When You Put God First, Everything Changes/ billy graham motivational speech

Now, the fifth chapter of Acts. The fifth chapter of the book of Acts. Just one phrase out of it.

And I'm going to take it totally out of context because I want to talk to young people primarily tonight. The scripture says in the six in the fifth chapter in the sixth verse, "And the young men arose. " Tonight, I would like to see out of Birmingham, Alabama.

And out of this crusade, I would like to see young men and young women arising and going forth to help change our nation and change our world. There's enough spiritual and moral power in this stadium tonight that could change the nation and change the world if we began to march for Jesus Christ. Young people all over the world are marching for every cause in the world.

And I believe tonight the time has come for us to declare ourselves and start marching in earnest for Jesus Christ. Mr The chowing lies said in China the other day to a group of people from Minnesota. He said, you know, the hope of America is exactly the same as the hope of China.

He said the hope of China and the hope of America is in the young people. Well, our hope is not in communism. Our hope is not even in democracy.

Our hope is in Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God. That is our hope. And we have our hope anchored to that.

But I've noticed that all over the world, young people are marching. Red China got them to march by the millions in what was called the Red Guards. And down in Italy the other day, the neofascius doubled.

They doubled their power in the Roman government or in the Italian government by going after the young people. SO, YOUNG PEOPLE FROM the left and young people from the right are beginning to march. Now, in my generation, 30 years ago, they clashed in a war in which millions of people perished.

Young people marching for Hitler. Young people marching for Mussolini. Young people marching for the people of Japan.

Young people marching in America. Young people marching IN BRITAIN. ALL MARCHING WITH GUNS.

And they began to shoot each other. And blood splattered across this planet as it's never been splattered in history. We pray that it will not happen again in our generation.

But young people are now on the move. Young people on the march. And these young people are wanting a say in national affairs.

They are wanting a say in how their world is going to be. But I find in traveling among young people and uh talking to high school groups and college groups uh personally and on the campus that young people today there are several things that they feel and feel very deeply. I think that young people today feel that they've been deceived.

THEY FEEL THAT somewhere along the line, we and our generation have deceived them. WELL, YOUNG PEOPLE HAVE BEEN DECEIVED. But young people, tonight, I want to tell you, every generation has been deceived.

And especially this one, because the Bible says the devil is the great deceiver. That's his business to deceive you. And he's called in 2 Thessalonians, he's called the lie.

Jesus said he's a liar and the father of lies. The devil's business is to deceive you. He tries to deceive you and he does in every generation by saying that you can give your life to pleasure.

You can give your life to the making of money. And you can let these things be your gods and that they will satisfy you and you'll find fulfillment in them. And after a while, the bubble is going to burst.

And when you're young, he tells you that you can take the drug route and find mind expansion and peace of mind by taking drugs. And you soon find that you're in bondage. And you soon find that you've been deceived.

YOU ARE BEING DECEIVED. YOU'RE BEING BRAINWASHED EVERY DAY BY THE DEVIL. And he USES EVERY AGENCY in the world.

Sometimes I fear even the church to deceive you. And sometimes the church is guilty of keeping you from the real Jesus, the real Christ who can forgive and satisfy and change and transform and who comes to love and to hold your hand and to be your friend. The devil wants to deceive you.

He's called in the Bible the deceiver. You see, he deceived Eve in the Garden of Eden. He deceived her into believing that if she ate of that fruit that God had forbidden that she would become LIKE GOD.

HE SAID, "You're really not going to die. There's no judgment. There's no hell.

" AND SHE BELIEVED HIM. SHE BELIEVED A LIE. So the very first generation of people that ever inhabited this planet were deceived.

And man's fall from God began with a deception of the devil. And Satan is deceiving you in this generation. And after a while, you can have success.

YOU MIGHT REACH THE TOP, BUT THERE'S a loneliness. There's an emptiness. You find that the power that you wanted, the money you've made, the glamour THAT YOU'VE HAD DOESN'T SATISFY totally and completely.

Eric Seagull, who wrote Love Story, was quoted in the paper recently as saying, "I can't tell you where I'm going, but I imagine wherever it is, I'll be alone. " Jesus said that materialism without God is disastrous. He said, "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God?

" HE SAID, "BEWARE of covetousness, for a man's life consisted not in the abundance of the things that he possesses. " The devil says, "All you need is security from the cradle to the grave and you'll be happy. I remember once that the Archbishop of Canterbury said, you know, he said, "We in the church worked hard for the welfare state and we've got it, but we found out that that didn't bring happiness and peace to the hearts of our people.

THERE'S SOMETHING ELSE. YOU can be rich, but if you're without God, what do you have? You have nothing.

The Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy and said, "Instruct those that are rich in this world's goods not to be proud. Don't fix your hopes on the uncertain things that money can buy. Fix your hope on God.

" Jesus said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all THESE THINGS SHALL BE ADDED unto you. PUT GOD FIRST, GOD WILL TAKE CARE OF the rest. But if you put money and pleasure and power first, you're going to be deceived.

