know about the suffering of Christ that you preach about so often?
You have never suffered. You live well and have the comforts of life.”
Billy’s response: “When a Western Union messenger boy
delivers a death message to a home, he doesn’t take part in all the
suffering connected with the message. He just delivers the
telegram. That’s all I am—God’s messenger boy.”
Graeme went on to tell of the time when he was with Billy in
a group setting. A leader in the organization was describing in
detail Billy’s accomplishments. “He told everyone about all the
many things he had done,” Graeme said. “But then Billy inter-
rupted him. He said, ‘No, that’s not right. I didn’t do these things.
The Lord did.’”
From those who have known him best emerges the picture of
Billy’s unfeigned belief that he was simply God’s ambassador, car-
rying a message of love to the world. His oft-repeated remark that
“my lips would turn to clay if God took his hand from me” gave
him a sense that he was, to use Mother Teresa’s description of her-
self, “God’s pencil.”
At the same time, his driving purpose, like Mother Teresa’s,
added to the force of his personality and his commanding presence.
Billy titled his autobiography Just As I Am. It’s the title of the
hymn sung during his invitations to receive Christ. Those who
have experienced the gentle, soul-searching sounds of thousands
of voices singing the invitational hymn know its probing power
and abject humility: “Just as I am, without one plea... .”
In choosing that title for his own life story, Billy identified
himself with every convert walking to the front and confessing
sin and weakness. By that title he says that he too is the recipient
of grace, and God has done all the work. “Most of all,” he says in
the book’s introduction, “if anything has been accomplished
through my life, it has been solely God’s doing, not mine, and
He—not I—must get the credit.”
This is no act. Through the centuries the deepest and most
perceptive seekers of God have concluded that those who draw
closest to the Almighty have the strongest sense of their own
unworthiness. When Billy deflects the glory, it’s not an “Aw,
The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham