My Dear Friend, 

Billy Graham is gone but his words are not. And they are more timely than ever! On the subject of complete consecration, Graham writes:

"'Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself'" (Mark 8:34). Today Christ is calling Christians to cleansing - to dedication - to consecration - to full surrender. If you are a Christian and have been suffering defeat or have been living outside the will of God, I beg you to surrender every area of your life to Christ.

"Only surrendered Christians will make an impact on our world. The world does not need any more lukewarm Christians, or lazy Christians, or quarrelsome Christians, or doubting Christians, or prideful Christians. The Bible says, 'a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways' (James 1:8, KJV). What keeps you from a full surrender of your life to the King of kings and the Lord of lords?

"Your response will make the difference between success and failure in your spiritual life. It will make the difference between your needing help and being able to help others. It will revolutionize your habits, your prayer life, your Bible reading, your giving, your testimony, and your church relationship. This is the Christian's hour of decision."

May we, the living, hear Graham, the dead … and his ever-living, ever-life-giving words. Oh, my, how this Grahamism is for this very moment in time!

What might God do in this deeply troubled land of ours if we - even a comparative few, a remnant - would deeply sanctify ourselves with the assistance of God's grace and Word! The words of another departed leader, Joshua, reveal the answer.

He, too, spoke profoundly on the subject of complete consecration. With the Canaan Conquest looming, Joshua directed the people, "Sanctify yourselves [today]; for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you" (Joshua 3:7). And they did! They circumcised their flesh that day, in obedience to Joshua's inspired directive, and the next day saw Jordan supernaturally run dry and the way to the Promised Land open before them! It was a miracle, a "wonder" of God!

But the key is their obedience to Joshua's directive, the essence of which teaches us this vital lesson: Miracles occur the day after we sanctify ourselves! This, too, is extraordinarily timely for us.

If you, or I, if your church, or mine, or any remnant of Christians gets serious enough with God to get down to the nitty gritty business of getting every conscious bit of flesh out of our lives and setting them entirely apart from sin for the Savior's exclusive fellowship and use, the next day God will part "Jordans," or impassable barriers of trouble, before our weary eyes, and lead us on a straight course into our "Promised Land." For us, that good land is a good life.

It is a genuinely Christlike lifestyle, the mature Christian life in which God faithfully and steadily honors us with "wonders" - ever closer fellowship with Him, increasingly deeper understanding of His Word, an ever clearer understanding of His will and plans, supernaturally charged times of prayer, regular open answers to our secret petitions, ever sweeter heavenly fellowship, more personal guidance by the Holy Spirit, powerful "Book-of-Acts-like" ministry, open doors of testimony with open-hearted souls, divine appointments divinely timed, supernatural strength to endure testing, ever-ripening "fruit of the Spirit," regular revivals springing from the regular "rain" of the Spirit on our churches, miraculous harvests of saved sinners and matured believers, and one victory after another over the "Canaanite" gods that have for years kept us limited and bound and wandering in a frustrating wilderness of spiritual defeat: self, pride, envy, lust, sexual immorality, greed, unforgiveness, fear of man, fear of failure, prejudice, and so forth.

My living friend, let us heed the wisdom of our departed friends. If we will only obey the dead in Christ, consecrating ourselves fully, we will, we must, we cannot fail to experience the life of Christ. As never before! Fully! Today!

And witness His "wonders" in our "land," personally and nationally, "tomorrow."

Obeying the dead,

Greg Hinnant
Greg Hinnant Ministries