You're going to come up empty. You're going to come up short-handed. " And this generation of young people able to express themselves more than any generation at least in America and in some parts of Europe and some parts of the world.

You're not able to express yourself in much of the Eastern world. But in this country you can express yourselves and you're expressing yourselves that you're deceived and you're blaming the older generation when actually the older generation has been deceived too. And we've been deceived by a supernatural power called THE DEVIL.

SO LET'S PUT THE BLAME WHERE IT is on the devil. And then secondly, I find that young people wherever I go are frustrated by failure. You know, depression can become very great in adolescent.

When you're at the age between about 16 and 22 or 23, you can have terrible periods of depression, a sense of insecurity. You've not quite left boyhood. You've not quite gotten into maturity in manhood and in experience.

And there can be great depression. And in our generation where we have so much leisure time, you can be preoccupied with nothing. If you don't have a goal or a motive or a purpose or a meaning for living, you can be preoccupied with nothingness and YOU CAN BE ABSOLUTELY empty and this leaves you depressed.

Sometimes you're depressed and sometimes you have a ego trip, egotism, and you try to show off and try to show that you're a man and this way or that way by doing eccentric things to try to gain your place in the spotlight of your little world. The Bible says that we are sinners. Now, you know, I believe that young people need to be told the truth.

And I don't think in my generation we've gotten over to THEM THE TRUTH. WHAT IS THE TRUTH? THE TRUTH is that you have inherited a deadly disease and it's going to kill you.

That disease is called sin. That's a disease, a spiritual disease. And the Bible says the result, the wages of sin is death.

Now, we haven't gotten that across. I read the book Nicholas and Alexander. It's been made into a motion picture.

It's the story of the days before the Russian Revolution when Nicholas was on the throne in Russia, Imperial Russia, and they had a little boy, a little prince, and he had a disease. And when he hurt himself, he would bleed, and they couldn't stop the bleeding. It's called the royal disease, and some people are inflicted.

And the carrier of it, as I understand it, is through the woman. And here the queen Alexandra the empress felt that she was responsible and she carried THIS TERRIBLE GUILT. THIS DROVE her to a false prophet, a false priest by the name of Raspuchia, one of the most vile and wicked characters in history.

And that led to the destruction of Russia and led to the rise of communism. Now, there were many things wrong in Russia. I'm not entering the political part of it at that period.

I'm only saying that this little boy had a disease. And because he had a disease that he had inherited from his mother, this eventually led to a series of events that led to one of the greatest historical moments in the history of the world. Now, YOU HAVE A DISEASE.

THERE'S ABSOLUTELY NO cure for your disease. It's going to kill every one of you. It is appointed on demand once to die.

There is only one possible cure, one total cure. And that's why Jesus Christ came down to this earth. He came and shed his own blood that a cure might be provided by God for you.

It's the only cure for the disease that we all have. You've got it. Whether your face is black or whether it's white or whether it's brown or whether it's yellow, whatever language you speak, whether you speak with a northern accent or a southern accent, whatever you are, WHOEVER YOU ARE, YOU'VE GOT THE disease and it's going to kill you.

It'll kill you physically. You're going to die. It'll kill you spiritually because when you die, your soul is going to go out into eternity lost and separated from God according to the teachings of Jesus.

A lost soul wandering about and out of darkness, lost, lost from God, lost from your loved ones, lost from everything good and lovely and right and holy. Jesus described that situation as hell. There are many of you here tonight that are lost souls living in hell right now a hell on this earth.

But if you if you're outside of Jesus Christ, the Bible says you're infected with this disease. The wages of the sin is death. The soul that sins shall die.

You're under the sentence of death. You're just awaiting the execution. There's only one cure, one serum, one medicine that'll work.

God guarantees it. I know it'll work. It's worked in every generation for tens of thousands of people that have put their trust and their faith in Jesus Christ.

It'll work in your case tonight if you'll trust him. Yes, you may have a feeling of failure. So when you have this feeling of failure, what do you do?

Some people turn to sex. I read in the paper the other day that Billy Graham said that sex was sin. That is not true.

I've never said that in my life. If it were not for sex, I wouldn't be here tonight. Neither would you.

The Bible teaches that sex is not sin. It's the misuse of sex that's sin. When we misuse it.

You say, "But Billy, in our sophisticated modern generation, the pill is taking care of all our problems. " Is that so? Then why is illegitimacy five times greater now than it was 20 years ago per capita?

Why is VD now at epidemic proportions throughout the country until it's become one of the major diseases to be dealt with in the United States? The Bible says to flee fornication. The Bible says it's wrong to have sex experience outside of marriage.

Let's just tell it like it is. Tell it like the Bible says. You may not agree with it.

I'm not asking you to agree with it. I'm not trying to force it down your throat. You can make up your own mind.

I'm telling you, this Bible says that sex outside of marriage is a sin. And the Bible says if you commit that sin, you're going to pay for it in your body, in this life, and in the life to come. It's a sin.

And then there are thousands of young people in this state of failure and this syndrome of failure commit suicide. IT'S THE SECOND killer on the university campus today. Suicide.

