language, race, and culture.
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
This post first appeared at LisaAppelo.com. If you’d like this encouragement delivered right to your inbox, you can subscribe here, and I’ll send you my free 100 Days with Christ Bible study and journal.
*You can find these quotes and many others in the book Billy Graham in Quotes.
