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The mother-daughter team of Anne Graham Lotz and Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright talk about how to pass down a legacy of faith from one generation to the next in Jesus Followers.
Study Gateway's First Listens: Find your next Bible study! Join host Shelley Leith as she curates first sessions of Bible studies on various themes each season, taught by some of the world’s most influential Christian authors, teachers, and pastors. To learn more, visit https://StudyGateway.com.
First Listens Season 1: Episode 6
Jesus Followers
By Anne Graham Lotz and Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright
Hi there! It’s Shelley Leith here, host of Study Gateway’s First Listens, where you get first listens to first sessions so you can find your next video Bible study.
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This season of First Listens is called New & Popular, where we’re listening to the audio of the first sessions of the newest and most popular video Bible studies from HarperChristian Resources that are streaming on Study Gateway. In this season you’ll hear sessions by Louie Giglio, Jennie Allen, Michael Todd, Sadie Robertson Huff, Lysa TerKeurst, Anne Graham Lotz, and Sarah Jakes Roberts, and with these new and popular first listens, you’re going to get some great ideas for choosing your next Bible study!
Today we’re in for a treat. We are hearing from the mother-daughter team of Anne Graham Lotz and her daughter, Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright, the daughter and grand daughter of Billy Graham. In their brand new study, Jesus Followers, they take us inside Billy Graham’s house, and from those empty rooms they talk about how to pass down a legacy of faith from one generation to the next. As you listen, you’ll just have to imagine Billy Graham’s study where they stand to teach this lesson. Let’s join Anne and Rachel-Ruth for this session of Jesus Followers called Our Witness.
[play Session Two]
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ANNE GRAHAM LOTZ: There's a long one lane winding road that leads up to the place that I call my father's house. I know every curve, every foot along the way because when I was a child I was schooled down in the Valley. So I walked down this mountain every morning, and I walked back up this mountain every afternoon, five days a week.
But later in life when I moved away and had my own family, and I would return to see my parents up at my father's house, if I arrived after dark my mother would keep the light on near the driveway to let me know I was expected, and I was welcomed. This home has always been a place where I felt welcomed, unconditionally loved, accepted, safe, and comforted.
But the home is quite different today than it was during my childhood. All the sights and sounds of family activity are no longer here, because like many family homes, children grow up, move out, parents age, and eventually pass on. And our homes can eventually become an empty shell.
But what lives on is the eternal truth that was taught to me as a child. All the lessons I learned. Some were spoken, some were observed, some good, some difficult. And then those were the truths that as a parent I sought to pass on to my children by my own words and by my example.
What are you passing on that has eternal value? Your legacy is not something to be thought about towards the end of your life, because whether you know it or not it's already begun. The good news is that you can start now right where you are to be a Jesus follower. You can model a faith that will influence the generations that follow you. This study will introduce four characteristics you can incorporate into your life to help you build a legacy that lasts forever.
So the characteristic of a Jesus follower we're focusing on in this session is our witness. Hebrews 11 verse 4 says, "By faith Able offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith he still speaks even though he is dead."
There is no record of Abel preaching or teaching in scripture. At the early stage of history in Genesis 5 there may have been few other people. Instead he seems to have silently lived a righteous life that was very different from that of his brother Cain. Abel's witness has stood the test of time, influencing those who have followed, including you and me.
So what caused Abel to choose to be a righteous man? I wonder, was it the positive example of his own father within the home? Did Adam's absolute confidence in the reality of God influence his son? Surely, although now Adam was separated from God, Adam never forgot the touch of God's hand, the sound of God's voice, the expression on God's face, the authority of God's spoken word. His faith and who God is and what God had said would have been unshakable because he knew God firsthand.
And even though my earthly father died a few years ago, like Abel, he's still speaking today. My father's witness to the world is well known, but I can testify that he not only lived out his witness on a world stage, but he also lived it in the world of his own home, before his own family, behind these closed doors. Each of us also have a world that we live in. Our own homes, our own workplaces, our schools, and those places need our strong and effective witness.
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RACHEL-RUTH LOTZ WRIGHT: I want to welcome you into my grandfather's study, and I can't tell you what an honor this is for me to be able to have you come into this special place. And it doesn't look like much looking at the empty walls and empty shelves, and it seems like an empty room that isn't very significant. But to me it is very much significant, because this is where my grandfather came to study his Bible, to prepare his messages, to meditate on God's word. And so this is a very special place.
