School of Evangelism

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Growing as a Christian
by Billy Graham

When you become a Christian, that means you’re a follower of Jesus Christ. You’ll find
people all around you who are following other ideologies or other philosophies or even other
religions, but Jesus Christ is totally different. You’re following a person who is filled with love and
who loved us and who wants to help us in our daily lives, and He brings peace to your life in a
new way. In other words, when you have Christ, you have peace with God, and that was brought
about by what He did on the cross. When He died on the cross, He brought man and God
together. He reconciled us to God. We had been separated because of our sins, but now we are
reconciled to God and God lives in our hearts. So you don’t have to live the Christian life alone.
You have the Holy Spirit who was given to you the moment you received Christ as Savior, and
He’s there to help you to live the Christian life.

How to Live

We’re to be reflectors of Christ. We’re to live as Christ lived, and that means that we go into the
world and help them in their problems and in their difficulties and show them how a Christian
ought to live. For example, in some parts of the world, they’re not allowed to preach or to teach
or even to have a Bible class, but they live the life in such a way that people they work with or
go to school with or even in their families ask them, “You’re so different. You have peace. You go
about your work happily”—even if it’s in prison. “You are a different person. What makes you
different?” And when people start asking that question, then you’re able to answer them and
say, “Christ has made the difference in my life.”

Food for Your Soul

So you’re reading the very Word of God, and that’s very important in your life: to study
the Scriptures. The Bible says that we’re to study to show ourselves approved—“a workman that

Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke
and encourage with great patience and careful instruction. 1
2 Timothy 4:2 (NIV)
needeth not to be ashamed” (2 Timothy 2:15, KJV)—and we’re to study the Word of God daily. I
know in my own devotional life I try to read five psalms every day and one chapter of Proverbs
a day. In reading five psalms, I find that I can go through the book of Psalms every month,
because there are 150 psalms, and there are 31 chapters in Proverbs. The Psalms teaches me
how to worship God. The book of Proverbs teaches me how to get along with my fellow man. So
that has been a little pattern in addition to the other reading that I try to do each day. For
example, this morning when I got up, I read the book of 1 Thessalonians in addition to the others,
not only to refresh myself but to feed my soul, because we’re told to desire the sincere milk of
the Word, “that you may grow thereby” ( Peter 2:2, NKJV). The only way we grow is by reading
the Word of God. As you have food for your physical body, you also have food for your soul, and
the food for your soul is the Word of God—so when you read it, remember that you are reading
the very Word of God. Now, we gave to you a gospel of Luke, and I hope you have read that
several times.

Study it and memorize some of those Scriptures, because when you memorize the
Scripture, that gives you a power and an authority when temptation comes that you would never
have otherwise.

Difficult Scriptures

You’re going to find passages in the Bible that are very difficult to understand. When you
come across a passage like that, what do you do? How do you approach it? Well, first of all, pray
and say, “Lord, help me to see the meaning of this passage. What does it mean?” Then take the
context in which it was written and see if you can figure that out. And if you can’t, then if you
know another Christian, go and have a talk with another Christian, and maybe the two of you
can find out what it means.

Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke
and encourage with great patience and careful instruction. 2
2 Timothy 4:2 (NIV)
Obey What You Hear

It’s no-good reading the Bible if you don’t let it change you, and the only way the Bible
changes you is if you obey what you hear. The Scripture teaches, “I have hidden your word in my
heart that I might not sin against you” (Psalm 119:11, NIV). Christians around the world have
seen God’s Word changing lives in society because they’re obedient. They’re obedient to what
they have read. Sometimes people can read the Bible themselves, and sometimes they hear it
preached—but the key is obedience. Someone said, “The Bible wasn’t written to increase our
knowledge but to change our lives.” Pray that God will help you, and when you fail, start again.

Doubting the Bible

I remember that when I was younger and had just finished school and started in the
ministry, I had a number of doubts about the Bible. I was meeting in a conference of seminary
people and brilliant young university people. It was called a college briefing conference. I
remember that I began to have some doubts about the Bible as to whether it really was the Word
of God or not. And I remember going out in the moonlight out in California, high up in the Sierras,
and there was a stump that I came to. I took my Bible, and I opened it in the moonlight and got
on my knees at that stump, and I said, “Lord, I don’t understand all that’s in this book. I don’t
understand many of the things in here, but I accept this book from this moment on as Your Word,
and from now on I want to speak about it and live by it as the authority of my life and the
authority of my ministry.”

Prayer

When you start praying after finding Christ as your Lord and Savior, remember that prayer
is primarily a conversation. You talk to God as though you would talk to your best friend. You
may not be able to pray like a clergyman, but you can just say, “Lord, I love You.” That’s a prayer.
Or you can say in a moment of need, “Help me, Lord,” and that’s a prayer. But it’s always the
correct thing to do to pray, “Lord, Thy will be done.” Pray in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ
because He is the Great High Priest at the right hand of God the Father, and He intercedes for
us. When you pray, you may not even be able to articulate what you want to say, but the Holy
Spirit will make it clear to God the Father what you want to say.

Pray Together

Jesus said, “If two of you on earth agree, it will be done” (see Matthew 18:19) and
“Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst” (Matthew 18:20,

Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke
and encourage with great patience and careful instruction. 3
2 Timothy 4:2 (NIV)
KJV). Praying together is important, too, because it encourages our own prayer life. The faith of
others helps our faith to grow stronger.

Asking for Help

You don’t have to worry so much about your words or how you articulate it; just talk to
the Lord and say, “Lord, I really need You.” I do that all the time. Many times, when I have to
speak somewhere or I get up to preach, I say, “Lord, help me”—I just cannot even remember the
first sentence I’m going to say when I get up—and the Lord helps me. Just simple prayers like
that.

Pray Without Ceasing

I find myself praying right now subconsciously that I’ll say the right thing to you, and I
believe that the Scripture teaches that we’re to pray without ceasing—that means all the time,
constantly. It becomes a habit that you’re praying about everything. I don’t care what it is; I say
“Lord, please help me. Lord, give me the strength. Lord, give me the right words to say.”

Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke
and encourage with great patience and careful instruction. 4
2 Timothy 4:2 (NIV)
You Are Not Alone

People that believe in Jesus Christ are members of the same family. They’re members of
the same body. I’ve traveled now to 75 countries—with people speaking many languages and of
different ethnic backgrounds, different color skins, different cultures—and I’ve found brothers
and sisters wherever I go. If I get off of a plane or get out of a car or get out of a Jeep or a Land
Rover in the middle of Africa or Asia or Latin America or wherever I am and they meet me there,
I’m their brother already. They hug me and many times they kiss me though they’ve never seen
me before, and I do the same to them, because we’re brothers and sisters in Christ. And I found
the same thing in China. I found the same thing in the Eastern European countries. I found the
same thing in the Soviet Union. I’ve traveled in several parts of the Soviet Union, and I’ve found
that there are believers everywhere we went, and they feel the same way. We’re brothers, and
I think that that’s what Christ does. He creates a whole new family for you so that you’re not
alone. There are millions of people throughout the world that believe like you, that are having
the same struggles, the same problems, but the same joys and the same peace and the same
Christ that you have. You have a very large family.

©1989 BGEA

Last modified: 2/19/2021 8:08 PM

Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke
and encourage with great patience and careful instruction. 5
2 Timothy 4:2 (NIV)