■ ■ ■Billy’s prayer connection was not only unusually fervent, it was
also as natural to him as breathing. Perhaps most of the time his
prayer life was not overt and conscious but more like a computer
application that runs in the background—fully functioning but
not seen on the screen.
A. Larry Ross, who served as Billy’s director of media and pub-
lic relations for more than twenty-three years, told us the story
about his initial discovery of this side of Billy’s prayer connection.
“The very first time I set up a network interview for Mr. Graham
was with NBC’s Todayshow in 1982. I went in the day before to
meet with the producers and ensure everything was set. I assumed
Mr. Graham would want to have a time of prayer before he went
on national television, so I secured a private room. After we arrived
at the studio the following morning, I pulled T. W. Wilson aside
and said, ‘Just so you know, I have a room down the hall where
we can go to have a word of prayer before he goes on TV.’
“T.W. smiled at me and said, ‘You know, Larry, Mr. Graham
started praying when he got up this morning, he prayed while he
was eating his breakfast, he prayed on the way over here in the
car they sent for us, and he’ll probably be praying all through the
interview. Let’s just say that Mr. Graham likes to stay “prayed up”
all the time.’
“We didn’t need to use that room,” Ross added. “That was a
great lesson for me to learn as a young man.”
■ ■ ■“The great things happen to those who pray, and we learn to pray
best in suffering.” Helmut Thielicke quoted these words of philoso-
pher Peter Wust, and he had good reason to know their reality
firsthand. A faithful pastor persecuted by the Nazis, Thielicke
would preach week after week to his suffering parishioners, com-
municating the gospel of hope when there seemed no hope, for
Allied bombs were destroying their church and country. After thePlugging into Continuous Voltage