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PRAYING AND RUNNING

There's a high school story with quite a bit of steam to it . . . and you won't believe who's telling it. A young man — this was back in something like 1936 — was a high school senior rehearsing with some fellow students for the school play. And one of the girls in the cast was a real flirt; she kept giving him the eye and dropping hints right and left. He already knew that this young woman had kind of a reputation for "making out," as it was called even back then.

Well, one evening the kettle boiled over. After rehearsal, she teased him into a dark classroom. They were alone. And all at once, she wasn't flirting anymore. Her invitation was wide open. "Billy Frank," she whispered in his ear, "I want you to make love to me. Right here. Right now."
What? She wanted him right there? Of course, this Billy Frank was a normal high school senior, with hormones "as active as any other healthy young male's," he writes later. And he'd spent quite some time picturing just this very opportunity. And now this breathless senior girl was giving him the invitation right there.

Well, what should he do? He was a Christian, so that was pounding in his mind too. He had this temptation, and he had his fairly untested Christian faith. But as he tells the story later, he did two immediate things.

"I silently cried to God for strength," he confesses, "and [I] darted from that classroom the way Joseph fled the bedroom of Potiphar's philandering wife in ancient Egypt."

Many years later, of course, this Billy Frank — or you may recognize him as the Rev. Billy Graham — married the jewel of his life, Ruth Bell. So God rewarded him for his moment of faithfulness there in the dark classroom at Sharon High School.
As we spend this week of radio time thinking about sin and temptation, and how a Christian is supposed to find victory, there's a lot we can learn from this wonderful Billy Graham anecdote, told so frankly in his autobiography, Just As I Am.

Would you agree with the two things that this skinny-as-a-rail high school senior did? He prayed and he ran. That's pretty much it: Pray . . . Run. And you know, for him that worked. The Bible tells us, "Resist the devil and HE will flee." Sometimes it's us who need to flee! Is this the strategy we should all employ? Praying and running? Some people aren't very fast runners, especially when they're with a breathless girl in a dark classroom. In fact, they can hardly move. And some of the rest of us can't run very fast when some other vice beckons, like food or too much sports or anger or pride. We don't remember to pray and we don't direct our minds, even, to run from those evil thoughts.

I think it'd be well here on this Wednesday to flesh out what Pastor Graham demonstrated in that classroom, and what he's preached for well over half a century. First of all, we find clear corroboration for what we said yesterday: we're helpless to resist sin on our own. In that moment of weakness and physical temptation, young Billy Frank knew he couldn't do it alone. And so he prayed. This was an emergency moment, a quick prayer, to be sure. But all of us, as we remind ourselves daily, that we're helpless as individual sin-fighters, need to call on God. We need to surrender our self-confidence, our self-trust, even our own wonderful legs, which ought to carry us to the nearest exit, but often don't.

And really, I'd like to take it a step further than that, and find a deeper meaning to this Billy Frank strategy of pray and run. Pastor Morris Venden, as many of you know, is now the featured speaker on our Sunday broadcasts, which are carried on many of these radio stations. And while he makes the following point in a number of his books, let me share a paragraph from a recent title of his: It's WHO You Know. The entire focus of his more than four decades of Christian ministry is on having a personal relationship with God. And in this book, he also writes about what sin is and what temptation is. Here's what he says:

"The real issue in sin and temptation is dependence on myself."

In other words, whenever any of us decide, even subconsciously, to try to live life and win battles on our own, without trusting in Christ, not only DO we sin . . . but that decision in itself IS sin. Talk about "(quote) living in sin" — that's what it is. Going it alone, without Jesus. Even if we aren't doing wicked things, even if we leave that high school senior girl alone in that classroom and run out the door using our own two legs and nothing else — if we're living our lives trusting in our own power and abilities, that is sin. (It's also doomed, by the way, as we've already discussed.) And here's the second half of that paragraph by Pastor Venden:

"Second, whenever I depend on myself I either fall, OR resort to gimmicks and maneuvers to get myself out of the crisis I'm already in."

It's true that a person might run away from a temptation under just their own power. You might just be too afraid to have an affair. You might keep from popping your enemy in the nose by using the old Mark Twain adage: "When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear." But sooner or later, gimmicks like those are going to fail . . . and in any case, lust and anger are still sin even if we don't carry through with the act all the way to the finish line.

In another very good book, this one entitled The Nature of Christ, author Roy Adams takes us in the Bible to the scene where Satan is trying to tempt Jesus. If we want to learn the recommended method, this would be the best textbook, wouldn't it? You might recall that Temptation #1 — you can read the whole story in Matthew four — had Lucifer inviting a starved and weakened Jesus:

"IF you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread."

Let me ask you a question. What's this temptation about? Is it about food? Is it just appetite? It's not a sin to eat bread, especially if you've been fasting and praying for 40 days and nights. Is that all we see here?

No, remember that Jesus Christ was the divine Son of God. He had divine powers. Jesus certainly could turn stones into bread if He wanted to; in fact, He could turn thin air into bread if it suited Him. But we see here a suggestion by Satan for Christ to do two things. First of all, to doubt His Father and the mission His Father had sent Him on. Notice: "If You are the Son of God, then try this. IF." So Satan is saying here: "Can You really trust in God, Jesus? DO You trust Him?" And then secondly: "Why not use your God-ness, Your divinity, to help Yourself? Instead of feeding the crowds, feed Yourself! Why should You (quote) ‘trust in Your Father' when You're so capable of taking care of Yourself? You've got miracle powers, Man! Use them!"
As Roy Adams paints this picture of desert conflict for us, then, he observes this:

"While appetite was clearly the occasion or context of Jesus' first temptation, the issue went much deeper — to that of autonomy and independence from God. That was the real test, of which appetite was only the springboard. In John 6:57, Christ said: ‘I live because of the Father.'"

You know, if you read through this whole temptation story in Matthew four, we really find the same root challenge three times: do it yourself. Feed Yourself. Jump off a building and attract a crowd with a miracle. Make it easy on yourself by scuttling Your Father's plan, which involves Calvary, and let's devise a shortcut plan which involves a mere moment of pledging allegiance to me instead. Friend, the real temptation hitting Christ here was to not trust in God; it's as simple as that.

And that's what it is with us. Oh, true, there's diet and there's sex and there's pride and there's gossiping and there's hatred. But you can take every one of those temptations, and what's really happening is the quiet, demonic suggestion: try to make it on your own. Seek your own excitement, because God can't provide it. Hate your enemies, because you don't know that God can exact the necessary revenge. Fulfill your own sexual desires, because how can you ever know that God might have a plan to bring you lasting fulfillment later?
At the very end of Billy Graham's autobiography is a paragraph that really does bring tears to our eyes each time we look at it here at the Voice of Prophecy. Here this great giant of God, after years of wonderful service, looks back over his career. What a temptation to boast about the famous people he's prayed with, the presidents he's known, the kings and queens he's had lunch with. What a temptation to maybe think to himself, "After all of this, maybe I AM capable of a few spiritual victories on my own." But no. Listen to this quiet testimony:

"No matter who we are or what we have done," he writes, "we are saved only because of what Christ has done for us." And then here's his own confession: "I will not go to Heaven because I have preached to great crowds. I will go to Heaven for one reason: Jesus Christ died for me, and I am trusting Him alone for my salvation. Christ died for you also, and He freely offers you the gift of eternal life as you commit your life to Him."