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  NEARING HOME

  Life, Faith, and Finishing Well

  Billy Graham

  © 2011 William F. Graham, Jr.

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

  Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com.

  Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the English Standard Version. © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.

  Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version.

  Scripture quotations marked NASB are from the New American Standard Bible®, © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

  Scripture quotations marked NCV are from the New Century Version®. © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  Scripture quotations marked NKJV are from the New King James Version®. © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  Scripture quotations marked NLT are from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation. © 1996, 2004, 2007. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Graham, Billy, 1918–

  Nearing home : life, faith, and finishing well / Billy Graham.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references (NOTES).

  ISBN 978-0-8499-4832-9 (hardcover)

  1. Aging—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Older Christians—Religious life. 3. Graham, Billy, 1918– I. Title.

  BV4580.G725 2011

  248.8'5—dc23

  2011031734

  Printed in the United States of America

  11 12 13 14 15 QG 5 4 3 2 1

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Chapter 1: Running Toward Home

  Chapter 2: Don’t Retire from Life

  Chapter 3: The Impact of Hope

  Chapter 4: Consider the Golden Years

  Chapter 5: Fading Strength but Standing Strong

  Chapter 6: Death’s Destination

  Chapter 7: Influencing the Impressionable

  Chapter 8: A Foundation That Lasts

  Chapter 9: Roots Strengthen in Time

  Chapter 10: Then and Now

  Notes

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am deeply grateful to all those who have encouraged me to write this book, especially my son Franklin and my editors at Thomas Nelson, David Moberg and Matt Baugher. My longtime associate, Dr. John N. Akers, worked with me to develop the manuscript for publication; without his assistance it would not have been completed. I am thankful also for the contributions of Dr. David Bruce, Stephanie Wills, and Patricia Lynn of my staff, and of Donna Lee Toney.

  INTRODUCTION

  I never thought I would live to be this old.

  All my life I was taught how to die as a Christian, but no one ever taught me how I ought to live in the years before I die. I wish they had because I am an old man now, and believe me, it’s not easy.

  Whoever first said it was right: old age is not for sissies. Get any group of older people together, and I can almost guarantee what their favorite topic of conversation will be: their latest aches and pains.

  I will soon celebrate my ninety-third birthday, and I know it won’t be long before God calls me home to Heaven. More than ever I look forward to that day—not just because of the wonders I know Heaven holds in store for me and for every believer but because I know that finally all the burdens and sorrows that press down upon me at this stage of my life will be over. During the last year the physical ailments common to old age really have taken their toll on me. I also look forward to that day because I will be reunited with Ruth, my beloved wife and best friend for almost sixty-four years, who went home in 2007 to be with the Lord she loved and served so faithfully. Although I rejoice that her struggles with weakness and pain have all come to an end, I still feel as if a part of me has been ripped out, and I miss her far more than I ever could have imagined.

  No, old age is not for sissies.

  But that isn’t the whole story, nor did God intend for it to be. While the Bible doesn’t gloss over the problems we face as we grow older, neither does it paint old age as a time to be despised or a burden to be endured with gritted teeth (if we still have any). Nor does it picture us in our latter years as useless and ineffective, condemned to spend our last days in endless boredom or meaningless activity until God finally takes us home.

  Instead the Bible says that God has a reason for keeping us here; if He didn’t, He would take us to Heaven far sooner. But what is His purpose for these years, and how can we align our lives with it? How can we not only learn to cope with the fears and struggles and growing limitations we face but also actually grow stronger inwardly in the midst of these difficulties? How can we face the future with hope instead of despair? These are some of the questions I have been forced to deal with as I have grown older; perhaps the same is true of you as well.

  This book, however, isn’t written just for old people. It is written for people at every stage of life—even those who never have thought much about growing older. The reason is simple: the best way to meet the challenges of old age is to prepare for them now, before they arrive. I invite you to explore with me not only the realities of life as we grow older but also the hope and fulfillment—and even joy—that can be ours once we learn to look at these years from God’s point of view and discover His strength to sustain us every day.

  Someday our life’s journey will be over. In a sense we all are nearing home. As we do so, I pray that you and I may not only learn what it means to grow older but, with God’s help, also learn to grow older with grace and find the guidance needed to finish well.

  —BILLY GRAHAM

  1

  RUNNING TOWARD HOME

  Teach us to number our days,

  that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

  —PSALM 90:12

  Remember that as a faithful child of God you await promotion.

