“As He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’” (1Peter 1:15-16 ESV)
Influence grows out of worship. Without that preoccupation, we have nothing to give a cynical, desperately unhappy, and unsettled world.
In 1966, during the closing service of the World Congress on Evangelism in the Kongresshalle in Berlin, Germany, Billy Graham spoke of the need for “a gentleness and a kindness and a love and a forgiveness and a compassion” that will mark us as different from the world. “We must be a holy people,” he said.
As an illustration of the power of personal holiness, he spoke of the conversion of Dr. H. C. Morrison, founder of Asbury Theological Seminary. He described a day many years before when Morrison, as a farm worker, was plowing in a field. Looking down the road, he saw an old Methodist circuit rider coming by on his horse.
Morrison had seen the elderly gentleman before and he knew him to be a gracious, godly man. As he watched the old saint go by Morrison felt the power of God’s presence, and a great sense of conviction of sin came over him. He dropped to his knees. And there, between the furrows in his field, alone, he gave his life to God.
When he concluded the story, Billy Graham earnestly prayed, “Oh, God, make me a holy man, a holy man.”
-- David Roper in “A Beacon in the Darkness: Reflecting God’s Light in Today’s World”
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