6 December 2012

coverstory

Anne Graham

LotzJust give her Jesus

By Lori Hatcher

“You can’t revive a dead person,” reasons Anne Graham Lotz, daughter

of world-renowned evangelist Billy Graham and sister of Samaritan’s Purse founder Franklin Graham. Like her famous father and almost equally well-known brother, Anne Graham Lotz is committed to advancing the Kingdom of God. But she’s quick to differentiate between her ministry and theirs. Revival is her ministry.

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“My father and brother hold evangelistic meetings where they help bring people to a saving faith in Christ,” Lotz explains. “But revival is taking people who have (already) placed their faith in Christ and waking them up.”

In September the slender, silver-haired Lotz woke up thousands of women and several hundred men at Augusta’s James Brown Arena. Just Give Me Jesus, her two-day equivalent of an “old-time revival meet-ing,” was one of two conferences she presented in 2012. Designed to “bring women into a fresh encounter with Jesus,” the event required more than 18 months of planning by Augusta’s church and commu-nity leaders and ministry personnel from Lotz’s worldwide ministry organization, AnGeL Ministries. Lotz has presented Just Give Me Jesus across the globe for now more than 13 years.

Her message builds upon those of her father and brother. She likens theirs to Moses leading the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. “But then they wandered in the wilderness until Joshua came along and got them out of the wilderness and into the Promised Land,” she says thoughtfully. “Revival is getting people out of the wilderness, from walking around in circles, going nowhere with God, being apathetic and complacent, and moving them into the fullness of God’s blessing.”

Lotz expounded on her goal for the conference. “I wanted each woman to know Christ’s love, joy, presence, and peace in a way that she’s never known before. That she’d be assured that she was not only saved from her sin, but that she’d surrendered her life, was indwelt by his Spirit, and able to leave the arena ready to make her life available to anything he would ask her to do.”

Arcadia Lakes resident Mary Huffman was one enthusiastic attend-ee. “I believe this was the absolute best Christian conference I have every attended,” she said. “I came away with so many blessings from the wonderful worship, prayer, and teaching time. (I experienced) a spiritual revival in my mind, soul, and heart.”

Lotz’s desire is always that a fresh encounter with Jesus would not only impact individual lives, but an entire community. “(It is always my hope) that God’s Spirit would come down, and everyone in the arena would have that experience, and God’s Spirit would flood the churches, and then the community in a radical, life-altering way.”

Church and civic leaders agreed. While Lotz is willing to consider every speaking request she receives, she asks that communities lay the groundwork for success by gathering support from pastors, churches, and community leaders. In Augusta, more than 700 pastors within 30 miles of downtown Augusta met with Lotz preliminarily in January. This first face-to-face meeting was one of many events that began in 2010, when organizers took the first steps to bring Lotz to Augusta.

Blanche Conger, chairwoman of Just Give Me Jesus Augusta, caught the vision for Augusta’s own revival after leading busloads of women from Augusta and Aiken to some of Lotz’s earlier revivals in Atlanta, Raleigh, and Charlotte. She met with a group of women for nearly two years to pray and study biblical models for revival before invit-ing Lotz to speak. More than 140 people in the community wrote letters supporting a Just Give Me Jesus revival. They represented 61 churches, 22 organizations, and 15 civic and government leaders in Augusta, Aiken, and North Augusta. Organizers also had to raise $250,000- $300,000 to fund the revival. AnGeL ministries, Lotz’s organization, provided the other half.

Unlike many events headlined by well-known evangelicals, Just Give Me Jesus is always offered free of charge. “I don’t pay anyone on the platform,” Lotz explained, referring to worship leader Fernando Ortega and prayer leaders Babbie Mason and Sheila Bailey. “They just come out of their love for the Lord.” No one on the team participates to make money or promote themselves, she adds. “We’re just hoping to break even.”

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Like her father’s, Lotz’s message is simple and straightforward. “I believe Jesus is the answer for all of our lives and for our nation, but we look for so many other things.” Christians have gotten away from the simplicity of their devotion to Christ. “We’ve gotten away from simple Bible reading, Bible study, prayer, obedience, service.” She be-lieves the church has become sophisticated in its approach, but, quot-ing 1 Timothy 3:5, has only a form of godliness. “We’ve substituted programs for power, orthodoxy for obedience, and lots of activity for the movement of the Spirit of God,” she says passionately.

“The biggest need in our nation today,” Lotz says, “is for the church to be the church as God has laid it out—exalting Jesus, not buy-ing into political correctness, presenting the truth without backing down, but in a loving, winsome way.” She believes that many political issues are actually moral issues, and God’s people need to be salt and light by loving the sinner, but “calling out the sin.” Lotz cites Chick Fil A’s CEO Dan Cathy’s courageous stand for the biblical definition of marriage as an example.

Her words of exhortation for believers are that “time is very short, and we’re living right at the end of human history. It’s a privilege to be living in this generation, and with that privilege comes respon-sibility.” She encourages everyone to consider this question: “If the world were to end today, if Jesus was to come back this afternoon, what would you wish you had done?”

For Lotz, being able to answer that question means living every day in light of the reality of Christ’s return. “I want to have as few regrets as possible on the day I meet Jesus face to face,” she says. “There’s eternity to come, and what we do here determines a lot of what happens in eternity. Strengthen your personal relationship with God through faith in Jesus,” she exhorts. “Get into your Bibles. Get on your knees in prayer, be obedient, serve, and live your lives as though you will be giving an account in the next five minutes of what you’ve done.”

It’s the same simple message she shares through Just Give Me Jesus, and the way she lives her life. “I have not outgrown the need to pray or to read my Bible, to serve or be obedient. That’s just the Christian life, and there’s no substitute for it.”

For Anne Graham Lotz, it’s a pattern for a life with no regrets.

To watch the simulcast of the Sept. 21-22 event in Augusta, visit http://videos.justgivemejesus.com/. To learn more about AnGel Ministries, visit http://www.annegrahamlotz.com/.

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