George W. Bush tells how Billy Graham helped him stop drinking and changed his life

Of all the left-wing attacks on George W. Bush, the one that used to frost me the most was the one about his drinking and driving - not because it wasn't true, but because Bush himself had owned up to it and gone to great lengths to become a better man after it happened. People who have issues to address in their lives, and do so, do not need jerks coming along and throwing their past wrongdoing back in their faces. People who do that are toxic and can have no part in your life. They're just flat out mean, nasty, destructive a-holes.

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The Bush who served as president was a very different man from the one who lived recklessly and irresponsibly in the 1970s and early 1980s, and he'd be the first to tell you that. It's one of the reasons I've always loved the man. What I didn't know until this weekend was the very direct and personal role Billy Graham had played in his personal turnaround:

Soon after, I had my own personal encounter with Billy. As I wrote in “Decision Points,” he asked me to go for a walk with him around Walker’s Point. I was captivated by him. He had a powerful presence, full of kindness and grace, and a keen mind. He asked about my life in Texas. I talked to him about Laura and our little girls. Then I mentioned something I’d been thinking about for a while—that reading the Bible might help make me a better person. He told me about one of the Bible’s most fundamental lessons: One should strive to be better, but we’re all sinners who earn God’s love not through our good deeds, but through His grace. It was a profound concept, one I did not fully grasp that day. But Billy had planted a seed. His thoughtful explanation made the soil less hard, the brambles less thick. Shortly after we got back to Texas, a package from Billy arrived. It was a copy of the Living Bible. He had inscribed it and included a reference to Philippians 1:6: “And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.” God’s work within me began in earnest with Billy’s outreach. His care and his teachings were the real beginning of my faith walk—and the start of the end of my drinking. I couldn’t have given up alcohol on my own. But in 1986, at 40, I finally found the strength to quit. That strength came from love I had felt from my earliest days and from faith I didn’t fully discover until my later years. I was also fortunate to witness Billy’s remarkable capacity to minister to everyone he met. When I was governor of Texas, I sat behind Billy at one of his crusades in San Antonio. His powerful message of God’s love moved people to tears and motivated hundreds to come forward to commit themselves to Christ. I remember thinking about all the crusades Billy had led over the years around the world, and his capacity to open up hearts to Jesus. This good man was truly a shepherd of the Lord.

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Bush makes clear it was God who changed him, but it was Billy Graham who sowed the seeds for the softening of Bush's heart, such that he was open to what God wanted to do in his life. Everyone who lives a serious life of faith will tell you that your growth lasts a lifetime, and at any point in time you'd have to look at what you've learned and overcome, and realize you're ahead of where you were at a previous point. Hebrews 11:6 says God rewards those who earnestly seek him, and that seeking is a lifelong pursuit. That's why Bush says he only came to a full discovery of his faith in his later years. It's probably deeper now than it was when he was president, and it's certainly deeper than it was in the '80s when he was living what he thought was the good life. Billy Graham's heyday was before my time, but it's really something when you think that he was called upon for spiritual guidance by presidents of both parties for several generations, and that he became friends with every one of them. We all have our callings from God, and that of the preacher who pastors your local church is no less noble or important than Graham's. But he clearly made a difference, and as bad as we often observe the moral state of our government to be, how much worse might it have been without Billy Graham being welcome in the halls of power?

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