Graham comes to GFW Convo

Franklin Graham challenged Liberty students at Convocation Wednesday, Oct. 10, to make their lives count by following Christ, no matter the cost.

Graham, president and CEO of both Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, said many people follow Jesus “at a distance” — when things are going well, they follow him, but when things are not going well, they disappear. Graham emphasized the importance of “picking up one’s cross” and following Christ without looking back and without making
excuses.

“There’s a cost for (following Christ),” Graham said. “He’s got to be first in your life.”

The cost, Graham said, is that Christians must be willing to give up everything for Christ. 

“We live in a world where it is less and less popular to be a Christian,” Graham said. “The world is going to hate you if you stand for Christ, and we can’t compromise. If the world pats you on the back, there’s something wrong with the way you’re living.”

Graham used the emergency field hospitals set up by Samaritan’s Purse as an example of the cost that is sometimes required of Christians.

In the evening of Oct. 8, hundreds of students attended an event in which they heard from the medical staff who served in the emergency field hospital in Iraq. Doctors and nurses spoke about challenges they faced while working in Iraq during and following the battle to reclaim Mosul
from ISIS.

“We were there in the name of Jesus,” Graham said. “I wanted these Muslims to know there is a God who loves them. I want them to know that God cares for them, that he sent his son from heaven to this earth to take our sins.”

He challenged students to use their education for Christ after they graduate.

“Use this education to take the gospel to the ends of the earth,” Graham said. “Use this education to tell a dying world that’s going to hell that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosever believeth in him should not perish, but should have everlasting life.”

Graham emphasized the blessings that result from
listening to God.

“When you obey God’s voice, the blessings that he pours out on you (are) incredible,”
Graham said.

Convocation also honored Dr. Wallace Turnbull, a missionary to Haiti, who was awarded the first ever Liberty Global
Awareness Award. 

Because of Turnbull’s lifetime dedication to the island of Haiti, 20 percent of 146,000 native students are enrolled in Christian education.

“It’s not me, it’s the Lord. I just acted, and he used it,”
Turnbull said. 

After Convocation, Graham and Falwell toured the Emergency Field Hospital set up on the northern end of the
Academic Lawn.