  —VANCE HAVNER

  Growing old has been the greatest surprise of my life. The young live for the here and now. Thinking ahead seems to be in the form of dreams that promise fairy-tale endings. Though I am nearing ninety-three, it doesn’t seem so long ago that I was one of those dreamers, filled with great expectation, planning a life that would satisfy my every desire. Since there were few things in life that I loved more than baseball, as a young man I dedicated myself to the sport and hoped that my passion for the game would lead me straight to the major leagues. My goal was simple: stand at home plate, with bat in hand, immersed in an important game. I often pictured myself hitting a big-league grand slam into the stadium seats and hearing the crowd roar with thunder as I ran the bases—nearing home.

  I never would have guessed what lay in store. After giving my heart to the Lord Jesus Christ—repenting of my sin and putting my entire life into His hands—I laid down my dreams, along with my bat,
and fully embraced God’s plan by faith, trusting that He would lead me all the way. He did, He is, and He will.

  As I look back, I see how God’s hand guided me. I sense His Spirit with me today, and most comforting is the knowledge that He will not forsake me during this last stretch as I am nearing home. If that doesn’t give me a sense of hope, nothing else will.

  MAJOR LEAGUER FOR GOD

  I have remained a baseball fan, not necessarily of one team over another but of the game itself—the teamwork, the strategy, and the challenge of defeating the opponent. But baseball was not God’s plan for me. Nevertheless, He taught me how to integrate these important components into service for Him. The Lord has blessed me with a loyal team of men and women whose hearts are united with mine—set on leading others to an eternal home with Christ. Our team strategy has been to fulfill the Lord’s command to go into the whole world and preach Christ for the purpose of defeating the opponent—Satan.

  When I started preaching, it was never my intention to preach inside a baseball stadium or any other stadium for that matter. I was accustomed to preaching in churches when I was pastoring and in auditoriums when I was traveling with Youth for Christ (YFC). At the close of the war in 1945, several of us on the YFC team had the privilege of preaching at Soldier Field in Chicago.

  The details are sketchy now, but I recall the first time I stood in an outdoor arena to preach the Gospel. I had been invited to hold an evangelistic citywide meeting in Shreveport, Louisiana. When the local auditorium could not hold the crowds, the organizers had no choice but to move the event outside. Uncertain as to how people would feel about attending an evangelistic rally in a large arena, I was rather nervous. Then I thought about my boyhood dreams. Instead of bat in hand at home plate, I had what I now know is a much greater privilege: to stand behind a pulpit, with Bible in hand, immersed in the power of the Holy Spirit. I was not performing before fan-filled bleachers but pronouncing the Word of God to sin-filled hearts searching for truth.

  Life, indeed, is full of surprises.

  Now, all these years later, I still enjoy watching a batter successfully cross home plate, but nothing thrills me more than seeing the Holy Spirit at work in hearts as the Gospel is carried into stadiums, across the airwaves, and around the world. A baseball may be driven into the farthest corner of the largest stadium, but the Word of God travels to the farthest corners of the earth, proclaiming the Good News of salvation. It still excites me just to think about the impact.

  Jesus Christ did conquer death, and by His resurrection He was victorious. Before He left earth, He imparted to His followers the greatest of all strategies: go into the world and preach the Gospel. After listening to His words, they looked up to see their Savior nearing home.

  I wonder. What home are you preparing for? Some people spend their lives building ultimate dream homes so they can enjoy their twilight years. Some find themselves exchanging their bank accounts for residence within the gates of a retirement center. Others spend their last days in nursing homes. For those of you who do not know Him, choosing your eternal home is the most important decision you will ever make. For the Christian the last mile of the way is a testimony to God’s faithfulness, for He said, “I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2 NKJV).

  Regardless of where you lay your head at night, I hope your thoughts are about nearing home, and I’d like to explore those thoughts with you in the pages ahead.

  Someone once said, “The gift of old age is remembrance.” Although I have had to curtail most of my travel, life itself still keeps me motivated as I watch God’s hand at work, not only in my own life but also in the lives of those around me and throughout the world. These last few years have brought the gift of observation and reflection. While that may sound dreadful to some, reflection is biblical:

  Remember all the way which the LORD your God has led. (Deuteronomy 8:2 NASB)

  Remember . . . hold it fast. (Revelation 3:3)

  Remember and do all My commandments. (Numbers 15:40 NKJV)

  Remember the word . . . of the LORD. (Joshua 1:13 NKJV)

  Remember His marvelous works which He has done. (1 Chronicles 16:12 NKJV)

  These are remembrances worth recalling time and again.

