Billy Graham Quotes - Page 21

Effective preaching must be biblical preaching, whether it is the exposition of a single word in the Bible, a text, or a chapter. The Word is what the Spirit uses.

Double-mindedness means the faculty of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind and accepting both of them. We talk out of both corners of our mouths at once.

I have not known of too many people who found Christ on their deathbeds. When we come to Christ in our youth, a life is saved. When we come in old age, a soul is salvaged and life eternal is assured; but the opportunity to live a life for Christ has been lost.

Someday your life will be over, no matter how much attention you give to your health. Will you look back with regret, because you nourished your body but starved your soul?

We spend enormous amounts of time and money on fad diets, expensive exercise machines, and health clubs. For many people, these things only demonstrate their preoccupation with the physical side of life . . . but even more important is taking care of our souls.

Partial education throughout the world is far worse than none at all if we educate the mind but not the soul.

Unless the soul is fed and exercised daily, it becomes weak and shriveled. It remains discontented, confused, restless.

God requires something of us. We must confess our spiritual poverty, renounce our sins, and turn by faith to His Son, Jesus Christ. When we do that, we are born again. He gives us a new nature. He puts a little bit of heaven down in our souls.

The Bible teaches that whether we are saved or lost, there is conscious and everlasting existence of the soul and personality.

May we all storm the gates of heaven for the souls of the anguished, that in their greatest time of need they will hear the gentle voice of God’s Spirit calling them to repentance.

The Bible teaches that you are an immortal soul. Your soul is eternal and will live forever . . . the real you—the part of you that thinks, feels, dreams, aspires; the ego, the personality—will never die . . . your soul will live forever in one of two places—heaven or hell.

Even in the darkest moment, before death snatches man’s last breath, God is willing to save a lost soul.

It is a time for soul-searching, a time to see if our anchor holds.

The soul actually demands as much attention as the body . . . the soul was made for God, and without God it is restless and in secret torment.

The searchlight of [God’s] Spirit will probe the inner depths of your soul and reveal things that you think you have already yielded, but you have not.

The Bible teaches whether we are saved or lost, there is an everlasting existence of the soul.

Hardship is not our choice; but if we face it bravely, it can toughen the fiber of our souls.

Our soul is that part of our being which possesses intelligence, conscience, and memory—the real personality. Your body will die, but your soul lives on. And that soul has a “sixth sense”—the ability to believe, to have faith.

Our souls set us apart from every other living creature, and that makes us unique. It also makes us fully human.

Let [Christ] transform your life so that you will have a glow on your face, a spring in your step, and joy in your soul.

Where do we get the notion that our idea of success and God’s are the same? You have written a book; you are a clever manager and promoter; you are a talented artist; you are independently wealthy; you have achieved fame and fortune. Without the gifts of intelligence, imagination, personality, and physical energy—which are all endowed by God—where would you be?

Our world is obsessed with success. But how does God define success? Success in God’s eyes is faithfulness to His calling.

The Bible says that God sees two classes of men. He sees the saved and the lost, those who are going to heaven and those who are going to hell.

Lying is one of the worst of all sins and can be committed by a thought, word, or deed. Anything that is intended to deceive another person is lying.

As men and women seek to find independence from God, they have lost a sense of purpose in life. The worth of human personality is often equated with what we do for a living. However, a person’s occupation, community standing, or bank account is not what is important in God’s eyes.

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.

All around you are people who need Christ: your family, your neighbors, people you work with or go to school with every day. Are you praying for them, asking God to open the door of their hearts to His truth?

Someday all of us will give account of the way we have used the gifts God has given. The person to whom much has been given will find much required of him.

I have never met a person who didn’t have problems of some kind. This is why we need one another’s encouragement.

In our desire to achieve success quickly it is easy to get our values mixed up and call evil good and good evil.

Instead of manipulating [people] for our own purposes, we’d help them achieve what is best for them. We’d also try to see life through their eyes. Treat others the way you would want them to treat you.

If the other person would just do things my way, we could get along,” one says, when the other person is probably thinking the same about us—that leads to conflict. Our deepest problems are within ourselves.

Man boasts of his nobility, his ideals, and his progress. Man’s goal is imitation, not redemption.

Man persists in waywardness. If one institution fails [he says], try another—anything but God’s plan.

Some of the most miserable people I have ever met have been people who are very popular with the public, but down inside are empty and miserable.

Proclaiming “the whole will of God” should be the goal—and the joy—of every church and every preacher.

Our souls have a disease. It causes all the troubles and difficulties in the world. It causes all the troubles, confusions, and disillusionments in your own life. The name of the disease is . . . sin.

We spend all our time and energy pampering our bodies and minds, but if we ignore our souls, we will end up spiritually starved and malnourished.

Take care of your soul—your inner self—by feeding on the Word of God and letting His Spirit transform you from within.

Christ taught that in the sight of God one soul is worth the entire materialistic world! In God’s sight the individual is all-important. When Christ calls a man to follow Him, He calls him “out” from the “group.” Christ can fill the vacuums. He can restore your personal identity. He can become the truth to your generation.

Nothing can calm our souls more or better prepare us for life’s challenges than time spent alone with God.

You should no more allow sinful imaginations to accumulate in your mind and soul than you would let garbage collect in your living room.

Compared to when I was a boy, we now live in reverse. The people are locked up in their homes at night and criminals are outside on the loose! When I was young, the criminals were locked up and the people were free to move about. That time has passed for many cities.

The central theme of the universe is the purpose and destiny of every individual. Every person is important in God’s eyes.

In our day many people are broad but shallow. Agnosticism, anxiety, and emptiness have gripped much of our world.

No area of human life is so full of difficulties and heartaches as relationships. If you listed everything that upset you during the past week, I suspect most had to do with other people. People can be selfless and kind, but they can also be difficult, stubborn, ego-driven, thoughtless, mean, selfish, manipulative. But the problem is not just other people; it’s also ourselves.

Man is not growing better! Man is not climbing upward. Instead of progress in man himself there is degeneracy—degeneracy of body, mind, and spirit. Man is going downhill.

Success stories may be great motivational material for sales seminars, but we are not always successful.

Time and tide and the ravages of sin take their toll on the most noble achievements of man.

Our job in life is not to be successful, but to be faithful.

This age is interested in success, not suffering . . . Our Lord was ridiculed, insulted, persecuted, and eventually killed. In the face of opposition, He went about “doing good.

Many of the wicked are receiving their wages now. Many Christians who may not be succeeding according to the world’s standards now, will reap great rewards in heaven.

The Western world’s sole objective seems to be success, status, security, self-indulgence, pleasure, and comfort.

Success or failure cannot be measured by any human standard.

God measures people by the small dimensions of humility and not by the bigness of their achievements or the size of their capabilities.

God can take anything that happens to us—even bad things—and use it to shape us and make us into a better, more Christlike person—if we will let Him.

There are three of you. There is the person you think you are. There is the person others think you are. There is the person God knows you are and can be through Christ.

Our personalities, our intelligence, and our capabilities are gifts from [God’s] own bountiful hand. If we divert their use for our own profit, we become guilty of selfishness.

Almost nothing is as complex as the human personality, and no simple formula will ever cover every situation or every relationship.

People are little creatures with big capacities, finite beings with infinite desires, deserving nothing but demanding all. God made people with this huge capacity and desire in order that He might come in and completely satisfy that desire.

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