And I remember coming when I was a kid, I'd come down the hall and I'd walk into to his study and I would see him studying his Bible at his desk, which was right in a corner. And I would see all of his notebooks on the shelf with his past sermons in it. And sometimes I would see him in his room with his suitcase open. He was packing and I'd asked my grandmother, you know, where's Daddy Bill going? And she would say, oh, he's headed out to Moscow, or he's going to somewhere in Europe or India. And I knew he was going to preach. He was going to share God's word with other people around the world.
And then I'd probably tear off up the mountain and play in the weeds and the trees and not think much about it. But as I've grown up I see how significant what took place in this study was. And that's why it was so important to my mom and I to have you all come into this special place, into my grandparents' house, to see that it is just a shell now. There is nothing left. It's just empty rooms, empty hallways, and empty stairwells filled with memories, of course, but there's nothing left. There's no treasures, no-- nothing here to say, wow, look at all this loot I had while I was here on Earth.
None of that matters. And what matters is what was passed down to us spiritually. What came through my great grandparents, my grandparents, both sets. And my parents, and what they passed on to us was a love for Jesus. It is not about all the treasures you can get and accumulate in your lifetime. It is what is it that Jesus has done in your life, and are you being faithful to pass that on to those in your family, to your coworkers, your friends, whoever is around, and that's what I've seen in my life and in my family's life.
And so the reason why this is such a burden on my heart is because I'm wondering if any of you have come from homes where you didn't have that example. You didn't have grandparents and great grandparents or parents that modeled that for you. Model that Christ like life to you.
And so I want you to join our family. I want you to just sit back and listen to some of these stories, and each session, I'm going to be taking-- basing it off scripture, and then just sharing stories from my growing up years. From the example that was set. And it is God's grace. It is God's grace and he set me in this family. I don't know why he did, but I am very thankful for it. And I want to share with you what I saw.
At first I'm gonna tell you this silly, silly example, just to base it off. I'm going to go to Acts 1, which I know in this past session you've been going through some scriptures on your own, and that you probably discussed already. One of them was out of Acts 1. And just to set that up, there was this movie that I watched years ago, my dad loved it. I think it was probably made in like 1960 called A Mad Mad World, and it opens up this scene with this guy just tearing down this road in this car like an old Cadillac or something, and he's just-- it's a switch back, so it goes back and forth, back and forth. He's driving crazy.
And he just careens off the road, and goes down the steep embankment. And so the people that saw it pull their cars over, and they get out, and they climb down the side of the mountain, and they see the man had flown out of the car, and he was lying there on the rubble on the side of the hill. And so they went up next to him and he starts to tell them this-- he had something he wanted to tell them. So they had to lean real close and listen to what it was.
And the man began to say, I buried a treasure. And it's under a big W. And the big W, it's in San Diego, at some park in San Diego or something like that. And so they're like, what? You know, and he tells them again. He's like, it's under the big W. And then he dies. It's a funny movie, so it's not tragic or anything. But anyhow.
He dies and they run-- they go back to their cars, they act like it's no big deal, and they just take off. And they're trying to get to the big W in San Diego as fast as they can to get the treasure for themselves. And the point is that instead of them going wherever they were going to go, they change courses to get to that big W, to get the treasure.
And it's just like what happens in Acts 1. Where in Acts 1 they're all standing around Jesus, wanting to hear what he has to say. And he doesn't tell them, go get as much money as you can. And go get all the treasures you can. Make yourself as happy as you can.
Instead what he tells them is be my witnesses. And he says in verse 8. "In Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the world, to the ends of the Earth." What that is showing us is that we have to be an example in our homes, in our cities, in our states, in our country, and in the world. We have to go. We have to be like those guys tearing off in their cars, but we know what the great treasure is, and it's the gospel of Jesus Christ. And how he saved us.
And so I want to just give you examples in my family of how they show that to me and how they took that burden in their heart to share with everybody else what God had done in their lives. And so my grandfather, we called him Daddy Bill, and Daddy Bill, if you don't know, his name is Billy Graham, and he went and did crusades. He's big stadium events all over the world. And told hundreds of millions of people about Jesus, and he didn't just get up and speak a bunch of head knowledge, but instead it came from his heart because he knew that Jesus had changed him. Jesus had radically changed his life.
