Last week Billy Graham observed his 97th birthday. He and my Dad were the same age, both born in 1918, only a few weeks apart. Growing up, I had great respect for both men. Both were preachers worth imitating \u2013 although it was much easier to imitate my Dad\u2019s Texan than it was for this east Texas boy to imitate a North Carolina accent. Both played semi-pro baseball, but yielded that career to the calling of God on their lives. Both married women described in Proverbs 31:10-31. Both fathered ministers. One preached to thousands, the other to hundreds, but neither preached according to certain modern sermon styles. Both dressed up in suit and tie to preach, believing it was better to honor God than imitate the congregation. Both believed when you said \u201cthe Bible says\u201d you didn\u2019t need an adjective to modify \u201cBible.\u201d Both loved God\u2019s people and wept over those who weren\u2019t. One heard God say, \u201cWell done, good and faithful servant . . . enter into the joy of your Lord\u201d (Matthew 25:21); the other is within the sound of that heavenly announcement. A man like me couldn\u2019t ask for better role models.<\/p>\n
Join me this week in praying for the following global concerns:
\n\u2022 Pray for Eric and Tricia and their City English Project in Bangkok, Thailand.
\n\u2022 Pray for Shaun and Whitney as they launch a new church in Maple Ridge (metro Vancouver), Canada.
\n\u2022 Pray for Mark\u2019s ministry through Outreach UK.
\n\u2022 Pray for Ron and Robin, as they host a \u201cChristianity Explored\u201d Bible study for public school teachers in Budapest, Hungary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week Billy Graham observed his 97th birthday. He and my Dad were the same age, both born in 1918, only a few weeks apart. Growing up, I had great respect for both men. Both were preachers worth imitating \u2013 although it was much easier to imitate my Dad\u2019s Texan than it was for this…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}