Some go to drugs. Did you know I read the other day that 6% of the American young people are now experimenting with hard drugs? I could hardly believe it.

And there's NO CURE. THE UNITED STATES government spends an average of $65,000 to try to cure one addict. and we only have a 1% cure.

And they're only arrested. That's how dangerous and how terrible this drug business is. Not only in America, but in Europe and throughout the world.

But it's a strange thing. In China, they say there no drugs. Young people don't use drugs there because they're not allowed to.

But here in America, with all of our freedom, we have a plague upon us that's like a cancer that could destroy our society. In fact, the Bible intimates that there'll come a time when an entire nation will someday be drugged. It doesn't say America.

It doesn't call the nation by name, but it says the nation will be drugged and we will become soft for the kill like Rome was in her latter days. Drgs. And then there's loneliness.

Young people feel a sense of failure and so they are very lonely. An actor wrote in a national magazine last week and he said, "I'VE REACHED ZERO LEVEL. " He said, "You know, I go on the stage and I act or I go before the cameras and I act and they think I'm a great guy.

" He said, "I've been nominated for the Academy Award. I've had all the money that a man could make. " But he said, "When I get home," he said, "I reach zero.

Take the mask off. " And he said, "I'm the loneliest guy in the world. " He said, "If I only had somebody's hand to hold that really loved me, I want to tell that actor tonight if he's watching, you can hold the hand of Jesus.

" >> Amen. >> He loves you. He'll forgive you.

He'll come in and be your friend that sticketh closer than a brother. He wants to come and hold that lonely hand of yours tonight. He wants to come and make you have purpose and meaning in your life.

Then I think that young people are searching for a challenge. They want something to challenge them. I saw, you know, we read a lot about the fellas that go to Vietnam and I've been over there several times and I've talked to them and I I heard a fellow interviewed on television the other night and he was a pilot off one of those carriers.

And he said, "No, sir. " He said, "I wasn't drafted. " He said, "I'm here of my own choice.

I want to be. " And they said, "Well, why do you want to be? " Well, he said, "I want to serve my country.

" But he said, "You know, I like the daring of it. I like the challenge of it. AND YOU KNOW, WE WANT A CHALLENGE.

That's one reason we LIKE FOOTBALL. THAT'S ONE REASON WE'VE GONE SPORTS CRAZY. WE LIKE A CHALLENGE.

MAN WAS BUILT FOR A CHALLENGE. Why not also have a spiritual challenge? A challenge to change the lives of men and women.

Take the loneliness away. Take the sin and the guilt away. Why not the challenge to follow Jesus Christ and change the world with love instead of hate?

What a challenge we've got tonight. And then lastly, I find that young people all over the world and the world at least that I move in among young people, they want a faith to believe, something to really believe in, something that's intellectually logical, and something that will satisfy their hearts and give them an experience, not a drug experience, BUT A SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE THAT they can experience every day. Well, I want to tell you if you come to Jesus Christ, you found it.

Because when you come to Jesus Christ, it makes logic and it makes sense. It satisfies the intellect. Though you cannot come to Christ intellectually alone because your mind has been affected by sin and your mind and your judgment has been warped by sin.

And you have to come by simple childlike faith. But you also have an experience. You can sense Christ.

You can feel Christ. And what a wonderful thing it is all day long to have a a power about you, a strength about you, a glow about you, no matter what the circumstances, maybe in a hospital room or wherever you are. And you can overcome those feelings of despair and depression and physical handicap BY A GREATER POWER.

THE POWER OF THE Holy Spirit that comes to live within. Oh, I want to tell you there are times that I feel Christ so very close that I fight feel like standing up and dancing a jig. There are times that I feel like shouting hallelujah.

And then there are other times when Christ I can't even touch Christ. I don't even feel him at all. And I my mother is here tonight.

And I remember when I was in school, I wrote to her one day many years ago. She's forgotten. And I said, "Mother, you know, for the last few weeks, I haven't been able to get anywhere in my prayers.

And I don't feel Christ. " And she said, "Son, you have accepted Christ as your savior. And whether you have feeling or not, the moments that you don't feel anything are the moments when he may be the closest because that's the moment that you must walk by sheer faith and God may be testing you.

How wonderful to have a faith to believe, a faith that could change the world, and certainly a faith that could change your world and your life. I came forward like this in a meeting one night many years ago and I started in a whole new direction. It could happen to you and I'm going to ask hundreds of you young people and older people as well to get up out of your seat right now and come and stand in front of this platform and say by coming I do receive Christ.

I want him to be my Lord and my Master and my Savior. If you're with friends and relatives they'll wait. If you've come in a bus they'll wait.

Just get up and come. men, women, young people, hundreds of you right now. And after you've all come down here and you're standing here, I'm going to have a prayer with you and say a word to you and give you some literature and you can go back and join your friends.

I'm going to ask that no one leave the stadium now as hundreds of people come from all over this great stadium and make this commitment. Why do I ask you to come forward publicly? Because Jesus said, "If you're not willing to acknowledge me publicly, I'll not acknowledge you before my father which is in heaven.