  I often hear people younger than me talk about their sleepless nights. There are times I experience the same. But then I remember those marvelous works He has done, and I recall what the psalmist poetically penned:

  When I remember You on my bed,

  I meditate on You in the night watches.

  Because You have been my help,

  Therefore in the shadow of Your wings I will rejoice.

  My soul follows close behind You;

  Your right hand upholds me. (Psalm 63:6–8 NKJV)

  There is great comfort available, even to the aged, when we remember Him.

  Not only does the Lord instruct us to remember, but the Bible reveals what the Lord Himself remembers—and what He chooses not to remember. “He remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14 NKJV); and to those who are repentant He says, “Their sin I will remember no more” (Jeremiah 31:34 NKJV). I am so glad I can remember that promise. Because I have repented of my sin, God chooses to forget my sin. This is a glimpse into the heart of our Savior.

  The Old Testament is filled with such remembrances. It even says, “Remember the former things of old” (Isaiah 46:9 NKJV). Society today may not like the word old, yet young people pay a small fortune for jeans that look old. Collectors put the highest value on antiques because they are . . . old! Others buy old clunkers, restore them, and then proudly drive down the highway showing off . . . the old.

  The days when the aged were admired, looked up to, and respected are gone. Growing up, I was taught to look up to my elders, but there were only a few whom I considered to be ancient. I didn’t really know my grandparents (except for a grandmother who died while I was in elementary school), so I had little opportunity to observe any close relatives who were well along in years. Perhaps the oldest person in our family I can remember seeing regularly was an uncle who often came to our house for Sunday dinner. As I recall, he was a janitor at the county courthouse in Charlotte, and I always looked forward to his visits because he usually had some interesting stories to tell about local politics and other happenings around the courthouse. To me he seemed old (although he couldn’t have been much more than sixty since he was still working), so if someone had asked me then if I thought I would ever be as old as my uncle, I probably would have said, “No way.”

  As far as I know, few members of my extended family lived much beyond seventy; my father passed away at the age of seventy-four after suffering a series of debilitating strokes. Following our 1957 crusade in New York City—a demanding sixteen-week marathon of meetings that left me physically drained—I told some of my associates that because of the intense, nonstop pace of our work I didn’t expect to live beyond fifty (I was thirty-eight at the time). Repeated physical problems in the years that followed— some minor, but others more serious—also made me doubt if I would live a normal life span. The added problems of middle age only seemed to support my theory.

  And yet God in His goodness had other plans for me.

  I am not sure exactly when it happened, but as the years passed, it gradually dawned on me that I was growing older. Middle age—I had to admit—was fading into the distance, and I was rapidly approaching what we politely call the mature years. Sometimes my age showed itself in small (even humorous) ways: the occasional embarrassment of forgetting a good friend’s name, the reluctant awareness that most of the people I saw on an airplane or passed in the street were looking extremely young, the experience of having a server in a restaurant give me the senior discount before asking if I qualified. But it also revealed itself in larger, more serious ways: a slow but inexorable decline in energy, illnesses that easily could have ended in disability or even death, the obvious aging—and even death—of people I had known most of my life, my wife Ruth’s brave
but difficult struggles as the years passed and she grew increasingly frail.

  I began relating to stories I heard from others. “Most of my middle-aged patients are in denial,” a doctor said to one of my associates. “They think they’ll always be able to play strenuous sports or travel anywhere they want or continue working twelve hours a day. They just assume if something goes wrong, I’ll be able to fix it. But one day they’re going to wake up and discover they can’t do everything they once did. Someday they’ll be old, and they won’t like it because they aren’t emotionally prepared for it.”

  I can’t truthfully say that I have liked growing older. At times I wish I could still do everything I once did—but I can’t. I wish I didn’t have to face the infirmities and uncertainties that seem to be part of this stage of life—but I do. “Don’t get old!” I’ve said with tongue in cheek to more than one person in recent years. But of course that is not an option; old age is inevitable if we live long enough. And old age definitely has its downsides; it would be dishonest to say otherwise.

  The Bible doesn’t hide the negative side of getting older—nor should we. One of the most poetic (and yet candid) descriptions in all literature of the infirmities of old age comes from the pen of the writer of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament. After surveying the futility of life without God, he urges his readers to commit their lives to Him while they are still young. The reason? Not only would God give meaning and joy to their lives right now, but if they delay too long, it will be too late to enjoy God’s good gifts. Turn to God now, he urges,

  before the days of trouble come

  and the years approach when you will say,

  “I find no pleasure in them”—

  before the sun and the light

  and the moon and the stars grow dark,

  and the clouds return after the rain;

  when the keepers of the house tremble,