When God Gets Your Attention | Billy Graham Classic Sermon

Are you trying to live without meaning in your life?” Hear Billy Graham explain how you can find God’s purpose for your life in this 1992 message from Portland, Oregon. Watch more

From our archives, the Billy Graham classics.
I want to take as our text tonight, a passage in the 12th chapter of Hebrews, these words, and this fact, the removing of all those things that are shaken as of things that are made, but those things cannot be shaken may remain.
Therefore, we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved Let us have grace, whereby we may serve god acceptably with reverence and godly fear for our god is a consuming fire.
Since we were here in the fifties, and then in the sixties, things have changed.
I was asking Joel Rich a moment ago. I said, don’t you all still have street cars?
It seems to me I’ve seen one since I’ve been here. He said, yes, they’ve just put them in.
And, uh, I thought, well, that’s the first city I’ve been to in a long time, where they had street cars.
The last I can remember was in arrest.
They had street cars, and it took me back to my boyhood and childhood when we had street cars in our town of Charlotte, North Carolina.
But many things have changed since we were here, and those of us that are senior citizens can really see a change in Portland, things that you younger people take for granted.
We were born before television, before frozen foods, before antibiotics, before nylons, before Xerox, before credit cards, first time sharing meant togetherness, not computers.
And software wasn’t even a word.
We were before pantyhose and drip dry clothes before ice makers and dishwashers.
Cherryos, instant coffee, decaffeinated anything, and and McDonald’s had never been heard of.
And I don’t know how we lived.
If we’d been asked to explain CIA, VCR, UFO, ERA, Nfl, or JFK, we we would have said, well, that’s alphabet soup.
When you think are pretty hearty bunch because we came along through all of that.
There have been great political changes. Hungry.
We win the people’s stadium in Hungary about 3 or 4 years ago, and it had the largest crowd in its history to hear the gospel.
A 115,000 people in one service.
South Africa would have never thought of having an integrated service in those days.
We went to South Africa. We did not go until they guaranteed we could have integration.
And we went there.
And we can show you on film where the newspapers had headlines saying, Billy Graham says apartheid is sin.
And, uh, then there have been gigantic geophysical and ecological calamitous across the world.
Our red on this earth week column in the Argonian, a diary of some of the things that happened on the planet last week.
It talked tropical storms last week, like the worst hurricane to slam into Hawaii in this century.
It continued to report on the damage from hurricane Andrew in Florida.
Norman Mitskey’s house, who is on our team, uh, looked like some giant hand had come down and just lifted the whole thing up.
Lifted everything out. We went to Homestead in Southern Florida.
And my son, who’s here tonight, Franklin Graham has an organization called Samaritan’s Pur and they had already gotten 10 trailers in place down there by the time we got there to see it.
And what a devastation that was. You cannot imagine what happened in Southern Florida.
You can’t see it on television.
Stephan Nelson, my grandson spent his full time down there working, handing out water and bread and, uh, things and He saw on top of one roof this sentence that somebody had written.
Okay, god. You got our attention. Now what?
And the newspaper went on to mention Typhoon Civil, the tropical storm’s pain in Roseland, monsoon floods washed away entire villages in North Indian Pakistan, killing thousands of people.
They were earthquake and Zahir and Nicaragua and minor shakes in many other parts of the world.
These are just the things that came out of one newspaper.
This is all in addition to environmental changes, such as the sudden drop in levels of protective ozone over the anti arctic mentioned in the column, that might signal major damage.
I could go on and on, and that was just in your newspaper last week.
We are living in a changing and increasingly dangerous world. That’s the point I’m trying to make.
It’s not getting better.
Do you have a purpose in your life and does life have meaning to you?
Or is your life cracking up and going all the pieces?
The big question today is what is meaning?
50 years ago, when I started preaching, the philosophical question was what is truth?
Today’s question is, what is the point?
The Bible says the heart is deceitful, above all things, and desperately we could, who can know it.
Your heart, my heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. Who can know it?
Who would believe that after a storm hit Miami and Southern Florida like Andrew, that there’d be lueders taking advantage of it.
I read an article in the Charlotte Observer last week that the domestic violence cases are soaring after the hurricane in Southern Florida.
We don’t know our heart.
So we don’t know what would happen till it actually happens.
Andrew Morris, the great philosopher in France wrote, the universe is indifferent, who created it, While we’re here on this puny mud heap spinning in infinite space, he said I have not the slightest idea.
And there are many people that take that attitude.
Albert Timu, who was The great philosopher that everybody quoted a few years ago said, man cannot live without meaning.
Are you trying to live without meaning in your life?
Now here are some of the things that the philosophers were saying that people think about when they’re alone.
When you’re alone, here’s what many people that are here tonight think about.
First, you think about Well, I have to suffer, maybe now or soon, I must struggle to make ends meet I must struggle in my marriage.
I must struggle with my girlfriend, my boyfriend, because it seems that things are going wrong.
I’m a struggle to make grades in school. I’m at the mercy of chance.
I feel guilty all the time, and I don’t know what I’m guilty of.