And so it just came out of his heart. And so everywhere we were with Daddy Bill, we could be at a restaurant, we could be in an airport, or in a big stadium, and he would share the gospel of Jesus. It was such a passion of his heart to make sure that lost people could be saved. And have their sins forgiven and go to heaven when they die. And so Daddy Bill was a great example to me.
And my grandpa-- so my dad's dad, he was a preacher in New York City. And so you see Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, it kind of goes bigger. Grandpa stayed in New York City. That was where he shared the Gospel with people. My grandfathers were friends, and even though Daddy Bill, my mom's dad, was an evangelist to the whole world, my dad's father, which we called Grandpa, and his name was John Lotz, he ministered to people in New York City.
Grandpa was so faithful to evangelize who he could in New York City. He was one of those guys that preached on the street corners and telling people about Jesus and he carried these tracts on the inside of his coat, and a tract was just a piece of paper that shared the gospel. Just wrote out the gospel with some scripture, and he knew that people wouldn't take it. They wouldn't take the tract if they saw this man just handing out these pieces of paper.
So he paper clipped $1 bill to every tract, and he knew they would take it when they saw that dollar bill. And so he always had those in his coat pocket. And he would get on the subway when he was going from the city back out to Long Island where they lived, and on the subway, whoever was sitting next to him, he'd pull out this tract, and he had from A to Z scripture verses that shared the gospel. So A, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. B, behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. C, come into me all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
And it goes all the way through Z. And he would hand it to the guy next to him and say, hey, can you look at this piece of paper and see if I memorized it? I'm trying to learn it, and they're like, OK. And so he starts going through this scripture, and their eyes were opened, they'd start asking him questions, and he'd lead them to Christ on the subway. [13:12]
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I’m so glad you’re joining us here at Study Gateway’s First Listens, and I hope you’re enjoying this session of Jesus Followers by Anne Graham Lotz and her daughter Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright, published by HarperChristian Resources and streaming on Study Gateway. Study Gateway is a streaming video service, and we’re the only one that has a subscription plan especially for small groups. For our First Listens listeners, we are offering an exclusive rate on our small group plan. When you use the promo code FIRST at studygateway.com, you’ll get a small group plan for up to 20 people for only $15.99/month, a 20% savings. And, for a complete experience with Jesus Followers, take advantage of our publisher-direct pricing on the essential Bible study guide designed to be used with the videos. You’ll get the group discussion questions and leader materials, the Scripture text and key ideas, and personal Bible study and discipleship activities to do between sessions. Get all the details at Studygateway.com.
And now, back to Jesus Followers.
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And so my grandpa was always looking for ways to share the gospel. In fact he would pick up hitchhikers. You really can't do that nowadays, but back then he was even late one time to our Thanksgiving meal, eight hours late because he had taken some hitchhiker to wherever he needed to go, just to share the gospel with him. And my grandma, my dad's mom was a hygienist on Fifth Avenue. And you know she's working on people's teeth, and they can't talk, so she would share the gospel that way.
And then my dad, he played basketball at the University of North Carolina. And so he was this big star. They won the 1957 national championship, and so all the people on campus looked up to him. And he told us about this story. He used to kneel beside his bed before he'd go to bed every night, and he would pray. And he didn't know anybody was looking at him, but apparently some man, some kid, college kid, who walked by the dorm room and saw my dad kneeling. This basketball star kneeling beside his bed praying with his Bible open.
And years later that memory of seeing my dad kneeling beside his bed, that's what drew him to Jesus, and he gave his life to Jesus because of that memory. And my dad carried on. He always was leading men to Christ, and leading Bible studies. And my mom has been a great example to me, and she's also been like my grandfather where she's traveled all over the world, and told people about Jesus.
And a lot of us can't do that. We don't have these ministries where we go out and share the gospel to stadiums or arenas or big churches and venues. But you can share Christ with who is put in front of you. And my mom is so faithful to not only think about the arenas and the big venues that God puts her in, but she also thinks about people. A cab driver, or somebody who comes in. She comes in contact with. And she'll share the gospel with them.
In fact she was speaking in Dubai at this big conference in Dubai. And noticed that some of the workers from the hotel were standing in the doorway, listening. And so she decided after she spoke to the people that had come to this event, she decided to stay at the hotel instead of traveling around and looking at all the sights. She had all the hotel workers come when they got off their shifts, and she sat there and shared the gospel with them, and hundreds of them came to Christ.
