The Grands Letter

Dear Grands,

Galatians 6:14, “But may it never be that I should boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”

Franklin Graham tweeted this morning that his father, Billy, always wished this verse to be

the focus of his last message. Billy Graham was truly a humble man. Videos that are currently

playing on the Net depict him saying that he wished there were not so much publicity about

him, because he was not causing anything. The one who was doing it all was Jesus!

Could it be that that is why we’re not seeing more “fruit” from out witnessing? Could it be

that our churches have focused on the “externals” instead of the Message of the Cross? Paul

speaks in this verse of “the intense contemplation of a crucified Savior through which the

Christian dies to the world.” By the world, he means “the world of sense, the sphere of outward

and sensible things,” for it is these external and lesser things “with their manifold temptations

to sin” that plague us –the things from which we seem powerless to escape. They are “merely

external rites” that are added to the Cross and displace its singular and only way of salvation.

True salvation in Jesus Christ causes the world to hate us. We are “offensive” to those who are

not saved because the Cross and all who embrace it fly in the face of the evil in which the world

wishes to engage. At the same time, that evil worldliness is offensive to us, and it is to that world

that we are crucified. Each and every time we engage in sinful thoughts or practices, the Holy Spirit,

Who indwells us, cries, NO!” He awakens our conscience that we have “died” to the world and its

ways.

May the message that Billy Graham so faithfully preached and lived be the message for each of us.

The world will always hate and crucify us; we must remember our crucifixion to the world.

Our love and prayers for your always,

Nana & Dado III

Gene L. Jeffries, Th.D.

Springdale, Arkansas

“We never know that God is all we need

until He becomes all that we have.”