I ask the question when I’m alone, who am I?
I know that I must die, and I’m afraid to die.
I don’t wanna die, but I know I’m going to have to die.
Every person in this audience, 75 years from now will be dead.
A scientist recently asked the question on television, who made the earth?
Why is it here? What is its future? We have the answer.
We just don’t know. Then he said an interesting thing perhaps we’re all going to have to restud in the biblical accounts.
And that’s exactly what many atheists doing today. They’re rest adding the biblical accounts.
The first time I met Mister Yelson in the Kremlin, I talked with him, and he told me that he’d been an atheist.
But he said, I’m no longer an atheist.
He said, I’ve come to believe that there’s something beyond this life and something bigger than we are.
He said, I’ve started going back to church.
And he said, my grandchildren are wearing crosses around their necks, and I’m glad.
Now that was a couple years ago before the 2.
TS Elliott once wrote, where is the wisdom?
Think of it now. Where is the wisdom? That we’ve lost in knowledge.
We have a tremendous amount of knowledge.
We have universities by the school and 100 and 1000 throughout the world.
But we’ve lost wisdom in the midst of all of our knowledge.
Jesus said, and there shall be signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars and upon the earth, distress of nations with perplexity.
In loop 2125.
Distress, that word means that we’re oppressed from all sides.
And perplexity means no way out.
If you’d gone to Rio, to that conference on Ecology, And how can we save this planet?
You would have come away, like many of them came away, confused and mixed up, discouraged, and hopeless.
President Kennedy said a quarter of a century ago, no man entering upon this office could fail to be staggered upon learning the harsh enormities of the trials through which he must pass in the next few years, how right president Kennedy was.
He went on to say each day the crisis multipliers. Each day their solution grows more difficult.
Each day, we draw nearer the hour maximum danger, and time is not our friend.
In the midst of all these changes, there are certain things that have not changed and will never change.
The first thing that has never changed in all these centuries, the nature of god has not changed.
He said, I am the lord. I change not. Malachi 36.
The scripture says there is no bearableness neither shadow of turning with god.
That means the batting of an eyelash. Not even that much change in god.
In all these centuries, he’s from everlasting to everlasting, He had no beginning. He has no end.
I don’t understand that, but I accept it. He’s the one thing that we can count on is god.
He’s unchanging in his holiness.
Holy, holy, holy lord, god almighty, which was and is is and is to come. Revelation 48.
God is unchanging in judgment. It says the lord shall judge the ends of the earth.
God is unchanging in love.
For god commanded his love taught us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, god loves you.
That’s hard to believe. That’s hard to take in, but god loves you.
And if you were the only person in the whole world, god would love you, and we he would have sent his son Jesus Christ to down the cross for you.
God is love. That’s one thing I want you to remember when we leave.
That we’ve said. And then the second thing, the word of god has not changed, not only the nature of god, has not changed, but the word of god has not changed.
This Bible is the word of god.
The grass witherth, the flower fadeth, but the word of our god shall stand forever.
And what you read in this book stands forever.
It’s a thrilling thing to take up this book and know that you are reading something inspired by god, and it’s his message to the human race.
He tells us where we came from. He tells us where we’re going.
He tells us how to live every day. The third thing that hasn’t changed.
Human nature has not changed. Jeremiah, the prophet said, as said a moment ago, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it.
All have sinned and come short of the glory of God, Euro Center, I’m a Center.
Sin means that I’ve broken god’s laws. I’ve broken the 10 commandments.
If you have broken one commandment, one time, you’re guilty of all. Have you ever told a lie?
Have you ever had lust in your heart? Then you’re guilty. We’re guilty before god.
And because we’re guilty, we’re under sentence of death.
Death in this life and death in the life to come. The way of salvation has not changed.
In all these centuries, the way of salvation is still the same.
Neither is there salvation in any other, for there’s none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.
In acts 4:12. John 146 says, I am the way the truth and the light.
No man cometh to the father but by me.
In the last generation, the only way to god was through Christ.
In this generation, the only way to god will be through Christ.
The only one in history of whom it is written.
He that believeth on the sun hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not the sun shall not see life, but the wrath of god abideth on him.
Think of it. The wrath of god abides on you now.
And the only way that wrath can be turned away is by the cross.
When Jesus Christ took your sins on the cross, God could no longer see your sins because your sins were buried in the depths of the sea, and god cannot even remember your sins.
Think of it. God cannot even remember.
He has the ability to turn the tape recorder off and erase it.
And god cannot remember your sins when you come to Christ at the cross by faith and repentance.
Yes. God will never change. The word of god will never change.
But you have to change if you were to go to heaven.
If you were to have a a new life here and have purpose and meaning in your life, you have change.
The first thing you have to do is repent.
Repent you, therefore, and be converted that your sins may be it out the scripture says.
The second thing is to believe, and that word believe means to commit That’s the marriage vow that we take.
It’s not just getting married. It’s a lifetime commitment.
My wife is here tonight, and she And, uh, we’ve had differences like every normal couple.