And so the example that is set for me, when I've seen my grandfather, see my mom, or any of my grandparents or parents share the gospel with whoever is in front of them. That has set the example for me. So that I knew, as I was growing up, I was going to share with my friends in high school. I was going to share with my friends in college. I was going to share as I've grown up, whoever God puts in front of me. My neighbors, and my kids friends' parents, or whoever it is.
And it's so important for us to have that burden to share the gospel, and so praise the Lord, I think my girls. I have three girls and they've watched me share the gospel. They have watched my parents, their grandparents, share the gospel. And I've told them stories about their grandparents, their great-grandparents. My brother leads people to Christ every single week. My sister has young girls in her home and she's telling about Jesus, and it's that legacy.
We're nothing. We're dust people. We're just a family. Just like everybody else. But what the difference is, is we have been changed by Jesus. We have been saved by Jesus. And it's just a burden that's in our heart to tell other people.
And so I want to close to tell you about this story of when I was growing up. I think I was about eight years old, and I was a hyper kid, ADHD all the way, just always getting into stuff. And so I think I must have been picking on my sister or something upstairs. And so she probably just had it, and she was chasing me through the house, and I ran down the stairs, ran through the kitchen, and I was running out the back door, and I slammed it as hard as I could, and it was a glass door.
And the glass door broke. I heard it shatter. And so I was like, oh, my goodness, I'm going to get it. And so I ran to my mom's old station wagon, and I got in the back of the station wagon, huddled down, just waiting, waiting, just knew I was going to get it. And I heard my mom come in, and she was calling my name. And so I got out of the car, and she just told me, Rachel, go to your room.
And I was terrified. And I mean it was impressive that she didn't just let me have it there. But she just sent me to my room, and I went up there, and you just start sweating just thinking, what did my sister get cut up by the glass? And what is my dad going to do when he finds out? And then I hear the creak of the stairs, and I know he's coming, and I don't know what's going to happen.
He walks into the room, and he sits down on the edge of the bed, and I'm just bracing myself for it. And he said, Rach? He called me Rach, and he said, Rach? Today you deserve to be punished for what you did. You broke that glass, you could have hurt your sister, you deserve to be punished. But instead I'm going to teach you about grace.
And I was like, what? I couldn't believe it. And so he said, I want to teach you about grace, because even though you deserve to be punished, instead I'm going to take you to get some ice cream. And I couldn't believe my ears. And he just made me realize in a new fresh way what grace means, because he said, it's just like when Jesus went to the cross. He was the Son of God. He left the beauty and majesty of heaven and came to this sinful, awful world.
And He came at a time when it wasn't going to be easy, you know? It wasn't an easy death. They crucified Him on a cross. And that meant He had nails put in his wrist, in his feet. He had a crown of thorns in his head. He had a spear in his side, and they had just whipped him on his back. It was brutal. It was brutal. And he did that for us. He did that if you were the only person left on this world, he would have done that for you.
And so he did that to take away our sins, and that is what grace is. And He's offering it to you. And so how can you be a witness if you have never received Jesus yourself? And so would you ask Jesus into your heart? Would you let Him transform your life? And then would you just go and tell. Go and tell, just like Jesus said. Be my witnesses. Go out and share with the nation, share with your neighbors, share with your kids, share with your friends, share with your coworkers. Whoever God puts in front of you.
And you don't have to think up some unbelievable way to present the gospel, and go to seminary, and do all this stuff. You just share from your heart. Just like my grandfather would share from his heart. No matter who was put in front of him. And that goes for all the people that I saw in my family, down the line from my both sets to my grandparents and my parents. And hopefully that's what's coming out of my heart and my kids' hearts. When we share about Jesus it comes from our hearts.
And so it doesn't matter who's put in front of us. We wanted to have the overflow. Have it just flow out. This is what Jesus did in my life. He changed my life, and I want to tell you how he did that. And in fact, just recently I heard of a tattoo artist was sitting down and sharing Jesus with a person that was in front of them, getting a tattoo, challenging them to go back to church.
And God can use you as a tattoo artist, a hairdresser, a teacher, a coach. Anywhere he places you, you don't have to be some big timer. You just-- wherever you are, that's where God wants you. He has placed you there to be a witness for Him and so be a witness. Go witness and share it from your heart.
