December 6, 2021 – Click here to listen
It is with a heavy-happy heart I report to you that another God-loving friend went to be with the Lord yesterday morning. Bill Glass was my hero, mentor, and good friend of many years. His health had been declining over the past several months and the Lord mercifully called him home.
Bill often told me that mine was the most powerful testimony of total transformation of a person through Christ that he had ever heard in his half-century of conducting prison ministry crusades. He was a faithful reader of Words for the Day and hardly a week went by that he didn’t send me some type of encouragement for it and nearly every time that we spoke, or he wrote to me, he encouraged me to write a book consisting of a compilation of the Best of Words for the day. He was a big believer in Christians writing books and I believe he wrote around 19 himself.
Bill was an All-American defensive end at Baylor and then spent a decade or more as an all-pro with the Cleveland Browns and was with them when they won the first Super Bowl. He was asked by the Reverend Billy Graham to join him on his citywide crusades, where he gave his stirring testimony of our need to have Jesus in our lives. Reverend Graham encouraged Bill to found what would become the Bill Glass Behind the Walls Ministry where over one and a half million inmates have made personal decisions to follow Jesus, (including Jack Murf the Surf Murphy), and even more important 500,000 or so volunteers were trained by his ministry to lead others to the Lord.
I served as a platform guest for many years with his ministry and served on Bill’s board. I spent many hours with Bill and his love for Jesus was unsurpassed by anyone I’ve ever personally met. He knew of my situation of physical abuse from my father and mentored me as a father. To say I will miss him is a pitiful understatement. It seems that all my best friends are going to be with the Lord each year at an increasing rate and I miss seeking their counsel or just catching up and having some laughs and good times.
Even though I will miss him dearly and am exceedingly sad today, I’m simultaneously exceedingly happy for him – Something unique to people of faith. I can be happy at his passing because at this very moment I know that today he is shining in the glory of Jesus and is reunited with his beloved wife Mavis who was called home several years ago now. There is no doubt in my mind that God has already told him, Well done my good and faithful servant. His pain is gone, and he no longer suffers from poor health, and most importantly has fought the good battle, finished the race, and kept the faith. Hallelujah!
Bill, you will be missed but your legacy lives on my brother. You have been an inspiration for me, and millions like me. Enjoy your new adventure you have earned it. I look forward with great anticipation to joining you when my work here is done!
1 Cor. 9:24
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.