And someone asked her, had she ever thought of divorce?
She said, no, but I have thought of murder.
I don’t know where she’s sitting, but sometime, I’m going to ask her to explain that.
But we have a wonderful marriage, and we have a wonderful family, and all of them know the lord, for which we give thanks to god.
Now I want to ask you, do you know Christ?
You see, Christ died for you?
And on that cross, god laid on him the sins of us all. We deserved hell.
We deserved judgment. We deserve to pay the price for our sins, but Jesus took them voluntarily on the cross.
And on that cross, he had the capacity because he was the god man to see you sitting here tonight.
He looked ahead these 1000 of years, and he could see you, and he knew you, and he knew all about you, and he loved you, and he’s willing to forgive you and give you person meaning in your life and change your life.
Your life has to change.
But as many as received him, to them, gave him power to become the sons of god, even to them that believe on his name.
Have you come to Christ?
Has there been a time when you received him as your lord and your savior and said, lord, with your help, I want to follow you.
I’m going to read the Bible, and I’m going to pray, and I going to be as faithful to you as I can and I can’t live the Christian life alone.
I’m a failure Billy Graham cannot live the Christian life. I’ve tried.
I can’t do it. But with the help of the word of god and the help of the Holy Spirit, I can live the Christian life, but he lives it through me.
He produces the fruit of the spirit, which is love, and joy and peace.
All of these things are supernaturally produced in you by the Holy Spirit when you receive Christ.
Some people say, I’m trying to hold on. You don’t need to hold on. He holds you.
Just turn loose and let him come into your heart.
How many of us?
We’ve been baptized? We go to church once in a while, maybe every Sunday, but deep in your heart is a doubt that you know Christ.
You’re not sure that if you died at this moment, you’d go to heaven.
You wanna be sure. You want to be certain.
You want to know that your sins have been given, and you want to know that purpose and meaning that god can give to you.
Are you willing to change your way of living?
That’s repentance to change your mind, to change the direction of your life, and you And then you come by faith and faith means commitment when I stepped on this platform.
Last night, I’d never been on this platform before.
I didn’t get down and examine it to see if it would hold me up.
I accepted by faith that the carpenters that built it, built it to hold a man.
And by faith, you receive Christ in the same way. You totally commit yourself.
You say, lord, I’m not trusting anything else to save my soul except Jesus.
I commit myself to him. Young people today are looking for a cause.
They’re looking for a flag to follow. They’re looking for something to really believe in.
People are mixed up. They’re confused. They don’t know what to think. They’re just angry.
And many people think, can we hold to other as a society.
Come to Christ.
He will meet all those longings and all those needs and give you a new life.
He can into your family. He can come into that office where you’ve been having trouble.
He can come into your schoolroom. He can come into every phase of your life.
And make you a new person. He can make those ends meet.
He can help you meet those payments.
He can help you in looking for a job.
He can give you total assurance that your sins are gone and that god will never hold you accountable for them again.
They’re forgiven. And he receives you with open arms, and he’ll do it tonight if you’ll let him.
And I’m going to ask you to do something we saw hundreds of people do last night.
I’m going to ask you to get up out of your seat and come and stand in front of this platform and say by coming.
I want Christ to come into my heart. I want him to take all of me.
I surrender my life to him, and I say lord Jesus, I am willing to repent of my sins and turn by faith to you and put my total confidence and my total faith in you.
He died on the cross and shed his blood for you.
And certainly you can come and take a stand here for him.
He said if you’re not willing to acknowledge me publicly before men, I’ll not acknowledge you before my father, which is in heaven.
That’s the reason I asked people to come forward.
Every person Jesus called in the New Testament, he called publicly. Everyone, you look and see.
There was one. Negadimas came by night.
But those that made their commitment to Christ came publicly, I’m going to ask you to come publicly and receive him as your lord and your savior and your master.
You come right now. We’re going to wait on you.
Just as hundreds here have responded to the invitation to make a public commitment to Jesus Christ, UK 2, whatever you are.
Just call the number on your screen right now.
Special friends want to help you with this most important decision you can ever make. So don’t wait.
Call now.
If you just prayed that prayer with my father or if you have any questions about a relationship with Jesus Christ, I would just call that number that is on the screen.
There’ll be someone there to talk with you, pray with you, and answer those questions.
And remember, God loves you.
Now toll free at 18777724559.
That’s 18777 24559.
Or you can write to us at Billy Graham, 1 Billy Graham Parkway, department C, Charlotte Carolina 28201.
Or you can contact us on the web 247 at peace with god. Tv.
Get the same helps to you that we give to everyone who responds at the invitation.
On behalf of Franklin Graham and the Billy Graham evangelistic associate, Thank you for watching, and thank you for your prayers.
It’s Anne.
She’s in trouble. If you don’t take it to the edge, every chance you get, You did it already, baby?
I was in trouble, and I didn’t know what to do. Help. Where are the Jews?
I knew that I could take on the world.
It’s like you’re in a dream, but not really a dream is a reality.
I don’t really believe in all this, but I know something crazy is happening right now.