ANNE GRAHAM LOTZ: Thank you so much Rachel-Ruth, that was phenomenal. You've challenged all of us to be a witness.
RACHEL-RUTH LOTZ WRIGHT: Well, it was because of my mom that I came to Christ. It was when I was a five-year-old little girl. I'd watch an Easter program, and my mom recognized that in me. She recognized that hunger for the Lord, and that I wanted to receive Christ. And so she and I got on our knees, and I prayed to receive Christ. And that's when I saw that witness in her, and in my life, just watching her as I was growing up.
And I think that's very important for us to remember as parents. Our kids are watching us. And so you can lead your little kids to Christ. Don't leave it up to church or Sunday school. You can. I mean they can hear it there. But you be that witness to your kids, and to those around you.
ANNE GRAHAM LOTZ: And you did that with your children. You've got-- Rachel-Ruth has three girls, and each one of them prayed to receive Christ before I think they were three. And the corner window in this house is leads in my bedroom, and it was when I was eight or nine years of age, I don't remember the year. But I remember I was on a Good Friday, I'd seen a picture of Jesus on TV, and I knelt down beside my bed. And I knew he had died for me, and I asked him to forgive me of my sin and to come into my heart, and he did.
So I just wonder if there's somebody watching. You're taking this Bible study, or you're watching this video, and you want to be a member of the family of God, and you're not sure you've ever prayed to receive Christ. You're not sure you truly belong to God's family. But you want to be in His family. So I want to just pray with you. You can make that decision right this minute. You don't have to put it off or wait. It's just as simple as praying by faith.
And the words aren't as important. It's the faith in your heart that God responds to. So let me pray and you can pray with me, or you can just follow along in your heart. But pray something like this.
Dear God, I want to belong to Your family. I want to know that You're my Father. So right now I confess to You that I've done wrong things. And I'm sorry for all the wrong things I've done, and I believe Jesus died on the cross to forgive me. So right now I ask that You cleanse me with His blood and I believe that Jesus rose up from the dead to give me eternal life. And so right now I receive the eternal life that You offer, and I know that eternal life is not just going to heaven when I die, but it's also a personal right relationship with you now.
And then I open up my heart, and I invite Jesus to come live inside of me in the person of the Holy Spirit. And You've promised that You will never leave me, never forsake me. So I choose to follow You from this day forward all the way to heaven. And I pray this in Jesus's name. Amen.
RACHEL-RUTH LOTZ WRIGHT: Amen.
ANNE GRAHAM LOTZ: And if you prayed that prayer, then welcome to God's family. You belong to our family. We belong to His family. God bless you.
RACHEL-RUTH LOTZ WRIGHT: That's right. And so the challenge now is to be a Jesus follower that is a witness. Where you go out, you share with whoever God places in front of you, and you tell them about the love of Jesus, tell them how God changed your life. And don't make it difficult and hard, but just share from your heart how God changed your life. And maybe the Lord would have been already preparing their hearts to receive Christ. You just have to try. So be a Jesus follower and be a witness.
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What a great challenge, and a great encouragement for us all to take to heart!
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You have just enjoyed a first listen to Jesus Followers, a video Bible study by Anne Graham Lotz and her daughter Rachel-Ruth, published by HarperChristian Resources and streaming on Study Gateway. Here at Study Gateway you can find your favorite authors, pastors and Bible teachers, all in one place. We’re the only streaming video subscription service that offers a small group-sized plan, AND has user-based pricing for churches, no matter what the size. And don’t forget, you can use the promo code FIRST to get a 20% savings on a small group plan. Is 20% such a big deal? Well, it means you’re going to save $4/month, so instead of $19.99/month, you’ll pay only 15.99/month for your entire small group of up to 20 people, which works out to only 80 cents per person per month!
With Study Gateway, you also get a direct link to our store, where you get publisher-direct pricing on the essential Bible study guide for Jesus Followers; a study guide designed to help you remember what you’ve learned in the videos, guide your discussion with your group about your insights, dig deeper into what the Bible says about this topic, and apply what you’re learning to your life. Is Jesus Followers going to be your next study? Get started right now by going to studygateway.com, click start free trial, choose the monthly small group plan, and use the promo code FIRST.
Make sure you rate and review this podcast so other people can find this show too. We’re so glad you’re here. Be sure to join us next time on Study Gateway’s First Listens.
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