My Own Dark Night

In my sophomore year of college, I met and married a beautiful girl named Deb. We fell in love immediately, were married as students, and began our life together in the summer of 1970. I was preaching all over West Texas as a youth evangelist, and Deb often traveled with me to sing and play the piano. With my Bible in hand, I preached my heart out at youth revivals and rallies in small towns and churches all over Texas, never imagining what was about to happen to our family. At the end of a hot August, while preaching and evangelizing at a little place called Crowell, Texas, my older preacher brother, Bob Graham, called to deliver terrible news. Our father, Tom Graham, had been mortally wounded at his hardware store in Fort Worth. A thief had attacked my dad with a claw hammer and beat him with multiple blows to the head. The father I loved was left unconscious and died ten days later. Our family was devastated by his tragic death. We were cast into the fires of suffering and sorrow. My faith was also in that fire. But God was with us, and we all were comforted by the God of all comfort. Still, the tragic event was definitely a major test of faith. It’s been said that the faith that can’t be tested is a faith that can’t be trusted. The day after my dad’s death, my pastor called to express his care and concern for me and our family. Dr. Fred Swank was a wonderful shepherd and leader who had grounded me in God’s Word and had just that same year ordained me and my lifelong friend, O. S. Hawkins, to the gospel ministry. Most of the words he said that day are long forgotten, but the Scripture he shared, one that I had never heard or noticed until that time, is still with me. 

“Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by” (Psalm 57:1).

I was just twenty years old and facing the trial of my life.

When we have questions we can’t answer, doubts and fears we can’t shake, pain that pierces the heart, God’s Word can be trusted to calm and comfort us. It is a sure word that settles the troubled soul and brings healing to the broken heart. One day Jesus spoke hard words to a large crowd of seekers, men and women who had been miraculously fed with a few loaves and fishes. When the Lord challenged them with the demands of discipleship, many of them turned and walked away, rejecting him. Jesus then asked his twelve disciples, 

“‘Do you want to go away as well?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life . . .’” (John 6:66–69).

Jesus not only possesses the words of eternal life, but he is the Word of Life. The Bible provides the eternal words that offer life to all who believe and follow Jesus. What I determined to do in those dark days was to keep believing the Bible and not throw away my faith, but instead by God’s grace dig deeper into the Bible and trust his Word in the darkness. By knowing him more and more, I stayed with Jesus and walked with him in the Word. Where else would I go? We need to learn to take God at his Word and trust what he says. When we believe God’s Word, trusting him to do what he promises, we can expect him to act. Taking God at his Word means that we believe it and we receive it. We “welcome the word,” as the book of James tells us, and then God acts in ways only he can. The British preacher Charles Spurgeon called the Bible “faith’s checkbook,” saying that

“All the riches and resources of the heavenly bank are available to us in Christ and guaranteed in God’s Word so that the Bible is a window in which we look and see our Lord.”

I don’t want to pretend that one Bible verse makes all the pain go away. But if we lean on his Word and his Spirit, day after day, it will give us the strength we need to carry on.

Pages 78-80